Bloody public transport

Bloody public transport. Here I sit, blogging from the slightly grubby and very cramped seat of a Number 12 bus - the only form of transport which seems to think the most direct route from Torbay Hospital to Paignton is via the centre of Torquay.
40 minutes?!? I can do Paignton to Plymouth in half that (police traffic officers please ignore that last remark).
Insult to injury the bus timetable told me a bus was due a minute after I strolled up (lie) and that they came every seve minutes (lie). The fact three buses following the exact same timetable passed in the opposite direction while I was waiting for this one seems designed by fate, or Stagecoach, to induce a stroke.
And then two turn up at once. I thought that was just the punchline to a Jasper Carrott joke.
To top it all off my epic voyage home is setting me back £2.85. So Gordon Brown can continue his pogrom of taxing us motorists back to the Stone Age while the oil companies mainline cash direct from our accounts but it seems there is no alternative - buses are even more expensive than driving and about as customer-friendly as a Barnstaple B&B.
So why do I find myself traversing the Queen's highway with the hoi polloi?
As previously reported my other half is expecting our second child. Not due for another couple of weeks but when the maternity unit sees a lull in the tidal wave of economic migrants "coming over here, using our NHS"(damn, I've come over all Daily Mail) I guess they decide to induce.
Having got a lift in to avoid filling out the second mortgage applicaion necessary to fund a day's parking, I was planning to wait by the bedside all day for the action to start, watching £2 a minute TV and contracting C Diff, but when the midwife heard I'd been up all night uploading election coverage to thisisplymouth she took pity and told me to go home for a nap. Either that or she heard I was a journalist and wanted me out of the way. Ah well, by the time this bus gets me home at least the new arrival will be old enough to drive back and pick me up.
In other news, I'd say even more exciting news but the other half may kill me, thisisplymouth has rocketed up the chart to become the third largest website in our nationwide group, and has just been shortlisted for a prestigious website of the year award.
Well must go, a bloke with a dodgy grin, a Morrison's carrier bag and a smell of yak is eying up my palmtop and the bus is just pulled upo in what is either Paignton bus station or one of the slightly-less gentrified parts of Albania.