But there is no announcement on the platform today, and no need to touch on. No trains today, or yesterday. An Outage.

Also Melbourne is freezing and walking the streets in this weather is unappealing,

So I am queuing for the replacement bus with all the other commuters on a Saturday late afternoon.

Actually I am surprised at the good humour. Maybe Melburnians are used to transport issues.They are certainly inured to the weather. The guys directing to the correct bus or coach are equally good humoured, answering each query patiently and pointing the way again and again. Rain ponchos are distributed. Rain is forecast and the sky is darkening. The icy wind though keeps the storm at bay.

We pile into the bus bound for, ironically, Sunshine. Then trouble strikes. But it’s mine really. Stupidly I sit in one of the few free seats. Next to a talker. A few minutes in, despite my non -committal responses, the young man launches into a full blown account of his brain injury. He corroborates his story with a U Tube video on his phone . Then he fills me in on the accident, the rehab, the state of his car that he loved as much as his girlfriend, how he catches a ball ( showed me a hand frozen into a clench), his life now. I’m not unsympathetic, but having just come from a hospital visit, and cold and moody, I really don’t want to hear anyone else’s story.

Sunshine has never seemed so far away .

Finally I reach the end of this line and look for the next bus. I make sure I look old and grumpy. And I sit up front on a single seat looking straight ahead