Stepping Out #2

 Went out again. Out in Belfast. I got about 200 yards from my house when I was caught in a torrential downpour. I hid under a copse of trees. The rain lasted exactly ten minutes, the precise amount of time it takes to get to the nearest bus stop from my house. I had beaten the weather - it didn't know about the copse of trees. It's the end of August and it's been raining every day for the last three or four months. Belfast. 

At the bus stop there's a ten minute wait for a bus. A series of out of services buses rush past. A Friday evening in the rain is the ideal time for a skittish Translink to take all their buses out of service. After all, who goes out on a Friday? The bus, when it comes, is standing room only, and I find myself inhaling an elderly man's backpack. His neck hair is like something you'd find flourishing in a Botanical hot house. After two stops I've had enough. A look at the bus-tracker tells me it's three minutes until the next bus, so I risk it and get off. I don't re-tap my pass, though technically this is another journey because, as usual, fuck you Translink. You owe me a free trip. Maybe don't cancel all your buses at four in the afternoon on a rainy Friday. 

I prepare a speech for when I get busted by the ticket inspectors. The pensioners will be up on their seats shouting "Captain, my Captain" when I deliver it. 

The bus arrives in five minutes rather than the advertised three, and I get a seat. Yay. But it's full of fractious toddlers screaming. One of them has ginger hair and bulbous eyes and looks exactly like Beaker from the Muppets, so I'm appalled when his mother actually appears to be addressing him as "Beaker". It's a good job I don't have the Child Support Agency on speed-dial. It transpires, in fact, that the child's name is actually "Baker", and I was just thrown by the Norn accent. Phew! 

Still, Baker. 

At Connswater Shopping Centre the woman and her children get off, and that's the last I see of Baker and his siblings, presumably Butcher and Candlestick Maker. 

At Central Station (or whatever it's called now) the ticket inspectors get on - the penultimate stop before I get off. I'm ready for them. I have my pass in my hand, waiting to tear them shiny new arseholes. Nothing happens. He scans my pass and a big green tick pings up on the reader. I'll have to be the People's Hero another time. Great, I hate confrontation. 

Earlier this week, I mentioned on social media the price of a day ticket on the buses in Belfast. I write very interesting posts. One wag suggested I might have a Freedom Pass, and would therefore not need to pay for a ticket. Chortle. 

When I picked myself up from the floor, reeling from this muscular zinger, still half blind from tears of laughter, and my funny bone shattered into breadcrumbs, a couple of things occurred to me. Firstly, he'd edited the post. Meaning this was the second version. His first attempt had been more lazy and pathetic than that. This was the honed final product. "I thought you'd have a bus pass lol". 

Secondly, the cunt's older than me, and, you know, looks it. 

When I got off the bus I went to the fanciest book launch I'd ever been to. 

After the book launch and a few pints, I elected to go home. I popped into Tesco for some sausages - what? I was hungry - and then on to the bus stop. A bus duly arrived and I got a seat. Finally, the system was working.

At Short Strand a drunk fell out of his seat and was lying unresponsive on the floor. The driver emerged from

his cab, called it an official "situation", and we all had to slope off the bus. This sudden fluctuation caused the

next few buses to be cancelled, as Translink is as panicked by change as the International Money Markets.

Eventually another bus arrived - packed to the gills - at which point the drunk miraculously came to life and

started fighting the bus driver, who wouldn't let him on the bus, telling him repeatedly "This is not your bus,

mate."

Left the pub at nine, got home at eleven, clutching my sausages so tightly you could make out individual

fingerprints through the cellophane.

Belfast. You'll make a hermit of me yet.