IT'S quite a scary prospect and it's something I haven't done in years, but I've made up my mind - tonight I'm going to do it.

When I was a teenager I did it all the time, so what's the problem now?

Yes, I'm going to go and sit on the top deck of the bus on my way home from work.

Hopefully, I'll get the seats right at the front, which will mean I have a really good view of the countryside that I normally can't see from downstairs.

Of course, I'm not one of those people nosy enough to deliberately peer into other people's gardens and homes, but if my new vantage point means I catch a glimpse, I can hardly be blamed for not averting my gaze straight away.

And who knows, I might even feel the sort of exhilaration that makes people say daft things like "I'm the king of the world!"

Looking back, there was definitely a time when my raggle-taggle mates and I wouldn't be seen dead travelling anywhere but on the top deck of the bus.

It's hard to remember now. Was it the unmistakable tang of ancient fag ash or the penetrating chest-rattle of the more practised smokers that once lured us all up that steel staircase?

Or was it the chance of escaping the gimlet eye of the prefects who lay in wait downstairs to spot whether we had tied our tie in an unauthorised manner, creating a fat knot and a stubby tail end and leaving a large expanse of unadorned grubby shirt front?

I think, logically, that it must have been the latter.

It stands to reason that anyone goody-two-shoes enough to have made prefect would never have exposed themselves to second-hand smoke.

Therefore, going upstairs would have meant that the coast was clear for us to run up and down the upstairs aisle, wrecking each other's homework, stealing drop scones from Tupperware boxes on domestic science days, and inflicting Chinese burns on one another to our hearts' content, safe in the knowledge that when the complaints came winging in to the headmaster it would not be possible to say who had been responsible for what misdemeanour.

Later on, when I had become a student and had put my vandal days behind me, I used to get all melancholy and deep looking out of the bus window and thinking how I would probably never again see the face that was staring back at me from the top deck of the bus travelling in the opposite direction.

It gave me something to take my mind off the rest of the journey. I'd reflect on the sense of alienation created by modern industrial society, at least until the next night when the same face was there again, rather shooting my theory out of the sky.

I'm standing at the bus stop now, and my resolve is still hard enough for me to go through with this, even if the kids in the queue beside me do look a bit tougher than I remember we grammar school jessies used to.

There's no smoking on the top deck any more, so at least my chance of developing carcinoma will be reduced.

I've got my fare ready as everyone stands and turns to see the bus pull in at the stop.

Tonight, it is a single decker.

Updated: 10:46 Wednesday, April 14, 2004