“Roadhouse blues”

“You must be kidding”
I’d only had a bite of my BLT when the train started cruising. My fellow passengers eyed me unmoved as Branson’s idea of a treat bounced sideways at considerable speed. “I think I am gonna be sick”, I added as my stomach sent waves of indignation.
The manager had said, “No mate, you can’t come here, there ain’t no room, why don’t you go at the very end of the damn thing”. I was dripping with sweat, exhausted and without a trolley to roll my Downing street years I feel compeled to examine these days. “This is a train right ?”, I asked. “Yeah man, but the only space you get is in the loo and it ain’t my fault”. I somehow managed to usher myself in the very last coach with great labour seconds before “shiny shooe” propelled its electronic nonsense towards the North.
Mind you, I sure had some room in the lavatory, comfortably puking as the train rocked to and fro. Welcome back to England !
But I didn’t really grasp the extent of our post-industrial society future before two whole weeks of bus service. I asked God, “can there possibly be anything more temperamental than a dirty shaky lousy double-decker bus driven ultimately by inward looking psychos ?”
If you need a weekly discount, you have to bet. Get the red ones, and then they never come, get the magic ones, and so on. But once you’re in them, it’s a bit like disneyland, you are unlikely to actually die, but you’re in for a real good time. The thing simply hardly stops at all, you get to see people wave all the way and you can pretend this a bus trip and people around are so amazingly nice : what a nice place ! The people is so friendly ! When there ain’t no traffic, and you’re not stuck behind another bus which isn’t necesserily a bad thing as the driver can assume all the people waving are waving at the other lad, you get a sense of suspense and high adrenaline as the machine storms in town unaware of the tiny creatures who walk upon the land. Occasionaly, you might also benefit of the odd “hors piste” ride, bit of tourism on the edge always surprising even to the locals.
We are in a free economy now, buses like any other law abiding citizens can just do whatever they want do whoever they want, and you don’t have the choice unless you are mad enough to take a bike which I am pretty sure are to buses what local authorities were to Margaret.