On The Buses

Her eyes bulge as she sucks nicotine deep into her peroxide skull. Around her, two children run amok, their voices cutting through the cold morning air like nails on a blackboard. Thankfully after pushing their way onto the bus they usually disappear into the anonymity of the top deck, neither seen nor heard again until they resurface in town.

The jockeying for the back seat has been less intense this week. The rear of the bus is the place to be on cold days as the heat from the engine leaks through the upholstery and into our buttocks. But lately a challenge has been issued to our back seat seniority. A mormon upstart arrives absurbdly early at the bus shelter and rushes straight to the back, occasionally joined by a bespectacled interloper. Although we have no divine right to our perch of choice we quietly fume whenever we are forced to sit elsewhere. Thankfully we have had a free run at the back row this week. Perhaps God has got the mormon doing later shifts.

As we wind through the residential Brackenwood streets we are joined by a familiar cast of characters. A young student gets on at the same point each day. Her hangdog expression never changes as she sadly climbs the stairs to the upper tier. I always hope that her day gets better.

The most metrosexual man in the world also boards the bus. Eyebrows plucked sharper than his razor cheekbones, he is immaculately groomed. He seems not to realise, however, that sucking his face into a permanent Blue Steel mask gives him the appearance of a homosexual waxwork. I suspect he's middle management, obsessed with making a visual impact as his career flounders beneath a glass ceiling.

Joining him shortly, the territorial Robert Smith. Her corkscrew hair and smear of red lipstick are uncannily like The Cure frontman's. Recently she's given up on her ubiquitous Harvey Nichols carrier-bag. For months she'd clutched it posessively to her chest. It was used so often that the writing had worn off and the plastic thinned. Today it was replaced by a sturdier, brighter bag: maybe Sainsbury's? She sits in the same place every day. It's hard to tell if she's as annoyed as Richard and i when someone else sits in 'her' seat - her face always looks like she's sucking a citrus fruit regardless of where she parks herself.

The other cast of characters are no less predictable, but slightly less interesting. Of course, the two most predictable characters of all are myself and Richard. We rarely speak at that time of day other than to pass barbed comments about the other commuters or whinge about the weather. But we're always there, judgmental bearded gargoyles, creatures of habit deriding others for being just like us.