Norwich Bus StationYou need a second mortgage to park in Norwich city centre.  When we moved into the micro-loft, we flogged the sexy-arsed Mégane (to my sister) and Liam now rides the bus to work. He no longer risks life and limb on the narrow country lanes with their tail-gating yokels, blind bends, loose livestock and black ice.

Bus travel in Norfolk belongs to a bygone era.  People still (mostly) queue at bus stops and drivers apologise for being late. Just imagine that! It’s the kind of civilised behaviour long since abandoned in London, a place where the law of the urban jungle prevails and it’s survival of the fittest. The last time I visited the Smoke, a bright red double decker actually yelled at me. Over and over it screamed…

This bus is under attack. Call 999!

London Bus

I’m delighted to confirm it was a slip of the driver’s wrist. Still, it was enough to wake the dead and give nervy tourists on-the-spot seizures. The hapless driver was frantically trying to switch off the announcement as the bus cruised slowly by. After events in Paris, Beirut, Turkey and elsewhere, I felt his pain.

Imagine the absurdity of two openly gay, married, middle aged, middle class men escaping the liberal sanctuary of anonymous London to relocate to a Muslim country. I chronicled our exploits with the mad, the bad, the sad and the glad in a blog for the whole world to ignore. Then came the book which became a critically acclaimed best seller. Its success opened out a whole new career for me, firstly as an author, and now as an indie publisher. Who'd have thought it? Certainly not me. In June 2012, we ended our Anatolian affair and paddled back to Britain on the evening tide, washing up in Norwich, a surprising city in eastern England, then to the wilds of Norfolk as the only gays in the village. I’m sometimes nostalgic for our encounters with the hopeless, the hapless and, yes, the happy go lucky. They gave me an unexpected tale to tell and for this I thank them.

12 thoughts on “Survival of the Fittest”

  1. Love those buses!
    Hey, I have recently thought about taking one of those lovely treks across England. This would be in a few years. I suppose I’d have to fly into London but would escape as rapidly as possible. I am a small town girl, after all (my town has about 700 and I have to drive two hours to get to a city.)
    Will surely let you know if I get to do this.

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  2. Last time I used a rural bus in Norfolk I did what most folk used to the more rude “city” services do – I stood up long before my stop and prepared to work my way forward and hang on, ready to leap off… when the driver pulled over immediately, all smiles and chat, assuming that it was where I wanted to be (the middle of nowhere). Being English I naturally didn’t explain, and just waited until the bus was out of sight and then walked on the mile and a half to my real stop!

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  3. . . there are talking helicopters and talking trains so why not talking buses? Mind you, those new things look like total shite – you can’t beat a Routemaster!

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  6. Ahhh, I’m sure you’re living in a type of paradise. I keep seeing Norwich voted as ‘Best this,’ and ‘Best that,’ in Britain. Most recently, ‘Best place to work.’ Lucky Liam that he also gets to go to work on timely buses with polite drivers! 😀 So is Norwich also the best place to use the bus, too? Certainly not London. 🙂
    Julia

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