Screw the earth, I want a car

Yeah, it's been quiet around here, but that's only because I've been too. Some things bear serious thinking about.

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On another note, in case anyone is in any doubt, I HATE public transport here. Mere words alone cannot express this deep hatred. It would require some Linda Blair head-spinning, force-vomiting and perhaps some spectacular blood geysers to truly express how much I hate it.

There's this place, see, where I'm supposed to get to, for reasons I won't go into right now.

Anyway, this place is ten minutes drive away from the uni. Ten minutes. That's nothing.

I check the bus guide online, which tells me that it would take me an hour to get there. Fuck. Never mind. I'm a trooper, so I gird my loins, make another phone call to change the time of my appointment, and resign myself to carrying around my heavy ass street directory (still one of the best going-away gifts ever, I love you cuz!).

The day dawns bright and cheery because God likes to play mind games with you like that.

By the time I left the uni after my driving lesson (after having nearly run the car into a wall but otherwise having performed admirably), it was pissing down like frat boys after an all-nighter. And the wind literally HOWLED. Which meant that the second I reopened my umbrella it collapsed. Which also meant that I walked for about half an hour getting my epidermis sandblasted off with a combination of gale force winds and loose sand.

By the time I reached the bus stop a million years later, I looked like someone had sewn a tumbleweed onto my head, I was shaking violently and I was blind from wind-induced tears. Mind you, reaching a bus stop is not in any way synonymous with reaching shelter, nooooooooo. Their idea of a bus stop is a rather large stick driven into the ground with a number painted on it, I fuck you not. Like a modern totem pole, but even less useful. No indication of what bus numbers stop there. Just that random number. So I waited as the wind howled and rain beat at my head like a Jehovah's Witness at the door.

No bus.

No. Freaking. Bus.

I call the bus service on their laughably named InfoLine, and was informed brightly after being put on hold for an interminable period where the wind nearly makes me do a Mary Poppins that yes, there is a bus, but it wasn't the one I expected, and it would take me an HOUR AND A HALF to get to my destination.

Ten minutes drive. One and a half hours by pubic transport.

I gave up, but the ordeal wasn't over yet. It took me an hour and a half, three buses and standing for a good fifteen minutes in what was pretty much a howling gale to get home. It took me a further five minutes to locate my keys because my fingers didn't have any feeling left in them.

I fucking hate being here.