On Missing It by Four Minutes

Journal · 5 min read

There is a particular quiet that belongs to a bus stop after ten. The timetable is a promise made by people you will never meet, and standing there you are entirely dependent on strangers having done their jobs properly. Usually they have.

The schedule is a kind of trust

Nobody thinks about a network that works. It is only when the last service is ten minutes late that the whole invisible arrangement becomes visible at once.

Everyone waiting is on the same side

Strangers at a late stop talk more than strangers anywhere else. Shared uncertainty is levelling, and it ends the moment the headlights appear.

Walking is not a defeat

If it has gone, it has gone. An hour on foot through a town you normally cross at speed is a fair trade, and you see the shopfronts properly for once.

More notes to follow.