There are many upsides to commuting to work on the bus.

I get to read, or just stare absently out of the window (to be fair, I sometimes stare absently out of the window when I’m driving, until my wife tells me off).

I don’t have to worry about ice or snow or idiot drivers who pull out of side-streets without indicating – that’s all the bus driver’s responsibility!

I sometimes get to have interesting strangers plonk themselves down next to me and treat me to the tinny music they are listening to on their smartphones.

Bus fare is cheaper than paying for petrol, car maintenance, insurance and road tax.

There are, however, some downsides as well. Chief among them is that if I go to work in the car I am pretty sure it will be there to take me home. The same, sadly, can’t always be said of the bus.

It’s understandable that buses are sometimes cancelled, and if I’m waiting at a bus stop in the street to come to work there’s not a lot can be done about that. I usually take as my sounding board Sandra, who often catches the same bus into Bradford as me.

About three minutes before the bus is due she’ll start glancing at her watch. If she’s still looking at her watch and shaking her head one minute later I know we might be in trouble.

“The bus is going to blob,” Sandra will say. She’s like one of those country folk who knows when it’s going to rain just by sniffing the air or inspecting the behaviour of a toad. She has an innate sense about these things.

At one minute to the bus being due, Sandra will nod her head sagely. “It’s definitely going to blob.”

Nine times out of ten, her instinct is right. And by the time the bus has, indeed, blobbed, there’s usually just not enough time to walk home and back again, so it’s a case of standing at the bus stop nervously watching Sandra to see if the next one is going to make it or not.

Still, there’s nothing can be done about this. What’s annoying, though, is when the bus “blobs” at the Bradford Interchange end for the journey home. You’ll watch the countdown on the little digital display over the bus bay... due in four minutes... due in three minutes...due... due... due...

And then it’s gone, wiped from history, no bus, the digital display dismayingly telling you that it’s now an hour until the next one.

There are no announcements over the tannoy. No people in hi-vis jackets coming over to apologise for the disruption to service. Not even so much as a message on the digital display board: “Due in one minute... due... oh, actually, it’s not coming at all”.

That would be something, but no. Nothing.

Perhaps they should give Sandra a job at the bus station. At least we’d all know then when a bus was going to blob.