Sideswiped (write of passage number fifty-six)

I don't enjoy riding sideways on the bus, and avoid it whenever possible.

This particular afternoon, the bus is fairly full, so I find myself fighting momentum sideways while clutching a rail with two full cloth shopping bags dangling from my wrist, and an ice cream birthday cake balanced precariously on my lap.

Across the aisle, a plumpish young woman is curled up in a corner, her bare knees pressed against a bar, chatting nonstop on her phone.  Next to her, a young man with odd colouring - pale, pink, and washed out - is gazing into space.  He's wearing earbuds.  There's something about the proximity between the two that suggests to me that they're travelling together, just not quite in the same universes.

Every now and then, he sings out a snatch or two of whatever is playing in his ears.  I don't recognise anything, of course. Knees Up Phone Lady glares at him when he does this for the fifth time.

"I'm on the phone," she hisses, and plunges back into the other conversation.

"I was answering the question," he shrugs.

Cramped and crippled, I juggle my packages, struggling to keep the cake upright, and leap gingerly down to the pavement, wondering what the question was.

Ankle-biter express (write of passage number fifty-five)

 "Oh, no-no-no-no-no...."  I breathed, gazing in horror out the bus window.  Two days in a row, I'd escorted Demeter to medical appointments, the latter being a dental appointment that lasted over an hour.

We'd been thrilled to just catch a bus bound for home, securing courtesy seats with a gap to keep Demeter's walker out of the aisle on a relatively uncrowded bus for a late weekday afternoon.  

Not quite this bad

The bus turned up the incline on Burdett Avenue, and lined up at the stop outside the Starbucks were two dozen seven-year-olds in day-camp teeshirts and yellow vests, intending to return to the community centre with a grand total of three supervisors.  In the grand summer tradition, exactly one supervisor went to the back of the bus with the youngsters, while the other two stayed at the front of bus, calling directions while the kids hung ineffectually from the dangling loops intended for adult standees, and clutched at Demeter's walker.  

I caught the eye of one of the minders and said, firmly:  "My mother has a walker.  She will be getting out at Cook and Fairfield."

"Cook and Fairfield," the minder repeated, a little dazedly.

Looking with some despair at the aisle, a sea of little yellow vests, I rang the bell just after the Vancouver stop and raised my voice:  "Lady with a walker getting out at Fairfield and Cook!"

I could hear the message being passed to the front, where at least half a dozen adults, who had been unfortunate enough (or foolish enough) to board behind the ankle-biters, were crammed beyond the yellow safety line.  The driver called her acknowledgement and about a dozen people of varying sizes poured out on to the sidewalk to allow us out.

As I helped Demeter step down backwards, I heard the driver yell:  "NO!  You cannot get on!  These people are all getting back in!  This bus is FULL!"  She smiled reassuringly at us, and I thanked everyone.

This was an improvement on the day before, when a couple (old enough to know better) leapt ahead of us like a pair of gazelles, and claimed two courtesy seats, leaving only enough room for Demeter to sit and clutch her walker close.

I'll bet they were American. 

Intervention (write of passage number fifty-four)

The Resident Fan Boy was zoning out on the bus, so at first didn't hear the voice from the seat behind him.

"Hello?  Excuse me?"

A waving hand appeared near his ear.

The woman, having his attention, leaned forward.

"There are lots of free seats on this bus."

The RFB turned slightly, so as not to disturb younger daughter, who was gazing out the window, and fidgeting slightly.  The bus was, indeed, nearly empty. He fixed the woman with a quizzical gaze.

"And your point is?"

"Well, you're making people uncomfortable."

While the RFB was processing the implication, younger daughter spoke up.

"No, you're not!" she declared, ignoring the woman completely.  "You're my dad!"

Nothing further was heard for the rest of the trip.

On hearing this story (and having been questioned by strangers more than once myself), I gently pointed out that if younger daughter had been on her own, with an unwelcome man sitting next to her (which has happened), perhaps someone should issue a challenge.

The RFB agreed - a tad begrudgingly - and younger daughter called warningly from her bedroom.  She doesn't like being discussed, and her hearing is acute beyond belief.

Dropping the mask (write of passage number fifty-three)

As is my coffee house ritual, I whipped out three paper napkins out of the dispenser with a flourish, en route to picking my carefully spaced spot to await my order.

Something was different, but it eluded me for several seconds. The barista was  embellishing my morning mocha with an attempted heart - it looked like a persimmon - when it hit me, and I blurted:  "You have a cream and sugar station again!"

