Bus Ride

I took the kids into the city this morning. Me wife suggested I drive but knowing I would get lost I elected for the bus. The kids love the bus, I don't, but its driven by someone who knows the way. The kids love it as they bump and roll on the back seat and wave at the cars behind. I don't like it as it's full of people - I don't really like people.

Two parents and their child got on and sat in front of us. Both adults were wearing yellow jumpers and blue jeans. The son was wearing a yellow tee shirt and blue jeans. He was around the age  as Toes. As soon as he sat down he started to howl and was given his mothers iPhone which immediately started chirping and bleeping. Bear glanced at it and gave me a doleful why don't I have one of those glance. The kid howled again and was handed a piece of cheese.

He howled again and was given a banana.

Again - a lemon iced biscuit.

With each new food item he spat out the old one and his father scouped it and handed the masticated clump to his wife who looked furtively around and then ate it. Several times she seemed to gag.

Toes pointed up the bus at a man.

Dad, he's wearing your shirt

I saw a shirt similar to mine and whispered in her ear

You're right darlin', but I make it look good.

A mother and seven year old got on. The child sat and was also handed an iPhone and started hacking into the FBI database while her mother spoke

When I was young there was no internet.

The child rolled her eyes and carried on tapping.

No Angry Birds, no e mail. Do you know what that was like?

She stole account details from Amazon and hacked WOPR to play tick tack toe with Joshua (it's a War Games joke). The mother wasn't looking at her daughter and her daughter wasn't looking at her. The mothers eyes were off gazing into some pre internet Angry Birds era.

It was boring. It was horrible.You don't know how lucky you are. We only had the real world.

I remember the real world. It smelt of cut grass and was soundtracked by lawnmowers and motorcycle engines. There were blackberries in it. One morning when I was 7 we snuck off to the railway bridge to see the remains of a Labrador that had been hit by a train. Had the internet existed back then we would have uploaded the images. It looked disgusting but we all said it looked cool.

The boy ahead of us was chewing custard creams before spitting them out so his mother could swallow them. Bear asked for a piece of chocolate and I handed it to him, Toes told me I was the best Daddy so she got a piece as well. Cheese banana custard boy stared at them and shot out a snapping hand. His mother pulled it away and seemed to hiss

No no, that's dirty

before handing him some corn on the cob. Every piece of food had been yellow. I wondered if this was a constant theme or if they changed each day, if tomorrow would be a blue food day, Monday a striped day.

When we got off in the city we walked past the man in my shirt. Toes looked at him and shouted

Dad, you're right you do make the shirt look better than that man.