Why do my fellow incomers and I like this city so much?
IN my experience, Nottingham's greatest fans are not those who were born here and perhaps take their great city's glories for granted, but those like me who have settled here after first sampling life in the kingdom's duller regions.
A quarter of a century in London and the South-East? Traffic jams aside, it could have been worse.
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Alternative: The Blakey-style bus "services" in other cities.
Thirty-five years on the banks of the Trent? Even better. I've had a great time and I'd like to thank all who have helped make the experience so enjoyable.
And just in case you were the good-for-nothing jobsworth with the speed camera in Abbey Bridge Road last year, I am not talking about you. Hope you get done yourself.
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The Nottingham Establishment may be virulently and obsessively anti-car but for those of us who are being priced off the highway because of workplace parking larceny, officious parking attendants, revenue-hungry speed-trap pirates and avaricious car park shareholders, at least there is one consolation.
And that is that Nottingham is very good indeed at public transport.
You don't often hear it from those bred and raised here but the point is readily conceded by all who have endured Blakey-style bus "services" in other cities.
So I am not in the least surprised to learn that Nottingham, with City Transport in the vanguard, has done to the league table of bus cities roughly what Manchester United have being doing to the Premier League since August.
So, Glory, Glory, City Transport – and all the other operators who have earned an unrivalled passenger satisfaction rating in the latest survey.
Of course, there is room for improvement.
Like restoring some cross-city routes.
Like giving change.
Like reviving City Transport's smart and dignified dark green-and-cream livery of yore and ditching the silly route colours: passengers are brighter than operators think and can handle things like route numbers and destinations displayed on the front of vehicles. If it says Arnold, it's going to Arnold.
Even so, more league titles surely await public transport operators in a city which is now capitalising on the brilliant success of the inaugural tram route by opening second and third lines to Clifton and Chilwell.
The sooner they are completed the better, if only to silence the chuntering from the Beeston Nimby Tendency.
Why do my fellow incomers and I like Nottingham so much?
Well, I offer up a unique sketch of Ashes showdowns at Trent Bridge, picnics on Victoria Embankment, the fried onion bouquet of Goose Fair, steam-ups at Wollaton Park's industrial museum, pints of Harvest Pale and our handsome boulevards in full leaf – a green contrast to red-brown Victorian and Edwardian brickwork.
But I also nominate our buses.
Generally speaking they are plentiful, on time and driven by agreeable sorts who negotiate with great skill the preposterous speed humps with which hysterical highway authorities have vandalised our suburban roads.
Perhaps one day I will have a tram line laid down in my parish. Until then, the No. 43 and 44 will do very nicely indeed.
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