A change of scenery
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A new house brings a new bus journey and with it new scenery and a whole array of new people to be amused or irritated by. Since moving at the end of last month, I've had time to get used to my new routes to and from work. The journey that from my old house required only one bus that conveniently picked me up from the end of my road and dropped me at my office is now split across two buses with a brief changeover in the city centre. While not as convenient, it's not so bad providing said buses actually turn up.
Rather than an efficient and direct route, my new bus takes a somewhat meandering journey through parts of the city I wouldn’t otherwise have seen. Some of the houses further out of the city are more picturesque than those I'm used to seeing so early in the morning. They are sparse with attractive frontages and large windows. The cars outside range from fancy business class to mid-life crisis, indicating that this is an area populated primarily by those in or near retirement. You can spot the average retiree from a distance of forty paces just by comparing how much extra time they've spent on the garden.
Closer to the city, the houses get older and are more densely packed. There's nothing new on this side of the city. Most of the buildings been there since the early twentieth century. Some may be older than that. The oldest of them still have their grand frontages, but many have seen better days. It's an area that hasn't seen much aesthetic change since the 1940s. The residents, mostly younger, have yet to trade their working lives for those of a gardener and the approach to mid-life is still measured around the waist.
Scenery aside, the biggest change for my journeys to work is who I share it with. Until you don't see them anymore, it's difficult to appreciate how much you take those around you for granted. The people you see every day but might never even have said much more to than "hello" to are as much a part of the journey as the scenery outside. You get used to who gets on or off at each stop. The bus stops now are as unfamiliar as those that use them.
With my scenery so altered, thus far I've yet to get used to its many characters. I'm sure the two women who like to repeat how they need to get to work whenever the bus slows down will turn out to have exciting stories to explain their impatience. Maybe the woman who only ever talks to one of the other passengers about what her husband does for a living will turn out to have her own hobbies and interests. And perhaps the man who will happily talk to anyone else on the bus or, failing that, himself might one day find something interesting to say. If such information is to be forthcoming, I'm sure I'll find out in due course. This, after all, is the setting for my journeys from now on.