Going By Bus

I have a Bus Pass, which I capitalise out of respect, for it has changed my life.

I am out of my little lavender-blue box and and meeting people, many of whom also have Bus Passes, and finding out what's really going on.

We're standing waiting for the 30 or 31 or, in my case, the 132.  (Much light-hearted banter from my focus group when I get on the wrong one by mistake.  And get off again.) We have ten minutes, at the most, to get to know one another: to learn all that is salient about health and families, before moving on to politics.

I have largely given up on politics, although, being a good citizen, I will go and waste my vote on Tweedledum or Tweedledee come the next election. If I were to be judged by which radio station I tune into, my ostrich feathers become very apparent.  I live in the south of England, and listen to KUOW Seattle. Give it a go. This is filler, back to the coven at the bus-stop.

Things are not looking good. My group travel by bus because they have no choice, they, all female, by the way, eke out a living on the State Pension, and their opinions must count.

And what opinions! These are kindly women made angry by Sunspeak (or Mailrant) and see themselves as being impoverished by a multitude of spongers, of different ancestry, with huge families, living high on the hog, in houses taken from their own grandchildren.

Don't yell at me! I know it happens. There are people in this world who will see an opportunity for a free ride, and take it. I'm one of them, hence the Bus Pass.  But the fact that my fellow-travellers should be made so hateful saddens me.

So I thought about it all the way home on the bus, and wondered at my cowardice at not challenging the vox pop... .

In the end, I sighed at my own ineptitude, and gave thanks for the fact that I only have Tweedledum and Tweedledee to vote for at the next election.


Think: 'All living is meeting.' Martin Belper