Catching the bus is for many a quotidian experience... it's easy for those with cars to forget the ease with which one can travel to where one needs, without having to wait.
I used to catch the bus (including the 102 service from Rotherham to Maltby via Wickersley shown here) quite a lot in earlier life. I've written about it previously in a number of places.
Here's Doreen Massey from her book: "Space, Place and Gender" on observations from the top deck of the bus:
‘I can remember very clearly a sight which often used to strike me when I was nine or ten years old. I lived then in the outskirts of Manchester, and ‘Going into Town’ was a relatively big occasion; it took half an hour and we went on the top deck of a bus. On the way into town we would cross the wide shallow valley of the River Mersey, and my memory is of dank, muddy fields spreading away into a cold misty distance. An all of it– all of these areas of Manchester – was divided into football pitches and rugby pitches…I remember all of this sharply. And I remember, too, it striking me very clearly– even then as a puzzled, slightly thoughtful little girl – that this huge stretch of the Mersey flood plain had been entirely given over to boys.’ (1994, 185)
The last time I caught the bus was actually in Cologne, and I sat on the front of the top deck so that I could pretend to drive it.
Here's a video I shot from the top deck of a bus in Sheffield a few years back:
Doreen again on buses - from a while back - as you can tell from the language:
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