Hold very tight, please.

It's not very often that I catch a bus. No, I don't miss them - well, not all of them - I just don't set out to catch them. The route that runs nearest to our house has a bus once an hour in each direction. That is, once an hour between about 8.00am and 6.00pm. I think they run less frequently on Saturdays and I know they don't run at all on Sundays. On weekdays the timetable seems to be pretty flexible. I know that the bus is due at or close to the hour going up the hill and a few minutes later going down, but it is quite often that I see people waiting at the stop 15 or 20 minutes after the bus should have come.

On those few occasions when I do want to take the bus I start with a brisk 5-minute walk downhill through the twittens to get to a different route where the buses run every 10 minutes. That's the advertised timetable. The reality is that I usually have to wait for at least 15 minutes and I have waited more than 20. But however long I wait, I never ever look to see what the bus is called. Yes, you did read that correctly - what the bus is called. You see, way back in 1999 every bus was given a name and the practice has continued. Those names are nothing like Skylark or Tess but are the names of real people.

"The main criterion for inclusion is that the deceased person made a significant contribution to the area or had a strong connection during their lifetime. As more contemporary names have been suggested another criteria is that the person has been deceased for at least a year," it says on the company's web site. I know that somewhere it is possible to see all the names in use and to find out to which bus each has been allocated along with short biographical details. Frankly, I can't be bothered, although I do sometimes see a name and wonder who or what and why.

As far as I know, the company that runs buses through our village in France hasn't got round to naming them. I say 'as far as I know' because I have never actually seen a bus in the village - except the school bus. I believe such vehicles might be spotted occasionally - there is a bus shelter and a timetable is affixed to the bus stop (which is not at the bus shelter - but let's not go into that!). I have tried to make sense of the timetable but it has proved somewhat difficult. It would seem to me that there are two buses running through the village every day (except some days either during the school term or during the school holiday, I'm unsure which). The problem seems to be that the bus from the village to the nearest town runs after the bus from the nearest town to the village - which makes a shopping trip a tad awkward. But at least there is a bus both ways.

Which is more than the residents of a Wiltshire village can say. They used to have a bus to Andover and a bus back, but the service was heavily subsidised by the county council. The council, because of financial hardship, was forced to cut the subsidy by half. Consequently, the bus company now runs the bus from the village to Andover - but not the return journey! That's what I call sensible.