It was THAT kind of shift, last night... (part two)...

OK... typing this up before I go to work tonight :)

So, there I was at our Friday night lunch stand (at 04:08 in the morning! Ye gods, I gotta find an easier and more sociable-hours usable way to earn a living!), when our nice friendly roadside controller comes up and says, "Sorry mate, I gotta nick yer bus, chummy's got a water leak, you'll get a sub" - he meant a substitute bus from the depot - "soon, OK?"

This, when for the first time in close to a fortnight, I actually had a bus whose cab heater worked as advertised, and pushed out warm air, not frozen air from the Siberian regions!

OK, so the bus wasn't exactly all systems go, the nice new shiny just-out-of-its'-wrapping iBus system on it was somewhat stuffed (it wasn't taking trip data, so no recorded bus stop location announcements for the punters to fall asleep by as they usually do), and the front route blind winding mechanism wasn't working properly (it only wound in one direction: naturally, this was not the desired direction!), meaning that I had to change from the day route number to my night route number by opening up the front route blinds cabinet from the upstairs saloon, and winding them by hand (laborious, that!), but forget that - the damn bus had a working cab heater!

And he wanted to nick it off me!

On a bloody freezing night just like it was last night!

Sometimes you just can't win.

So he got my bus.

Naturally, I muttered dark imprecations about the driver of the stuffed bus, the stuffed bus, the controller, engineers, et all. In my very best "Victor Meldrew" impression (from the telly series "One Foot In The Grave"), of course. Must retain some kind of sense of humour, or I'd wind up talking to myself, AND getting answers, too!

Anyhow, I wound up spending my break in a not-very-warm, and very drafty, staff room at the bus stand. Muttering dark imprecations about engineers, spit balls, baling wire, and chewing gum usage...

Hmm... I was talking to myself again, wasn't I?

Add to this the fact that my better half is off with a bunch of our friends this weekend, and partying hard without me, because I couldn't get the time off work (probably just as well, I don't dance, and I really don't do discos - they make my ears hurt!), and you might understand why I was a tad hacked off last night...

The kind of things speeding through my sorry excuse for a brain bucket (skull) at this point were similar to "I've had enough, I don't wanna play no more, gimme me ball back", and "Stop the world, I wanna get off!". You get the idea.

This somewhat less than ideally motivated attitude was inspired by previous incidents of this nature. Whenever you needed a sub bus, the bus the engineers would send out would be about one step away from being a candidate for the knackers yard... and specifically on a night shift, would likely as not have (1) no working cab heater, and (2) probably about as much acceleration ability as a slug, meaning that I'd not only be freezing my toes off, but would have to work my backside off to keep to time, even on an empty road.

So, imagine my shock and amazement when they sent not only a bus that had a working cab heater, but which was actually able to do nought to thirty in less than five hours!

Colour me not only impressed, but totally gob smacked! I sincerely took it all back about what I'd been muttering about engineers earlier (well, until next time, anyhow )

To even things out, it was all things back to normal when I got home a little while later. Once again, I'd failed to win the Euro Lottery jackpot. Hell, I hadn't even got any numbers whatsoever!

Oh... pooh. Back to work again tonight, then!