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That salty bunion known as Knightswood was alive with the screams of feral children showing off to each other with high jinx and crazy stunts. Although the term 'stunt show' does not actually refer to a midget parade, tonight that's exactly what it was. A whole skitter of dwarves, gnomes and runts were tumbling around in the middle of the street at Tartazine Force 10. A couple of particularly scruffy urchins were even sitting in a bread crate nicked from a local corner shop and punching the living shit out of each other. Taking no notice of my decker as I barreled down on them, it was clear that their wrangling in that little box was like a poor man's Punch and Judy show for all the other soiled gutter rats.

As I trundled along, droves of children came running after my bus in scenes similar to an aid truck laden with supplies driving into a village in Sudan. Mind you, I could see in their twisted faces that these children were hungry for blood, not bread. After a brief standoff, I managed to squeeze past and make it to the terminus with only a few punches and kicks to the bodywork. But just as I tried to relax and read The Metro, a little gray man pigeoned his way up the street and pecked at my door.

"Is it alright if I sit on, driver?"

"Aye, I suppose."

"Cheers, driver! Oh, fuck! I'm in pain! I wuz wrestlin' with my grandson there, he was really kickin' the shit oot o' me and noo I'm all black and blue!"

"How old is your grandson? Seventeen? Ha! Ha! Ha!"

"Noe! He's only four. He kept kickin' me in the kidneys and I've got flamingomungo too!"

"Eh?"

"Aye! Anyway, lah-de-dah ticket please, driver."

Flamingomungo? Lah-de-dah ticket? Oh, yes, I'm afraid some peasants in this part of the world try to move their face as little as possible when they talk. So, on a bus, with a bandit screen in the way, their words are often reduced to what sounds like a string of babbling baby talk - "Bub-bub-bub!" For those who apply Prit-Stick instead of Chap-Stick, I usually reply to their mumbles with a nod and wink, even though it's perfectly possible they could have just sworn at me.

This particular mumbler had plopped three pound coins into the slot, so I figured his "lah-de-dah ticket" was actually "I'll have an All-day ticket." So that's what I issued and this seemed to please him. The "flamingomungo", though, I just let that go.

After leaving the terminus, I headed back through the bunged-up bowels of Knightswood. Waiting for me at a bus stop near the corner shop were those two little loafers and their bread crate. They both had their hand out and seemed genuinely intent on getting on the bus. Although they looked a bit young to be traveling about on public transport, I often have ten year olds humfing their screaming baby siblings up my bus stairs. Nothing would surprise me in this neck of the woods anymore.

So, like a stupid bastard, I gave them the benefit of the doubt and stopped. As soon as I opened the doors, the pygmies sprinted on to the bus and darted right past me. With a shriek, they ran up and down the gangway, bounced up the stairs, ran about the top deck, came leaping back down the stairs and hopped out the door. Both of them stood there on the pavement in uncontrollable fits of giggles.

It was all over in about 10 seconds, but I couldn't help feeling violated. Those malnourished frecklers had succeeded in shaving another couple of minutes off my life and forcing me into a post-molestation anguish. Well, okay, this incident didn't quite qualify as a full anal plunder but it was definitely up there, ranking alongside the unwanted thigh strafe and groin pester. At least they hadn't damaged the bus in any way. For me, that would have just been the money shot that broke the camels back.

Whoopi Moldberg, however, was about to put a completely different paint job on the whole situation.

Whoopi is a stout little woman of colour who frequents our buses in the Anniesland area. I've spoken to her once or twice and she seems like a fairly well balanced individual. The smile she gives drivers when she boards accentuates her wonderfully huge cheekbones so that you could quite easily use them to grind your own bread. The only problem is: She absolutely STINKS! I don't mean, 'Ooh! That's a bit niffy, isn't it?' What I mean is, 'Jesus Fucking Christ! My nostrils feel like they're being zapped with a pair of jump leads!' Her moldy aroma of living death is physically painful. Whereas icebergs sink ships, Moldbergs sink buses.

I picked up Whoopi a few stops after the bread crate critters. After she hit me with her cheekbones and a blast of death-funk-max, she looked up the bus and went, "Ooh! Whoah! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

Now what the hell's going on? I looked round to see what she was laughing at but all I could see was Mr Flamingomungo perched on his seat fiddling with his lah-de-dah ticket. Then I looked down...

My eyeballs nearly popped from their sockets. There were hundreds of little white Nike footprints all over the bus floor. I got out my cab and found them all up the stairs and along the top deck too. Those bastarding bread crate critters had walked through a puddle of white emulsion before their anarchic invasion of my bus. Here I was on one of the hottest days of they year with what looked like footprints in the snow all over my vehicle.

Actually, the paint seemed to be drying up and didn't smear when I scuffed it, so I just continued in service. Eventually, Whoopi and her cheekbones got off at the Western Infirmary, but her choking essence lingered all the way to central station. Several times I had to fight the gagging reflex in order to maintain control over the vehicle. So foul!

Went for my break at the Anniesland bothy and heard Driver Ticklemop tell a classic story of how another driver was sacked a few years ago:

"Remember that manky bastard wi' the club foot and the honey pot hand that used to get on roon' aboot Paisley Road West?" started Ticklemop, "He used tae carry his bus fare aboot in his mooth, and come on tae yer bus and just spit the money into yer coin tray. Noo, this is back in the days when we used tae handle cash so we had tae count it all oot by hand. It was fuckin' rotten! But one time, he gets on big Billy's bus and spits oot his money into the coin tray, but Billy says, 'Here! That's fuckin' disgusting! I've had enough o' this!' so he prints a ticket, licks it, and slaps it to the guys forehead! Ha! Ha! Ha! He got kicked oot straight away for that!"

After my break, I picked up a decker and humfed it all the way down to East Kilbride. Just as I was pulling into the terminus, I accidentally ran over a mouse. He was just minding his own business, maybe trying to cross the road to snuffle for juicier worms, when I came along and splatted him the full width of the tyre. When I think of all the muppets I've ever driven past, all the sleepers I've flung off at the terminus, all the Wobble Head I've ever played, NOTHING stung my conscience more than murdering this mouse.

I can't really explain it. Even as I humfed the bus back into the city, his little mousey face stuck in my mind as much as his mousey guts stuck in my treads. Turning the steering wheel seemed almost like an act of disrespect because I knew he was down there getting squished into the tarmac even more. But, as I drew up to the Western Infirmary, a thought suddenly popped into my head : "That's not who I think it is standing at the side of the road, is it? Shit! It is!"

Damn it! What were the friggin' chances of getting Whoopi twice in one day? I bet it was that little prick mouse getting revenge on me! I'm a great believer in Natural Law and right now I was retching on a dildo of bad karma. If you even see a mouse in the road - swerve and brake! Nothing is worth this.

Even though I was driving a completely different bus with no Nike footprints, she must have recognised me from before as she erupted in another, "Ooh!" But this time it was directed straight at me personally, which left me quite unsettled. It was clearly an "Ooh!" of unexpected delight, the kind she'd give if you were in her house reading her electricity meter and her bath robe "accidentally" fell to the floor. Any frisson of excitement you might have would very quickly wither as you realise with despair that, although Whoopi cushions are quite odourless, Whoopi Moldbergs are anything but.