BUS travel in Edinburgh these days can be bad for your health. Brings the old blood pressure to the boil when it can take 25 minutes in a stop-and-start trundle to get from Hanover Street to the end of George Street (on a good day, 16 minutes from North Castle Street).
Down to the trams, of course, and the trauma and turmoil they're inflicting on a city that neither needs nor wants them. Never mind what Edinburgh Trams say in their propaganda. Heed, rather, your fellow bus travellers.
What does the blood pressur
e no good at all, the buzz that the bill for the trams will top a billion. I said a billion.
So when you board a bus driven by Mo Phillips and you hear her greet every passenger with a cheery smile and "hello and thank you" and, when they alight, a breezy "thank you and goodbye," she can ease you out of stop-the-world-I-want-to-get-off mode.
Lard be praised We chaps, those of us who've lived a bit, were warned the other day that a couple of slivers of bacon and a brace of bangers could well put us in pole position for the big C.
Now a dingly doc at Harvard Medical School spreads more fear and alarm, broadcasting that an egg a day for middle-aged men increases the chances of dying by 23 per cent.
That's it, then. Curtains for the time-honoured sausage, bacon and egg tightener of a morning.
Waiter! The ketchup, if you please. And yes, pile on the beans while you're at it.
Meanwhile, I have a warning for you, dear readers. BBC Glasgow are muttering about bringing back a screen Gaelic soap. Run for the hills!
Afterwords . . . . . "I was married to a Catholic for 20 years. Didn't stop our marriage ending in divorce," says Bryan Ferry at 62. That was six years ago and it cost him £10 million.
But the miner's son adds in all humility: "If I'm in a limousine on the way to the airport, I still haven't forgotten what it's like to stand in the rain at a north-eastern bus stop for hours.
"I do have memories of deprivation.
"But I don't carry them around like some bitter left-wing hammer to beat people on the head with."
The full article contains 401 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
