Drive-by XI

'Waiting for the bus.' 'In the rain.' (adrenaline sport rating = 5/10)

Sometimes buses come, sometimes they don't. Will it be the right number? will it not...the excitement doesn't stop there..

Sometimes they take a very long time, and sometimes they rush past just as you turn the corner, and you stand swearing at the driver for being late, but not late enough. The most common complaint is that nothing comes for half an hour and then two come at once when you are already cold and wet.

The art of embarking on a bus journey also involves having the correct change in your pocket. Things have been simplified in this fair city by making all bus trips cost £1. This has taken away a lot of the adrenaline of fumbling for the correct change as every other passenger stares at you with evil eyes.

Before the £1 fare - if the correct change was not in your pocket and you realised before the bus arrived, then you had to rush into a sweety shop and make a purchase of a quarter of soor plooms or cola cubes so you then had enough change. Occasionally this stage was complicated by the sweety shop owner over-pouring the cola cubes so that they cost just more than the bus fare, meaning you needed to break into another pound by buying a Beano or Dandy, (by which time you had probably missed the two that arrived at once.)

Such is the excitement that today's bus stop waiter lives with every day, only slightly marred by the introduction of the £1 journey fare and the occasionally frequent rain shower.

Try it - you might like it...a little.