Foiled: Attempt to "Get Home"

    I can't seem to manage a simple journey without something going wrong. You've heard about my first solo train journey, and you've yet to hear about my first voyage to London alone. Then there was the time when I went back to my Halls alone ... Yeah, there is a pattern forming. I am a beacon for misfortune, and yesterday was no different to those other times. 


     I honestly thought that it would be different. I thought, "This is it. This is the one. This time, there are no problems to get in the way. You'll make it. Believe. Just believe." It was almost like the introduction to a cheesy song. I was going to make it somewhere without something else messing it up. How wrong can one person get?


     ANSWER: Very.


     Friday, 7th May. I am going home for the weekend to see my family before they go on holiday (yeah, I know, they're going on holiday without me! Rejection much). It seemed simple enough, and welcome after last week's four day extravaganza of complete solitude. All I needed to do was get a coach as close to my hometown as possible, then get the bus from the town centre to my house. The latter was a journey I'd made many times. The previous? Never. 


     I was nervous, to say the least. Coaches? Coaches without any instructions? Coaches that may make me stranded in some Godforsaken place. Man, I was worried. I had all this weird scenarios playing in my head. I'll share some:

1. I get to the bus station, only to miss my coach because I can't find the stand that it leaves from. I've wasted £7, and end up spending the weekend in Coventry.
2. I get on the coach, but the driver ends up deciding to skip my stop and I end up at Stansted airport, stranded. 
3. I get on the coach, and there are no spare seats for me, so I end up being left behind, because who really cares about whether an eighteen year old student gets home safely?

     There are more. I have a rather big imagination, and it likes to torture me when faced with new situations about the possibilities that aren't really possibilities, but incredibly farfetched fears. The coach journey was the one part of the trip my mind was fixated on and couldn't get passed. Like I said before, the bus trip from the town centre to my house was a piece of cake. Done a million times before. The coach? Bleh. 

     I went to the bus station early, to make sure that I was stood at the right stand, on the right side of the bus station, and not some other place where I could see my coach come in and leave without me. I checked with a nice lad, and he assured me that my stand was Stand C. Of course, even his assurances didn't ease my fear, and I didn't believe his words. He was in on the conspiracy to get me stranded. 

     However, I had no other choice but to go to that stand and keep a vigilante on the incoming buses/coaches. Funny how fifteen minutes stretches on forever when you don't want it to. I kept checking the clock what seemed to me like every five minutes, but the clock never seemed to change. I was getting more and more agitated. I wanted it to be over and it was never ending. The minute hand seemed to hate me and be deliberately moving slowly, and then there were other people standing ahead of me, all smug and superior because they knew what they were doing and weren't eighteen and inexperienced ...

     After forever, the coach arrived and I stepped forward to claim my seat. The driver took my ticket, looked at it, and circled the destination. 

     "Luton airport," he declared. I shook my head, and he looked at me bemusedly.

     "Luton," I said, regretting my phrasing as soon as it came out of my mouth. The driver looked at me like I was an idiot, and I had to agree with him at that moment. I was shaking and thanking my Mum for reminding me I had clothes at home and didn't need luggage. That would have complicated things further.

     "The town centre?" he replied, and I nodded timidly. He sighed impatiently and I knew that I was being dismissed. I walked onto the bus, face hot with embarrassment. I found a seat, and settled in. For the next five minutes, I decided whether I wanted to sit by the window, or by the aisle (I originally phrased that "in" the aisle, but realised that looked like I was sitting in the aisle, literally). Anyway, I shuffled from one seat to the other, debating it out, before settling by the window, but only because I looked stupid shuffling between the two seats.

     The driver got on and I fastened myself in. The motion of looking down to fasten it made me realise something important, embarrassing and altogether uncomfortable: I felt sick. 

     I never get travel sick in a car, trains are alright give or take, and coaches have never bothered me. Until that moment. I started deep breathing, in through the nose, out through the mouth. The woman behind me must have thought that I was a loony, what with the moving seat and heavy breathing. There is no doubt in my mind that she clutched her bag tight to her chest and rested her hand on a can of deodorant/body spray in case I turned around to attack her in a rabid rage.

     To make matters worse, the seats were leather and every time the coach went around a roundabout, or stopped suddenly, I slid forward. I was only held in by my belt, and even then there was enough slack for me to jolt forward, adding to the nausea. I held as still as possible, breathing in and out, my iPod plugged into my ears to distract from the stares. It would all be over soon.

     If only.

