Almost there

this bus station is all shiny white and chrome, tiled floor, seats to sit on and that piped music and electronic timetables.

new bus station.

There is a choice of stairs escalator or lift to get from road level to the bridge which goes one way to a covered shopping centre and the other to a housing estate and past the building I work in.

The escalators (up and down) are this week sporting new safety signs, you know the ones, advising not to take pushchairs on etc.

The new signs are all pink and shades of purple and rather a slap in the eye compared to the old dim blue and white ones they have replaced.

It was not always this greenhouse of glass and tile, it was previously concrete and metal walls painted blue.  It was dark and cold, old and dingy.  It had the option of stairs or a lift which was rather forbidding.  

It was quite an exciting pleasing though when they announced it was to be improved, of course things would get worse before they would get better.  A temporary bus station was set up held together with scaffolding and that worrying black and yellow striped tape. Which stands the buses arrived and departed from appeared to change daily.  The ladies in the ticket shop were decanted into a port-a-cabin and the scaffolding stairs were scary indeed and a tad slippy during the winter weather.

At the time, as such things do, it seemed to take ages to finish.  The last little bit took extra extra long to be completed, to the outside observer it looked done and why couldn't we use it yet already! But it was worth the wait in the end.  Mind although it is a brighter nicer place it still manages to be very cold in the Winter, sliding doors for access to the buses but open at the top of the stairs and escalators, so drafty.  In the summer, as per my earlier description the sun gets very hot through the glass and tomatoes would do well in it.

The ticket ladies have a spacious new shop, there was a little shop for snacks tucked under the stairs but two different attempts at running it have both failed and it has been closed longer than it was ever open.

I use the escalator (when it is working) the lift when it is not, the stairs are at the other end of the station and I would need to work my way through the shopping centre if I took that route.

So up the escalator...