A Bus Journey Through Britain

Prologue It’s strange what passes through your head when you stare certain death in the face. Take my own experience. From what I can recall, what astonished me most wasn’t the fact that a huge double decker bus was inexorably bearing down on me but rather the fact that, at the very point of my imminent and painful destruction, the only thing that popped into my mind was “Oh look - that bus goes to Durham”. No panic, no scream, no hurried mental check whether I’d donned clean underpants that morning (it was a Tuesday - I had), not even the traditional whole-life-passing-before-my-eyes-in-glorious-Technicolor bit. Not even the highlights – either of them. Just those seven little words. What was bewildering was the fact that I should have been terrified, yet I plainly wasn’t - instead, I was focussed entirely in a slightly perplexed sort of way on the fact that the bus which was just about to crush me to death was in fact en route to Durham. Then it all got a bit