All buses go to Sorry

Another cancelled train, so I go sloping off for an half-hour wait for the next bus in the freezing rain. Sigh. It is an awful journey.

The bus is full to busting with late shoppers and kids coming back from 'Clifford The Big Red Dog on Ice' or whatever it was at the Hippodrome. One child's kicking the window petulantly. He looks over to another passenger and wails: "Mummy! That man's frowning at me!" Clip round the ear that's what the little bugger needs.

A couple of people old enough to know better are listening to music on their 'phones, sharing the tinny blather with an unwilling world. I had a transistor radio in 1974 that had a better tone. My brother keeps saying that I should get an ipod or some such. Perhaps I should. I could amp up the volume, as the teenyboppers say.

"There you are: Carroll Gibbons, you bastards!"

The clincher came a few stops before mine. A couple of ladies dressed as lamb lurched over to the driver.

"Hey! Is this the 159?"

"No, it's the 157."

"It said 159 when I got on."

"No, it's the 157."

I lost count of the number of times she went on telling us all that it said the 159 when she got on, hoping that constant repetition would change reality. One might have thought that she would have noticed half an hour earlier as the 157 takes an entirely different route to the 159. Eventually we are released as they take their leave of the bus and lurch over to the next bus stop.

Stepping off the bus, the cold wait at the bus stop finally takes its effect. A jolting spasm of cramp ran through my calf like a lightning bolt.

Another happy day.