No more clinging to the door frame at a safe distance while the staff pour out the sugar and cream under customer supervision. 

At least for now.

From my accustomed seat, I took a quick visual poll to see who's still wearing masks, aside from the baristas.  Much like when British Columbia attempted to relax restrictions last summer, it's a sexual divide: the women approach the counter en masque; the men stride up bare-faced.

At present, we BC residents are moving into a strange limbo:  face-masks are "encouraged", but no longer required, and each institution has noted this on social media.  The library, for example, has added a plea to patrons that they not harass anyone choosing to wear a mask.  The latest trucker nonsense has left scars, though I'm not sure many truckers frequent the library, judging from their spelling and grasp of recent European history.

Buses are also going into "masks recommended" mode.  A few weeks ago, I ran into trouble when face coverings were still mandatory on transit.

I found myself juggling my umbrella and drug store purchases, as I stepped into the teeming rain outside the only medical lab at which I could get an appointment, some kilometres from my home. After a suffocating half-hour waiting to have some blood taken, I removed my mask to gulp in the moist, rain-scrubbed air.

Having scuttled across the crosswalk, it was only when the bus drew up to the stop that I realised my mask wasn't in my pocket.  Frantically searching as others boarded, I appealed to the driver:  "I must have dropped it somewhere!"  Seeing him hesitate, I added:  "I'm triple-vaccinated..."

Somewhere further in, I heard someone offer:  "I've got a scarf..."

The driver allowed me to board, and I found a recess in which to huddle and cling, still obsessively checking my pockets, while an older woman, standing with her shopping cart while the oblivious university and middle-school students sat, spoke soothingly to me.  I must have looked a little crazed.

The bus driver suddenly appeared at my side, holding out a plastic baggie of disposable masks.  I thanked him profusely, and feet aching, found my way to a seat.  I gazed out at the rain, and thought miserably of my pretty cloth mask, abandoned and trodden upon, somewhere on the soggy pavement.

A week later, and I would have been allowed on the bus without question.  

Now, I read that the World Health Organisation is saying we're still in the middle of the pandemic.

Yesterday, I ordered three more pretty facemarks, one in the same design of my lost and lamented one. It's cold comfort, but best not to get too comfortable anyway.

Getting philosophical at the bus stop (write of passage number fifty-two)

Younger daughter and I are late. Again.

I decide to save time by trying for the bus. We approach the stop nearest our home, where three elderly people wait. I ask the closest lady if a bus is coming soon.

There is a long pause, long enough that I'm beginning to wonder if I have been understood.

"Soon?" she says finally, in an accent that sounds faintly east European. "Is five minutes soon?"

Ah. A philosopher. Just what I need.

She turns to the other two, a couple standing far enough away that she has to raise her voice a little.
"You'll see," she tells them, as if continuing a previous conversation. They look mildly startled. (Younger daughter begins to reply, then realizes the lady isn't speaking to us.)
"If he's a male driver, he'll roll right up to the sign, which is tough for us, because of the grass, but easier on anyone getting out the back, because they'll step on the pavement. If it's a woman, she'll stop at the pavement back there." She points.

Almost immediately, a bus appears. The driver is female. She pulls up to the sign. The Bus Philosopher shrugs, and clambers on.

Later in the afternoon, younger daughter and I walk in from downtown, because it's downhill, only takes about fifteen to twenty minutes, and we're no longer in a hurry.

As we reach our home block, the bus draws up alongside us and the Bus Philosopher staggers out, clutching large shopping bags and boxes.

"You made it!" she informs us, and plods away.

In syncopated time (write of passage number fifty-one)

I finally got in to see One Man, Two Guvnors. I've wanted to see it for years; the original "live-streaming" was in 2011, when James Corden looked about fifteen.

The play was vastly entertaining. It's a reworking of an eighteenth century Italian commedia dell'arte, set in 1963 Brighton. Aside from James Corden (who eventually won a Tony for his role, when the play transferred from the National Theatre in London to Broadway), there were a number of faces familiar to anyone who watches British drama. Lots of slapstick, some audience participation (including one ringer), and musical interludes provided by the cast, and a skiffle band that mutated into Beatlesque foursome (with XTC overtones) after the interval.

I was very glad I went.

