Digressions

One has not experienced true terror until one has relied on public transport. It's a symbiotic relationship: those greedy bastards need money, and we, the people, who are too lazy, too old, too ugly or too disabled to drive, need them. Unfortunately, the public transport busy bodies take a huge liberty on the faces of its consumers. Trapped in the maze of cancellations, delays and red tape there exists the unfortunate flurry of people reliant on the 'service' and when the 'service' stops 'serving', these people are required to emulate this efficient mode of productivity by cancelling or delaying their own appointments and the cycle continues eternal, ad nauseam. I was, and continue to be, one of those people. Anyone would believe my destination spanned thousands of miles and I was complaining about the ferries or airports; but it was nothing so glamorous. My destination happened to be the decrepit slums of Birmingham in the depths of winter. My goal was simple: to get to university. I only had to go in once a week in my first semester as both of my modules were on the same day; so, although I had six sevenths of the week to myself (barring studying and writing) the day ended up being excruciatingly long. Each of these days followed the same pattern. I had to get up at six o'clock, pour cold water over my face to break any illusion that I was still dreaming, put about three layers of clothes on my wiry frame to fight the Arctic conditions of early November, and high tail it out of my front door whilst my family slept like newborns under the effect of tranquillisers.

No sooner had I removed the key from out of my front door and locked it, the cold air had hit me like a thousand tonne anvil. The foreign cold particles in the sky infested my virginal, still warm body like a virus, and, in a microsecond, the symptoms: fine strands of hair on my arms and a shiver in my body, began to appear. I sighed and began to walk zombie-like to the bus stop. The only ally I had was my iPhone which had over a thousand songs at its disposal. After a quick touch, the 'shuffle' function activated and the song 'Black Sabbath' met my ears. It's one of my favourite songs and I was glad that I heard something familiar, but during the early hours of the morning, things that are treasured and respected take on a whole new quality: they're uncannily eerie. The song fitted my thoughts perfectly. While there wasn't any actual rain like in the song, there was a figurative storm raging in my head. It could have been symbolic of my digressive thoughts, pelting away, insignificantly into the abyss of my mind, never to be thought of again. If my ears didn't deceive me, I could hear the distant ringing of a church bell crying out for a bygone age in which there weren't any commitments in life; we lived by our own measures and values, free of the worries of Travel West Midlands, the Lib-Dem/Conservative Coalition and strict deadlines. Suddenly the riff by Tony Iommi and the high- pitched wails of Ozzy Osbourne would convince us that it was all an illusion. My reluctance to trek to the bus stop was matched by the slow, lumbering guitar riff and the grimy, miserable tone of Geezer Butler's bass. It acted as a not so subtle reminder that the rest of my day would seem like this. I was heading for my doom; something, anything, I do in the day would result in my embarrassment in some form or another.

As I left my street, I examined the houses. All of them seemed bereft of life. Not one of them in my street had their curtains opened or any form of light on. A rather insular thought, I recounted later; the neighbours may have been having orgies behind those 'dead' curtains and I wouldn't have known the difference. After all, my higher functions don't begin to work until after I've fallen asleep again. After slipping through frozen marshland that may or may not have been people's gardens, I almost made it to the bus stop. The only thing that stood in between us was the alleyway. This infernal passageway has been the bane of my existence since I moved to my current house when I was five years old. I've fallen down there more times than I care to imagine; whether it be frost, flood or fire. After dusting myself down, I was never sure whether I was red from injury or embarrassment. The occasional graze on my skin never bothered me; my white blood cells could repair it in no time; but no amount of biological and medical research can do anything to cure a broken reputation. In spite of my personal grudge of the gully, I always felt that the place has an aura of evil and has had a continually odd effect on me. It's hard to describe, but the buildings around it seem to bend and twist as if they were props in a German expressionist film and block the only source of light. The wall that houses the grassy bank has an eternal resident in the form of a black cat. Whoever it was who said that a black cat brings you luck is a fool; that cat always passes my path, yet I'm the most unlucky person alive. The parking lot adjacent to it is adorned with Gothic looking gates and they amplify the feeling of deprivation and abandonment I feel whenever I walk through there. It was almost inevitable that they'd build those gates there. Even now, twenty years young, I tread carefully. I'm not scared of muggers or anything like that; after all, they'd be sleeping on top of their ill-gotten gains whilst I was pondering that thought, it's just the atmosphere that unnerves me. I'm not superstitious in the slightest, but that alleyway makes me question my grip on reality. I know that somehow, somewhere, there are some unusual powers emanating from there. Being neither a smoker nor a drinker, sleep-deprivation is my hallucinogenic.

