The joys of public transport

Since my unfortunate coulda-been-a-near-death-experience when my brakes failed last week, the car has been in an immoveable state - except for when my bro in law took it back to my mum's house (ta D!) and that was all uphill so I don't think the brakes mattered that much. Anyway I've been thinking of getting rid of the car. No, let me correct that. I doubt I'll have much choice on that one. What I'm thinking of is NOT replacing the car and managing by public transport.

However, today, I used public transport to get to Greenock which took forever. Greenock back to the office in Paisley was fine but trying to get home at night - what a pain! Battling through the rain and wind for 15 mins on the way to the station was bad enough - my Mary Poppins style brolly nearly took off, MP style! And waiting the extra ten minutes for the late train was fairly irritating but at least I got a seat, the folk on the trains going out of Glasgow were crammed in like the proverbial sardines.

But the bus journey from Glasgow to Dennistoun? OMG! Now if I was not tired after work, if I'd all the time in the world and nothing to do but write comedy sketches I'd have loved the research possibilities that the bus journey opened up for me. But I was tired, I was desperate to get home and these folk - well, they're only funny when we're watching them from the comfort of the sofa aren't they? In real life, they're mostly extremely irritating.

The two football fans kitted out in the strips, rolling about drunk and talking rubbish. When they're on TV you can't smell the drink, they can't fall into you with their fags spilling ash all over you and they don't distract you so much with their unbelievably annoying behaviour, that you miss your own bus! Aaargh. Still, it allowed me to share a journey with a charming woman who spent the whole time on the phone. Allow me to share some extracts of her one sided conversation:

"Aye but the hing is, ye don't waaant tae have a fight just for the f***ing sake o it dae ye but fur f***'s sake, sometimes when folk wind ye up."

"Tellin ye man, if I hud a stanley knife near me, she'd a f***in goat it man!"

In between times it was lots of "na't u mean?" also translated as "do you know what I mean?".

She didn't spray her ash over me, she only blew her smoke in my face, talked loudly in it and then skipped in front of me in the queue. Decided that as I had no way of knowing if there was a stanley knife in that bag or not, I'd let her do precisely as she pleased. It's not fun and I don't think I'm keen on doing the public transport thing day in day out. So, today, environmental consequences are fading into the background and the desire to shut myself into my car (A car) is taking over.