The Bus Station

Illustrated by Maja Kobylak.

It’s such a shame about the bus station. It was its own entire universe, a perfect metaphor for the world. Shattered windows, flaking paint and the most brilliant bunch of weirdos you could ever meet. Hundreds of people would pass through here every day and I liked picturing who they were, their lives, wondering where they’ve come from and why the fuck they decided to come here? What did she have for breakfast? Who’s he thinking about, and why does he look so constipated? 

You can’t play that game anymore. Not after the re-development. It’s too easy now. Too transparent. You’re not meant to see into these places, it ruins the mystery. I know he’s constipated because he chose the festive bake from the mini Greggs by the ticket machines. Honestly, what psychopath gets the festive bake? My point is, I shouldn’t know this. I’m not meant to know that she got off the 251 and almost dropped her coffee when she bumped into the driver heading off for his fag break. That ruins the game. All of that should reside within the magisterial pebbledash fortress, and then I get to make all that shit up once they exit the doors and get on with their lives. No, all this glass, modern architecture, it’s not for me. I know everything now, and I wish I didn’t. 

And this isn’t me being some sort of modern-day Cromwellian against all social progress. I know the old one was disgusting, you’d probably get tetanus just by looking at for too long. But it had a certain charm. A je ne sais quoi that bewitched me somewhat, all those years ago. I think its to do with authenticity. The old bus station didn’t pretend to be anything else other than what it was. ‘I am regional bus station, not an international airport. I do not need a “socialising hub” or a “hydration station”’. 

We used to watch the night buses come and go. I could never sleep with the noise, that swarm of angry electric crickets, beeping and beeping under the glaring moon. We’d stare out the window like TV, then he’d wave at the club-night stragglers struggling to keep their vomit down as they boarded the 02:48 towards Newcastle. Our personal planets orbited that horrid bus station. It was where we first held hands. And now, that sacred stone has been demolished, burnt and buried. That hallowed space has been ruptured by diggers and stabbed by giant shards of glass too clean, too naked for the secrets that lay beneath its foundations. My secrets. 

I realise I’ve been standing outside too long, my fingertips have turned blue. “Might as well go in,” I said to myself. 

It felt like a hospital in there. It was bizarrely sterile. The floor was so clean I felt the need to take my shoes off before I went in. Not how bus stations are meant to be. Dazzled by the new departures board, I scurried over to my safe place: Greggs. I glanced over the glass counter, scoffed at the festive bake (“What an idiot”), and pretended that I was making my order up on the spot, like some whimsical pixie-woman from a film written by a man, as if I don’t order the same thing every damn time.

“Sausage roll and a yum-yum, please.” 

There’s something I find fucking hilarious about having my first course look eerily similar to my second. So much so, you risk getting them mixed up in the bag and you get a mouthful of sugar instead of a mouthful of sausage. Ha. “A mouthful of sausage”. Sorry. 

I took my lunch and sat in the ‘relaxation centre’ — a waiting room disguised as a glass cube— and pretended I was needed somewhere. That someone was waiting for me at the other end. I stared at the old man sitting opposite me, judging him. He was wearing those hiking boots that look like Cornish pasties. “Red flag” I thought. 

And then it happened, finally, like how I always knew it would; he appeared. Almost too casually. Bringing in the filth from his shoes.

I had it all rehearsed. The faux surprise on my face, my opening line, how I’d almost forget his name, then remember suddenly as if I hadn’t spent the past three years memorising his instagram captions. 

He walked over to the Greggs. A sausage roll and a slice of margarita pizza, that was what he used to get. He’d regret the pizza then wrap it up in the greasy paper bag and let it go cold in his pocket. But, instead of the pizza, he chose a yum-yum. 

And then, through the fucking glass, before I had time to pretend I was busy doing something else, he saw me. There was a moment, a brief glimmer of recognition. Then he left and got on 314 towards Darlington. Looking back on it now, he might have just been looking at his reflection in the glass. 

You see, transparency isn’t always good, in architecture or otherwise. It doesn’t help knowing everything.