Bloodbus

At the bus station hundreds of raggedy pigeons were all aflap as they busied themselves with love making and parasite pecking. It was quite embarrassing to watch all this debauchery when you're sitting next to a gaggle of old ladies. Felt like being forced to sit and watch cheap porn with nuns.

From around the corner came Gurgle-Gulp with my bus. Today it was an old Volvo single decker with a rotten funk of damp in the cab. Gurgle-Gulp peeled himself out and informed me that the bus had been sitting in the depot yard all night with the cab window open and the rain had soaked the driver's seat. Smelled to me like the whole bus had thrush.

What a stench! I'm pretty sure that if I had checked under the driver's seat there would have been mushrooms growing and wood lice running around. Also, it looked every bit as bad as it smelled; brown and sludgy like Gurgle-Gulp had farted out a pint of Guinness before he came round the corner.

I set off into the darkness sitting on six Metro newspapers to keep my ass dry, but every muppet that boarded informed me that my bus stank. Oh, really? If they could guarantee to me that their husbands wouldn't defecate on a whim and their grandchildren wouldn't vom down my gangway, then and only then could they throw stones.

At Balmore Road I picked up a Chinese woman and her young daughter and for the whole way to Springburn the little girl just sat there and said:

"Wobble wobble wobble wobble wobble wobble wobble..."

It was initially quite amusing but then I found myself thinking: Enough! Make it stop! I've heard of Chinese Water torture but never Chinese Wobble torture. Still the wobbles continued. I was getting so worked up that if her mother had club feet then I would have used one of them as a weapon to..to.. Stop! Calm down.

Deep breaths, that's right. Composure. There will be no clubbing of children's heads with their Mother's feet on this bus.

But the little punk was adamant to her wobbles to the last.

Later on, at Edinburgh Road I chanced upon a couple of happy drunks who wanted to go into town. They paid their fare to the penny and shuffled up the bus. I usually wait until drunks are seated before I move off so they don't flail around and land on someone. Even then, these guys were so drunk it was like watching Laurel and Hardy with bars of soap tied to their feet.

A couple of stops later, I was hailed by a young woman who struggled to get her pram up the steps of the bus.

"You'll need to fold the pram down before you can bring it on," I said.

"But my daughter is asleep, I don't want to wake her up!" replied the woman.

"Just let her on with the pram, driver!" shouted drunken Laurel and Hardy from up the back.

"This bus isn't designed for prams, you'll have to fold it down and put it in the luggage rack."

"Fuck sake, driver!" said Laurel and Hardy who then decided to amble down the bus and help the woman on with the pram.

What should have taken ten seconds took six minutes thanks to the efforts of the drunken duo. They fell up the stairs, swore oaths and smacked the pram against hand rails as they maneuvered it on to the bus. Of course, all this woke the kid up who now began to cry. Great, that's all I need.

"Shhhh! Sit nice, Megan, sit nice, there's a good girl!" said the woman to the shrieking kid, with absolutely no effect whatsoever.

"Where you from?" asked one of the drunks to the woman. A perfectly innocent question, but in Glasgow innocent questions can be met with far from innocent answers.

"Clydebank," said the woman, "but I got a flat in Easterhouse because of Megan's violent Dad."

"Oh?"

"Aye, he was physically abusive. He punched me here [point], here [point] and here [point]."

"Jesus!" said the drunk.

"That's not all. He used to grab my throat like this, [grab] and I would bite his arm like this [bite]. He's a total psycho! One time he threw the iron at me like this [wham] so I flung the frying pan at him and he was like this: Aaaarrgg! Then he pulled a kitchen knife on me. The bastard went to court for that."

There was a turgid pause as the drunks gathered their thoughts. Even through the numbing veil of alcohol intoxication they could sense this was not just idle bus chat but the fiery embers of an ominous domestic breakdown.

"Aye, you're better off getting away from that," ventured one of the drunks. What kind of place is this where drunks talk more sense than the sober?

"I wish I could get away from him, but I have to see him every Sunday because of Megan," said the woman sullenly.

"Oh. Was it the court that decided that?"

"Court? No! I have to take Megan round to his house every Sunday coz she likes to ride around the back yard on his new Pit-Bull."

"Go ride the dog, Megan. I need a quick word with your Mother..."

With that I almost crashed the bus. I was suppressing laughter so much that I had to pull in and stop for my own safety. That's a keeper! That's one for the blog!