Unlimited Travel Across our Network

I buy a Metro Voyager Ticket and board the bus. We're off, and upstairs in the prow we rise and fall with the undulations of the road.
I'm reading a novel, Half a Life. Willy Chandran, Indian, has moved from London to Mozambique with a Portuguese lover. Signs along our course welcome us into Surrey and then into West Sussex again as we weave across the border.

"My parents are in India." Course mates are talking on the seat behind me.
"So you're Indian?"
"Well, part. My mum's part Polish. I'm half Indian."
"Why don't you just say 'part'?"
"I'm four-eighths Ukranian." Her voice goes quiet as she continues to divide in her head.
"Nice houses," says her friend, looking out at new builds made to look old. We sail past bus-stops at which people neither board nor disembark. No one seems to live here.
"Three-eighths Polish"
"Why don't you just say 'part'?"
"I like working it out."

 Willy on the page is also trying to work it out.

Beyond the estates, the bus throws itself forward into forest. We are pounded by boughs like rocks on an unsafe coast-line. There is an almighty battering every time we pass these wild branches. We wince and duck. This is the voyage home to Crawley.

Flight Path

There is a moment when
she keeps pace with the plane,
taxiing parallel behind the car park,
its tail fin slicing past the hedgerows
of her path.

Goaded by flight she pedals faster
then is lost
as the plane rears and rises
then is aloft.

She cycles far -
out of Sussex into Surrey
past fields, over two hills
and down long lanes

so that by the time the passengers
are winding through passport control
and exiting to board
left hand drive buses
on foreign tarmacs

she is at work.
She pours coffee,
cleans and dates the whiteboard, cursive,
logs-on with chunky keys of kids' computers,
sets out books on tiny tables
and opens the door to outside.

She aligns trikes
so the children too can learn
the joys of the world
and of going round and round
in circles.

Celebrating here

I noticed blossom was out in the rain on the approach to the roundabout. I took the footbridge over the A23, busy at noon today. On Sundays, quieter, Ben always asks, 'which way would you like to cross, love?' If we're quick, we can take the crossing in two stages, pausing in the mud of the verge midway. Further down the road people must have got desperate to leave Langley Green and get to Sainsbury's; they have forced the iron railings apart. I don't feel that way today and start to ascend the whirling slope upwards. I am part of the motion of the ring road, walking round and round, higher over the bridge more choreographed than engineered. Below, cars and lorries dosy-doe, they swing their partners round and round, they wait their turn to join the dance, keeping to the left, keeping in step. Then, dizzy, they swing out of the circle and up towards the many other roundabouts on the roads to Gatwick, Horsham and Pease Pottage. A coach took a twirl today, emblazoned on its side, 'Knights Travel'. Indeed, why should this not be a place abroad for chivalric adventure?

Yes, the blossom is out, pink and purple and so are daffodils. Easter is happening, making all things new. In shops, walls of eggs have been put together again. All the king's horses and all the king's men have been busy in the Co-op and Sainsbury's and no doubt all the other supermarkets that orbit the town.

In school today we read the Easter story during milk time. Children drew pictures of stick men on crosses captioned, 'jesus did on the cros' and wrote 'a happy day' or 'jesus is uliv' above angels and empty tombs. Then we tidied up and it was art. We were learning to observe, looking at pictures of tigers and smudging oil pastels in bright orange and black stripes across good-quality paper that was not to be wasted.

In Sunday School yesterday, we cut out palm leaves for next week's arrival in Jerusalem and made banners with poster paint: 'Hosanna,' Jesus saves,' 'God is boss.' Karen asked what they would do if Jesus rode a donkey in to Crawley. One child would worship. One would ask him to sort out her nan. One would ask for anything what he wanted. One would bow down. She got down onto the carpet and put her head to the ground, arms outstreched to show us how. 

I thought of how happy that would make the old Jamaican man who, much to the merriment of his congregation, had brought something of a prophetic dance to the worship concert Ben and I snuck into the night before. He had asked for the reggae beats to be broadcast loud. No, louder. He looked over the control desk and showed the sound crew how to twist the knob. When they had found his preferred level of amplification, he danced to the rhythm then began his song. 'Craalay pe-ople! Craaaaalay PIAPAW! Bow DOWN to Jesus!'