It's odd how certain hobbies - perfectly respectable ones - feel like something to be ashamed of, isn't it? I think it's because society has a tendency to ridicule people who don't quite conform to a particular standard of presentation and interests. Somehow, collecting mass produced pottery, lead crystal or handbags falls into the realms of acceptability and having an encyclopaedic knowledge of plants or artists or a knowledge of certain aspects of history is seen as something to be admired. Heck, if you're really wealthy you can collect Ferraris and become as famous for that as anything else you've done. Yet an interest in anything to do with buses or trains or transport in general is something often ridiculed and here's you guys admitting to occasionally feeling ashamed and experiencing people who work with you or live with sneering that they don't understand the attraction.
I'm quite glad my son has got into this one. He became intensely interested in coins for a while and learnt an awful lot about them - would impress people by telling them whether their pound coin was real or fake. It was a rather insular interest, though and he tied himself in knots with it. The bus interest is a lot healthier for him, I think. It started with our occasional days out and he took an interest in the Go Northeast liveries. He started off printing off and assembling paperbuses from the ron and ton website, did some more reading, collected pictures he'd found, started collecting timetables and so on. Now we try to visit somewhere new each weekend - he and his brother appreciate the time apart and he's a lot more relaxed than when they're together (I'm ready to hit the wine, tonight, after a day at home with them both bickering, goading and sniping!) The fact that we get out is good for him, though I do have to hold his hand in bus stations, sometimes, or else he'd end up under one trying to get a look at al the registration numbers! He suffers with anxiety a lot and struggles with crowded places, but the fact that he loves the mode of transport helps him to work on keeping his cool (though he lost his rag in Whitby, the other week, because the X93 was full of other kids who were rather noisy and we'd already had to stand most of the way on the X7.)
I'm sure the buses will take a back seat to something else, at some point, but hopefully it'll be something else that's multifaceted. He's done some geocaching with school and enjoyed that, so we might do some of that when his brother's easier to take to places and a bit less unpredictable.
