Extra Exercise

 My branch of Specsavers has relocated to MacDonald's car park in the wider Connswater conurbation. I wasn't ready for the sheer number of fat lads in sports gear as I left the shop, as I was already befuddled by being asked for my telephone number by the woman holding my bag of contact lenses. Not only do I not know my phone number - yes, I know - but she was propping herself up on a stick and the stick looked a bit spindly and she looked a bit wobbly on it, so pace was a factor. I've been going to the same optician for fourteen years. I've bought five or six pairs of glasses from them. The eye tests are into double figures. I get contact lenses off them three times a year. No one has ever asked me for my phone number before. My name, yes. My date of birth? Increasingly embarrassing, but yes. My address. All of these I know. But I have never bothered to learn my own phone number because I fear if I learn any other number I'll forget my pin. 

I'm racing through my contacts list. Am I J or H? 

"Do you have an iPhone?" the girl says, hopefully. I'm aware of her hand wobbling sweatily on the pommel of the stick. 

"No." I say, simply. 

I find my name and the number, but I can't read it because I have the wrong glasses on for detail work. These are my expansive, outside glasses for avoiding Audi drivers and other urban horrors. I push them onto my forehead and bring the phone an inch from my face and read out the number. She gives me the contact lenses bag with audible relief. 

As I step outside, I see a Glider flash past. I've already walked two miles to get to the opticians and I fancied getting the bus back. I have things to do. I'm a busy man. I've already made eggy bread, listened to a podcast and had a haircut. These things are eating into my day. There's washing up to do when I get in. It'll be three before get to sir down at my desk. Where does the time go? 

I don't know, Sandy. I don't know. 

Crossing the road takes an age. Crossing again at Holywood Arches to get to the bus stop - the crossing makes no noise and all the "walk now" signs favour traffic over the pedestrian - takes longer. I don't mind. It'll all eat into the bus waiting time. They should come every ten minutes or so and this has taken, what? Seven minutes? I've got a pretty sweet 3 minute wait. I get to the Glider halt and check the bus tracker. 

The next bus is expected in 11 minutes. 

Fucking what? 11 minutes? I'm not hanging round here for 11 minutes. Fuck that. Up with this I will not put, and I start powering up the hill to Ballyhackamore, fuelled by righteous indignation. With a following wind, I might make it to the bus stop at M and S before the glider does. Still worth getting on the bus at that point. But as I walked past that bus stop, there was no sign of the bus. I walked on, passing bus stops, each one dotted with people, busless people, looking at their watches, tutting. The last bus stop it would be worth getting on is the big one outside Arnold's Hamburgers. I strolled past. No bus. I pass Horatio Todd's, the Greenwood Surgery, past KFC. No bus. I look behind me. There's still no sign of it. I'm not far from home now. This must have taken more than 11 minutes. The next bus tracker I pass indicates the bus is still 2 minutes away, but by the time I get to the intersection of the Upper Newtownards Road and the A55, I think the bus is bound to catch me. There are two lanes of traffic and a slip road to negotiate. But still no sign. Over the road is my ultimate quarry: Cabin Hill. The last stop of my journey. The place I ordinarily alight. Will I actually beat the bus? 

It was a photo finish. I was yards when I finally heard the bus behind me, its carbon-heavy breath on my back. It nosed past me and screamed to a halt at the, er, halt. The interior was thick with thick bodies, their sallow faces pressed against the glass like gecko's bellies. The bus was rammed. It disgorged it's contents, vomiting out schoolgirls in green woolly tights, shivering as it did so. But the rules are this: could I have got on the bus? Were its doors still open as I reached the stop? Could I now walk past it before it started its delightful journey on to the Ballybeen estate? Reader, I could have. Reader, I did so. 

I beat the fucking bus. It's a journey of about two miles, the first half up hill, and I beat the bus. Friday after noon, two thirty, before the rush hour, and I had been walking for a half an hour and not a single bus had passed me. 

Good fucking job, Translink. That's a monopoly in action. I passed three clusters of your ticket inspectors hanging round the bus stops. Even they couldn't get on a bus. 

Fucking useless.