280 Stops

by Jon Bounds, Adam Juniper, Leonardo Morgado

Next time you're on the bus look around you: everyone has a story, everyone is going somewhere, everyone is thinking something. They're the lead actors in their own drama, and everyone around them is the supporting cast. Including you.

Now meet 11 people who rode the 11 bus on the 11th November, 2009 and step into their shoes, hear their stories, and see all of the connections between these strangers.

280 Stops is a tribute to two wonderful things: the 11 bus route which runs through Birmingham (oh, and bits of Solihull and Sandwell), and Geoff Ryman's novel/website 253.

15 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 10, 2013

About the author

Jon was voted the ‘14th Most Influential Person in the West Midlands’ in 2008. Subsequently he has not been placed. He's been a football referee, venetian blind maker, cellar man, and a losing Labour council candidate: “No, no chance.

A complete no-hoper” said a spoilt ballot. Jon wrote and directed the first ever piece of drama performed on Twitter when he persuaded a cast including MPs and journalists to give over their timelines to perform Twitpanto. But all that is behind him.

As well as founding the famous blog Birmingham: It's Not Shit, he's also organised psychogeographic trips around Birmingham's Outer Circle, measured the emotional wellbeing of the city and started Talk Like a Brummie Day. He currently edits Paradise Circus: A Birmingham Miscellany.

In 2014 he published 101 Things Birmingham Gave the World, with a foreword written by Stewart Lee. Pier Review, is about visiting every seaside pier in England and Wales and has been described as "On the Road meets On the Buses".