I admit it. I came here to mock Alain de Botton. He has always been easy to mock and the revelation that this week he has become writer-in-residence at Heathrow Airport has made it easier. He is sitting at a desk in Terminal 5 now, typing The Truth © BAA. Fish. Barrel. Load.

I too shall become a writer-in-residence – at Edgware Bus Station. I shall chronicle the lives of the people waiting for buses. Perhaps, like Alain, I will write a book about it. It will be called The Consolation of Buses. Or Bus Anxiety. Or Bus in Love.

Edgware Bus Station is one of the biggest bus stations in north London. It is a long, thin, clean building surrounded – strangled? – by a bottle-shaped road. One hundred buses an hour come through here, on 16 routes.

I approach a woman. I explain that I am in the writer-in-residence at this bus stop and I ask her, what is the central narrative of your life? Who are you? The woman looks at me. "I am an overweight mother of two with an awful job," she says. I scribble down – "Hates job." And why are you here? "I want to catch a bus."

Then I speak to a man reading a newspaper. He is called Graham. He is chubby and affluent; he looks content. I ask, who are you? "I am a building surveyor," he says. "I spend my days looking at broken guttering. I am one of the non-people." And is this what you want? "I would rather be sailing a yacht round the Caribbean," he says. And he gets on a 340 to Harrow Weald. I scribble: "Dreams of water."

This is easy. People seem to want to talk, as they wait for buses. The cold London expression falls off them, and they speak. They tell me the truth, even if they have to interrupt their stories to get on the bus. A tall man says he is one of the cleaners at Edgware Underground Station. Last week someone defecated on the platform. Which platform? "Platform 3. There's my bus." A woman says, "I was held up in a bank by a man with a double-barrelled shotgun. Twice. There's my bus."

Only one person objects to my request for information. She is blonde and squat, with very blue eyes and terrible teeth. "Without people you wouldn't have a job," she says, "When I did market research for Boots I got a £5 voucher." I have a £5 Boots voucher in my purse, and I give it to her. She tells me she has written a Sci-Fi comedy set in the 51st century. It is about malfunctioning robots. Why has she written about malfunctioning robots? "Because it's funny."

Paranoid

I approach a bus driver. He has a plum-red raddled face, with a sunken mouth. He is standing outside, smoking a cigarette. "They are spying on me," he says. "You never know who is a passenger and who is a spy. Transport for London spy on you. There's my bus." I scribble down "paranoid".

And then I meet Mr Fenner.

He is waiting for a 204. "I am in an old age home," he says. "I don't get on with my family. All they want is money. And I have no intention of giving them money. They have succeeded in conning me, which is why I am in a bloody home." Why don't you go home? "I don't have a home any more. There's my bus."

I see a man with a pile of leaflets. They say, "The Truth Has Set Us Free." He is bald, with a neat beard; he says his name is Vince, and he is 53. "My idea of life was to make lots of money and be successful," he says. "I was an insurance salesman. I ended up in debt. I found myself on my knees one morning, saying 'God, if you exist, help me.' And he did." How did he help you?

Vince says he went to a religious meeting, with the idea of pretending to believe in God in order to sell the others insurance policies. "I was devious," he says. But when he listened, he was converted. "I had a spiritual experience in Wembley Park," he says. "Now I have a joy and a peace that the world does not understand. There's my bus."

I find another woman. She says her name is Angela. Tell me a story, I demand, because I am writer-in-residence at this bus stop. "About what?" she replies. The first man you ever loved, I say. "He drowned," she says, quickly. "His name was Francis."

What happened? "It was three years ago. He fell off a speedboat in Nigeria. We had been together for nine years. I didn't believe it until he was buried. There's my bus."

Outside the terminal, by the road when the buses enter and depart, I spot a bus spotter. I have heard of them, but I have never actually seen one. He is tall and tanned and he carries a notebook.

What are you doing? "I am taking the fleet numbers down," he says. "That one," he points, "is VCP 162." Why do you do it? He gestures for me to move. I am in his sight line, and he cannot see the buses. "It is something to do. I can see no harm in it."

I am frustrated. I want to know who this man is. This man has a story, but he will not give it to me. He is impenetrable. I ask – where are you from? It might help to know. "Watford," he says. And goes silent. "TE715," he writes.

I came to mock Alain de Botton; I stayed to listen. As unemployment rises, I believe we should employ a writer-in-residence at every bus stop in Britain. Now, if you will excuse me, I must go. There's my bus.

Wilde to Weldon: Other writers-in-residence

From its beginnings in prisons in an attempt to keep inmates on the straight and narrow, writing-in-residence has attracted some of the biggest names in literature.

• The idea has been used and somewhat abused by the Savoy hotel in London, which – hoping to reignite the spark once found in former in-residents Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling and Oscar Wilde's notebooks – has hired Kathy Lette, Fay Weldon and Frank McCourt to write about their stays. On joining, Lette spoke of fellow writers wearing "the kind of facial expression normally associated with a probe of the prostate".

• Football clubs followed suit with Ian McMillan taking on the job of the first poet-in-residence of his home town football club, Barnsley. "Barnsley is the filter I see everything through," he said.

Tottenham Hotspur bestowed the glorious title "writer of White Hart Lane" upon Sarah Wardle, who wrote nostalgically: "And did those boots in '61, run upon Wembley's turf of green."

• Less romantic organisations have been keen to jump on the bandwagon – Steve Dearden spent five days as scribe of Bluewater shopping centre in Kent.

• American universities have also followed suit hiring their own writers, with Ellen Douglas having held the position in three different institutions.

• In 1980 Alice Munro became writer-in-residence at the University of Queensland in Australia. Despite being given a state-of-the-art office to work in, the Canadian writer found she couldn't write a thing.

• Ruth Padel, who resigned as Oxford professor of poetry after allegations that she conducted a smear campaign against a rival candidate, Derek Walcott, was appointed writer-in-residence at Somerset House in London in January 2008.