There's no Jolly Hostess

Nothing beats the enjoyment of a cup of peppermint tea on a tar-meltingly hot afternoon. Nothing. The sheen wears off somewhat if you have to buy a cup of regular tea from the drinks machine because it fails to serve hot water and you need the plastic cup as a receptacle for the hot water you’re ‘stealing’ from the staff kitchen as you’re too lowly to be able to use ceramic beverage vessels and might get a right ticking off if you’re caught with a prohibited mug. I lead a dangerous life. So dangerous, in fact, that I’ve written about my work’s drinks machine several times on this blog.

At the weekend, I spent fourteen hours travelling. My vast experience of cross-country travel has enabled me to identify three key stereotypical figures always present during a coach trip:

Firstly, we have The Smelly Man. No matter where I’m destined or where I position myself on the bus, there will always be an assault to my olfactory organs seated directly in front of me. I’m evidently a magnet for pungent males. This particular gentleman was so very offensive to my nose that I made an attempt to breathe through my mouth for a considerable amount of time, only to stop when I realised that the aroma was so strong that I could actually TASTE the sweat. Later, he reclined his chair so that his waxy hair was less that forty centimetres away from my face. I promptly whipped out my Olbas Oil and sniffed it with as much gusto as a fifteen-year old experimenting with poppers. It didn’t help.

This leads me to my other observation. I was sniffing away at my smelling salts when I suddenly became aware that a teenage girl was eyeballing me like a crime scene. It wasn’t just a case of my overdeveloped paranoia; there will ALWAYS be someone who stares at you for the whole journey. They’re usually sat on the seat opposite, and seem to find your every breath inexplicably engrossing. Granted, I regularly contort my rather odd face into all manner of strange configurations, but it’s disturbing to discover that during a moment of deep self-evaluation, someone has been watching the way your eyebrows do That Thing. Read a magazine or look out the window, just DON’T look at me. I’m not going to be doing anything more interesting than accidentally squirting myself in the face with Satsuma juice or attempting to sleep by resting my head on my knee.

The third and final coach passenger of note is The Lovebird. This individual is either travelling across the country to be reunited with their paramour or leaving them in a sticky puddle of longing. At Sheffield bus station, I watched this journey’s deserter prise himself away from his pigtailed fancywoman with considerable difficulty. She wasn’t keen on letting go. And as he walked up the aisle to find his seat, she was making all sorts of wild hand gestures, presumably by way of saying goodbye. And then there were tears as he mouthed sweet nothings through the glass. If I was anything other than an emotional leper, this might’ve moved me. Instead, I noted that her shoes were scuffed and unattractive and her handbag had ‘The End of the World is Now’ emblazoned on the side. Perhaps that’s why they were so desperate not to be parted. Perhaps.

I prefer train travel.