caddyman | Hobble like the wind

This morning, I decided (again) to give my squeaky knee a break and wait for the bus. Since that wasn’t the original plan, the bus I waited for was the 86, meaning, for those who do not know my current stomping grounds, that I had already walked part way to the station by a couple of hundred yards more than if I’d decided to catch a bus directly on leaving the house.

Anyway, I waited for the 86. And I waited and I waited. This has happened more than once recently, though today when it did arrive it didn’t come in convoy as it has in the past. The annoying thing about a straggling bus is that by the time it is clearly late, you have invested too much time waiting for it to arrive, so if you are on a deadline (as I was, of sorts), your only realistic option is to continue waiting. The traffic coming down from Romford was moving pretty freely, so I have no idea why the gap in the service went far beyond the scheduled 6-7 minutes. Certainly they can’t blame the Royal visit to Ilford, which is happening in Valentine’s Park, well away from the 86 route and happening now, not between 8.15 and 8.30.

Still, it did afford me the opportunity of watching a polite, but distracted and clearly uninterested catholic priest desperately trying to avoid conversation with a nun. His look of relief when the bus did arrive was palpable. He managed to worm his way into the bus and get a little further down than the rather portly nun’s frame would allow and then when we got to the first stop, a distance that even with my dicky knee, I would have covered, he piled off and stood waiting for the next bus instead. Of course, he might have wanted a different route and was just being lazy…