I love our Oxford buses. Living in Kidlington I do realise I am spoilt rotten with the amazing frequency of the service and the calibre of the drivers working the route.

You do get the occasional grump, but the vast majority of drivers are friendly, professional and sterling ambassadors for the city. Over the many years travelling on the Number 2 I have collected a group of bus friends. These are a wonderful assortment of people I have got to know purely by striking up conversations while commuting, including Anita the social worker, Sarah the PA and Bob the builder (yes really). We don’t spend Christmas together; we’ve never so much as shared a drink, but I know the ins and outs of Sarah’s love life, Anita’s shoe size and am aware that Bob’s elderly dog will only eat chicken. It’s not all glorious, I’ve always avoided one bus buddy like the plague – let's call her Liz (for Liz is her name) – who regales me with the plight of her piles at every given opportunity.

I have also overheard some truly amazing conversations (admittedly, sometimes by shamefully straining my neck). My very favourite being a little old lady who delighted a young pilot seated next to her, and half the bus, with loud tales of the three airplanes she kept in her shed and all the fascinating places she flew to. The entire lower deck glowed with her charm.

Well, that’s how it used to be. My bus friends are no more, they have all moved on, we now just share the odd wave on Cornmarket Street. Recently it dawned on me why they haven’t been replaced.

Sat on the top deck of the bus this week I realised that around half my fellow passengers had earphones welded in. Sadly a huge number of us are now literally wired continuously for sound and exist purely in a private bubble. If aliens landed they’d have to conclude that earphones and wires are used for charging ourselves up.

Most other people, of all ages, were staring avidly at the screen of some mobile device – an increasing pastime of dining couples, who says romance is dead?

If we’d driven past Marilyn Monroe scaling the Taj Mahal none of them would have noticed – unless someone tweeted it.

It’s ages since I have been party to, or witnessed, a casual conversation being struck up across a bus aisle.

Intrigued I looked out of the bus window to gauge how rampant this earphone epidemic has become. Brace yourself for bad news. It’s spreading rapidly and I fear it may prove fatal for our declining community spirit.

I’m amazed it’s not causing real fatalities hourly. The number of pedestrians and cyclists using our busy city streets and willingly denying themselves of the gift of a survival sense is staggering.

And me? Well, admittedly when travelling alone I tend to escape the sea of wires and the virtual world around me by burying my nose in a book – a real one.