On the buses

Nice slogan...

I have fallen in love with a London Bus. It's official.

Some of you may think this is an extremely pitiful state of affairs. However I will now endeavour to explain the reasons why.

The main justification for my new-found amour is that I've now found a much more bearable route to work which involves catching a bus. More on that in a moment.

Since moving to a new area of London, Gustavo and I have had to adjust to the whole "new route to work" thing. It's radical! It's life-changing! And sometimes, it's a bloody pain-in-the-proverbials. The place where we now live is actually rather less well-located than our previous home in terms of getting to our respective workplaces, in spite of the fact that we live only 5-10 minutes away from a busy railway junction that has direct links to London Bridge. But more often than not in the morning you never get a seat on the train and have to stand all the way to London B (okay so it's a quickish journey, but having to jam yourself onto an already crowded train every morning starts to take its toll...) Then once at London B station, we either have to get a bus or tube to get to our work destinations, which usually involves a couple of changes and more standing-like-crushed cattle antics.

I hate it. It makes me question the whole ethics of living in London and I have done for some time. Originally I only moved here for the work opportunities and sometimes I wonder if it's all worth it. But my hubbie is more of a fan of London than me and doesn't seem to mind so much. And marriage is about compromise, huh? Still I'm hoping that in years to come, I can persuade him to move further out of the Big Smoke and into more relaxed, less stressful environs ... we'll see.

Meanwhile, I think as I grow older I'm actually growing less tolerant of the commuting-to-work thing. When I look at some elderly businessman hunched over his Metro on the tube, looking like he's been making the same tedious journey for several decades, I think: "How can you?" My hat goes off to people like that (if I was wearing one that is). Perhaps I'm not thick-skinned enough and should learn to grin and bear it, but I'm just not a fan of commuting.

Having lived in London since 1999, I've been travelling to work by public transport pretty much all of that time. Actually that's not strictly true. My very first job dans Londres involved teaching in a secondary school that was about 10-15 minutes walk from my house, so with respect to getting to work, it was a piece of p*ss. All I had to do was walk out the front door and take a brisk stroll across a common. Wonderful. Then I relocated to West London to work at another school. Getting there involved a quick tube journey (a few stops on the Central line) followed by a walk to work. Not too bad, but the public transport aspect was starting to kick in. Although the fact I was travelling OUT of London rather than IN stood in my favour. Then I quit teaching and took a temporary job working...wooh!...in the City! The complete opposite to what I was doing before and literally a "reverse" journey i.e. I had to travel INTO Central London rather than AWAY from it. It seemed that I was being sucked into the rat-race, joining the ranks of lemming-like commuters...This was followed by another job (and the one I was doing prior to my current position) working for an awarding body, again close to the City. I had no choice but to become a regular Tube-termite...it seemed there was NO OTHER WAY...

...That is, until I got hold of a push-bike and...gasp!...dared to brave the dangerous roads of London, filled with aggressive drivers and mad motorcyclists. Yes, I actually cycled to work. Some of my friends thought I was totally crazy. Suffice to say, most of the time biking it to my workplace was actually fine for me and literally a breath of fresh air (well, as fresh as being out in the fume-filled, polluted air of the capital can be). I enjoyed the freedom of not being stuck underground, reliant on late-running trains and hemmed in by masses of other people. It was great being able to weave in and out of traffic, there was the fitness aspect and I was usually able to get to work in the same amount of time as public transport! Unfortunately, later on I had my bike stolen, and fool that I was, hadn't had it insured. I haven't replaced it since and it has to be said, cycling to work from where I live now would just take TOO long, so is not an option. Ah well.

So. Having given you a potted history of my existence as a commuter in London, here I now am. Having been making the train/tube journey to work from my new home for less than two months and growly rapidly fed-up with it, I discovered a BUS, which travels from close to where I live, all the way to work! (Well, within five minutes' walking distance!) And it goes fast from West Norwood to Waterloo, so it's not one of those "seems to take forever and stops everywhere" type journeys (hence the "X" for "Express" - clever eh). Now, if any of you are really sad stalker-types you might even be able to work out which bus I'm referring to and from where I'm catching it. But I'm not telling you. Too much information. The Cheeser has to preserve a little anonymity. Go figure!

Anyway, here's what now happens. I leave the house, walk up the hill for about 10 minutes, wait about 5-10 minutes and the bus turns up! I ALWAYS get a seat, so can snuggle up nicely with my book or iPod and can then sit back and enjoy the journey without having to budge! No walking through horrid, packed London Bridge station, no descending to the murky depths of the underground, no having to get off ten minutes later and shove through the hordes...Then I arrive at my destination, and as said, can walk into my work building in about five mins. It does actually take a little longer than the original train/tube journey (door-to-door about 1 hour, 20 mins) but it's worth it for the relative ease of the journey and the not-having-to-shift-one's-butt aspect. Virtual bliss.

Until I change my job that is.

Now, I know a fair few of you out there are not Londoners, so probably don't have to endure what we mad City dwellers have to put up with. Aren't you the lucky ones, eh?

So what's YOUR journey to work like? Do tell.