Lynley Hood writes of the obstacle course facing Corstorphine weekend bus users.
Silly me, I should have known the first sweet corn of the season would turn up at the farmers market this morning.
And I should have known that when I arrived home on the bus with my lovely fresh cobs, the autumnal temperature would inspire me to make corn and bacon chowder.
In the thrill of the moment I forgot such impulsive decision-making doesn't work for me any more. Nowadays, I have to plan ahead. I have to think about what I'm going to cook.
I have to keep my larder well stocked. It's a matter of necessity.
My visual impairment stops me driving and my nearest grocery store is a kilometre hike up the hill. Normally, I do my food shopping during the week.
The bus service is so much better on weekdays.
Then it dawns on me - all is not lost! On Saturdays the bus from the Octagon to Corstorphine goes up and back past my nearest bus stop (a mere 120m away).
I could catch the bus to the grocery store, buy my milk, and catch the same bus home again on its return journey.
I consult the timetable. This is no easy task. The small font and poor colour contrast between print and background makes the hard copy very difficult to read.
Fortunately, unlike the many elderly, poor and disabled Corstorphine residents on the wrong side of the digital divide, I can download the bus timetable from the ORC website.
There's even a download for smartphones, but what a disappointment.
It's just a pdf of the hard copy with no internal links.
You can't find the Corstorphine timetable by just clicking on ''Corstorphine'' in the suburb index; it's far more complicated than that.
First you have to find Corstorphine in the alphabetical list of suburbs.
Then you have to trawl through four columns of page numbers relating to maps and timetables to find the pages you need.
Weekday daytime and Saturday timetables for Corstorphine are said to be on pages 50-51, but this is untrue.
The Saturday timetable for Corstorphine is on page 52. Now comes the biggest challenge: trying to make sense of it.
All bus timetables are not created equal.
The residents of Maori Hill and other favoured suburbs have separate bus timetables for their inward and outward journeys, and each of those timetables lists enough stops along the way to give patrons an indication of the route.
Corstorphine residents are not so lucky.
We have to put up with timetables in which inward and outward bus journeys are crammed together on the same table, and only the departure point and the terminus of each journey is identified.
Corstorphine's Saturday timetable lists three stops: Corstorphine, the Octagon and the university.
Yes, it's true - there is a bus service between Corstorphine and the university, but only on Saturdays.
On weekdays, every Dunedin suburb except Corstorphine is connected by bus to at least one, and often two or three, of the three key destinations for suburban bus patrons - the George St shopping precinct, the supermarkets along Cumberland St and the university.
But on weekdays, Corstorphine bus passengers can only go to the Octagon.
So I make a nice cup of tea and settle down to study Corstorphine's Saturday timetable.
When does the next bus leave the Octagon, when does it get to Corstorphine, and can I figure out from that information when to go out to my bus stop? Blessed are the Maori Hill residents with their separate inward and outward timetables.
Their departure times are always in the left-hand column of the table, and their end-of-route arrival times are always in the right-hand column. Cursed are the Corstorphine residents with their inward and outward bus journeys jammed together into one cluttered table.
On Saturdays, there are two outward destinations (the university and Corstorphine), and two columns of departure times, both labelled ''Octagon''. Both columns are located in the middle of the table.
So I enlarge the Saturday timetable on my computer screen and, after a period of intense concentration, I figure out which of the two columns labelled ''Octagon'' contains departure times for Corstorphine-bound buses.
There's one leaving the Octagon at 12.35pm. It's scheduled to arrive at Corstorphine at 12.55pm.
I glance at the clock. It's almost 12.30pm. Visions of steaming corn and bacon soup beckon.
I wrap up warmly and head for the bus stop.
It's only about five minutes by bus from the Corstorphine terminus, but with only one bus per hour, I'm there in plenty of time.
I don't want to miss the bus. Then I wait ... and wait ... and wait ... and freeze.
About 1pm, a horrible realisation dawns.
One of the many incomprehensible changes made to our bus service from July 1 last year was to run the hourly Saturday buses from the Octagon to Corstorphine on alternate routes.
One hour up and down Middleton Rd, the next hour up and down Corstorphine Rd.
To get milk from my nearest grocery store on a Saturday, I'd have to catch a bus that goes past my stop every two hours.
I've been waiting at the wrong time, for the wrong bus.
That's ridiculous. I give up. Corn and bacon chowder is off the menu this week
