The Zoo.

I make no secret of the fact that I do not drive, I travel 90% of the time by public transport, the rest of it is usually in the company of my wife as she screams abuse at other drivers, while I sit there looking pretty, for the times that I actually use public transport I do spend some time waiting in public waiting areas, now most of the time I’m not there for very long, however there is one place of waiting I seem to spend an inordinate length of time and the place is like the proverbial Zoo!

I like to be there before the time of departure any time I use public transport, yes I know I’m sad, , in this modern age you can track your bus, you can see which bus its going to be, its wonderful, but it can also give you a sense of dread when the bus disappears from the App as you then know that you could be in for a very long wait, I’m not going to go into details of the crap service my journey home from work has turned into, I don’t have time or the will to live/die! I’m also intending to make this blog slightly shorter than normal it’s simply me firing off a quick missive to keep my hand in, so to speak!

Where I normally have to wait, I have never seen so many people strumming banjos in all of my life, there are waifs and strays from all walks of life you have people who have money, some who are retired, you have school kids, College kids, people going to or from work, you have some people who obviously have mental health issues and are usually there with their carers, you can tell who are their carers are, they are usually the people on their phones ignoring the people that they are there to look after, you have the teenagers strung out on giant cans of Monster, the drunks, the junkies and then the prisoners who have just been released from prison, how are they known to the general public, simple they are  the ones with their possessions in clear plastic bags and they have a four can pack of Stella Artois in their hands and they seem inebriated simply because they are carrying them!

There is always a huge amount of noise in the venue no matter what time of the day it is, people shouting, arguing and simply not being concerned for the people around them, the rubbish is so bad that they have hired a team, not one person but a team to continually tidying up after these pariahs of common sense, there are fights on a regular basis, usually of the handbags at dawn variety, but occasionally there can be a number of more dangerous confrontations, I have even seen armed response police in the area to try and get them to calm down, it never lasts. Occasionally I have to wait longer than I want to, usually around 25 minutes for my connection, only on a morning thankfully when its reasonably quiet, sometimes I can make the earlier connection, unfortunately not always!

On the return journey my bus journey is 45 minutes, if it turns up at all however if it’s not there I simply get the bus that goes to my final destination via Stanleygrad (trust me its grim and it looks like the Wehrmacht is still fighting amongst the ruins) but this adds another 40 minutes to my journey, something which I would gladly do, purely so that I don’t have to stay a moment longer in that modern day version of bedlam! I either get a longer snooze or I simply get to play more music, either way I win and I get the chance to completely destress before arriving home.

This little missive arrives courtesy of Go NorthEast, my local bus service which up until recently I was happy with, in my 35 years at my last job I can think of only two times that a bus didn’t turn up, yes I know there will be more but in the times that I was travelling only two times a bus didn’t turn up, these days that happens at least twice a week, with no explanation, definitely a longer blog full of bile and vitriol  for a later date, so that’s this one done, thank you for all of you following, stay safe and stay alive, until the next one ……….Toodles!