Journeying North

I am traveling north, home. My train was canceled, so I caught another and got late for the bus connection. Now, trying to catch up with the bus on a train going the other way, I am confronted by an official who is angry because my bag touched her. She fines me for traveling on this train, and I am humiliated. I'm angry with a train company whose name I have already forgotten, bland as it is. To quibble is to waste time, more precious than the money right now.
How bleak travel in England can be. On the coach, passing places whose names I have never learned, I wonder how I'll be feeling next time I travel north, home, this time in Pakistan. This motorway with its traffic neat as graphics will give way to roads blasted from mountains with buses owned by men as horses were owned by their fathers: beasts of burden to be goaded and beaten up hills; protesting, thirsting, striving then, on arrival, hosed down, fixed up and decorated with fantasy paintings and silver chains to the ground.
Last summer on such a bus, far from being fined and flustered, I was served tea, bread and meat personally by the driver, who refused payment.
"England will not have roads this bad," he apologised.
"Neither does it have mountains this high," I replied.
In his driver's seat, he visibly swelled with pride.