2004-12-01..3:35 p.m.

I find being a commuter weird enough, but sometimes travelling by bus to and from work every(working)day is just unsettling and I am LONGING for the days when I can just hop on a bike and skid in unmolested undetected. As it is I�m currently starting my days as Bus Ninja � the stealthlike observer of bizarre behaviour, champion of seat preservation and held by the honourable code of Non-Communication: no eye contact, no verbal contact, if physical contact is made it is ignored BY RIGHT, or an inaudibly muttered �Sorry� as you shuffle to the side. HOWEVER TODAY my carefully honed skills were called to question, my honour put to the test and any buildup of acquiescence towards living in South London vanquished.

I catch my first bus at ten past 7, which excuses me for noticing more quickly the growing scent of stale chip shop that pervaded the bottom deck. As there were only another four stops to go and no telling what may be found on the top level, I left myself as I was. One film of grease later, and thinking I�d be rather clever this time, I ascended the cracked stairs of Bus No. 2 where there were open windows and grand possibilities to see the theory of free ventilation in action. Instead I received a smack up-side the head as the first wave of festering pot fumes hailed. The involuntary inhalation of the second wave � trying to see if it really was what I thought it was � knocked me into my seat and against the smuggy glass of the window. The third wave consisted of pinpricks of leftover smoke that burrowed into my skin, the fourth spat in my eyes and stung my hearing. Fortunately I never found out what the fifth might do as I�d reached Kings� Cross and had to go racing after the 91. So skin soaked with grease and feeling like I�d just exfoliated with a pot leaf I stumbled aboard only to find it was inexplicablely the official sponsor of This Week�s School Run. Screaming girls screaming at screaming boys throwing things at sulking boys ignoring sulking girls. It is a small dose of hell and I was not happy to find myself involved. I haul myself upstairs, lucky to find a seat all to myself and stare at the window in stony silence. And I do believe it was thus that caused the next series of events, for I sat unaware until it was too late to prepare for the assault. A mini-silence of sympathy had already descended amid the pleat-skirted hord when I glanced up and immediately shrank into feeble protection of my scarf as Sir Rancid No-Wash of the soap fearing Putrid McStinky�s plonked himself next to me.

And so it was that I arrived at work compromised by the stench of smelly old man, feeling like I�d just hotboxed a deep-fat fryer.

****meep