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I said I’d do it and today I did. I took part in Jon Bounds’ mad-but-inspired plan to spend eleven hours of the eleventh day of the eleventh month on Birmingham’s number eleven bus. Much to my surprise, my significantly better half Clare decided to tag along, too. She enriched the day significantly by keeping me company, feeding me chocolate and providing a steady stream of comedy-rich comments and generous slices of fried gold observations. She really is much funnier than me and I have every intention to plagiarise her aplenty over the the coming posts. My people-watching partner in crime has already informed me that I’ll be hearing from her lawyers.

We didn’t manage the full eleven hours – there was the small matter of having to pick the Littlest Raindog up from Mandy the childminder – but we did complete a full 27 mile, bus-based circuit of the city. We boarded the 11C on Vicarage Road in King Heath at about 1.25pm and it brought us, by Joyce’s commodious vicus of recirculation, back to Kings Heath and Environs about two-and-a-half hours later.

I thought of doing some kind of live blogging (a first for me), and even started setting up a Twitter account before we set off. Clare, however, took one look at my 4 year-old mobile phone and laughed. She’s much more tech savvy than me.

In the end, I made copious notes in a notepad while Clare took some photos. I’ve yet to decide on how to structure this cavalcade of scribbles. Should I do it chronologically? Shall I do it thematically? Shall I just make it up as I go along? That’s always worked in the past.

I am, as I have said elsewhere, an analogue man living in a digital world.