I love Easter. It is an emotive time. It is a time of hope. It is a time, as a travelling bus driver you see mainly good, a little bad and some really ugly things.
Durham Cathedral at 5am is a good place to start Easter Day. The lit tower against the light polluted red sky of Durham City sets the mood for the Easter Vigil service where the priests process in the darkness before light a brazier, before standing around and proclaiming certain scriptures. This is followed by a walk into the dark cathedral and some sombre prayers, before the Bishop shouts: 'Christ is risen. Alleluia.' The lights come on and the noise is deafening as every kind of instrument, whistle and gong is produced. Being the North East of England, the football rattles came out too.
That was the uplifting part. That was the good.
The bad? That was the above butty van, I saw on the way home. It has nothing to do with the food. Mac will no doubt qwell many passing HGV and bus drivers' hunger pangs with wholesome and hearty traditional roadside fare. What though is truly worrying is that he feels the need to put a clamp on his trailer, thinking that someone might want to nick it.
This is the bad. Have the morals of the country descended so low that we steal catering wagons?
The ugly was the sight of a bus shelter upside down by the side of the A1. It looks as if it was there as a result of an ugly crash. It was the sort of thing I had done once in the past. I reversed into a wooden shelter in the bus and dislodged and destroyed two panels.
Fortunately there was a broken shed abandoned in the ditch nearby. As nobody was around, I managed to rescue a couple of planks of roughly the same length and roughly the same colour - brownish, and tacked them haphazardly across the gaping hole. I then drove away.
Not very good behaviour on my part, but I suppose it is the thought of trying to make good which counts. But, then, if you see the standard of my DIY .... it is not a pretty sight.
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