The vagaries of buses

You’d think it only reasonable that taking a bus would be quicker than walking. And so it would be, if Upper Hale Road wasn’t in the process of being dug up.

Usually, it takes me 15 minutes to walk from Starbucks to our front door (and vice versa) but not today. I had a Talking Newspaper to present at lunchtime which meant leaving the house and making the journey into town. Naturally I took the bus.

Going into town was fine. I caught one of the ‘every 12 minutes’ buses and I only had to wait for about five. I didn’t mind. At least it wasn’t raining.

The big test for my knee came with the trip to the studio. There’s not many buses that way so the only thing was to walk…slowly. Normally it takes me about ten minutes. It took me 20 at my new, reduced pace.

I should mention that this new, reduced pace means there’s less chance of me falling over. I’m being a lot more careful in the placing of my feet and I can’t run across roads. Normally I would find this quite frustrating but it’s great to just be walking outside the house!

I was in for a bit of a surprise at the Talking Newspaper. I was presenting the Haslemere & Liphook edition (the second of the day) and the Farnham group was busy in the editing room, beavering away, when the presenter suddenly came out and flapped an article under my nose, asking if it was about me. Yes, it was, I told her. She giggled maniacally and returned to her work.

Here’s the piece that was in the paper this week. It’s quite ironic, given I’ve stopped blipping. Also, please note that the typos and bad grammar are NOT mine!

Me in the Herald

If that’s too hard to read, there’s a bigger version here.

Fortunately, the piece did not appear in my edition of the paper. ‘Fortunate’ because I’d have had to discard it and lose a story. It’s much easier when someone else has to read about me. Now I’m going to have to listen to the Farnham edition out of curiosity.

My own group of readers arrived nice and early and set themselves to work. I had all ladies this week, including the engineer, and they all proved most assiduous, finishing well ahead of schedule. In fact, we were all sitting around chatting as the Farnham group emerged from the studio.

I should probably mention here that today was the hottest day since August 11, 2003 when it reached 38.1 in Gravesend, Kent. Looking back through my journals, I find that I wrote “Another hot, cloudless day though it’s supposed to be cooler than the last few days.” There is nothing to indicate it was an exceptionally hot day in East Worldham. Perhaps the entry would have been different had we lived in Gravesend.

The only reason I mention it (apart from posterity, of course) is to explain why we all nearly melted in the studio. As some very clever mathematician once said

SP*HR = BH; where SP = the level of sound proofing, HR = heat retention and BH = BLOODY HOT.

Apart from the real risk of melting, the session went well, with only a few fluffs (the worst being one of mine, as usual trying to read my own writing and coming a-cropper) and we were away nice and early.

And now comes the tale of woe that is the bus timetable.

Obviously buses are not going to be reliable as long as there are other road users. There could be all manner of hold ups and, depending on the length of journey, the bus just gets increasingly later as it moves from stop to stop. Add to this the problem with Upper Hale Road and the bus diversion and you may understand why I had to wait (almost in the blazing sun) for 35 minutes for a bus to take me the five minutes home.

I am so looking forward to a return to full mobility. And following my (hopefully) brief but instructive period of bus dependency, I have decided that the collective noun for buses is a vagary.