The Last Bus Home of Doom

There's an iconic moment from cinema when Indiana Jones just slides underneath a descending door and then, while the door is still coming down, he reaches back and grabs the hat that he had dropped.

On Friday night I didn't cut such a dashing figure.

I was waiting in the wind and the rain for the last bus home. The driver didn't see me and didn't stop because he was following so closely behind one of the very many buses to the picturesque village of "Sorry Not In Service". I sprinted after the bus waving crazily and caught up with it when it got to a queue of traffic at the roundabout – I was now soaked, red in the face and completely out of breath. There was, of course, a waist high fence to stop pedestrians from straying onto the road so even though the bus opened its doors I couldn't step on board. As a younger man I think I could have vaulted the barrier like a pommel horse, if I was even drunker than I was I might have tried. Instead I made an ungainly clamber, one leg at a time, over the barrier and dropped my hat in the gutter. I picked the sodden hat up and got on the bus which was crowded with people who had watched my hopeless escapade.

Richard "inaction hero" B