Miss Neighbour is on the bus!!!

I went to school on the bus yesterday! I normally get a lift with a colleague who also lives in Northallerton, but his partner was at hospital, in the delivery room, having their first baby!
Actually, it was a couple of buses, half an hour each. The driver of the first one was extremely friendly, an ex-teacher from Scotland, so we chatted away, seeing as though I was the only passenger on the 6.57 bus. Then I changed in Stokesley half an hour later, and asked the driver if he stopped at the school. He nodded. Hmm, not so Scottishly amicable then.
It's only when I got in the vicinity of Guisborough that I realised what would happen, when one of my Y11 got on the bus. Before long, some of the kids I teach and used to teach were filling the bus, giggling away and pretending not to look at me, while I was half-smiling, half-thinking I didn't want to be there. One especially silly girl, who spent more time last year behind the door than in my lesson, was completely past herself that I should be on the bus and kept winking and making discrete gestures to her friends. Eventually, I put my bag on my knee and someone sat next to me, as the bus was completely full.
I don't know why it is that pupils never think teachers have their own life. It's as if somehow we were tucked away in a mysterious environment where everyone drives a car, lives by themselves, never go to the cinema or, heaven forbid, shop for underwear or the Sunday roast. I've always wondered whether it was the pupil or myself who felt most embarassed when we meet in a different and forbidden context. I once bought a handful of heart-shaped balloons as a Valentine present and on my way out of the shop, ran into one of my Y9 pupils, whose cheeks became redder than the lot his father had just sold me from the family shop. He would probably have preferred to swallow ten chillies rather than say hello to me in this circumstance, and yet the story of my purchase went round the school faster than my husband can eat a packet of hobnobs. Somehow, telling the story was better than experiencing it.

As I was glancing out of the window, trying to ignore the whispers on the seat behind me, I saw one of the girls from my tutor group on her way to school. She gave me a glance of recognition and was probably immensely relieved that I didn't waive at her but just smiled. And yet I know that even before the bus reached the school, the rumor would have spread like wild fire: "Miss Neighbour was on the Arriva bus this morning!!"