In her new series Bus Poetry, Alice is the bard of the bus (as well as according to fellow bus passengers of the mental variety: 'twat' 'stuck up bitch' and 'trans'.) Alice is riding the Number 12 bus to make it home for 6pm on Saturday - her least favourite time of the week.
It starts............................
Saturday at 6pm. The twilight hours begin to beckon but the bucket diary's looking empty. The energy got sucked out of my place by the weekend Dyson. The early evening is an uncertain promised land. The door to a House of Fun. An invitation to take a seat, take a chance on me. The first one's free, so be 'free.'
I hear the warning footsteps of my ghost children in this hour. I see the grass is greener memories that always have such a pink sky coral and never contain a reminder of being as sick as a dog.
There's always distant smoke, a covering of the day as the bedroom becomes a changing room. 6pm is Transformation Time. Better shoes. Heavier earrings. A smaller, fuller bag. It's Christmas Eve for adults stuck in a time warp where alcohol can take them out then take them home and fuck them like a bad ex.
At 6pm there's still time to change our minds. Flip on the kettle. Run the bath. Read the book. But everyone wants the social currency of a tale well told, a throbbing head and scuffed shoes on Sunday. So we go out. And we go and we go.
And soon it's Third Drink Time and it's 9.30pm and there's no going back now. All that bluff magic has disappeared in the bubbles of cheap lager and lime. The cracked mirror watches you in the faded glamour of a hotel lobby and you yearn to go back, don't you, you fool? But you can't....
Next Saturday at 6pm the twilight hours begin to beckon...........
Alice is 7 years' sober and now sober coaching at 361diamond.co.uk
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