43 - The Musical

I got my preferred seat, behind the stair-well, plenty of leg room. Across form me most of the benches were occupied by people sitting alone against the window. The left hand side of the bus was clearly the more popular side today. However, these lone travellers weren’t all travelling alone, as I realised when a rather overweight woman suddenly reached forward and started vigorously brushing the dense mouse brown hair of the boy in front. He wriggled and wrinkled his nose up with displeasure, but otherwise knew well enough to submit to this brief act of humiliation.

As we pulled in and out of bus-stops, the gaze of this single file of passengers moved as one down to the heads of those waiting to alight, and then back to some distant point a few degrees left of the road. Their synchronisation was such that I half expected them to suddenly burst into the chorus line of a musical number. ‘43 - The Musical’ it would be called. I’d go see it, at least.