The walking bus.

I volunteered to be a parent helper with my son's class outing. They were going to see a 'thing' (can't categorize it) at the Science festival. Now this 'thing' was in the Usher Hall and we (the teacher, the teaching assistant, me, another parent helper who was luckily a friend) had to get 25 young and excited children to the venue by means of public transport and walking.

This is not a simple as you might think, particulary if you take into consideration the perpetual road and pavement upheaval in Edinburgh's west end due to tramworks.

The show 'thing' (which was all about bees) was informative and enjoyable. This is them on the stage of the Usher Hall.

Trip home was something else. We (the collective selection of adults) had neglected to check out the bus stop situation. There are no stops on Shandwick Place at the moment! All buses have been re-routed. Our closest bus stop from the Usher Hall was on Princes St but as we had directed the children (via two rather large pools of vomit,which I suspect will be one of the abiding memories of the trip) onto Shandwick Place we decided it was perhaps better to continue in the direction of home/school. The next stop.........Haymarket. That is quite a long walk with 25, now hungry and slightly on the edge 6-7 year olds but it was preferable to turning them round and walking them back into the lunchtime busyness of town.

We did it!

3 missed buses later.

I must add that all the children behaved very well and I had several very funny conversations with some of them on the bus back. One of the girls said to me "you can have lunch with us at school......you're a kid today anyway so it'll be ok"........

........and I thought I'd been very mature and autoritative.