The wheels on the bus go...

Buses seem to be featuring here recently so I thought I'd give it a go. However, rather than talk about it later like Shan and Darren, I thought I would give it a go as I was actually travelling.

So good morning and welcome to my bus.

It's a pretty decent bus from a working class suburb into the city, mostly people on their way into work or college at this hour I presume from their dress. And maybe that's where this post is going.

You see I was quite shocked by the reaction I got the other day from my brief thoughts about love. I just said what I felt (admittedly a rare quality in most men) and apparently that's quite astonishing, and welcomed.

Too late, you've started me off now.

Today my thought is about where I live. My wife and I seperated as many of you know and I moved out. I insisted that she and our beautiful children stay in the family home to minimise the disruption for everyone and I would go to the only place that would have me - my parents house.

I know you're going to ask the question "well why not just move into your own place, no matter how small?" The money simply isn't there. There are still bills to be paid, a roof to be kept over my childrens' heads and that leaves almost nothing for me at the end. That's fine. It won't always be like that I hope and anyway my actual needs are fairly small. Like I said, minimise disruption.

I moved out when I was 20 in a blaze of anger because I just couldn't take being treated like a schoolchild anymore. In hindsight I was the first born and my mother had always been VERY overprotective so a clash was bound to happen when I went to college and became independent.

Now don't get me wrong, we got over that fairly quickly and got on much better when we weren't all living under the same roof. Time passed. Then in my thirties I came to find myself back home again, indefinitely, which is the hardest thing in the world to deal with right now.

There's no conflict, that's not it at all. Merely that I had been a proudly independent adult since I could be, had almost never gone to them looking for help. Not any more. Thus I try to be out of the house as much as I can. I leave early for my bus, go to work and spend my evenings either with the kids or out with friends. I come home late.

Where I live is a factor too. Like so many I grew up in a working class suburb and then promptly escaped at the first possible moment, never to come back. Well, almost never. I don't hate there, or the people, I just never fit in or belonged, was always a little different, the subject of ridicule.

So now I'm back there full time in a box room full of the things I could take when I left. I'm not looking for sympathy, far from it. To leave was my decision and I accepted all of the consequences at the time. It just struck me as something I might like to talk about, here on the bus, almost finally in town.