Mair Does Community Travel

I rang Traveline North Wales to ask if getting to Mechlyn Spa, North Wales, for a seven-thirty curtain-up next Saturday would involve kayak, farmer’s cart or donkey cavalcade. Nerys, helping me, sighed; I heard typing noises, and she gave me the time of a bus from Aberystwyth to Mechlyn Spa leaving at two-fourteen on that following Saturday afternoon. 

And I didn’t ask for a second opinion as I have done with all call centre advice since a phone-psychic wished me luck with my third pregnancy.

Moiling off the train and down the hill to the Aberystwyth bus station, I found the bus Nerys had highlighted only ran at two-fourteen on market day: every alternate Wednesday. In three days, ten hours and fifty-six minutes time.

Stranded in Aberystwyth.  Frazzled from touring as Madame Galina Prima Ballerina. Chronically sore where ligaments in the foot I favoured for pirouettes were trying to tunnel their way out via my Achilles. Two-hundred-and-forty-seven pounds to the bad having bought a three month’s supply of nasty-tasting boil-in-the-bag foliage from the Chinese Herbalist, who had diagnosed kidney blockage as a physical manifestation of the emotional trauma I nightly put myself through performing Giselle’s ‘Mad Scene’ the Method Acting Way. 

I did a Linda in The Pursuit of Love - sat on my luggage to cry. 

‘Woah!’ I shouted, leaping up and away from my wheelie case. I must have burst a bag of the herbs. The case was now giving off a reek of liquorice, fox shit and melon.

  

  

I rang Traveline, only for Nerys’s weekend counterpart to tell me that the nearest I could get to Mechlyn Spa from Aberystwyth now was Brecon. A shortfall of fifteen miles. ‘Sadly, there is actually a bus from Brecon to Mechlyn, but it will leave eight minutes before you get to Brecon from Aberystwyth.’

A woman was watching me.  Lean with a recent blue rinse, she wore pink trainers and a puce woollen coat, whose fake fur collar had synthetic mange.  

‘Awful blotchy you’ve got, love, while I’ve been standing by here watching you nearly wear out that timetable by looking at it. Lost are you?’

I explained about Nerys’s mistake with the timetable. ‘And if I don’t get to the theatre, I can’t do the gig.’

'And you won’t get your money?’ she asked.

‘Worse than that. I have to compensate the theatre for any loss of revenue from ticket sales and for expenses incurred by the marketing department.’

  

‘Dew, dew that’s a buggery, now. But where is it you’re meant to get to, love?’

'Mechlyn Spa.’

Chortling she shook her head and fluffed her coat pockets.  ‘Well why didn’t you say?’

She shouted across three stands.  ‘Mair, you're going home now to Mechlyn, is it?’

‘Aye.’  Mair was teeny-tiny and gaunt, in a jaunty sou’wester and stridently sensible mac.

‘But there isn’t a bus to Mechlyn from here; this man can tell you.’  Sarah winked at me. 

‘No - catching it in Brecon.'

‘But isn’t that bus due to leave Brecon eight minutes before the one from here gets in?’ I asked Mair. 

‘In theory. But what we do is get Kev to drive too fast from here, and my friend Pam (has the small-holding) will delay the Mechlyn bus till we get there.’

‘Foot down now, Kevin,’ said Mair, as Kevin punched a hole in her return ticket.  

From time to time as we crossed the Beacons, she would admonish him, ‘Get a move on, now - we'd be quicker getting on those horses over there. We all know the view off by heart. And him that don’t is more concerned with losing money.’  

Sarah took a box of chocolates out of her bag, opened it and held the lid close to her face, reading. She chose a chocolate, her attention going to the window as she chewed. Crows squalled over a grassy mound the texture of Plasticine. 

She leant forward, offering the chocolates to two women sitting in front of Mair.  They verified the bus was on an even keel before the first woman reached back for the box. Sarah moved it away from her. 

‘No, not that one, please, Eleanor,' she explained. 'Says in the instructions it should contain one of four centres I most look forward to saving for myself.’  

Eleanor’s mac swished as she went for a second choice, her stricken expression clearing as Sarah said, ‘Better.’  

‘Oh, flip.  I forgot my stamps,’ Mair said. I could read her shopping list over her shoulder. Saturday cake.  Wednesday cake.  Overseas going stamps. She was holding her palms up as though fending off the weather she was dressed for. 

She sat up suddenly, peering ahead at the road. ‘Don’t bother stopping for that boy, now, Kev. Remember he combed his hair onto the floor for five stops that Christmas Shopping Saturday?’   

The boy, realisation dawning, began signalling to Kevin so aggressively, he nearly tipped himself over. 

Kev drove past him.

‘That’ll teach him, now,' said Mair. 

We shuddered downhill into Brecon.  

‘Only two minutes after our bus is supposed to go instead of eight – well done, Kev. And look, there’s Pam now delaying the Mechlyn bus, acting slutty on the step.’  

Pam got off the step to make way for us, winked at Mair, and to choral variations on a theme of Oh, now, look, see, by there, all’s well that ends well, I boarded the Mechlyn bus with Mair, off to my gig. 

 

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