Today I am 22222 days old.
Thanks for all your cards.
An ideal ride to celebrate would be the 222 to Tooting.
Unfortunately the 222 doesn't go to Tooting so I went to Uxbridge instead.
Route 222: Hounslow to Uxbridge Location: London west, outer Length of bus journey: 11 miles, 55 minutes
The 222 has been running between Hounslow and Uxbridge since I was 2222 days old. It heads west along the Bath Road towards Heathrow, then diverts north through Sipson and West Drayton. If it terminated at the airport then it would be the 222 to Terminal 2 but alas no, so 222 to Uxbridge will have to do.
Like half a dozen other routes the 222 starts in Hounslow High Street just outside the bus garage. The road's full of diverse convenience shops so it'd be easy to stock up on durian, fresh fish or fragrant country sausage before you board, but thankfully nobody has. Instead we head off round the back of the shops, pedestrianisation having won out over traffic hereabouts, narrowly missing a pensioner fleeing from the rear of the Treaty Centre. Planes roar regularly overhead. We pick up plenty of passengers at Bell Corner, just past the rebuilt pub and boarded-up Chinese restaurant. A milestone in the wall outside The Mulberries asserts that we are ten miles from Hyde Park Corner. A burst water main at the next crossroads means all the traffic coming the other way has been diverted, but thankfully we dodged that bullet.
The first of the three stations on this journey is heptagonal Hounslow West, the pre-Heathrow terminus of the Piccadilly. The shops opposite have a particularly Asian flavour, including an eggless bakers, a vegetarian restaurant and a yellow window from which warm naans are dispensed. Nobody has yet taken down the glittering Christmas tree occupying several parking spaces outside Sabba Supermarket. We skirt a grass verge doubling up as a pigeon sanctuary, then spin past a drive-in McDonalds to join the A4. The Waggoners Roundabout is named after a former pub, now a lowbrow hybrid of bar, banqueting suite and hotel rooms. Next up is Cranford, a suburb I don't want to say too much about in case I choose it as my alphabetical choice next month (although be warned, the word 'drab' may occur a lot).
By crossing the River Crane we enter the borough of Hillingdon, just as the perimeter of Heathrow Airport comes into view. This northern edge is completely dominated by places to park and sleep, most notably ugly capacious hotels with no architectural merit whatsoever. Interspersed are restaurants where global travellers can dine while staying over before an early morning flight, even a huge bowling alley taking advantage of a trapped temporary population. I imagine purgatory looks similar. We've been following a bus on route 111 for the last mile, another of London's triple-digit routes, but things really hit the jackpot at Nene Road where the bus stop displays tiles for 111, 222 and 555. I understand route 555 hasn't stopped here since it was cut back to Hatton Cross in August but until someone at TfL notices then what we have here is an extraordinary triple triple.
The 222 bears off the main road at the Esso garage as the sole route the serve the village of Sipson. This was once a quiet backwater surrounded by market gardens until the arrival of Heathrow Airport scarred it, specifically the M4 spur carved alongside. Once across the motorway the pebbledash houses begin and so do the St George's flags, one from every lamppost, because someone with antagonistic intent has been busy. Sipson proves mostly charmless other than its three pubs, one of which is tastefully half-timbered, one of which is now an Indian restaurant and one of which is bedecked with winter lights and plastic flowers as if the landlord didn't quite know when to stop. Revised plans for Heathrow expansion have reprieved the village but the third runway is due to end barely 300m from the main street sending planes roaring directly across Sipson's rooftops, and that'd properly wreck the place.
A monumental Holiday Inn dominates the north end of the village with all the charm of a Stalinist prison, then we duck beneath the actual M4. There are even scrappy red crosses here, hanging limp under the viaduct, so comprehensive is the flagging hereabouts. And it doesn't stop there, it continues along Cherry Lane where someone's additionally draped ten enormous flappers over a fence facing a primary school playing field. I get to stare at them for a full two minutes because the driver picks this spot to "regulate the service", less than ten minutes after he's done the same thing outside the Radisson hotel. Several silent curses are uttered. We then proceed through the outer reaches of West Drayton past its chippie, burial ground and boxing club. It's a joy to see the cupola on top of the newel turret at 13th century St Martin's church because nothing for the last half hour has been nearly as old.
It's all now northbound, first past the lowly library and then into West Drayton's main shopping street. I struggle for a while with the name of a cafe called B☕tties before correctly concluding that the graphic of a mug represents a U rather than any less salubrious vowel. The 222 makes a special effort to turn into the forecourt of the station, a brief turnaround tightly sandwiched between purple trains and the Grand Union Canal. By crossing the railway we're now officially in Yiewsley, its high street somehow bolted on to West Drayton's to form an extra-lengthy chain of shops. I don't want to say too much about Yiewsley because it's very likely to be my alphabetical choice at the end of the year, but I will confirm this is the third consecutive paragraph with flags hanging from every lamppost and they show no sign of stopping yet.
The 222 is the sole bus route through the obscure suburb of Cowley Peachey, which from the top deck appears to be mostly cul-de-sacs and retail parks. Brown signs point towards Packet Boat Marina and Little Britain Lake, the braided River Colne being the dominant landscape feature. Beyond Cowley's bowls club the High Road morphs into a very underwhelming High Street - minor highlight the Karma Lounge - and then with less than ten minutes remaining the driver decides to pause and regulate the service again. It's his third two minute pause (appropriately summarised 2-2-2), and all the more annoying for being entirely unnecessary. We wait just long enough that a U5 swings in from the University and picks up everyone our delay might plausibly have helped, and only then does our jobsworth driver head off behind him. If you want to piss off a busful of passengers, this is how you do it.
Something astonishing happens as we pass The Crown - the flags on lampposts suddenly cease. There's been either a Union Jack or St George's cross on virtually every lamppost FOR THE LAST FOUR MILES, and because I travel widely I can confirm no other part of the capital comes even close. A few flags could have been the work of a patriot but this concerted effort feels more like deliberate weaponisation, a disruptive attempt to make Hillingdon's considerable ethnic minority feel ubiquitously uncomfortable. We plough ahead on the unadorned approach to Uxbridge, the roadsigns increasingly focused on ULEZ and car parking, before several severe office blocks herald the edge of the town centre. We hear the announcement "222 to Uxbridge" for possibly the 22nd time (it still sounds odd), and the driver eventually pulls up at the final stop opposite the bus station bang on schedule.
