Bloodbus

You think? You think? Where's the doubt? An ale washed bum got on ten minutes ago, his empty bottle has been rattling around the floor every time the bus goes around a corner, he just made yakking, retching noises and now the whole bus is filled with the hideous funk of bile... and you think he might have been sick?

Do you think it's even remotely possible that he just had a really bad sneeze or something? Silly muppet.

I radioed the control room to let them know I had a soiled bus and was hopeful they would send me back to the depot. No such luck. The controller said: "Just block off the stairs to the upper deck and continue in service only using the lower deck."

"Block the stairs with what?" I asked.

"Dunno. Just use your imagination."

Well that was helpful. As a last resort I switched off the upstairs lights and roped the stairs off with six feet of ticket roll that I ejected from the ticket machine and tied around the hand rails. A flimsy barrier but it seemed to deter passengers from going upstairs for the most part. Most normal passengers that is. Until, of course, the neds got on.

At East Kilbride bus station two freaky neds quirked on to the bus, and where do neds always sit? That's right - upstairs at the very back. So as they boarded I shouted after them to stay down stairs, but with a flick of the wrist they showed me their middle finger and marched through the flimsy paper cordon that I had fashioned and went straight up to vom city.

Have it your way, I thought. I made no further attempt to stop them going upstairs, smug in the knowledge of what lay in wait for them in the dark...

I kept the upstairs lights off so they couldn't see the surprise and as soon as I heard the little runts clumping up the gangway to the rear of the top deck I hit the gas; and sure enough they both met their slippery doom: wump and wump. They went down on top of each other like two sacks of spuds.

"Whoa! What da fuck is dat?" I heard them shriek in the dark as they floundered in warm bile. The puke must have been extra viscous and stuck to their Nikes because they found it quite a business to right themselves. Mind you, my deliberately erratic driving was doing them no favours either. That is for every window you've smashed with a bottle, that is for every seat you've slashed with a blade and that is for every ceiling you've graffitid with a marker pen.

Roll with it: just as well their track suits are so garishly coloured so the puke might not show up so much.

Unfortunately it was too dark to see them rolling around on my CCTV screen but then again, sometimes imagination is better than experience.