There’s a guy who often travels on the same bus to work as I do. But these days whenever I see him I get this little twinge of guilt.

You see, I did something to him that, were I of the one true faith, would commit me to commuter hell for all eternity.

One morning I was in a crashing hurry for the bus. I ran out our gate, passing this guy on the stairs down the hill to the road. By the time I got to the bottom (96 going down) he was a good 50 metres behind me.

Now our bus stop is about 80 metres up the road from the mouth of the stairs. As I sped out the bottom I saw the bus leaving the bus stop and start to gather speed towards me. I madly flagged it down and hopped on – the bus barely breaking speed as I did so.

But for some reason I didn’t tell the driver to wait for the other guy. In the panic of getting on board it didn’t occur to me to ask, and when I did think of it some sort of cowardice gripped me and I slunk down the bus to my seat, trying not to meet the disbelieving eyes of the other guy as he madly flailed his arms in an attempt to stop the bus. The bus went around the corner and I lost sight of him.

Since then our little morning wait at the bus stop has been fairly well silent. (Except for that damned garrulous Scottish guy that looks like Blinky Bill – now I wish he would shut up. Some things just cannot be tolerated before the morning’s coffee.) That other guy never said much before, and now he says even less.

Should I care?