After stumbling through the alleyway of hell, I finally arrived at the bus stop and, naturally, it was deserted. It now seemed like a Twilight Zone episode. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Rod Serling in his trendy suit from the sixties narrating my life in meticulous and elegant purple prose, punctuated by Bernard Hermann's intense soundtrack. In my naïve state of mind at half six in the morning, I could delude myself into thinking that a neutron bomb attack had occurred in the time when my eye was moving rapidly. The buildings were still standing, but all life had been eradicated. Nathan Lloyd, sole survivor of the human race. Forget the atomic attack, humanity would well and truly be at a disadvantage now; its last hope in the form of a long-haired, charmless cretin who had all the grace of a maggot! I suppose it'd be a fitting indictment of humanity if they left me in charge. I smiled at such a sentiment, at least survival would break with the monotony of day to day life. Although I discarded morals, would I shed a tear to those who had perished? My girlfriend was the only important person in my life, so I would definitely cry over her. I'd probably yell out her name in vain over a smashed landscape until I expire of loneliness, regret and old age.

My reverie was interrupted by a passing car. I knew I enjoyed fantasy, but I wasn't aware that I positively revelled in it. No more digressions. I began to resolve myself to keeping my mind on more pressing matters of what time the bus was supposed to arrive. Even though I knew what time the bus would come: forty-four minutes past six, I checked the bus schedule affixed to the bus stop. 6:44. For once in my life, I was right about something. I checked the time on my iPhone. At 6:37, I was too early for the bus. Shit. One of my pet peeves is waiting. I'm either early or punctual; my nerves can't take me being late. On the flip-side; however, if someone else is late on my time, words can't express the anger and anxiety I feel. I checked my watch again and only a minute had passed. Even though it was useless to pray for an early bus, especially when its vendor was Travel West Midlands, I could not resist cursing. I suppose my rising anger was a blanket for my paranoia. What if the bus didn't arrive? I'd have to wait half an hour biting my nails down to the bone as the world of university would continue without me and I'd still be stuck in the dark hole that is Gornal.

Why is it that every minute seems to wane on pointlessly when you are waiting for public transport? It's almost as if we are in a time warp in which the basic mechanics of time are distorted by some fatuous joker who gets some sadistic or, worse, sexual pleasure on spying on us checking our watches. Each minute waiting for that damn bus makes several thousand of my brain cells jump off cliffs like lemmings in my cranial cavity. There simply isn't anything as soul destroying, especially when your bus ends up not only being late, but non-existent. It's the same with trains. There you are sitting or standing at the platform alone and the only thing you can do to stop your mind from wandering is to inspect the arrivals board, which is placed in a strategic position above you in order to mock you. Waiting for a bus is worse though because Travel West Midlands still live in the Stone Age and haven't invested in the same technology to track buses or, more challengingly, hire competent drivers.

