8 April 2026
Tonight I took the 345 bus to South Kensington on the way home from the gym. When I got on, a man cradling a warped stick that looked like a piece of driftwood was the only other passenger. He was sitting in the lower deck of the bus in the back by the engine and seemed to be talking to himself out loud while looking out the window, but I couldn't really hear what he was saying through my noise cancelling headphones (I often like to wear them on the bus without any audio playing so that the passing sounds of the city soften).
I sat in my favorite top deck seat—the one overlooking the stairs. I kept my headphones in for the duration of the ride, but I was aware the whole time of a continuous muffled monologue from the man below. His voice was steady, never rising much higher than a conversational hum. It made time pass. When my stop eventually came into view, I hopped down the stairs to prepare to alight. As the bus pulled to the curb, I removed my headphones to step onto the street and heard the man say: “You've got water in the earth? I'm jumping in.”