The fiction factory

Bus timetables, certainly in this country, are given for information only - one should regard them as having only a passing relation to fact.

I was due to meet a friend for lunch in Edinburgh yesterday. Easy peasy - get the 11:00 bus into Camelon, stroll down to the station and catch the 11:21 train to Waverley with at least five minutes to spare. And it was a local bus, too: the terminus is only a couple of miles (at most) up the road. Except that the 11:00 bus came at 11:06 and I stepped off at Camelon seven minutes late to see rear view of the Edinburgh train as it made its way eastwards. Pah!

Thirty minutes - and a few text messages between friends - later, I caught the next train. Hardly the end of the world, just a minor inconvenience. And we had a very pleasant afternoon together, a wee walk along the Water of Leith and a most excellent lunch at the Gallery of Modern Art at Belford Road before I caught the train back to Falkirk and the bus home.

A good day, if one draws a veil over the fictional numbers printed at my local bus stop.