     Once we arrived in Luton (town centre, not airport) I hopped off the coach and stretched, feeling thankful that it was all over. All I had to do was get the 38 to my home and I could finally relax, a weekend away from revising, a weekend full of home cooked meals, a weekend full of people contact. I strolled over to the bus stop, the bus coming within ten minutes. I climbed aboard, paid and settled in for the ride.

     This is the part where the coach journey looked like a casual walk in a park and the usually half hour ride home looked like purgatory. 

     I decided against music this time, figuring I'd be home soon and that staring out the window at familiar sights would occupy me. We were stuck in traffic, but this part of the journey always took forever and once we were through, we were home and dry. The first signs that something was amiss happened shortly after I text my Mum that I was on the bus. A fire engine whizzed by. Not unusual, so I ignored it. I figured that it was probably heading towards the motorway to an accident.

     We carried on slowly through the street, Friday afternoon traffic playing havoc with the speed we could move at. I saw that we were almost through and relaxed. That was when another emergency services car sped by. It was a regular car, with lights, so I deduced that it was a paramedic of some sort. Still no alarms of my own sounded. A normal sight. But then, I spotted a car doing a three-point turn in the road. 

     Feeling slow, I tried to peer around the man sitting beside me to see what was going on. I couldn't see, so I decided that person had probably reversed off their drive into the road. I was wrong. It was turning around because the road was blocked. There had been an accident, except it hadn't happened on the motorway. It had happened on the only road I could go on to get home. 

     The bus stopped. People stared. I saw the fire engine from before, parked ahead. I saw the silver Chevy, its driver putting out cones to stop the cars. I saw police, ambulances and people from the nearby houses stopping and staring. I realised that the accident was literally in front of us, and people started talking.

     "They're cutting those people free."

     I almost face palmed. It had happened again. To me. I could not get home without something happening. Something like this. It was a curse that I carried. I texted my Mum. I sat back as a police officer stepped aboard.

     "Sorry folks," he said in a friendly manner. "You'll be waiting a long time. You might as well start walking."

     He was insane if he thought I was walking from where we were, to where I live. That was an impossible feat, too many miles and streets between us. Other people heading to my town murmured in agreement with my thoughts. Some people got off, having only to walk up the road. 

     I was effectively stuck.

     The iPod didn't seem like such a bad idea anymore. I tugged it out. Of course, this is a debriefed version of the two hours I sat on the bus. I didn't get the iPod out for ages, chatting with strangers about the situation we were united in. To be honest, I'd only started a conversation because I thought I was awesome for coming up with a plausible way to fix our problem. It was so awesome, I had to share. So I turned to the woman behind me and said:

     "I don't see why they can't get another bus to come down and stop beyond the crash, and then let us walk through along the pavement to the bus, and then be on our way."

     I was amazing for thinking that up. The woman thought I was awesome. The bus driver, however, did not do as I planned. So we ended up stuck there while the emergency services did their job. I sat back and relaxed, finding it hilarious that I couldn't go anywhere without something happening. Other people did not. In fact, the most annoying part about this was the other people talking loudly about themselves.

     However, my personal favourite was the phone call between one woman and her daughter at home. If there was an award for stupidity of the most genetic, she would have won, hands down. The phone call went something like this:

Woman: Stephanie, could you check to see if I've got any post. What? No, can you check to see if I've gotten any post. Post. I said post. No, Stephanie, check to see if there is any post. What? Get Dad to check if there is any post for me. I've got my social work coming through. What? What? Get Dad to check the post. What? Post. I said post ... 

     And on and on she went. Is it any wonder I plugged my headphones in?

     Anyway, the dilemma does not end there. The bus driver realised that we would be stuck beyond his paid hours. So instead of being a good, selfless citizen and driving us to the depo, or even home, he decided to chuck us off his bus and put us on another that was behind us. 

     We got on the second bus just as the traffic started moving. The two buses in front of us moved. We didn't. I looked up at the driver, who was desperately pressing the ignition button on his panel. Nothing. I figured that his bus had broken down. No one else did. They started moaning again, as all British peoples are exceptionally good at.

        "The bus has broken down," I supplied cheerfully, figuring that since so much had gone wrong so far, it wouldn't hurt for more to go wrong. "He can't start it. We're stuck."

     So, to resolve this new issue, we were put on another bus and then we were finally off. It took me longer to get home from the town centre then it did to get from Coventry to Luton. I loved the irony. Laughed at it.

     I kind of had to. That, or go insane from the magnitude of mind-numbing things that occurred on one, simple trip home. It's a speciality of mine. Screw up the simplest of journeys.