Working as a part time stage manager for a London classical music venue does have its upsides – like meeting and working with lots of wonderfully talented musicians and artists. Unfortunately one also gets to meet some who aren’t over talented – and they’re also usually the ones with the biggest egos! Another disadvantage of the job is that, as stage manager, one is usually one of the last people out of the building at night, before the mice come out to get at the leftovers of the interval buffet – that’s if the Roumanian cleaners don’t get there before them.

Being last out also usually means taking a late train home, along with the hoardes of night revellers and showgoers who make up London’s nightlife communities.

On two occasions last week however, Network Rail and South-eastern Trains conspired against us all by cancelling the last two trains of the night due, we were told, to ‘planned engineering work’ (why is it that the only thing the rail operators in this country are good at planning are those events which inconvenience travellers the most – like engineering work, while those things that should be planned, such as running clean, reliable trains on time and providing a decent level of customer service never are? Just a thought!)

However, the result of the planned engineering was that after two stops the train we were advised to take joined with a replacement bus service for the remainder of the journey into North Kent.

Along with the other twenty five thousand passengers (or so it seemed) I therefore made my way as advised to find our one replacement double decker bus. Being an old fashioned and amiable sort of chap, I allowed my fellow passengers on to the bus first, which resulted in the lower deck being filled to capacity very quickly (not difficult on modern buses, as most of the space seems to be taken up with huge swathes of meaningless plastic, a large space for standing passengers and an even bigger one just in case some wheelchair user decides to take the bus once every ten years – a few seats here and there for passengers to actually sit on might also be useful…).

Along with a number of others I therefore made my way to the top deck, somewhere I try to avoid usually, to be greeted by a couple of pond life (I think they were female) enquiring as to whether the bus visited their particular destination. Having satisfied their ignorance I settled down to ‘enjoy’ the remainder of my journey.