Didn't we have a lovely time the day we went to Bournemouth....

I hate you Butler, not the bloody number 36 bus again!!

THE number 36 Wilts & Dorset bus plies a long and tortuous route from the heart of the picturesque New Forest rumbling into Bournemouth.
I can't remember the last time I caught a bus. On a radio show yesterday, the presenter asked listeners when was the last time they had written a letter? For me, the last occasion when I bought a ticket on a bus was around the last time I wrote a letter.
But as I stepped onto the red, single-decker in the small town of Verwood, I couldn't help but reflect how quickly times change.
A few weeks ago, I was working as the busy editor of a regional daily paper - at my desk at sparrowfart a good couple of hours before the rest of the staff, and not leaving the office until nigh on 12 hours later, with sometimes the prospect of an evening function or meeting to come.
I was responsible for a team of journalists, an incredible Addams Family set of characters, as my day often depended on their whims and moods, or what issues popped up in my emails.
As an icebreaker for one of those terribly dull management training sessions, I was once asked to draw my job, so bizarrely I sketched a toilet roll. I explained to colleagues that my job every day was not a creative journalist, but instead it was determined by dealing with other people's crap!
So as the bus travelled slowly past the thatched cottages of Three Legged Cross and Ashley Heath (I know an Ashley Heath who works for BBC Wiltshire!), I reflected how I no longer miss those toilet roll moments.
After 30 years I had stepped off the incessant media merry-go-round, and it felt good. I had no-one asking me to do their thinking for them, no phones ringing, no Microsoft Outlook heralding the arrival of the latest piece of cyber dross to be dumped in my email basket.
No, the only decision I had to make was what stop to get off as the bus drew closer to Bournemouth town centre.
I was the youngest person on the bus by a good 20 years, and the only fare-paying passenger - everyone else had OAP bus passes! By car, the journey from Verwood to Bournemouth, a distance of 15 miles, takes just under half an hour. The number 36 takes over an hour as it winds its way south. But time was no issue.
A couple of ladies behind me spent the entire journey putting the world to rights. They were several rows back but talked in that loud hailer way which only old folk can do.
You couldn't help but eavesdrop their conversation as they disclosed their own medical histories, the annoying traits of their lazy husbands, and why mutual friend Mary should stop feeling sorry for herself 12 months on from her husband succumbing to cancer by getting out more.
The conversation was so trivial and charming, the atmosphere on this gentle charabanc so leisurely and cathartic.
As we reached our destination by the elegant Pavilion Theatre, the sun shone brightly, the sea glistened on the horizon and all was right with the world.
I helped one grandmother off the bus from the step to the kerb, and as we alighted in the south coast sunshine even the bus driver has a smile and a kind word.
Talk about Smallville, but why not?