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According to Shakespeare, "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players." But how different would things have been had buses trundled through 16th century Stratford? Well, if tonight's haul of mutants and misfits were anything to go by, I reckon he would have been inspired to write, "All the bus's a circus and the all the punters merely clowns." A woman talking to unseen spirits, children possessed by the Devil and a bald guy with a pair of scowling eyes tattooed into the back of his skull had all crossed my path tonight. In the time of the bard, such genetic flukes would have been kept safely behind bars in circus sideshows. But today, it is we who are kept in the cage while these degenerates roam freely, and sometimes even use us for their entertainment.

Of all the miscarriages of humanity that I picked up on my way into town, the oddest was a ragged little halfling who was right now humping his dirty knapsack down the bus towards my cab. This scrawny circus freak looked as though he had just been fired out of a big-top cannon. His jacket, trousers and shoes were thoroughly threadbare and begrimed, as though he had overshot the safety net by some distance and landed in a hedge. As he peered at me over my bandit screen, I noticed that he had very broad shoulders for a pygmy, but no neck whatsoever. Because his head sat directly atop his shoulders, and his body tapered alarmingly towards his feet, it gave him the unfortunate stature of a cornetto. A parsnip. He was trigonometry in brogues.

"Driver," he said, "you've just missed ma stoap! Goannie just let me oot at that roonaboot?"

"I'm afraid I can't let you out. Look, there's a police station right next to that roundabout. I can't stop there."

"Aye, just at the roonaboot, that'll dae me."

"What? I said, I can't stop."

"Aye, just open the door here, cheers."

Hadn't he heard me? I suppose it stood to reason that, with no neck, his shoulders came up over his ears and rendered him quite deaf. So it was no surprise when we came to the roundabout and he went bonkers because I didn't slow down.

"Ow! Whit ye' dain? Ah said ah wanted aff!" He banged on my bandit screen as I took the bus into the roundabout, then he grabbed at the emergency handles on the doors and tried to pull them open himself. But the doors held firm and would not yield to his frantic smurfery. "Fuck's sake, all the other drivers let me aff here! You're a first time offender! You're on remand, ya bam!" He was bouncing around beside my cab like a firework in a shoe box.

Eventually he spied the EMERGENCY DOOR OPEN button and jumped up to whack it. The doors swished open and he approached the edge of the platform. It was so tempting to speed up and and yank the steering wheel to the right and send him flying into the gutter, but with Helen Street police station so close by, I figured it would probably be best to slow down and just let the little puke go.

"Noo I've got tae walk all the way back again, ya fuckin' pie!" he shouted, and off he went.

With a smile of satisfaction on my face, I closed the doors and pulled away from the kerb. What a little runt. If walking was going to be such a problem he should have brought his own little circus cannon in his knapsack so he could just fire himself back. I'm sure there were other hedges nearby that he could have safely landed in. As my thoughts meandered through such triflings, a private hire taxi overtook me, pulled in front and slammed on the brakes. In nothing more than a reflex, I stood on my brake pedal and the bus wheels locked. I slid several feet along the tarmac right up to the back bumper of the taxi. What the hell was going on?

The driver's door of the taxi sprung open and a low-brow, knuckle dragging hog-boy leaped out. The car lurched forward as he hadn't taken it out of gear. As he swaggered towards my bus, I noticed his mug was whiter than a Shanks lavy pan but there were two black pits where his eyes were deeply set. His entire face was creased into a hellish snarl that just dripped with evil. Although unsure of his intentions, I sensed a ravenous malice and wished there were some portly muppets on board so I could toss them out as a meaty diversion. Muppet-chum.

This being a warm summer night, my cab window was slightly ajar and the porker managed to get a trotter in the gap and pull my whole cab window right open. "Whit dae yoo 'hink yer dain, cuttin' me up at that roonaboot?" he grunted.

"Huh?" I said, surprised.

"Ye' hink ye can go aboot breakin' the law?"

"What? Me breaking the law?!" I spluttered in disbelief.

"Aye, yoo!"

I thought back to the roundabout. If my driving had been less than cordial it was only because my cab door was being fisted by that wee midget prick. In any case, hog-boy's reaction to my alleged indiscretion was several degrees beyond barbaric. As I pondered the situation, the taxi driver proceeded to take all sorts of bites out of me with: "I'm goannie fuckin' this..." and "I'm goannie fuckin' that..." His big gobby mouth was busier than a piranha in a birthing pool. He had completely lost it.

"Excuse me, but you've just forced a bus into an emergency stop. Do you know that everything you've done has been recorded?" I said, pointing out the numerous cctv cameras all over the bus.

"So fuck? Take ma picture all ye fuckin' like!" he said. He walked round to the front of the bus and gawped into the dash mounted cctv camera. He pointed to his swarthy pug-chops, "You getting me? You getting me?" He then ran his finger along the registration plate of his taxi. "Ye getting' ma number? Good! I don't fuckin' care!" Then, he came back round to my cab window, which I had now closed. "Here you! I'm goannie fuckin' pull you oot o' there! I don't like your fuckin' attitude!"

I was clearly being invited out for a street brawl, but I refused to allow myself to be seduced by his undignified flapping and barking. He was the kind of roguish peasant you would never want to have anything to do with on any terms. Not even to beat up. Although the devil in me wanted to run this hogster over until there was nothing left but a pile of pink mush and a curly tail, I did not. My higher rank in the evolutionary food chain had taught me to view such witless savages as nothing more than yappy little Jack-Russels, choking on their own leash. He was a real bottom feeder.

Seeing that I was not going to respond, he eventually got back into his car and zipped away with a wheel-spin towards Cessnock. Just to show me exactly how much he didn't care about the cameras watching him, he drove up on the kerb and went along with two wheels on the pavement.

The worst thing is, I'm afraid he was totally right to be unconcerned about the CCTV cameras. When I got back to the depot and complained that I had been road raged, they said "Just put in a report."

"Great, but will the report go to he police?" I asked.

"No, they'll just hang on to it here at the depot."

Eh? So, let me get this straight: damage the bus and the report goes straight to the cops, but damage the bus driver and it's, "oh, just put up with it and stop making such a fuss, it's part of the job." Damn it! That shit swilling hog-boy was probably sleeping soundly in his Cessnock sty right now under a mound of filthy straw, dreaming about snuffling through a trough of bus driver limbs. I could only cling to the hope that dwarf boy might accidentally line up his cannon wrongly and come crashing through his roof, because that was the only retribution he was ever likely to receive. They are beyond the law.

We are truly living in the age of the sideshow freak. Welcome to Freaktopia.