RAIL REPLACEMENT BUS

They’re replacing the bridge at Oxford station this week. Trains are messed up, so perhaps unbelievably today, I’m taking the bus… all the way there.

I do like an adventure. Right now the bus is crossing the Thames, and through the rainswept window I can see the great river stretching wide and dawn-grey beneath the bridge. It’s a new perspective. Normally I cross the river without even thinking about it.

Quite the adventure then! The houses are grander this side of the Thames - bays and balustrades, wide porches and garret windows. The roads are leafy too, though on mornings like this, those bushes and trees drip with rain rather than dappled sunlight.

I don’t have much idea of how long this bus takes. I imagine I’ll be later than normal, which, I admit is quite alright in the grand scheme of things. It’s certainly better than the dreaded rail replacement service that would have awaited me at Didcot today. That would have taken longer and is far less predictable.

We’re in the countryside now. A wood of spindly silver birches flashes by, then a green field speckled with white gulls. Now horses, farm buildings, copses and telegraph poles. I have no idea where we are, which is strangely appealing to me. Sometimes we want to know too much; it stops us believing, and makes faith much harder.

Apparently the temporary bridge at Oxford station will be made of polystyrene! I’d love to know the physics of how the same crumbly stuff that’s used for packing could be compacted enough to walk on. Maybe I’ll embrace that mystery next time and trust it’ll be alright, literally crossing that bridge when I come to it. But it isn’t today.