Waiting for a bus?

There's a guy in Glasgow who can often be spotted sitting on a camping stool in the middle of a traffic island on Jamaica Street with a shopping trolley staring straight up the middle of the road.

Now, the first time I saw this guy I thought that he was so unfit that he literally had to carry a seat in order to punctuate his shopping journeys with little pit-stops wherever it took his fancy. I watched him for a bit to see if he was okay then noticed that he was sipping out of a thermos flask and waving at the buses in quite a jolly manner and so, with a brief inner monologue something along the lines of ....."hmmmm", I buggered off back to work.

But a few days later there he was again his arse planted down on a camping stool, shopping trolley beside him and giving the thumbs up to every bus that passed him.

"Could this be the ultimate in door to door bus services" I thought to myself, "do your shopping, pop yourself down wherever you fancy and flag a passing bus to take you home" but decided after careful consideration and half a packet of Monster Munch .........nah.

So I stood and watched him for a while longer and realised he wasn't just parking his bum down in any old place just for the sake of it, he was actually taking photos of the damn buses that went past!!!

Now there are quite a few things that are universally considered to be sad including train spotting and collecting air sickness bags but .........BUS SPOTTING !....... C'moan, that's just wrong.

How many variations of the Auchenshugle bus can there be for crying out loud ?

I can only image the thoughts going through his head "Oh look, there's one with four wheels".........."Oh.... oh, there's another, wow two in the same day, I can't believe my luck".

Surely rather than spot buses a more worthwhile pastime would be shopping trolley spotting, that way you could combine your hobby and your weekly messages into one and think of the variations you could come across:

• Choice of supermarket brand
• With or without child seat
• Wee/medium/big trolley
• With or without shoogley wheels
• In the canal/skip/back-garden

Just as many options as your average bus and with all of the associated saddo stigma.