Waiting for the bus, I encountered a lovely lady struggling with the new bus app on her phone, which informed her that the next #11 wouldn't depart for another hour or so. I checked the posted schedule, and texted the stop number, assuring her that we only had a ten-minute wait.

Evidently this wasn't enough. She asked a young man seated next to her for help in deciphering the app. He asked me if I were sure that I had checked the Saturday schedule. Patiently, I told him that not only was I looking at the Saturday schedule, I had texted the stop number. The bus driver in the "Not in Service" bus chose this time to take pity on us and allow us on, where the discussion continued, Victoria-style, about how technology has transformed university course-work, reading, and life.

The app-challenged lady turned to the young man, whom she recognized from some sort of tour he'd given up at the university (also very Victoria): "You won't remember this; you're far too young, but there was this duo called Simon and Garfunkel..."
"Oh yeah," he said. "They're great."
"Well, when I see everyone on their phones, I remember they sang this song, 'Dangling Conversation' - have you ever heard that one?"
I nodded. "With actual syncopated time," I said.
"But there was this line, I always think of: 'You read your Emily Dickinson; and I, my Robert Frost...' She paused, thinking. "...and I don't remember it exactly..."
"'And we mark our place with bookmarkers, to measure what we've lost,'" I supplied, grimacing apologetically.

I was getting weary from the effort of tuning in to the not-so-dangling conversation across the aisle, which was veering off in another direction anyway. I leaned toward my window, watching my old neighbourhood darkening in the fading autumn light.

Might have been the paint fumes (Write of passage number fifty)

The RFB and younger daughter elect to walk Demeter home after dinner at a Japanese restaurant to celebrate our wedding anniversary.

I'm exhausted after a long day of running errands, so I trot in the opposite direction to the bus stop, where an express bus is loading passengers. The express bus doesn't drop me off as close to our apartment as other buses do, but it's a Friday evening and I have no offhand idea about when the other buses might be coming, so I join the queue, and find myself an aisle seat, which is fine, because my destination is a few stops east.

"How are you this evening?" says a man sitting directly across the aisle, about two feet away. He is deeply tanned with grizzled stubble and dark brown eyes.

"Very well indeed," I respond automatically. It's Victoria, and this is a short ride.

"That's good! Where are you from?"

I'm a wee bit startled. "Pardon?"

"Where are you from? Are you anglaise?"

I'm even more nonplussed: a) because no one has asked if I'm English for years; and b) his accent sounds neither French nor Québecois to me.

"Well, I'm from here."

"Here?"

"Yes, I grew up here."

He launches into a description of his plans for the evening. He tells me he wants beer; he wants to bathe in beer.

"Well," I tell him, "fancy ladies use to wash themselves in beer."

"Ah, I paint all day," he says. (His clothes attest to this.) "I want the beer for my head; it will make me right."

I chuckle and rise. "Well, have a lovely evening!"

"Goodnight! I love you!" he calls after me as I step down on to the pavement.

You know best, dear (Write of Passage Number Forty-nine)

There's an older couple sitting next to me in the bus shelter on Fort Street just up from Douglas Street. They look a bit like tourists - lots of white in their clothing, comfortable shoes.

Nuthin' wrong with that.

They're conferring about something, looking at a bus schedule in the wife's hands, and although I'm not listening in (I swear!), I hear them say 'the 24 bus".

I decide to intervene.
"The 24 doesn't stop here," I tell them, gently and politely, I hope.

The husband gestures westward.
"We saw it pass down there; it has to come up here."

I'm a little taken aback by his logic, but actually get up to check the sign.

Sitting down, I say, "The #24 is not on the lists of buses that stop here." (I knew this, having taken buses in Victoria for years, but he sounds so sure of himself, he's got me doubting myself.)

Wife is checking the timetable she's clutching again.
"It says "Maplewood'," she begins, but husband overrides her.
"We saw it pass by down there," he repeats, pointing, "and it has to come by somewhere."

In this face of this brand of reasoning, I decide I don't have the time or inclination to argue.

"Well, there was a big fire downtown this morning; maybe the bus has been re-routed," I remark, in my placatory Canadian fashion.

My bus, which bears one of the numbers on the bus stop sign, has pulled up, so I board it, with my dark, indignant thoughts.

Double-takes and ladders (Write of Passage Number Forty-eight)

It's a double-decker, but late afternoon on the last Wednesday before Christmas, and most of the seats are taken near the front. I squeeze to the back, where the long rear seat is unoccupied.

