It was a warm day and I had been sitting in the garden in the afternoon sun flicking through the pages of the bus timetable. Recently, I’ve been spending some time with the bus timetable, and I have eventually reached the conclusion that it must be me who is missing the point. Surely it can’t be all that difficult to understand. After all, it is just a bus timetable.

You know that eureka moment when you wake up in the middle of the night and suddenly you realise that you have just stumbled on the meaning of life, or the formula for anti-matter, but then, a split second later your mind has gone blank and the moment of truth and revelation has disappeared.

This was exactly what had happened to me just recently. I had woken from a dream that explained beyond doubt where I was going wrong. It was so simple and suddenly everything became clear. I now knew how to read the timetable.

And then as quickly as it had arrived, it vanished.

Later that afternoon I decided to clear my head and was enjoying a refreshing gin and tonic in the Piano Bar in the Manx Arms when the subject of buses and time tables cropped up in the conversation. Someone had heard that Bus Vannin in partnership with the hospital patient transfer service would be starting a trial operation to transport patients from the north of the island to the Sea Terminal or the airport. If everything went to plan, the new service would set the standard in cost efficiency and patient convenience and no doubt could be extended to serve the whole Island.

I can imagine what the local taxi drivers think of that idea.

Anyway next day, there it was in the Courier, a picture of a row of shiny new Mercedes mini buses all lined up and ready to go. Now forgive me for being simple minded and I have to admit that I have no experience whatsoever in running either a public bus service or a hospital patient transfer department, but can anyone tell me how it can be possibly be more efficient for one government department to purchase a fleet of brand new vehicles to hire out to another government department?

Then there is the question of sufficient staff to organise and co-ordinate the new service and enough available drivers to make it work.

I would imagine that the Road Traffic Commissioners will have had to approve this service, but is it a bus or is it a taxi? On the face of it, it seems a bit daft to go to all this trouble and expense to fix something that isn’t broken. But what do I know about running a bus service, I can’t even understand the timetable.

But the plain fact is that our trains, trams and buses do represent a huge investment, which for most of the time is under-used, but from another point of view, given the complexity of the service that passengers expect, Bus Vannin and their fleet of vehicles have to be ready for all eventualities.

I do admit to suffering a certain amount of personal loss when the number 23 was laid to rest, but I have to say that in my opinion the island is served well by Bus Vannin. What I don’t understand is how the cost of a fleet of shiny new mini-buses can be justified by a run to the airport and back each day. And how much of the DHSC transport costs will be saved to spend on other needs. I suppose that saving the cost of half a new hip every week would be some help.

But how about this for an idea. If these new buses are only being used for part of the day, how about day trips for pensioners? They could run to Peel or Ramsey or even round the island. They could save more money by delivering the ’meals on wheels’, and what about the Post Office? They seem to be in trouble, and you can carry a shed load of parcels in a mini-bus.