Another morning at the bus stop.

What’s a boy to do? I’ve just started my new summer job, which mostly involves making sandwiches in a pavement café. It’s not amazing, and I still get nervous and shake when the customers watch me clumsily spoon fillings onto the mangled bread (this is, of course, due to my efforts at cutting it). But I’m sure that in a few more days I’ll be wondering what all the fuss was about. But there’s a problem – the man at the bus stop. I recognise him, slightly. That is to say, I think I do. I think he lives on the same road as my parents, which is where I’m staying right now. His face and body shape and walk are all remembered from my childhood, but I can’t be sure if he’s simply a look-alike. Every morning when I get to the bus stop, he’s been there too. Standing quite a distance away from the pole, underneath a tree. Probably because it’s shady there. His face doesn’t betray any recognition on his part, but out of the corner of my eye I watch him do the same back to me. I want to say hello. I like to think that I’m the kind of young man who says hello to older people. I want to debunk their (you know – old people) theories that we’re all disrespectful scum. I’m tempted to say ‘morning’ and leave it at that. Maybe it could become a daily routine. The bus arrives and I get on it.

The next day I’m at the bus stop again, and so is he. I’m now certain that he lives on the same road as my parents do. But the fact is that I already have my own mundane, middle-of-the-road tradition. I like to spend my half-hour bus journey reading or listening to music. That buffer zone between my house and work is important to me. It gives me time to reset my head, to plan out my day and look at the other people who get onto the bus. There’s the danger that I could say something to this man, and then every day after that I’d have to talk to him. Even if it’s just a simple ‘hello’, that wouldn’t do. I’d walk out of my door expecting it, building up to it. And what if he wants to converse? Not just today, but every day after that? No. He knows who I am, I know who he is and he may or may not understand why I don’t say anything. Of course, there’s the possibility that he’s thinking the exact same thoughts as I am. So we’ll peep at each other from the edges of our coronas until September, when I move back into my student house and forget about this.

It’s hot and my neck feels prickly. Ten minutes after the bus is due to arrive and there’s still no red smudge at the end of the road. I could put on my glasses so I could see a bit further, but then means taking them off again would reveal the abysmal state of my eyesight to me. I’m going to put that off until I’m in the café and I’m not able to take them off for a few hours. Oh, sod this. Life’s about breaking through comfort zones, and I’m going to do it like a knife-wielding man who’s been trapped in a blimp. I’m not going to think about this any longer. I stand a bit straighter, summon my forces underneath the camouflage of a cough and say: ‘Morning’.