Bendy Buses and Blank Memories

I love walking, jogging, running and everything in between. Basically, I enjoy any form of physical movement which involves the feeling of brisk fresh air (well as fresh as air can be in a city) on my face as other people go on busily with their lives around me. As I am currently living at home, I walk to university every day which takes approximately 35 to 40 minutes. Usually when I mention this to people, they give me a funny look as if I must be mad to walk for that long early in the morning, especially when I have a 9am lecture!

I have taken the same route to university since I started and have always seen something interesting along the way. I pass by countless shops, a primary school, a church and a retirement home on my way so there’s always something that makes me smile, frown or at times even double take and silently gasp. It is surprising therefore that I have recently been arriving to university with no memory of how I made it there from home. How can 40 minutes go by whilst you are fully awake and at the end of it you have no memory of what just happened? Creepy. When I try to recall my journey, I faintly remember locking my front door and then it is blank till I picture the man I silently giggled at as he pointlessly tried to beat the bus to the bus stop with his suit jacket flapping in the wind. Then it goes blank again rather like a bad cassette or video when the screen goes all fuzzy with the white dots till I arrive at university and I see the green University of Leicester bendy bus with students piling off it. Then it’s like a light has come on and I can actually see and relate to my surroundings again rather than just floating past in a dreamlike state. Maybe I need to change my route to university as I have become so familiar with it that I can apparently walk to university whilst 99% asleep despite there being numerous roads to cross and frustrated drivers to avoid. Hmmm.

The majority of students that live in halls in the Oadby ‘student village’ as it has come to be known will take the UNIlinx bendy bus to campus as it comes every 15 minutes and is relatively cheaper than normal buses. Although these students solely see the bus as a means of transport, I have come to associate the bright green 18 meter long vehicle as a sort of daily alarm, waking me up from my own world of memories and hurtling me into reality, wide awake and ready to learn. So even though I don’t catch the bus, its presence is still vital for me to function correctly first thing in the morning!