I'm rather startled when a young woman plops down next to me, as it isn't elder daughter, in town for Christmas and - I'd thought - on my heels. This girl is long and lanky, with laddered black leggings that she has evidently shredded herself. (I gather this is a thing.) She looks a bit tired -- or stoned. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt.

Elder daughter slides into the seat facing me, and we exchange glances. As the bus rolls on, I remark, glancing up at the lack of headroom directly above my seat,"Good opportunities for concussion here, when we try to get out."

Before my daughter can reply, laddered lady drawls, "Yeah." After a pause, she adds, "I always come close to crashing down the stairs from the upper level."

This is Victoria, so I smile and nod amicably, while elder daughter carefully covers her confusion.

We all alight at the same stop - none of us has bumped our heads - and we see laddered lady saunter out ahead of us across Fort Street.

"That was so bizarre," chuckles elder daughter, who has lived in Hades for eighteen of her twenty-six years. "She thought you must have been a friendly lady just randomly chatting to her."

That's how we roll here, toots. Anyhow, judging the direction she's taken, she may very well be a neighbour in our building.

Footnote (write of passage number forty-seven)

The first thing I see is what I take to be a hand.  It's stretching out of the stroller parked in the bay a few seats ahead of me, the digits are curling to grip the rim.

That's when I realize that what I'm looking at is the foot of a really young baby with really, really prehensile toes.  What I mistook for a chubby wrist is, in fact, a chubby ankle.  The foot kicks back into the air to join another foot, and tiny hands grasp pearly pink toes.

The mum, propped against a window, leans over to coo.  She is snazzily dressed for a new mother - a little black dress cinched in impossibly tight with a wide leather belt, as if to say:  "See?  I'm just as slender as I was!"

She rings the bell in deepest darkest New Edinburgh, near the expensive houses that look out over the Rideau River.  She pushes the stroller toward the front door, but is instructed by the driver to back out, for safety's sake.

She apologizes profusely and turns, heading up the aisle past my seat.

I gently say to her, "He meant 'back out', not 'back door', while the driver is calling back much the same thing.

"Oh, I'm sorry, sorry...." she gasps, flustered.  The stroller is huge, and she knocks a sippie cup loose against the railing, grimacing in embarrassment.

I'm startled to see another pair of baby legs, as she retreats in confusion -- these are much longer and larger -- the stroller is two-tiered.

My goodness, I think.  Irish twins?  No wonder she can't think straight.

And maybe she's really, really hungry.

About face (write of passage number forty-six)

The lady doesn't seem at all pleased to see me.

"Don't sit next to me," she snarls.  She's sitting in the first forward-facing seat in the bus, while I've taken the sideways seat just in front of her, in order to help Demeter steady her walker.

The lady snaps a couple more times.  I think she's talking to me; she never actually makes eye contact, so I ignore her.

A family boards, taking a scattering of available seats.  There is a young girl among them; I'd say she's about seven.  She seems to hang back; resisting her family's directions to sit down, she clings to one of the railings.

Snarly snappy lady does a complete about-face.  She begins teasing the young girl and interacting with a purple bird puppet on the child's right hand.

"Does he have a name?  I want to see him fly!  Ow, he's pecking me!"

The girl smiles and relaxes.

So do I.

I guess I just wasn't young enough.

Maybe I needed a puppet.

Sky boy (write of passage number forty-five)

He's tiny and excited, taking his seat next to his young blond mum in the top of the double-decker. He's wearing some sort of headband, and his sandy hair sticks up like a cone behind it.

His mum tells him, "I used to ride on the Sky Train when I was a little girl; it's really high up too!"

"Well, this is the Sky Bus," he informs her.

"You can call it that if you like."

"'Cuz it touches the sky."

I look out at the blue expanse, and imagine the top of the bus is brushing against it.

From bag to verse (write of passage number forty-four)

He's all in black, wearing a jacket on a warm day, and seated at the bus stop,loaded down with a suitcase on wheels and a couple of shopping bags. When he asks me for the time, I can't place his accent.

He says he's on his way to the Paint-in at Moss Street and offers to read me a poem.

Oh heck,why not? I think, so he pulls sheaves of vellum from a sort of large wallet, and unfolds a large sheet which, fortunately, bears large handwriting.

Unfortunately, he spends a little too much time on the preamble, and the bus pulls up before he can begin reading.

This never happens in Ottawa.

