Released by Order of the Dean

When I returned from a lengthy meeting at work yesterday I was more than a little surprised to find my dad slumped in my chair in a horrendous checked shirt, arranging his meetings over my phone. Do you remember how embarrassing it was when a parent had to come in to one of your classes at school? It was much like that, only moreso. He hadn't come in to deliver a packed lunch or a missing PE kit, though - he had finished his interviews early and wanted to request to my manager that I come home with him to help put shelves together. This worked better when he explained that he was in fact their Dean, rather than just someone who had wandered in off the street like some people had first assumed.

A week living alone with my dad has made me realise how little we talk to each other normally - for a while we've been vaguely aware of each other's existence but that's about it. It's not a bad relationship at all, it's just that normally I'm upstairs and he's in his study doing something important like beating his Civilization score or whatever else Deans do. For most of the week we've behaved rather like two flatmates who have only just met each other - cooking the dinner, trying to share the work that neither of us are very familiar with, watching The Weakest Link and then going to our separate floors of the house. It's most odd, and sometimes feels a little awkward.

But I'd like to complain about buses again. I had to take one in to work today because of some meetings taking place at Garthdee early on, and I expected (as my 5-day ticket from before had been just over £20) that the price for a return would be set at the extortionate £5 as it had been previously. It was, in fact, £6.10 - a ludicrous price for a fifteen-mile journey. For comparison, from Berkeley you can get a bus going roughly the same distance for $1.75, which is roughly one sixth of the price that I paid to get in today.

Taking a Ford Fiesta in to work in Aberdeen costs about £50 to £60 a month in petrol. Taking the 307 in to work for a month not only makes travel a lot less convenient, but also costs £20 more. This is why Aberdeen is always clogged with traffic during the rush hour - if you can drive, there is no reason at all to waste your time with public transport. If the buses were a reasonable price, then maybe people would start using them.