I've just run to Shepherd's Bush and back. The first time I've done that route as a run. On the 207, I've done it a million times. But it's not the same on a bus. You don't see things. Don't have time to think about them.
I ran past the Pret where I worked when my flat was being refurbished. Where the front window table is always occupied by a group of elderly Polish men. Where the workers fight over the seats near the sockets. You have to know where the sockets are in Ealing. There aren't many.
I ran past the teeth whitening place that used to be a nightclub. I only went there once. With a guy I met late one night on White City platform. He told me his marriage was in ruins. That he was living in the conservatory because he couldn't afford to move out. I was on a high. He was on a low. Neither of us wanted the night to be over. So we went to the nightclub and danced and drank it away.
I ran past the dry cleaners that repaired the handbag I accidentally burnt with a candle in a tapas bar in Richmond. We were so engrossed in our conversation that was it a while before my friend and I realised what the smell was. I'd got the handbag in a charity shop for a fiver. I paid four times that to have it repaired.
I ran past the Common Room bar where I once went to a party. While waiting at the bus stop to go home, I snogged some guy who'd also been at the party. Had to decide between the fast approaching bus and exchanging phone numbers. Got on the bus.
I ran past CarpetRight, who did me a too-good-to-be-true deal on carpets. Then sent a cowboy fitter who did untold damage. I never did manage to get a refund.
I ran past the turning to Acton Working Men's Club where I went to a karaoke night with a boyfriend whose sister was a member. We sang Summer Nights. Afterwards his sister got into a fight with another club member. Her opponent pulled out such a large clump of her hair that she was left with a bald patch.
I ran past the gym where I had Bowen treatment on the tennis elbow that, for 18 months, had been stopping me so much as picking up a mug in my right hand. Nothing had fixed it. Not the GP, not the osteopath, not the physiotherapist, not the anti-inflammatories. Bowen sounded like mumbo-jumbo to me. But 6 sessions in, the pain was gone.
I ran past the old Victorian gin palace where I fell head over heals with a friend of a friend. I left convinced he felt the same about me. But he never asked her for my number. Annually at her birthday I'd meet him again and still feel the same. But never had the guts to ask him out for a drink.
I arrived at Shepherd's Bush Green. The number of gigs I've been to at the Empire! From the exquisite notes of Parisian Walkways from Gary Moore's guitar, to Saxon belting out Wheels of Steel, to an outrageous trans night with the Scissor Sisters. All of them preceded by a drink at the Defector's Weld. I go there mainly because I like the name.
I don't think about all this on the bus. That's what I love about running.