The wheels on the bus go round and round once more after you turn 60

The humdrum slowly replaces the exotic. Epic adventures to far off lands can barely match the excitement of turning 60 and getting your free bus pass. The joy could only be enhanced if the Scottish Government also gave you a free supply of Werther’s Originals for your maiden journey.

I’ve probably been on more buses in the last two years than I have in the previous four decades. Whether it’s for work, a gig or a day out, they’ve pretty much replaced train journeys.

The differences in travel times are not so great that they put me off - strangely, a two hour journey to Glasgow fair whizzes past.

Our company has an office in Edinburgh and it’s always a joy to escape the tedium and isolation of working from home and actually step back into a newsroom for a day.

Even relocating the office to Leith isn’t much of an issue - off at Queensferry Street, cross the road, wait a few minutes and on to a city bus down to Bonnington.

I just wish I could read a book while travelling by bus in the same way I do on a train. A journey without something physical to hold and read - a paperback, or a newspaper or magazine - isn’t the same.

For some reason the wheels on the bus going round and round make me feel icky, so I go old school and stare out the window to preserve the few brain cells I have left from rotting even further by scrolling through the witless, performative nonsense on Facebook.

It’s strange seeing hardly anyone actually buying a ticket when they get on a bus. Cash transactions have all but vanished, and the few who do tap and pay seem hugely outnumbered by those with passes.

I guess entire generations have also grown up without ever experiencing the fear of seeing an inspector get on to check tickets!

As kids we’d keep our eyes peeled at every bus stop and try to work out ways of getting off before he made it upstairs. They were, without exception, scary, mean looking, soor-faced men who upheld every rule, however petty.

In the 1970s, buses also had no back doors - just a platform and a metal pole you could hold on to until you jumped off. The trick was to hit the pavement with one stride just as the bus slowed down - if you were fly, you could get off at traffic lights. How no-one ever fell out and got injured is a miracle. In 2026, there’d be a “where there’s a blame, there’s a claim” chancer of a lawyer handing out business cards at every stop …

I grew up travelling round the city on the big red corporation buses which all had the engraved plate stating “no spitting” at the front of the upstairs, and had a pocketful of school bus tokens - wee plastic discs which let you travel for free if you were poor.

Maybe it’s those warm memories which surge back the moment we get our over 60s bus pass and decide to hit the open road once more.

Going somewhere just because we can is a pretty decent way of spending a day…