Another Trip to Leeds

Life has dealt me an ace once again and I find myself in Leeds.

I’ve already aired my views on the place, but this is a little different.

As a pretend Yorkshireman, I’ve adopted some of the practices of the people I share a county with. This includes frugality, so I took the bus – two buses in fact – in an effort to save a few quid.

The journey from Driffield to York was uneventful, save for a few loud school types who got on my nerves for the majority of it. I was mostly just jealous that anybody can possess such a high level of enthusiasm at such an early hour, and without the aid of caffeine and fags.

The bus from York to Leeds was much worse.

I was “treated” to the delights of Tadcaster, a town with two breweries that probably couldn’t organise a piss-up in either of them. If having to look at such an awful place wasn’t bad enough, a woman decided it would be a fantastic juncture to wheel her heavy shopping-bag-on-wheels over my foot. I’ve no idea how she’d managed to get it up the stairs on the bus as it clearly contained the remains of her dead husband.

Mercifully the windows steamed up to spare me the delights of the Ballardian, post-apocalyptic wasteground of Leeds as we approached.

The bus that was ten minutes behind us had already passed us in Tadcaster, so I assumed that the timetable was just for decoration and we’d get there when we got there.

The bus driver, possibly eyeing his impending tea break, decided to speed up considerably and turned the approach to some traffic lights into a white knuckle ride. Perhaps they should have installed a camera on the bus and tried to sell passengers their photo when they reach the terminus? Or a t-shirt emblazoned with “I SURVIVED THE LEEDS LIGHTS”? They’re really missing a merchandising trick there.

Amazingly nobody was hurt as the vehicle stopped at the line on only its two front wheels.

Alighting at Leeds Bus Station I was surprised to find that nobody was offering a counselling service to passengers who were deeply traumatized.

What I did experience was truly amazing.

The entire bus station smelled of gravy. Don’t get me wrong: I’m a Northerner, but this is possibly the most Northern thing I have ever experienced in my entire life. The Northern-ness could only have been increased if I’d stepped on to the street outside and nearly been knocked over by four pensioners riding in a bathtub on wheels.

It made a pleasant change from Leeds' usual un-Northern-ness with all the artisan beard-comb shops and bespoke Danish pastry outlets.