Bus Stop

Standing alone at the bus stop. Cold and wet from the rain, but taking shelter beneath the plastic erm shelter.

It’s not that unpleasant. Listening to the rain hit the roof, and then dropping, the pattering sound of large water drops hitting the tarmac.

Letting the buses pass that don’t go my way, some stop, let someone on. Let someone off. The engines shutdown to silence while they’re stationary, gone are the sounds of a diesel ticking over, now that the hybrids are used. Gone too is the diesel smell. I miss that.

I’m not cross about getting the bus, but I am mad at myself for letting it happen. I thought we could manage with one car, but that is stupid. Just because I work from home doesn’t mean there won’t be times I need to travel.

This needs to be a lesson for me. I need to have options. We all need options in life.

Yesterday I caught the vintage Ribble bus. It was just the same as any other bus, but painted in the old colours. I’ve been nostalgic recently for the hour long 226 ride of thirty years ago, sitting in my favourite seat, at the back downstairs to the left. That reassuring whine of the engine, the warmth from it’s heater, the comforting familiarity of every twist and turn and bump in the road. Enough to fill the desires of a man’s heart. What the fuck was I thinking?

Bus shelters are not heated. They are drafty. It was ok when I was a teen. I was a student. I didn’t have any money. Buses got me where I needed to go, on the rare occasions I had somewhere to go, and being a penniless student in the 1990s, those were few and far between, just like the buses.

It brings it home, being stood alone at the bus stop on a cold damp rainy November morning. It’s makes you ask yourself some searching questions, like why am I here? School run. Why am I using the bus? The car is in the garage. Why can’t I walk? It’s ten miles. Why is it ten miles? We moved. Why not change schools? A promise.

In retrospect, telling the children that they would not have to change school before we knew where we would be moving to wasn’t bright. Noted for future reference.

More buses go by, not going where I am going. And cars, lots of cars, taking their drivers exactly where they needed to go, with their warm dry protective bubble. It’s tempting to think, that if all those people were forced to use the bus too, there would be more buses running, and I wouldn’t be stood in a drafty bus shelter on cold wet November morning, and I wouldn’t be considering the outlay of another car.