With only a couple of days till Christmas, you might need to venture into the city centre to pick up a present for the relative you forgot about or that friend you weren’t expecting a gift from.

You’re now faced with the dilemma of how you’re going to get there.

If you’re a public transport regular, you’ll know the drill. If you’re a driver, you might decide to leave your car at home and choose the bus over traffic queues and paying extortionate parking fees, (that’s if after spending 20 minutes waiting for someone who wants to leave, you actually find a space). A decision you might soon regret.

Your journey begins when you find yourself queuing at the bus stop (this could be in the rain, in which case you may find yourself losing an eye due to umbrellas). You then have to wait for a bus, which will probably be late, even later when you realise they’re running on a bank holiday timetable. Then eventually, one appears in the distance and you’ve finally made out the number on it, it either drives straight past you or 5 turn up at once.

When it comes to paying your fare, bus drivers are difficult people to please. Whether you’re paying with the change you scraped together by looking in ancient money boxes and down the side of the sofa, or paying with a £10 note, you’re sure to get tutted at. If you’re brave enough to board a bus with a £20, prepare yourself for the drivers anger. You’ll then be asked if you have anything smaller, of course, if you had anything smaller, you wouldn’t be paying with a £20 note, would you?

Next task is finding a seat on the bus, which is most likely full of elderly people, empty shopping trolleys (the sort old people use, not a metal one that’s been nicked from Tesco car park), young people playing their ‘tunes’ inappropriately loud, prams and the worst kind of bus dweller – the person who sits in the aisle seat whilst their worldly belongings are scattered across the window seat. If there are no seats, you can stand at the front and fall into all of the people who are fortunate enough to live further from town.

For the duration of your journey, expect to hear babies crying, people shouting down the phone and the ringing of the bell.

Eventually you reach your destination and are faced with more hustle and bustle, which you can read about in one of our recent posts, we do treat you don’t we?

And if all that hassle wasn’t enough, you can face it all again on you return journey (don’t lose your ticket).