He said “are you a broadminded girl?”

Not knowing how to reply, I shrugged and sort of smiled bashfully, which could have meant anything. The bus was deserted, apart from another passenger up near the front, the conducter lolling on a seat in the middle and me, on the facing seats near the platform.

“Only I’ve got this joke, see,” he continued, “and I’ve got to tell it to someone because it’s been cracking me up all morning, since my driver told it me.”

“Go on then,” I prompted.

“There’s this bloke in a bar,” he continued, “and he’s being a right pain in the arse - causing all sorts of bother, right?”

I nodded as we slowed into a bus stop, to let a man with a briefcase board. He climbed to the top deck and the conductor rang the bell twice to signal the driver to move on. We pulled away from the stop and he carried on.

“So the barmaid leans over and says to him:

‘Listen mate, do you like sex and travel?’

‘Yeah, course I do,’ the man replies.

‘Good,’ she says, ‘then fuck off.’”

He cracks a huge grin and chuckles. I smile. The old ones are…well, the old ones.

“I ‘ad to ask if you was broad minded, see,” he says, still chuckling, “’cause you need a sense of ‘umour for that joke, I reckon. You looked like you could do with a laugh.”

He wasn’t wrong.