Last night we went to dinner at Hotel du Vin in Winchester. It’s about a £25 each way taxi ride from our home in Southampton so we took the bus (I can’t go out to dinner and not drink!) the journey takes about 45 minutes and it’s a pleasant enough ride. The bill for two starters, two mains, one desert and one bottle of wine came to £110 which I considered a bit hefty. It is after all a Bistro meaning no table cloths, informal atmosphere etc. The food was OK but not good enough for the price and I hate it when you have to pay extra for potatoes and each veg chosen. Here’s a sample menu and pricing. The wine mark up is pretty hefty, £35 for a bottle of Morgon. To be fair it was perhaps the best bottle of Morgon I’ve ever had but it shouldn’t have been 35 quid.

And so to the trip home by Bluestar number 1. The bus came along spot on time and wasn’t very busy for the first 20 minutes but then began to fill up with ‘kids’ heading into Southampton for a late night out. They’d already been drinking and were noisy but pretty soon half of them had lit cigarettes and the bus was filled with a smoke fog the likes of which can’t have been seen on a bus since the 1950’s. Then one of the girls started vomiting over herself, anyone near her, the seat and the aisle! Enough, enough we’re getting off now, bugger whether the bus is at a stop or not! And so we had to get a taxi the rest of the way.

I know I’m a bus driver but I’ve never done late shifts. Is that behaviour ‘normal’ for a bus running after 10:00pm? If that’s the sort of bus I had to drive I’d be doing something else to earn a crust.