My friend messages me because she’s going to be late to our 9am class. Her bus is late—a real rarity for Adelaide Metro!—and when it finally arrives, she boards and discovers her metroCARD is out of credit. There’s no way to top up your credit when you’re on a bus, and if you don’t have enough loose change for a ticket then there’s nothing you can do. My friend is late to our class because she must walk to Uni instead.

My bus to and from Uni used to travel along North Terrace. It was temporarily redirected thanks to the tram construction; I learned this with a shock one day when my daily bus turned left instead of right. This redirection has since become permanent, which I suppose is unsurprising. It has been enshrined with shiny new bus stop signs. The redirection of my route makes sense; it’s less apparent why of the four bus stops rendered obsolete, only one has been re-established along the new route.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had to explain the bus timetable to a stranger on the street. No, the time displayed on that sign isn’t actually for this stop number. Yes, I realise that the bus is meant to be onto the later stops already. Yes, it’s late. Yes, it’s always late.

Perhaps we’re bad people, and Adelaide Metro is our karmic punishment.