Results tagged “blog” from Birmingham Post - Lifestyle Blog

I thoroughly enjoyed Michael Palin's diaries of his years in Monty Python, he's amusing, literate and as has been widely noted very very very nice, but reading them made me feel somewhat inadequate. Here's a man that was writing and performing not only in Python, but films, his own Ripping Yarns series, and various theatre appearances, he was on the board of Shepperton studios, partner in an arts publishing business, father to three small children, having "rather nice claret" at lunch with various luminaries of the day, but the killer was that he still found time to be on his local residents committee.

You can easily imagine the hopelessly amiable Palin, bumbling though life painlessly overachieving in all of his chosen fields, as well as the feeling of inadequacy it also inspires you a little that nice guys don't have to finish last. Especially if they don't consider they're racing anyone.

I'm glad I read it thirty or so years after the event though, imagine how wearing it would be to read Palin's blog each day or worse hear about every effortless triumph on twitter.

Buses aren't the most romantic form of transport, or at least aren't romanticised. Car driving gets the Route 66 treatment, the concept of "the road movie" and any number of soft rock classics, trains get Brief Encounter, Night Mail and er, Jimmy Saville. Ask anyone to name a piece of culture about a bus -- Summer Holiday and funny looks are all you'll get.

I think it's something to do with the bus being the middle ground, not the romantic freedom of the car, nor the regimented closeness of the long distance train. Buses are always just that one step up from Shank's pony, and bus stops don't get names so there's isn't even a Mornington Crescent type game to play.

We didn't have a car when I was a kid, and for one reason or another I'm just not bothered by them, trains were always expensive (they were competing with the fabled 2p fares on the bus, remember) and still to me seem a middle class way of travelling I'm not totally comfortable with. So buses are where it's at for me culturally, not that I get aroused by a shapely MCW Metrobus or even a Gardner engined Daimler Fleetline (I am however quietly obsessed with the 11 route, the local network in general and harbour fine memories of the tracline 65).

The interweb, of course, is nothing if not home to the nichest of niche content so, along with the bus-spotting and the tiny sites I've made that track people using twitter on the bus, there is something genuinely interesting and bus-related happening.