On the buses (or not)

I'm so glad I wore my big scarf pulled up to my ears, my beret pulled down to them, the Danish wool coat which makes me feel like I'm being hugged by a sheep and gloves lined with snuggly cashmere. The car needed to go in for a service and MOT on Monday and we woke up to snow on the ground and minus temps.  "I'll come with you, just in case..." I suggested to Mr SDS who was going to drive it there but catch the bus back from the garage in a quiet village 6 miles from us. "You know, if there was an issue getting home, at least you won't have to deal with it alone". We put on our layers for a chilly expedition.

Besides, I like a bit of bus travel - the return trip on a red double-decker out here in the sticks would take us down shiny, pinkbrown lanes, past acres of flat frosted fields, under archways of twiggy trees, all to be spied through a handmade porthole in a condensated window, against that soundtrack of strangely comforting rumbles and rattles.  I checked it all out first - the Number 43 would be perfectly timed and, just in case we missed that one, a 43a should turn up 20 minutes later.  So we left the car with the garage and headed down to the bus stop.

We didn't miss the bus.  The bus - or buses - missed us. Over an hour went by and we were still waiting. An hour?! you say - but there's always that thing in your mind, isn't there - just wait a bit longer, it's bound to turn up soon, or it will just at the very moment you decide to walk away, so...just hang on in there.  Just ten minutes more, twenty maybe, it'll come.

Nothing.  Eventually we gave up and rang for a cab - around another half hour to wait for that, then.  We stayed by the roadside so we couldn't be missed. Actually we hung around next to the public loos to be precise (they're at a convenient turning point).  It was freezing cold, did I mention that?  It was freezing cold.  Nothing to do but observe the world. A well-to-do elderly man, complete in tweed jacket and cap, exited the Gents and inadvertently set off an alarm which clanged and flashed for ages, and of which nobody took any notice.  A red kite flew low across the street, scaring off the woodpigeons high up in a nearby tree. A woman in the Medieval house opposite wandered out in her slippers, leaving her front door wide open, while she posted a letter just down the road.  Slippered feet!  Outside, in this weather!  And she didn't wipe them on the doormat before she went back in.  Then we caught sight of Mr SDS's wanky boss from a few years ago, driving by slowly in the opposite direction.  "Quick, hide!"  We ducked behind the Ladies until it was safe.

We got home eventually and I'm so glad I wore my big scarf pulled up to my ears, my beret pulled down to them, the Danish wool coat which makes me feel like I'm being hugged by a sheep and gloves lined with snuggly cashmere... It was freezing cold.

The car failed its MOT, it has a major problem and it's going to cost over £1000 to fix it.  But what can you do? - We couldn't get another car for that amount and without one here, well - sadly it seems we just can't rely on the buses.

Snippets

I'm terrible, I love earwigging other people's conversations; it's not hard when I'm on my own on a train, for instance.  It can be quite captivating and distracting and, give or take a noisy tunnel or two, you often get the whole conversation and a feel for the dynamic between those involved.  On a journey a few months back I couldn't help but hear the discourse between two young men sitting opposite me, obviously colleagues, where they started off very lightly discussing the football match they were on their way to. This to me was terribly boring but then the dialogue took a detour to one of their girlfriends and the awful time she'd had healthwise - suddenly I was party to this intimacy, the dark and difficult stuff of countless hospital visits and the diagnosis of a brain tumour.  I'm glad to report that by the time they departed the carriage I'd gathered that she was doing very well and that the tumour was benign. But it really made me think.  Another I remember hearing was the woman who kept reading bits out of the paper to her partner - a fascinating piece on the origin of cornrows is one I recall - determined to pique his interest somehow (she did mine!), but he only ever replied with indifferent grunts.  And then there was an analysis of the year's Glastonbury footage, where one of the two teenage boys talking about it seemed determined to belittle and show up the other for his presumed lack of musical knowledge.  "Name me two songs by her, then" he demanded with a definite flicker of spite in his voice when his companion dared to say he rather liked Lana Del Rey.  Funny how these things still stick in my mind.

But there's also a strange appeal to those moments when you just catch a short excerpt, disconnected from context, when words drift by you fleetingly.  No beginning, no end, just a fragment of a middle.  Living by a road where people walk directly past the windows from time to time (not a main thoroughfare, but a route liked by dog-walkers and others just out for a stroll) I'll sometimes catch a stray sentence or two through an open fanlight.  I heard such a good one earlier this morning that it inspired me to think: why not jot some down?! For no reason other than that they have a brief, inexplicable charm - and I'm such a fan of the delightfully random, which is exactly what today's overheard conversation snippet is, verbatim:

"...and occasionally, like I say, we've had dinosaur legs."

What a lovely thing to wonder about! That's my 2026 notebook started, then.