A Holiday on the 389

This morning on my way to work I took a journey, inadvertently, around the world. I closed the front door behind me and inhaled the metallic smell of rain starting and those first dark spots on the tarmac made me think of Munich, the comfort of grey drizzle. I passed a neighbour's flower box and was transported to Austria, to skiing villages populated with flower studded chalets and small doily curtains in wood-edged windows. I got on the 389 bus and, travelling through Paddington, I put my head down into my Margaret Atwood book so that I was aware only of a small sliver of the world passing by outside.

I could be anywhere, I thought to myself.

And perhaps because I was reading vintage Atwood, I felt I was in Toronto, with the Eaton Centre around the corner and Tim Hortons coffee waiting for me somewhere in a larger-than-life cup.

Then I got off the bus and I was in Sydney again, and late for work.