"Drive on, driver." The passenger's voice jolted me out of my slumber. "Don't stop for him. The silly old sod. He's not worth picking up."
It had been a beautiful start to the morning. The hawthorn bushes along the roadside had lost all their leaves. The abundance of red berries had acted like marker lights, guiding the way through the mist and fog. Even the mobile phone mast, disingenuously disguised as a monkey puzzle tree, on top of the hill, emitted attractiveness rather than the everyday pulsed radio waves.
The wretched man looked grateful when I ignored the passenger's advice and stopped. "Snow's on the way," he said. "I can feel it in my bones."
I think he may be right. I had already seen signs that morning. The local wholesaler in town had hung up orange sledges and snow shovels on his shop front. The sheep seemed to have worked their way down from the hilltop and had congregated by the road. That was a sure sign of snow; it was nature's barometer.
The conversation on the bus had degenerated. "Do you have Sky Tv?" one passenger asked another.
"No I have this new Freesat thing."
"Don't you get overloaded with those tatty European channels?"
"No I have to pay for them. I like them. Actually they are quite good."
Following a silence a perturbed voice said: "No I didn't mean THOSE kind of channels. I meant the shopping channels."
"Oh................"
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