Buses

I really hate buses. Which is good considering I've just bought a pass condemning me to bus travel until the end of my placement (£250). What I didn't reckon on was the time it would take to get from Saltburn (where I live) to James Cook Hospital, Middlesbrough (my placement) - bear in mind I can cover the distance in 20 minutes driving: I figured out, you know, using those "timetable" things which I guessed (silly me) would be accurate - they look so precise, down to the minute - that I could make it here in an hour (here I say, as I'm here at my desk right now. Yes this is work, it's valuable keyboard practice). So why has it taken me an hour and a half, every day this week? Bus is late. I Get on late bus. Bus proceeds to: Stop-start-stop-start-stop (extended as a passenger asks a seemingly unanswerable question to the driver,and then at last fumbles as an eternity passes for money in a bottomless purse) -start, traffic jam, stop-start, traffic jam at traffic-lights, red, green, red, green, red, green got through at last stop, start, stop(extended as lots of people get on) , start, stop-start-stop-start....change buses, missed connecting bus as first bus late, wait for another bus, bus late...bus comes, stop, start...you get the picture. I travel the 13 miles to work in the time I could travel 100 in my car. That's like traveling to the Scottish border. I could be in a different country, in the time it takes me to get to work. Put another way, the guy who won the - also 13 mile - Great North Run, and plenty who didn't, would easily beat me to work, using their LEGS for goodness sake!

I'm not looking forward to this year. Think of the money you're saving John, think of the money...actually, although I'm saving £50 a month, I'm already not thinking of the money; I'm thinking of the buses, the neverending line of buses I must take...