By Vanessa Cort

THE driver took a route I was unfamiliar with. And I was not the only one. A couple who wanted the Massey Store, just off the East Bank road, barely realised in time that they needed to get off the bus, which was ‘backtracking’.

I had already told the driver I wanted the station, though I didn’t name it. So, a passenger who heard me suddenly called out, “Auntie, look we passin de station!”
Without checking I jumped out of the bus, only to find myself in an area – Jardin du Providence – I had never visited before, in front of that area’s brand-new police station.

I was lost. Looking behind me and to my left I saw cars moving steadily along a roadway and headed there only to discover that this was actually a part of the dual carriageway, Heroes Highway.
A friendly policeman, who was doing traffic stops, redirected me to the same spot where I got off the bus. “Yuh gun get a bus from right there to go to Diamond,” he reassured me.

By this time, I was hot and bothered having walked a couple of long corners to the highway and back. I wanted nothing more to do with this bus route and decided to cross the road and board the first bus headed back to Georgetown.

Soon a bus came along and I jumped in with relief, only getting my bearings when it finally emerged on the East Bank Road, at the junction with the Providence Police Station I knew.
I told the driver I would get off there, planning to join a bus for Grove and suddenly remembering the Grove Police station situated just a stone’s throw from my home.

As I reached out to pay the driver, I realised he was the same person who had dropped me at the Jardin du Providence station and who was looking at me with a slightly quizzical expression.
I could not help but suppress a laugh while gritting my teeth and thinking, “If you only knew…!” Travel weary I crossed the road and soon joined a bus to Grove, getting off at the corner of what is called, ‘Station Street’!
When I finally made the report of my lost purse, I was told that I needed an affidavit. At this point, I decided I had had quite enough for one day and slowly made my way home.

THE AFTERMATH
The following day in a mini bus headed to a friend, the purse suddenly appeared in the bag. For a few minutes, I sat stunned, stupidly wondering how this could be. Then it dawned on me.
I had been rummaging in the bag in a ‘last ditch’ attempt to find the purse because I always had a lingering feeling in the back of my mind that I had not left it on that ‘greens’ stand.

As I poked around in one of the smaller pockets, a larger compartment, concealed with a press stud against the outer wall of the bag, had come open revealing the purse. I could not believe that I had not detected the purse though I had searched the bag several times and did not even remember putting it there.

This made me think of a commonly held belief, particularly among men, that women’s handbags are generally too big and always too cluttered.
Then as I laughed to myself, my grandson’s voice echoed once more in my head – this time commenting on his “grandma” feeling she had lost her purse and laughing to herself in a minibus – “Grandma…old age”.