2004-07-30

Well, you get what you pay for, I suppose. Remember my fantastically cheap bus ticket to London? Eight pounds return, as I recall? Well, it turned out that the �return� part of the deal was a bit sketchy. I turned up at the bus stop at the designated time on Monday; unfortunately, my bus did not do the same. For over an hour, the crowd of prospective passengers milled aimlessly about on the sidewalk as buses came and went. Nobody knew anything � no announcement or apology was made, and none of the drivers seemed to have any idea what the problem was, seeming rather put out when asked for information. We were randomly herded back and forth between different pick-up points for no apparent purpose, queuing up where we were told without knowing why or for how long. It was living under a Communist regime for an hour and a half.

Finally a military coup was presumably effected, and normal service was resumed. I boarded the luxury conveyance � a city bus, for all effects, with a toilet (toilet paper not included in the eight pound fee, sorry) � and we were off for Manchester.

Directly behind me, there was a group of three girls with North American accents. I had no choice but to overhear their conversation, since trying to avoid overhearing a group of teenaged girls is like trying to avoid gravity; and I realized, to my surprise, that they were actually from Calgary � my hometown. So I found myself on a double-decker bus trundling through the British Midlands, listening to a discussion about how nasty the strippers are at the Back Alley, and whether there were any good rides this year at the Stampede. It�s a fucked up, fucked up world, I do declare!