#MicroblogMondays:Taking The Bus

My friend Carol took me to task the other day for going on about getting old. Whilst I protest that I do so with tongue-in-cheek, as I feel twenty, and am frequently caught out acting like a six year-old, I admit she has a point. So I have stopped dwelling on creaking joints, aching backs and wrinkles, and am spending my time doing age-irrelevant tasks like dreaming up new and better meals, beating my record on 'Penguin Slide' on Wii-Fit Plus and catching up on back-issues of the New Scientist.
But there is one consequence of becoming a Senior Citizen ( Prefer, 'Wise Woman' myself ... ) that I am delighted with - my Bus Pass. Here in the UK, it enables those of state pension status ( basically over 65, but increasing thanks to the Bankers and their Crisis) to receive free travel on all local bus services.
I have used my pass to visit the beautiful city of Bath, to collect my favourite cheese from Moreton-in -the-Marsh and to oggle the sights from the top-deck of an iconic red London bus.
Today I used it to catch the 32 from outside the Co-op in Newent, to travel to Gloucester via Highnam. I was on my way in to serve tea at The Salvation Army Lunch For The Homeless, but you know that.
It was a spectacular morning. The sun was low, just climbing above the horizon, presiding over a truly beautiful landscape. I was in pole position; front seat, top-deck, which gives the best view ever: simultaneaosly elevated and intimate. Open fields and open curtains offering delightful vistas on both fronts.
The woods are still asleep, but the understoreys of hedgerows are springing to life. I saw snowdrops! The view across the river from Highnam offers a view of Gloucester not much changed since the nineteenth century, excusing the pylons ... There is a magical viewpoint that I wanted to capture for you, but unfortunately I missed it as the bus moved off the stop a fraction of a second too early. Nevertheless, here is:
"The View Seconds After The Best Landscape West of Gloucester". Enjoy!

Posted with Blogsy

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