Expressway to Hell!

After readings this blog post, I am sure that you would realise that the title is not quite indicative of the content of this post. I have been clever enough to pre-empt this incongruity – of course I am not nearly clever enough to actually come up with an apt title, so perhaps I should put my intellectual pride on the back burner for a while. Regardless the title is irrelevant, you have obviously started reading and have continued till this point, so now that I have your attention, you might as well trudge along and read the rest (if you have time on your hands, if you don’t I suggest you do not put yourself through the duress I had to endure) – the following is the ranting of a very very disgruntled being.

About a week ago, a very dear friend of mine – AP (yes yes if you know me, you know who that is, now stop mocking my brilliant code in your mind and read on) came to visit me in this oh so grey city. She had some relatives in Edinburgh so we decided to make a weekend getaway of sorts to north.

We booked our tickets on a the national express coach – was our most reasonable option – and well I could do with something reasonably priced in this blindingly expensive city. It was a night bus departing at 11.20 on Friday night and reaching at 8 am on Saturday. I had made grand plans to nap through trip and wake up fresh and ready to explore Edinburgh – but of course like all my other plans this one too fell flat. It was the most ghastly trip ever.

For starters, the bus arrived an hour late, which sent AP into a tizzy, enquiring about 3 times every 40 seconds whether I was sure we were at the right place. I of course, refused to ask anyone for directions or even confirmation – this is one of the many reasons I think I have the mental constitution of a very stubborn man. After getting highly nervous for over and hour, the bus finally arrived, I was expecting a flurry of apologies from the driver, but instead I got a rather hoarse yell “Edinburgh Passengers here!”.

For a country which spends most of its time apologising for things both in and beyond her a control its rather amusing that this particular bus driver had no intention of apologising. In my two years here, I have been sent numerous apologies – we are sorry we are unable to call you for an interview, we are sorry to inform you the post went to a more deserving candidate, we are sorry to inform you that your payment is overdue, we apologise for severe delays on the Northern Line (More on that on my next blog post, the underground jungle.).

Just as we stepped on the bus, the only words I uttered to AP were “Make sure we don’t get seats near the loo” and of course much like most of Karan Johar’s movies (long time fan, first time referred to in my blog!) the end was most predictable. There we sat, right in front of the loo, inhaling the vilest of fumes and listening to the mechanics of every visitor’s bladder. As I complained relentlessly, for some reason AP was most not bothered, her concern seemed to be directed towards the men – sorry boys in the next row who were gulping down a bottle of rum. She turned to me and said that the smell of the alcohol was most noxious, as I stared at her incredulously, I wondered how she could even smell the rum above this stench and besides that the smell of rum was currently far more appealing to me then that of urine and other unmentionables.

Regardless  of all the above, I decided to get some shut eye – I wrapped myself up in my shawl, and put my legs on the foot rest, I realised there was no foot rest and micro seconds later this realisation was passed on to my feet which came crashing down. Shaking yet another incident off, I sipped some water and placed it in the pouch behind the seat in front of me, once again, much like my feet, the bottle also flung itself on the floor and rolled into the sea of feet ahead of me. The bottle would be lost until it decided to come slamming back into my foot in the middle of the one hour of sleep I was able to catch on the 9 hour trip.

As I groggily woke up to a cankerous noise of the overhead luggage shutter, I found AP wide eyed and well rested. I on the other hand was sleep deprived and oh so cranky. The trip went off brilliantly, except for my quite frequent narcoleptic behaviour – the cause of which we all know by now.  

The much dreaded return trip went off brilliantly, I felt I was in a 5 star hotel suite compared to the last journey. However, it was also an eye opener of sorts, I realised that the on our inbound journey our seats were actually missing seatbelts, heating and the consumption of alcohol was banned (AP was quite happy with this bit, I was not, I could have used a drink to get through the first trip)! A quick point which I had forgotten to mention earlier, I had sent a text messaging complaining about the service or lack of it to the good people at national express – of course needless to say, I got no reply. This only roiled me up even more and I wrote a 9 point letter to the complaints department, describing my rather colourful journey. Within 24 hours, I got a reply from a Vivienne or something with V, saying “MR. D…We have registered your complaint” – talk about adding insult to injury!