Thursday 28 July 2011

An unwanted adventure

Or, how to put your teenage daughter off bus travel for-e-ver!

Or how to spend an afternoon having a lovely drive through the countryside.

(Or, next time, just give her a lift!)

Recently I’ve been instilling a little independence into our offspring, Ciara is doing a lot of baking, Aedan is using his bike, a lot, and Rhiannon is catching the bus to see friends. From here to town is easy.

Today, she caught the bus into Elgin to go to ‘The Pictures’  with a friend to see Harry Potter. (Again.) She bought her return ticket and watched her film, then returned to the bus station and jumped on the bus.

Sounds good so far.

About 3.30 pm I received a telephone call.

“Mum, I’m on the bus, but I don’t know where I am.”

Ah.

It dawned on my she’d got on the right bus, but heading in the opposite direction. The bus station is in the middle and the same bus goes both ways.

Ooops.

My advice was, tell the bus driver you think you’re on the wrong bus.

I rang her back a while later, she’d told the driver and he was returning her to Elgin, but she didn’t know if she would have to purchase a new ticket. I opted to rescue our traumatised daughter from the bus station.

It is, admittedly, quite a while since we were living without a car and used the local buses regularly, but I did think they’d gained enough bus experience to know what to do. Maybe not.

6 comments:

Mike Knipe said...

Ah, bless 'er cotton socks - easily done. I remember getting on the wrong bus in Skipton bus station and ending up in Embsay instead of Earby.- and , with Ermysted's grammar school house system, this meant being in the wrong village with the wrong tie on.... Oooer.... No big thing in the end, but I still worry on trains and buses and stuff.....

Louise said...

Catching the wrong train/bus/ferry etc. is one of my (many!) paranoias and I've never even caught the wrong one! I always triple check at the very least.
Maybe this is a habit our eldest child will now pick up...
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, poor soul.
She's surprisingly un-traumatised.

Alan Sloman said...

I commuted to London for a few years from Peterborough and would regularly wake up on the return journey pulling in to Doncaster. Doncaster station on a December night isn't funny.

I bought a small alarm clock I used to slip into my shirt pocket after that.

You kids just need a healthy dose of OCD - that way they'll check so many times that they are on the right bus...

Wasn't it passed down in the gene pool?

Louise said...

Oo, Doncaster station, nasty surprise!

Rhiannon is a Neat Freak. She shares a room with Ciara who is her antithesis. There are tears.

But I don't know where it comes from.

(I've just deliberately messed up my own herbs and spices to see how long I can last before it has to be sorted. Food has been a bit bland of late...)

Gayle said...

There was a small incident a few years ago when Mick and I found ourselves on the wrong train out of Lancaster. As lovely as Scotland is, it wasn't our intended destination. We were on our way for a backpacking trip at the time and rather than arriving at our starting point at 4pm as planned it was nearer 8pm when we rolled up in the pitch dark. All part of the adventure...

(Re: messing up your own herbs and spices - someone put all of our plates into the plate rack facing the wrong direction a few weeks ago. Mick watched me itching to turn them around and mocked me at length, but I did manage to last a whole day before I furtively sorted them out whilst he was out.)

Louise said...

My paranoia must pay off, I've been very lucky. (I was very confused at Montrose station this year, by there appearing to be water on the wrong side until Laura gently reminded me about The Basin, or I would have been sorely tempted to jump on the train with more people.)
Doing really well re the cupboard, even managed to venture in for some spices to make a curry. Would have preferred to have done it with my eyes shut, but the curry wouldn't have been so nice...