It was shiny and sleek and it saved my bacon many a morning when my otherwise feckless source of transport - the number 33 bus - would turn up late, early or not at all. Oh how I miss the number 48 and it's express counterpart. I used to have a choice of buses to come home on but now I must stand around for up to 20 minutes at a time waiting for the next overcrowded 33. On top of this ridiculous reduction in the availability of bus services in my area, coupled with the fact that the whole of Princes Street remains closed along with now the East and West Ends of town meaning I require an hour to travel the 4 miles to and from work, is the hugely aggravating fact that they have dared to raise the cost of the monthly pass!
This loss pains me so much more at present given that I'm not able to choose to walk to work (a feat which used to take just fifteen minutes more than my current bus journey) or to cycle, which used to take half an hour. Both options FREE! With the City Centre road closures you really would need to be confident dicing with death to get amid the buses on 2 wheels without crash bars.
MC doesn't feel my pain. He works about a mile from our house and he doesn't drive. He has never owned a car. I beg and plead to be allowed to buy four wheeled transport and he makes sensible noises about the price of petrol, insurance and road tax. I kick and scream and he points out that even if we had a car, I can't take it to my work and so I'd still have to pay the exorbitant rates for a Lothian Bus pass and put up with the miseries of the daily commute on the number 33. We'd be poorer. Even hormonal and irrational I have to see the logic in his arguments. I don't have to like it.
Everyone who commutes rants about public transport. It didn't used to get to me so much, honest, but I'm very frustrated at the moment by my general lack of mobility. I need the buses, depend on them because I can't just take off walking if I don't want to wait. I have now gained over a stone in this pregnancy. It's all within the healthy boundaries for someone my height who is after all about six months pregnant but added to the evil entity relaxin I've got some hypermobile joints that are misbehaving. The pelvic joint at the base of my spine that I'm not even going to try to spell is literally chewing up my tailbone and the surrounding ligaments. Nice. As is the fashionable brace belty thing that I have to strap my bones together with in order to walk anywhere.
The upshot of the post I guess is that I'm a cranky round pregnant waddler who thinks that Lothian Buses are pants and that they should bring back the (X)48 immediately or reduce my monthly pass accordingly - half the available buses should mean half the price right?!
My ups and downs have all largely come in pairs since my last post. At our twenty week scan appointment we were delighted to learn that we are having a girl. We got to spend a good 40 mins gazing adoringly at her little form while the sonographer tried to encourage her to stop being obstreperous and get her head up out of my pelvis so that she could measure it. Finally she tilted the table so my feet were above my head to have gravity help out but I ended up a little woozy on coming back to rights. I went to the doctor this week and he gave me Nasonex and eye drops to combat the hayfever that's been rattling my brain loose one sneeze at a time which was lovely but he also asked me with a perfectly straight face if they'd ruled out twins because in his opinion the bump is quite pronounced for just shy of 24 weeks. They really should keep obese balding middle aged male doctors away from hormonal teary women. Grateful as I am for the sneeze banishing solution I did not need it affirmed that in his professional opinion I look like a Weeble.
MC's been great. Not only did he tell me (post run in with the doctor who has never known a gym in his existence) that he thinks I look great (and hey, I can live with the lie so long as it's kindly meant!) but he's been busy in the nursery. We finally found a joiner and have a new, fifty-year-old-carpet-free, built in wardrobe. Our garden looks like the MDF rejects yard but we are finally able to crack on with feathering the nest in white emulsion. The fresh plaster is taking a couple of coats to cover up but it's looking so much more like someone might be able to live in that room again! Wall stickers have arrived and I will do a nursery progress post as soon as I can take pictures. MC has banned me from the wood painting because even though we have non-toxic non-gloss almost solvent free stuff it still smells pretty pongy. So, I'm going to be busy making some funky bright curtains to cover up the hanging sections and he's going to turn some boring MDF into something pretty.
The only other major goal of the weekend is to do slightly less than I did last weekend. I seem to perpetually suffer on a Monday the backlash from my weekends. To that end, I bid one and all (except the powers that be within Lothian Buses) a happy weekend as I take my twin-proportioned belly off to bed to dream of the bygone days of better public transport for the peoples of the Inch.
No comments:
Post a Comment