waiting for the bus

today i was waiting for the bus.

the first time i remember catching a bus ...
i must have been six maybe seven, we were still in the uk, living in a place called oakleigh cottage in sussex. i went to school in a village called broadbridge heath and the nearest market town was horsham.
the cottage we stayed in was on a farm, there was no road to the door (not that it mattered as we did not own a car). instead there was a long, long concrete path which meandered next to a field, through a wood and on to the cottage. the cottage was in fact two, divided in half with a shared rickety stairway leading to the attic rooms. the ones to the right were ours whilst our neighbours turned left at the top of the stairs.
i remember my 'big' sister, maureen, once put her hand right through the low ceiling whilst making the bed! there was no running water, the farmer would bring water in large milk urns and deposit them in the kitchen. the kitchen had a coal stove and as far as i can recall, we practically lived there in that one room, we bathed in a tin bath in front of the stove, ate and entertained at the kitchen table.
at night we would race upstairs, trying to beat the cold and dive into our beds where icy sheets greeted us - shudder ...

i digress, back to the bus ...
if i really think about it, i must have caught a bus to school, must admit though, i can't really remember that!
what i do remember was bus trips to horsham with my mom and little brother rod, who i call joey (but that is another story altogether). i took ballet and tap lessons (oh yeah, little girl butch just dancing her way through life!), my teacher was a miss swain, the very fact that i can still recall her name probably means i had a huge crush on her. on the way to the dance studio we walked past a bakery and i can still remember inhaling the delectable smell of baking bread which drifted from the door each time it opened.
then of course there was georgina! a senior student whom i most definitely had a crush on! she seemed so grown up, i wonder how old she actually was, probably twelve ...

there was an old man who caught the bus - again ... was he really old or just old to my young eyes. he smoked a very smelly pipe! i remember looking down from the bus window and seeing him waiting at the stop, how i hoped and prayed he would not get on the bus. that smelly tobacco made me feel quite ill.

mostly though, bus trips to horsham were fun. a visit to the saturday market where mom bought me a tortoise, when we left the uk to return home to south africa we set him free. i love to imagine my long lived tortoise still wandering around the woods near oakleigh cottage, how big might he be by now. actually i wonder if tortoises are even able to survive in the wild in england? damn, never even considered that before.

another treat was to visit the local chippy in horsham, it was down an alley and had a really low roof and windows of that thick bottle glass, running with age. it smelled of frying fish, vinegar and the wet raincoats of the patrons. they still wrapped everything in newspaper (obviously long before health and safety took over the rule Britannia role!) and the taste was ... i will never forget the taste of those hot, salty chips on a foggy winter eve.

a summer treat was to pop into the small tea room on the carfax. the carfax was at the centre of horsham town and had a bandstand at it's centre ... well, as far as i remember anyway!
mom would buy us both a small bottle of seven up. lemonade of the god's as far as i was concerned. england was not long out of rationing and me, myself and my brother were very impressed by the luxuries of town life.
then, away back home on the crowded bus, filled with chattering women, wide eyed children and (mostly) silent men. jump down from the bus at our stop and walk home, along the path, beside the field and through the wood.
home to oakleigh cottage, a home in the middle of nowhere, a home which held all that my young heart treasured.