Inevitably, my patience was rewarded with nothing. As soon as my iPhone said 6:45, my inner voice assured me that the bus wouldn't come. I shook my head out of craven disgust for the company that I relied on and examined my bus pass. Was the £233 entirely worth it? Did it justify the utter disdain that the bus company felt towards its patrons when their drivers do their job only when they feel like it? Was I subsiding this cavalier attitude that seem to ooze from the company's noxious existence? Possessing anything that had Centro's name on it is a severe castigation of my outlook on life: that meetings should be honoured and service is what you pay for. It was perhaps relevant that my bus pass was in a red case; it did a perfect job in provoking me like a bull in a toreador outfit. The time continued to melt away in my head. I no longer felt cold because my growing anger acted as a boiler and with each passing second, the boiler became more and more overstocked with fuel. It was at 6:51 when I exploded. I never remember much when I have an episode of rage. 'Fucking pricks!' I must have shouted at the top of my voice, scaring off a murder of crows that had made nest in the nearby tree and doubtless waking up people in the vicinity. We have truly failed with humanity if buses cannot make a simple time. It was early in the morning. There was no excuse for such a shoddy service. There was little alternative: I would have to jog up the huge hill that links Lower and Upper Gornal to catch the number 1 bus with the added chance that I would rupture my back thanks to the huge volumes of Romantic poetry I had in my backpack. With a loud sigh accompanied by a growl, I began to lengthen my maelstrom into madness by walking up that hill.

Due to it being nearly seven o'clock, the roads were busier now. I had to take caution when crossing the Five Ways crossroads as it is a site for street racers, pensioners and learner drivers and I didn't quite fancy becoming pate for a cannibal's sandwich. After a swift jog, I was finally on the road to Upper Gornal. With a curse in my throat and a reluctance in my step, I was now ready to make the massive trek that awaited me. The vertical climb was akin to scaling Everest to me. I have never been into sports or exercise; in my opinion it's a gargantuan waste of time because we are all going to end up in a pine box, whether we exercise or not. It were times like that that I resented my hostility to exercise. If I were an athlete, I'd have been able to climb that hill in huge leaps and bounds and not even have the time and space to think; but, alas, due to me being built like a Swingball pole, I plodded along like a swan with its foot cut off by poachers.

As I walked up the hill with my head bowed down, I finally realised that I was exhausted. This went beyond me feeling tired as I did when I left the house; that was merely due to me not being awake fully, but after enduring what I had endured in that hour, my soul was crying out for a break. There were multiple possibilities as to why I was feeling lethargic. The first explanation that cropped up was, of course, my paltry physique and how a chicken could be seen as Arnold Schwarzenegger when I stand by it. It was a moot point as it goes without saying. My second explanation was that I had a low tolerance level to bullshit. Attracting misfortune as I do, one would expect me to adjust to it, but one never adjusts to it and rising to fate's bait every single time is indeed tiring. I usually wouldn't mind, but, as I have stated, days at university end up being terribly long; I'm out of my house for fourteen hours and if the first hour is tedious, it serves as an incredibly optimistic omen for the rest of the day.

I passed the myriad anonymous houses as I searched my mind for any vestige of positive thought. The grimy surroundings of my home town did little to raise my spirits. A school, church and a drinks shop stood between the replacement bus stop and I and none of them made me raise my head to even acknowledge them; I was too preoccupied by the sudden bright light in the distance. The sun had finally risen. Before I could scowl with disappointment at false hope, I could see a dwelling illuminated by the opal rays that cast a shadow that extended to my feet. Miracles do seem to occur as I identified the peculiar sight as the bus stop. I went towards it and inspected the time: 7:04. Seeing as it was 7:03 on my iPhone clock, I hoped and prayed that it'd arrive. People who argue that patience is a virtue are not people; they are androids programmed by some petulant scientist to believe that everything in life is positive and have no grasp on those ever present imperfections that make it so exasperating to live. As luck would have it, the bus actually arrived on time. Being utterly gobsmacked, I presented my bus pass to the driver. He was a typical Travel West Midlands employee: all charm with an eternal frown that emanates invitation and a strong desire to perform his job by nodding mechanically that allows passage like a contemporary 'open sesame'. I smiled mockingly and took my usual seat on the bus. I looked out at the back window and waved at the darkened slums and relaxed: the day could only get worse. Dolly Parton once said that 'if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain'. There wasn't a rainbow, but there was a hell of a lot of rain.