{"id":205,"date":"2008-04-07T21:10:13","date_gmt":"2008-04-07T20:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.weirdbutinagoodway.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/04\/07\/205\/"},"modified":"2010-05-08T22:55:08","modified_gmt":"2010-05-08T21:55:08","slug":"205","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.weirdbutinagoodway.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/04\/07\/205\/","title":{"rendered":"Is this seat taken?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was sitting on the bus today on my way home from work, not really interested in what was playing on my Ipod and for once not having my head buried in a book I was listlessly gazing out of the window . Contemplating the world as it passed me by when a man tapped me on the shoulder interrupting my reverie.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Excuse me love&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I turned in response expecting the usual &#8220;Is this seat taken?\/do you have the time?\/do you know which stop for (insert random place here)&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Have you been singing? Look at the rain, Yep, look at the rain. There are two things you should never complain about, the weather and your age, you can&#8217;t do anything to change either so there is no use complaining about them. Are you taking this all in young un.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Yes he called me young un &#8211; I may have started warming to him then.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Are you listening? There is no use complaining your weather and your age, You&#8217;re taking this all in aren&#8217;t you,  don&#8217;t bother worrying about either as it&#8217;ll be a waste of your time and you can&#8217;t waste time because you never know when one day you&#8217;ll wake up in the morning and find yourself dead&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>At that he got up, walked to the front of the bus and disembarked at the next stop.<\/p>\n<p>I was lost for words, How do you respond to a statement like that? All the usual sarcasm that I can draw on in moments like that had deserted me. All I kept thinking was &#8220;Cheeky mad bastard, how does he know my singing is THAT bad!?&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was sitting on the bus today on my way home from work, not really interested in what was playing on my Ipod and for once not having my head buried in a book I was listlessly gazing out of the window . Contemplating the world as it passed me by when a man tapped &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.weirdbutinagoodway.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/04\/07\/205\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Is this seat taken?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[102,1],"tags":[255,254,253],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home","category-wbiagw","tag-bus","tag-strangers","tag-travel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6WGy-205","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":125,"url":"https:\/\/www.weirdbutinagoodway.co.uk\/blog\/2006\/05\/04\/im-not-complaining\/","url_meta":{"origin":205,"position":0},"title":"I&#8217;m not complaining&#8230;","date":"May 4, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"...really I'm not, but where did the sunshine finally appear from??It couldn't wait till the weekend when I was off work to put in an appearence could it?? Oh no, it appears mid week to taunt me with how good it could be, and what does the forcast for my\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;WBIAGW&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":169,"url":"https:\/\/www.weirdbutinagoodway.co.uk\/blog\/2007\/07\/23\/not-me-again\/","url_meta":{"origin":205,"position":1},"title":"Not me again!!!","date":"July 23, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Why if a shop is going to be robbed I'll be the one walking past as the robbers make their escape brandishing shotguns and nearly running me over with their get away car(true).Why if someone is going to have a heart attack and die in a shop they are standing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;WBIAGW&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":79,"url":"https:\/\/www.weirdbutinagoodway.co.uk\/blog\/2005\/11\/28\/let-it-snow-let-it-snow-let-it-snow\/","url_meta":{"origin":205,"position":2},"title":"Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!","date":"November 28, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Today it came, and then some!!It snowed for hours and in typical British fashion everything came to a stand still, 1 hour 45 minutes I had to wait for a bus to get home tonight, AND THEN it took another 45\/50 minutes to complete a journey that usually takes 20.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;WBIAGW&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":144,"url":"https:\/\/www.weirdbutinagoodway.co.uk\/blog\/2007\/01\/08\/happy-2007teh-complaining-begins\/","url_meta":{"origin":205,"position":3},"title":"Happy 2007&#8230;teh complaining begins!!","date":"January 8, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"As I seem to have progressed from a general dislike of my job into a full on hatred of the building, the work, the people, the mess, THE MANAGER and everything else to do with it, i'm looking for a new job.I was promoted twice last year but due to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;WBIAGW&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":275,"url":"https:\/\/www.weirdbutinagoodway.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/12\/17\/a-thank-you\/","url_meta":{"origin":205,"position":4},"title":"A thank you","date":"December 17, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"To the girl on the top deck of the 559 bus travelling from Wolverhampton towards Wednesfield at approximately 5:30pm last night. I was the girl sitting in front of you wearing the black coat. You were the girl sitting behind me in the atrocious yellow jumper, purple skirt and black\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Health&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"Seasons Greetings Wolverhampton","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3048\/3078335476_f9bacc3fb8.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":223,"url":"https:\/\/www.weirdbutinagoodway.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/08\/14\/no-bullet-jibe-for-train-row-soldier\/","url_meta":{"origin":205,"position":5},"title":"&#8216;No bullet&#8217; jibe for train row soldier","date":"August 14, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"After writing of the insults I received courtesy of a train manager on my journey south the other day (here) I came across an article in today's Metro that sounded all too familiar. It seems Cross Country Trains managers are at it again, and not even our armed forces are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;WBIAGW&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weirdbutinagoodway.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weirdbutinagoodway.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weirdbutinagoodway.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weirdbutinagoodway.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weirdbutinagoodway.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.weirdbutinagoodway.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":788,"href":"https:\/\/www.weirdbutinagoodway.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions\/788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weirdbutinagoodway.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weirdbutinagoodway.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weirdbutinagoodway.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}