Dotage

Saturday 2 May 2015

After an excellent meal at a city centre restaurant with friends we emerge onto Upper Parliament St to find there's a bus standing at the bus stop. Decide to run for it (or more accurately perform the ungainly gambol that approximates to 'running' for me these days) rather than watch it slide away. There are fewer buses in the evenings.

Always the gent, I let C jump on first and she flashes her all-day ticket and disappears down the bus. Leaving me fumbling for my bus pass. It isn't in my trouser pockets. Neither is it in my jacket outside pockets. Or the inside pocket. Or my shirt pocket. Oh shit.

The driver is wanting to depart and is looking, bemused, at this doddery old sexagenarian in front of him frantically turning out his pockets like a demented Paul Daniels who has lost his rabbit.

Having checked all my pockets twice I say to the driver 'I'll have to buy a ticket'. So I'm about to embark on another embarrassing round of pocket searching but thankfully he asks what kind of bus pass I'm looking for, and then waves me on, obviously feeling the need to humour his lost, probably impaired,  passenger.

Good job, too. I have utterly no change in any of my pockets either.

It, and the bus pass, have fallen out of my pocket onto the floor of the restaurant. The waiter has run after us and returned the bus pass (but not the change!) to our friends and they come after us ...just in time to see us sail past on the departing bus!

Hope I get a driver as understanding as that next time. There surely will be a next time.