What are little boys made of? (Part Two and write of passage number forty-three)

My heart sinks when the bus on the way back from Butchart Gardens stops near Elk Lake, where several young kids are lined up.  It's day camp season in Victoria.

I was a day-camper for my first three summers in Victoria, ages 9 to 11 -- eons ago.  In those days, there were few day camps and we were transported daily by ancient, retired city buses.

Now, the hapless and hopeful counselors must marshal their charges on to city buses, to fidget and chatter cheek by jowl with unenthusiastic passengers.

This lot look roughly in the 6 to 8 range with a couple of taller boys who are either big for their age or some kind of junior assistants.  There are about fifteen children in all, and they have been instructed by their twenty-something counselors to stand.  Most of them ignore this, being small enough to fit several to a seat.

One little boy (there's always one) is sitting by himself, inches away from me.  His name is James and he's spent the first ten minutes of the journey playing with a rubber frog he's retrieved from the sandy pails dangling from the fingers of the distracted female counselor.  She has a nose piercing and purple hair-ends; she's busy pivoting to keep an eye on everyone in her end of the bus.  Her bearded co-worker is overseeing about half a dozen kids in the back of the bus.

For the next ten minutes, little James dozes off, but as he rouses, it becomes clear he isn't happy.  His small face screws up, and tears start dripping down his summer-coloured cheeks.  I wave to catch his counselor's attention, point discreetly in James' direction and draw imaginary tears under my eye.

He looks up at her in abject misery and butts his head against her hip as she reassures him that "we're almost there".  (This is debatable -- we're still in the upper reaches of Douglas Street.)

One of the big boys slips in beside him and tries to jolly him out of it, gently poking him, and trying to draw his attention to what's out the window, finishing with a droll "Drip-drip-drip".  Female counselor tells him this isn't helpful and to cut it out.

I'm a little worried, given my proximity, that wee James is bus-sick. but it's becoming clear that his discomfort is growing; he's starting to grab a bit at his groin and cry harder.  In other words, he's really wee James.

Mercifully, the group's stop is not quite downtown, and, out on the sidewalk,  I see James at the head of the fleeing line, clutching his counselor's hand.

Screen teens (write of passage number forty-two)

On a beautiful afternoon of what was probably the last warm Saturday of the year, I suggested lunch at a restaurant on the Rideau Canal, one which I've been meaning to try for years. This involved a hefty bus ride, lengthened by a re-routed crawl around the War Memorial, as Hades scrambles to get ready for Canada's sesquicentennial next year.

About half a dozen teenaged girls boarded the bus at the Rideau Centre, and artfully arranged themselves in the seats just ahead of us. They looked as if they'd been cast by an agency: willowy, various shades of blond - except for an Afro-Canadian, an Asian Canadian, and a prettily plump dark-haired girl who was reading the protest signs at Parliament Hill:

"'Stop execlutions in Iran... What's that?"

One of the willowy blonds looked down on her witheringly from her perch in the sideway seats.
"Executions.  There's no 'l' in 'execution'."

The subject was quickly dropped for gossip, continuing the length of Bank Street into the Glebe.

"Don't invite Max -- we hate him, remember?"
"So invite him and then we can all ignore him."

"Cassidy? I hate her!"
"So do I!"
"So do I!"
"I really hate her --- wait --- I don't think I know her..."

My phone tapped.  It was a text notification from elder daughter, seated next to me:

I wouldn't go back to high school if someone paid me.

Switching (Write of passage number forty-one)

The bus is trundling along Charlotte Street when I first glimpse the unicycle.

It's a tall black one with a huge wheel, and the young man atop of it is also tall and all in black, from his baseball cap to his sneakers. His earphones are blue - a worrying addition given the speed he's going, darting back and forth from sidewalk to gutter. He catches up and passes us at each bus stop, and as the traffic slows on Laurier Avenue East, his lead on us grows.

We're surrounded by the after-school crowd from l'ecole secondaire publique De La Salle, so the chatter is also darting seamlessly from French to English and back again, although the accents in both languages remain steadfastly Central Canadian Anglophone, much like the civil servant conversations I often overhear earlier in the day.

It seems that every year, no matter which school, francophone or anglophone, an awkward boy with an oversized backpack plops in with the gang of gabblers, then switches seats, further and further forward, away from his schoolmates.

If I peer through the front window of the bus, I can still make out the stick-like silhouette of the unicyclist, darting perilously back and forth between the line of cars on the street and the pedestrians on the sidewalk -- blocks ahead of us and getting smaller all the time.

