Route 93

The journey home from work was complicated. Four buses and four short walks of about ten minutes each. Left work at 5.25, arrived home 7.15. But it's not for much longer...

I have been working in a village just outside Gloucester for the past 9 months. The journey is difficult for a non-driver such as myself, and the hours are short. Two and a quarter, to be precise. Lunacy! But now the after-school club is closing for political and economic reasons, and I am going to miss the children and the village. A lot.

It's a little like Stepford, to be honest. People walk their dogs at same time every day, the lovely womenfolk keep producing lovely babies, and none of the new housing seems to be anywhere the social housing end of the scale. Lots of double garages and gated areas. It was originally a Temperance area, so there is no pub either. Something tells me I had better not contemplate moving there.

Today I wanted to blip the old orchard area, complete with black and white bullocks, that is part of the ancient Manor Farm estate. It looks impossibly rural, considering the busy city that surrounds it. The bullocks obliged me by being there, and ambling up to the fence and sticking their faces over to be photographed. As Temple Grandin says, cows are motivated by fear and curiosity. In their case, it was curiosity, and my fear abated as I got to know them a little more. Some had beautiful triangular markings on their faces, and they were in mellow mood. The light, however, was poor, and I was miserably aware of all the mums scampering past me on their way to school pick-ups, so I scurried off after them.

I haven't got over feeling self conscious about taking pictures while out and about. I know, I know, but I am actually pretty shy and hate doing anything that makes me look a fool, unless it's clumsiness, which I take as given. So on the front seat of the top deck of the 93 bus between Tuffley and Edge, on the way home to Stroud, I experimented with balancing the camera on the safety rail and taking pot shots. I am not sure that is the best, technically, but I have chosen it for the patch of blue sky and the copperiness of the leaves of one of the trees on the left.

It has been ridiculously unrewarding, financially, travelling all those miles every day, and I took the job merely to pay back my course fees and for the CV, but there are moments of serenity on the daily grind. Because I missed the earlier bus and had to wait for the 6.15 out of Gloucester, the roads were almost deserted, and for a brief moment, the evening sun shone, and I was glad.