Buses, on the other hand, are a different matter. For some reason, when it comes to buses, the travel myth doesn't hold. Or rather a second myth applies: that of the renegade loser on his way into or out of trouble (usually into). For in the movies, buses are strictly for people in dire straights. Think of Joe Buck and Ratzo Rizzo. Once they get to Florida, all will be sunshine and coconut juice. Until then, they must endure a multitude of indignities, like riding Greyhound. Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate fares no better. He gets the girl, and gets on a bus, headed to where we're never told. But you can be sure it's not a happy ending.

Of course the ultimate bus-as-bad-news movie would have to be SPEED. But SPEED is a disaster movie, and if we include it we have to include all the Airport movies and movies about runaway trains and sinking ocean liners, and these movies are not about travel but about paranoia. A true movie about the horrors of travel by definition would have to be long and boring. Andy Warhol would have to direct it, and he's dead.

Let's talk about those oceanliner movies, the ones where the ship doesn't sink. I must admit, of all the forms of travel addressed thus far I find ocean going the least debilitating. It's also by far the most expensive and time consuming. But for time and money you do get a few compensations. For instance, you get to breathe fresh air - if funnel fumes don't happen to be blowing down your throat. You get to exercise: if the ship isn't pitching too violently and if you can find enough room amongst the old farts in teflon jogging suits. You may even get to do some swimming, if you can manage it in a pool the size of a thimble. And you can get an awful lot of reading done, once you stop vomiting. Still, all the books in the world won't make travelling by sea any less boring after three days or so, by which time you start feeling like Patrick MacGoohan, dreaming of candy-striped golf-carts and bicycles with enormous front wheels. Number 9, number 9, number nine...Jump overboard: a big bubble will catch you.

According to the travel myth, however, ocean liners are never dull. The Captain is either Sebastian Cabot or Gavin McCleod, or someone else who could just as easily be Santa Claus. You're always seated at his table. Everyone dines with the Captain, the other tables being populated by insignificant entities who may as well be stoking the furnaces below. Also, the Captain is always making toasts.

That's all he ever does. He never steers the ship (there are other insignificant entities for that). If, by chance, the Captain should be called to the bridge, rest assured that you are about to die. For in movies and myths the Captain either goes down with the ship or marries someone, while the passengers are either happy or drowning. But none are ever bored.