So that was weird.
Waiting for the bus back from a shopping trip in which I celebrated my own sense of Me returning (HRT ftw) I chose to wait a bit and get the 499 bus because that wouldn't use Gallows Corner roundabout; currently undergoing Works and submitting drivers to seven shades of hell in roadworks, delays and diversions.
While we were waiting, a bus pulled up. This one was going to somewhere called Passingford Bridge which I've never heard of but as we stood there, the driver got out and looked around. He was on his phone for a while and then he got back in again, looked down into the bus and said “Does anybody on here know the way to Passingford Bridge and can direct me?”
A lady came down from the back of the bus and said yes so she sat in the front seat to the left of the driver with her phone on. I can only assume Google Maps was being used as she directed him on the way to go.
When my bus came, myself and the lady who sat next to me started talking saying but what happens if she's not going all the way to the end of the route? Does she have to stay on the bus all day? Are we going to read in the newspaper about a woman on bus for 48 hours?
“Woman on two day bus journey says ‘I didn't think the drive was ever going to end but I did my duty’. She has been treated for dehydration and sent home in a taxi.”
To my mind it sounded like a prompt for the beginning of a novel where she got on the bus never thinking that anything more would happen. It kept us entertained all the way back to my stop, and to be honest, we're still wondering if she ever managed to get off the bus at all because on the way back we saw the same bus coming back in the opposite direction, so we knew that he'd made it to the end of the route and halfway back again, but we couldn't see if she was still sitting in the front seat, waiting patiently to guide him around.
Was it a penance? Did he keep her there until he’d finished her shift or did they eventually they ended up in a co-dependant relationship while they searched for a third team member to open and close the bus windows as the seasons changed.
Will she end her days going to a café once a week to think back on her her experiences whilst nursing a strong coffee and vowing never to set foot on a bus again?
Hurrah for HRT!