Bus Stop

So, what happened was... (this is my embarrassing story that I mentioned previous post).

I was in my late 20s and lived and worked in Reading. Well...more precisely...I lived in Caversham (across the River Thames) and worked in Reading. At this juncture in my life I travelled to and from work by bus. Tedious. I haven't got a problem with buses per se, except (particularly in the rush hour) that they don't turn up when they're supposed to, which makes you late. OR they turn up and they're completely full so they sail past your stop, which makes you late. And you spend inordinate amounts of time in queues staring inanely at advertising posters or teenage mating habits.

One day I was travelling home on the number 25. It was packed out...I had grabbed a seat towards the back of the bus and next to the window, and by this point in the journey every seat was taken and every standing space in the aisle was taken. Packed. I'd had a particularly tiring day at work and was leaning my head against the window, completely day-dreaming and watching the world go by as the bus meandered its way towards my home stop. Tra la la.

When all of a sudden...

I became acutely aware of everything around me, as I now realised that we were literally yards from my stop and obviously as no one else was getting off there, the bus was on course to keep on travelling straight past it. And I was stuck 3/4 of the way back, with many people blocking my entrance, and reaching the bell to tell the driver I wanted to get off was going to be a bit of an effort (it would have involved sticking some private part of my body in at least 2 people's facial area). Taking all this in within the space of a second flat, I shot into an upright position at my sudden predicament and (without thinking what I was doing) shouted the immortal words...

"Ding ding!"

Oh yes. My knee-jerk reaction was to imitate the sound of the bell for the whole piggin' bus to hear.

Within a milli-second of these words falling from my lips, I thought "What in the hell did I do that for?!" as I realised that a very high percentage of the bus patronage were now looking at me, and no small number were also smirking, or even downright giggling.

I then had the embarrassment of having to say "Sorry, excuse me, sorry, sorry...thanks...sorry" as I shoved and squeezed myself past them all (b******s) to get to the door, all the while not looking anybody in the eye.

*sigh*

So if anyone is needing a bell imitator, then I'm your girl. Reasonable rates. Available for boxing matches, operating lifts, hotel receptions and of course buses....