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.