On the Buses
There was a radio show years ago I still think about. I’d been invited on as a guest to engage in witty banter about current events with regular panellists.
They were all mates, called Dave-oh or Biff-oh or Muzza, representing a range of views from centre to right, rugby to league, Holden to Ford. I was to play the role of “Woman” because their usual one had gone off to do something else. No one said it was an audition, but you never know with these things, one thing leads to another.
This did not lead anywhere. If you’ve ever been to a job interview or dinner party where you cannot for the life of you say anything right, picture that. Feeling desperately alone, I flailed about, unable to be clever or funny or any of the things we’d all hoped I might be.
At one point, the topic was “public transport” and what was the point of it. I said it was crucial for vast numbers – me included at various times in my life - plus good for the planet.
But did I use it now? Well, no, I started to explain, because buses didn’t go to the places I needed to get to.
Much guffawing – buses go everywhere, surely. By then I’d lost the will to explain my days involved complex logistics to reach multiple commitments in short and immoveable timeframes, plus daily visits to my mother in rest home care up the far end of the motorway. If I commuted home-office-home a bus would be a no-brainer – though in reality I walked to my home office most days in my pyjamas.
Now, though, I could regale Mikey and Wazza with tales of being an avid user of our city’s public transport.
I’ve come to think of the bus at the end of our street as akin to having “a driver”. Yes, it’s a largeish vehicle shared with people I don’t know, but it’s frequent and familiar. I only wish there were name tags so I could say something more personal than “Thank you, Driver” at the end – for the lift, and for not having to find a parking space.
Last Friday I entrusted my travel all the way to the airport via a bus-train-bus combination from my front door. It took longer than an Uber – one hour and forty minutes instead of just forty; but cost a lot less – seven dollars instead of seventy.
And the adventure! It started with the familiar bus at the end of my street, then underground to trains at Britomart where I could have taken a selfie and faked being somewhere exotic, like Frankfurt or Rome.
Brief panic when the Manukau train sat on the track past departure time – would I make the bus at the other end? – but moments later I was live-texting my husband, “On the train! Smells of wees!” followed shortly by, “Trains are nice. Rhythmic.”
Turns out airport buses meet the train every ten minutes so no need to panic. Besides, I was too entranced by the view from the carriage to fret. “I am seeing many things I don’t know!” I text, “A swimming complex, a Silky Otter by a garden centre… It’s a whole new world!”
I switch from train to bus with ease, and barely have time to text about the dangerously ripe banana in a backpack by my face before we reach the domestic terminal.
A big yes from me to public transport. I should let Marky and Whacko know.