You wait ages for a bus...

This is the sight of the world's most unusual bus queue, as over 700 buses, bound for the same destination, line-up and wait for their public. Not quite the way it's done on Oxford Street, but very much the way at the Imperial War Museum's aviation centre in Duxford, Cambridgeshire, where the world's largest bus show was held yesterday.

If you're a non-gricer, let me see if I can win you over to the attraction of buses. Firstly, leave your thoughts of a stereotypical anorak at home. You'd be amazed by how many people secretly harbour an interest in buses, some of them quite respectable folk (I spotted former BBC correspondent Andrew Gilligan at many of the Routemaster farewell nights in London last year). Turn up to Showbus, and you'll meet thousands of people of quite literally all shapes and sizes, indulging their passion with an equally diverse offering of buses and coaches.

And some fine specimens there were, too. For the transport photographer, this must surely be the perfect event, with buses and coaches cleverly grouped by the areas where they do (or did) their business. Here's East Anglia, appropriately grouped at the eastern end of the airfield:

This not only made it possible to visit your local area and sample its buses from over the years, it also gave a chance to reunite buses and coaches which haven't been together for decades. Which, I'm sure, is why some of the buses looked so happy.

There's our Routemaster, parked in 'London', along Duxford's main runway. Although masquerading as a 15 for the day, ours spent most of its life on the busy 73 route, busying itself between Tottenham and Seven Sisters, through all the salient points in central London. It lasted right up to September 2004 (then aged 38), when the 73 waved goodbye to its Routemasters and their conductors. Yesterday, they looked like old friends as they nuzzled into each other in the queue. And into planes...

It's always great to get together with people who do what you do, and when the result happens to be a spectacle like 700 buses stretched out across an airfield, you start to feel you may be vaguely normal after all. I resisted buying any more real buses, but if I've persuaded you it's the thing to do, there was a very fine orange open-topper with a 'For Sale' sign in its windscreen. One careful owner, apply within.