Beyond the bus station

I'm more of a train guy than bus boy. I am a bit of a train geek and can tell you of DMUs, diesel push and pulls, points, pendolinos and pantographs. I had a train set as a kid, and I got to know Messrs Triang and Hornby very well. A train set and Subbuteo and I would have been happy for hours. If you want me to travel, buy me a train ticket and I'm there. I don't drive - part green, part no need, part can't be bothered - but I'm ok on a bus. A local one, mind - the thought of going Glasgow to London, ten hours in a bus, terrifies the bejaysus from me.

The pic is Buchanan Bus Station, on Killermont Street in Glasgow city-centre. I used it as a student and occasionally these days I'll commute in or out. It's an open, concrete, functional uninspiring kind of place. Really a bus station should be the opposite, it should be a beautiful, romantic vision of a terminus - think of those who arrive in the city or depart from the city for the very last time, of the tourists and visitors, of the head-down commuters. Lift their heads, make then gasp and wonder as they board their bus, as they head off near and far, to suburbia and shire, around the corner and around the nation. There is the fabulous George Wyllie 'Kiss' sculpture and little else, although the station was immortalised in the Aztec Camera song 'Killermont Street', a love story of a trip home to East Kilbride: 'there's a message for us/we can get there by bus/ from Killermont Street'.

And when thinking of busses and bus stations (I'm blipping from the bus home from the bus station) I'm reminded of these words. I won't mention who said it - suffice to say that I'll be here til Christmas if I get started on my view. For the record, I'm over 26:

A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure.



Aztec Camera: Killermont Street:
http://www.lyricstime.com/aztec-camera-killermont-street-lyrics.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AhjV5rjfL8&feature=youtube_gdata_player