Seeing double (write of passage number forty)

One of the advantages of having a house-sit off Hillside - no matter how briefly - is the pleasure of clambering up into a double-decker. (The double-deckers only serve the university routes and the communities lying beyond Saanich.)

I'm not the only one who is delighted.  A little girl emerging from toddlerhood is thrilled, not only by being up so high above the streets, but by seeing other double-deckers streaming in and out of downtown Victoria.

"A big bus!" she cries triumphantly.
"An' annunner big bus! An' annunner big bus...."

She spots about a dozen before I get off.

Smitten (write of passage number thirty-nine)

As the bus draws up at the stop, the baby in the stroller is peeling off her gloves with the finesse of Gypsy Rose Lee. Her mother scrambles to retrieve them from the dark sidewalk, so we board first.

Somebody folds up one of the side seats so the stroller can be parked off the aisle, and the young man who finds himself facing the baby greets her with a jazz-hand wave. She responds by slapping her hand to her mouth and blowing him a kiss. He jerks back as if the kiss has hit him square in the face.

This young lady, mitten-free, seems now determined to tackle her boots. Her mother distracts her by pointing out the strings of brilliant lights that outline the trees in Confederation Park as our bus prepares to make the turn towards Mackenzie King Bridge. This works well -- for two minutes, then the mum has her do "high fives". She tries to get the little girl to high-five the young man, but she gravely shakes her head each time.

She's perfectly content to throw mittened kisses when it's time to get off. The young man waves and throws one back. When the stroller has rolled away, he saunters off the bus.

Sic transit gloria (write of passage number thirty-eight)

About four years ago, I wrote about a photograph I had snapped of my neighbourhood four years before that. I had thought it was a boring shot and had even attempted to delete it. Years later, I realized it was a record of how the block looked before a catastrophic fire.

So, if you look at the following video, which appeared on my Facebook wall a few months ago, you might not find it that scintillating, but it is an attempt, using Google Street view and 1950s photos, to recreate the streetcar line that used to run in a loop around our neighbourhood. It has interest for me, because it shows the main drag in New Edinburgh and a few snaps later, the corner nearest our house -- only fifty years before we moved there.


This past autumn was a lingering one, and for most of it, I was still making the three-hour round trip to Bells Corners. One of the consolations for this was the Transitway ride along the southern bank of the Ottawa River, and it occurred to me that this is an experience that has probably slipped away forever. Younger daughter is now making the trip home by herself, and, at any rate, is in her last year at her school. Most importantly, Ottawa has embarked on a city-wide conversion of the Transitway to light-rail, and one of the many changes will be a shifting of the western route away from the river.

One October weekday, just after the autumn colours had peaked, I decided to film the bus trip from LaBreton Flats to Lincoln Fields in small segments.

This is the departure from LeBreton Flats.


The land rises up before the bus pulls in to Bayview Station, which has no view of a bay, but the pathways lead down to the O Train that will take you south to Carlton University.

You can't see much for the next couple of stops as the bus hurtles through a man-made canyon - the light rail will probably run through here, but will turn away, I guess, before it reaches the breathtaking entrance of the Parkway with the first glimpse of the Ottawa River.

I will miss this.

And this.


Finally, the last glimpse of the river, deep blue this day with white caps from a strong wind, before the bus veers south to the station at Lincoln Fields.

This experience, ordinary and habitual yet changeable and beautiful, will not come again. Like most things in life, really.

Remembrance Day Retreat (write of passage number thirty-seven)

Remembrance Day fell on a Sunday in 2001.

It was getting toward noon, and the Resident Fan Boy and I stood at a bus stop downtown with our daughters, then aged nine and five.  An imposing lady addressed the girls in that school-teacherish fashion that some older people take with strangers' children.

"It's a beautiful day to be out,  isn't it?"

Elder daughter smiled shyly and nodded politely.  Younger daughter was cheerfully oblivious.

An extra note entered the woman's tone, slightly challenging, slightly accusatory, with an overlying aura of righteousness.

"Were you girls down at the ceremony honouring our soldiers?"

Elder daughter froze and hesitated, her eyes widening.  My cue to intervene and cut the sidewalk sermon short.

"We were in church," I said, with a pleasant smile while fixing the lady with an unmistakeable "Mum" look.  Trump card.

"Oh," she fluttered.  "Well, then, that's just as good..."

She didn't say another word as the bus arrived.