Yesterday we weren’t feeling very active, so we caught the bus in to sunny Birmingham, visted the wonderful Barton’s Arms (unfortunately we were too late for lunchtime Thai food, but at least the fire didn’t seem to have damaged the pub much), then walked up to Gosta Green (visiting the Sacks of Potatoes), having avoided any drive-by shootings in progress, visited The Crown and The Shakespeare (the latter being a smoke-free pub already! Yay!), and then caught the 51 bus back to Walsall. It seems the 51 is populated by the most irritating forms of life available: The people that want two seats to themselves on a full bus, the people playing shit music on shit mobile phones with shit speakers cranked up to distortion. It seems these days there’s a competition to get the worst-sounding music playback device possible, and use it.

It’s not helped by modern TWM buses that seem to be designed for 4ft tall, very skinny people: at 6ft 3 and 16st 7ilbs I fit very badly into a modern bus seat. Why is it that people have got bigger,and bus seats have got smaller? Later that evening we caught an old Metrobus, and the seats were perfectly confortable…..