I don’t hate buses per se. No. I don’t even hate the wide and peculiar varied variety of what I’m going to call ‘passengers.’ What I do hate about buses…is being stuck on the damn things!

Now I don’t have to take the bus into Brighton (oh, I live in Brighton, I forgot to mention that), but there is the double whammy of parking and not being able to even sniff a lager if I’m driving, which unfortunately means the bus is an absolute and necessary necessity.

My main bus? It’s the No.1 Brighton and Hove bus service from Whitehawk to Portslade. A £3.20 ‘day saver’ to sit on stinky seats, to be assailed by stupid idiots with tinny music, to wince at stale lager-smelling boozers clutching their half cans of Extra Strong Tennants at 8.30 a.m., of screaming kids and crying babies, of shouty noisy mothers, of belligerently stupid bus drivers who argue with everyone getting on, with slow bus drivers, with boy-racer bus drivers, with mobile phone shouters, piss-smelling tramps and tedious stupid people having dim conversations at twice the normal volume level because they are too arrogant and thick to realise that NO-ONE IS INTERESTED!

And don’t even get me started on the whole ‘trapped wasp buzzing up and down the bus dementedly and terrorising everyone’ scenario…

So, bus experience #1 - Guy wanking at me at the bustop…

So here it is. There I am at the bus stop the other night. Casually minding my own business when this guy starts wanking at me. I know - it shocked me too. It’s not as if I’ve not heard about this kind of thing, or read about the kind of people who perform sex-acts in public, but I was totally unprepared for what he was doing - actually standing there with his hand in his pocket, rocking backwards and forwards and smiling at me with a sort of, ‘I’m having a wank at you and arn’t I pleased with myself’ kind of look on his face.

I said, “You all right, mate?” - which only seemed to spur him on.

I don’t get it. I was on my own. It was early in the evening. And he chose me to have a pocket wank at? I hate the entire bus experience, and I’ve had some rare times at the bus stop in the past, but this one literally beat them all hands down.

Was he maybe having a slow night or something? Or maybe, I thought - as I got used to the idea - I was just looking kinda sexy. That wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility, surely? I didn’t have time to contemplate. The bus arrived shortly afterwards. Not that this stopped him of course. And as the bus pulled away, leaving him behind, his hand in pocket lurching antics reached what I can only describe as a crescendo of personal / sick pleasure and I was left that familiar feeling that I get whenever I’m on a bus, that I’m travelling in some weird alternative reality where anything can happen.

Unfortunately for me, it usually does…