This morning I nearly had a very serious accident as a result of a maniac bus driver, who made every effort to speed off once he had nearly killed me.

I was driving at about 70km/hr (45 miles or so). This may not exactly be freeway speed, but it�s fast enough when you�re in a three-lane traffic area, and a bus pulls out right in front of you, deciding that this is the perfect time to take his busload of schoolchildren across three lanes of traffic to turn right.

So I slammed on my brakes. The road was wet and slippery, and before I knew it, my car was spinning out of control.

I can�t believe that there were so few other cars around at the time. I was so lucky.

I skidded and skidded and this bus sped up to get out of the way. I just missed it. I�ve got this fragment of a memory of my car being parallel with the bus, across the three lanes, skidding sideways towards it. My tyres were squealing, screaming against the road. Then my car kept spinning and the bus was gone and then I was in a different lane, facing the other way.

The bus driver drove onto the side street� then he just kept going. He didn�t pull over and get out to make sure he hadn�t caused any damage. He just ran away.

I was stopped in the middle lane of the three, partially in one of the other lanes. There was a Mack truck hurtling towards me and I really thought it was going to hit my car. Luckily, it missed. If my car hadn�t ended up in a different lane during the skidding, that truck would have slammed right into my driver�s side door where I was sitting.

And the bus just drove off into the distance.

I was in shock, and my legs were tingling. And I was stopped across the middle of three lanes. I did my best to pull myself together, and realised that I had to get that bus�s details so that I could do something about it, so once I�d checked that it was clear, I turned my car around and raced onto the side street where the bus had gone. He was at the next intersection, waiting to turn. I bet he�d hoped he�d gotten away, and that I wouldn�t have thought to follow him. Well, I did. I got his registration number and wrote it down, along with a summarised description of events, on the back of a docket* I found in my bag, in case I forgot any of it later.

My hands were trembling as I tried to rummage through my satchel for my mobile phone, which must be sitting on the bench at home because it sure wasn�t in my bag.

As I sat in my car behind the bus looking at his rego, school kids were peering out the back window of the bus at me. Most of them had seen the whole thing. I don�t think that man should be allowed to be responsible for a busload of children. I don�t think someone who could cause that kind of situation and then pretend he had nothing to do with it should be allowed to drive at all.

The bus turned onto another road, but I had no intention of following him. I intended to file reports. So I turned off my car, and let it all go. Through tears of shock, frustration and anger I just shouted �you fucking wanker!� to the empty space where the bus had been.

The realisation that I could have been hit by a truck was so scary. I put my hand over my mouth and blinked slowly in disbelief.

Once the feeling in my legs mostly came back, I drove to work.

I actually did okay at composing myself for the rest of the drive, though I surprised myself once I got to the office by just degenerating into a moving ball of tears and snot again. Still, I found the phone numbers of the bus company and of the Roads and Traffic Authority. I don�t really know what to do now. I�ve spoken with the bus company, and the man I spoke to was really helpful, but I want to get in touch with the school that uses this driver. I want them to know that he is irresponsible and should not be driving their school bus. I just don�t know how to get that information, because even the bus company didn�t have that info at hand � they were going to have to look into it and find out.

Bit of a crappy start to a Friday, huh?

* Before I got my mitts on the docket, which I might add was for a packet of Vapo-Drops I bought at an airport in Singapore in February, I pulled out a brightly-coloured Swiss train ticket and decided against writing on it; then I procured a bright yellow scrap of a French brochure for a material/textile store in La Rochelle, which had on the back the phone number of a friend I made at Montparnasse Station (Paris) while we were waiting for the 6AM train. He and his friend were from Senegal and were staying in Poitiers, not far from La Rochelle where I was studying. We were all catching the insanely early morning train because we had misread the bizarre timetable and missed the last train back home the night before (I�ll have to tell that story one day because it�s a doozy � ever been cracked onto in a country where you barely speak the language? We had to converse through diagrams and a French-English dictionary). So I decided against scribbling on that as well. I was slightly surprised at the assortment of overseas crap I have in my satchel.

Anyway, I really, sincerely had intended to make this a happy entry, so I�d like to state that it�s Daniel�s birthday on Monday and I bought the last part of his present yesterday after work. The first part was a hooded jumper � my mum made him a black one a few months ago, a really warm one, and he absolutely loves it. He told me that if he didn�t have to, he�d never take it off. He also mentioned that he�d love to have another one so that when one�s dirty he can go to the backup. So I bought some material and asked mum to make another one for him, which she did and it looks really good. My mum is great at sewing. She�s handy at all sorts of stuff.

The second part is a young bonsai tree and a book on how to create and look after bonsai. It�s full of really cool pictures of other people�s bonsai trees, and it talks about the �rules� of designing a bonsai so that it looks like a full-size tree and is also visually pleasing. There really is a lot to it.

Daniel has been asking lately if we could get a bonsai, which was why I thought it�d make a good birthday present. The one place that I knew in Sydney that sold bonsai plants isn�t open at all on Thursdays (hello? Late night Thursday shopping? It�s a Sydney phenomenon, how could you not be open?) so I made a few phone calls and got my damn bonsai. Shame though, because I like the guy who owns the bonsai store that I know � he looks like he just arrived here from China last week but he has a broad Aussie accent and a great sense of humour.

I�m looking forward to this weekend � we�re driving down to Jindabyne and I really do love it down there. It�s going to be such a relaxing couple of days, even if I have to take my correspondence course with me and do homework. I�m nerd enough to find that sort of thing interesting. There�s no snow left down there of course, but we need to pick up all our gear, which lives in Jindabyne, so that we can take it overseas with us.

And now I go back to work.