Friday 20th November 2009 - Missing the Bus

          This Glasgow doesn't take very long to visit. There are no highway signs, just the old road sign

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and the old chapel

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          There was nobody around, except one man sitting on the bridge parapet. I took a few ostentatious pictures, doing as much 'tourist' as I could, then I drifted up to him and asked if he was from these parts. "No", he said, flatly. Then his face said "I don't want to talk to you, go away." So I did.

          CNN came up with one of those unforgettable TV moments today. There has been some government study suggesting breast cancer screening might not be all it's cracked up to be, and, of course, the sisterhood is swirling. CNN started the story, and up came the headline "More Cancer Confusion", under a picture of the Fort Hood Massacrist, thereby adding a whole new dimension to the confusion.

          Later that night, I decide to combine exercise with pubbing and public transport. I studied the Pottsdown Area Rapid Transit web site for times and routes. I worked out I can walk a mile to one of the better pubs I found, have a few, then get the bus back. I have always thought that using public transport, particularly buses, is a signal of how well you understand a neighbourhood. 

          So I walked the walk, and I drank the drinks, and when I came out, I was ready to bus the bus. I found myself walking with a grown-up lady who was exercising her dog, a very large black dog. I could tell she was a well-off lady: the dog was very clean (you can tell as soon as you touch them, can't you?), and she was quite slim. I asked her about bus protoccols, you know, where the stop was, how you hailed one.

          As I crossed the road, a bus came. I ran and signalled simultaneously, but it swept past me. The lady shouted across that the bus I wanted would be much bigger. Then another bus came, and I signalled again. It also swept past. But as it did, I could see it was the South-East Penn Transit Authority number 92, which my researches had told me about.

          I had arrived about ten minutes before the local bus was due. I waited for twenty minutes. And since it was only a mile, and I was getting cold, I started to walk. And what do you think happened? It's the same the world over, isn't it? When I was halfway between stops, the local bus joined the sweeping-past procession.

          How do they do that: with such unfailing consistency?

          I met a man once at a drinks party. He had been something senior in the Department of Transport. "The trouble with puiblic Transport", he said grandly, "is that it doesn't work. It's a good idea, in principle, but nobody can get it to work in practice". And he's sort-of right: as soon as you move away from the centre of big cities in the middle of the day, where there are so many buses and so many passengers that it just runs all the time, the performance drops off quite dramatically.

          And they looked such nice buses, too.