GO TO — but maybe not on my eccentric bus :-
Update …I’ve just seen this character again in my local town — but this time he was talking to an ice cream as he ate it! and I thought I was slightly off the wall!
We all talk to ourselves sometimes. Don’t we? We are also used to strangers talking into the ether aren’t we… mobile phones have been here long enough to educate us.
But a person who sits on a public bus, talks to himself, replies in a different voice and has a full on angry conversation with himself that eventually comes to blows? Now that’s a new one on me.
It gets worse. Add to this two mad women and a dog and you have the perfect scenario for my very strange bus journey.
As a writer my pen and notebook was out pretty quick I can tell you and I frantically scribbled the conversations I heard. Even writing it up later I can hardly believe it.
The beginning
I boarded the bus in Bristol, UK. A large, unkempt man got on at the same time and sat alone in the window seat opposite mine. His odour drifted over to my side of the bus from time to time [it wasn’t Dior!] and his unkempt appearance stopped anyone sitting beside him.
He was quiet for the first few bus-stops but then suddenly his voice boomed.
‘All right, but I’m fed up with it mind’. Now this could have been someone on a mobile phone I agree, but there was something in the tone that made that idea sound unlikely. He became silent for a minute or two. The lull before the storm I later realised.
‘You bloody waster! You get behind me. Now!’ he then shouted to nobody in particular.
I saw the quiet little lady sat in the seat directly in front of him twitch as he continued. ‘All the bloody time, you sit there on your arse in that place. You do. You bloody know you do. You do!’
A second lady who had been sitting quietly in front of me looked around to see what all the noise was about just at the moment that he pointed his arm in her direction. It was unfortunate timing but I don’t think he was pointing at her, rather through her. ‘See! See! You need to move your lazy arse.’ He screwed his face in anger. She quickly looked away.
‘I’m gonna bloody kill you one of these days. You’re so lazy. You know that don’t you? You know that. Sitting there. Doing nowt.’
The bus never had more than a dozen people on board at any given time that day but I could sense that every last one of them was listening and trying not to look at the man who held his conversations totally oblivious of anyone around him.
Two women and a dog
I didn’t think things could get any stranger, but believe me they could. About twenty minutes into our journey two middle-aged women boarded the bus.
One of them boarded quickly and sat about six seats in front of the ranting man (whose conversations only ceased when the bus was stationary). The second woman had heavens knows how many shopping bags and a very large dog that was not on a lead.
‘You can’t bring that dog on the bus without it being on a lead.’ said the bus-driver as he eyed the huge specimen clogging up the entrance door.
The woman’s clear voice rang down the aisle. ‘Now look here, how do you expect me to hold all these bags, count out the money for the fare and hold a dog lead at the same time.’
The driver looked grim. ‘That’s as may be. I’m only telling you he’s got to be on a lead.’
‘I will put him on a lead. Once I’ve paid the fare.’
As the confab at the front of the bus continued I temporarily forgot about the man opposite until out of the corner of my eye I noticed that he had made a fist with his right hand and was punching his shopping bag that was placed on the seat next to him. His mouth was opening and closing but no words could be heard. Little did I know that he was about to move up a notch in the amazement stakes.
Meanwhile the lady with the dog had paid her fare and with a big theatrical gesture put her dog on a lead. She left all her shopping bags by the driver in the way of other passengers waiting to board whilst she led the dog down the bus aisle and then gave the lead to her seated friend. She then slowly retrieved the bags.
The loud chatter that started once the two women were sat side by side competed with the man for the attention of one’s ears. They gave their views very noisily on everything.
The woman with the dog had us all hanging on the end of our bus seat when she got onto the subject of the sex that she’d had with the various men in her life. ‘I’d only give him two out of ten.’ He was rubbish,’ she said dismissively. Good job he wasn’t onboard.
She put the troubles of the world to right in one sentence ‘They should just shoot all the troublemakers in the world, that’d shut them up!’ (she was right they would definitely be quiet after this retribution).
She then endeavoured to persuade her friend to join her in the purchase of a second-hand van to drive around the world.’Just the two of us’ she said, ‘no men allowed. It would be fun’.
‘But I can’t drive,’ her companion wailed.
‘I’ll teach you on the way. It won’t be a problem,’ but at this point she lost the argument, or maybe I lost the plot because my attention returned to the man.
He was now moving to sit in the empty seat that had been next to him and as soon as he was there he spoke to the empty seat he’d just vacated. At times he made fist like gesture towards the empty seat.
‘Watch who you are calling lazy. You’re a stupid man and you might wish you’d never said that!’
He then shuffled back to his first seat and looked towards the empty seat, through a sideways glance I could see that his mouth was pinned back into a wire drawn shape of misery. He appeared to be looking directly at me at this point so I made sure my head looked down at my notebook as I frantically continued scribbling his words.
‘I am not stupid but you are lazy. That’s just what you are. Bloody lazy you son of a bitch.’
It seemed to me that he was playing out two characters with the necessity to move seats in order to do so.
‘I’m not a son of a bitch, you are the lazy sod. You should get off your fat arse a bit more. You could light that fire for one thing.’
The poor women in front was becoming agitated and you could see her relief as she pressed the bell to stop the bus and get off.
I only had a little farther to travel so I was never to see my odd fellow companions get off of the bus, but the lady with the dog gave a rousing finale as far as I was concerned.
Her dog must have quietly farted not something such a woman would ignore naturally. With the bus still moving she stood up pivoting on the spot and waving her arms energetically around as she spoke. ‘Phew everyone, it’s a big stink, cor it’s awful, but it’s not me that farted. It really is not me. It’s my dog.’
I left my travelling companions at the next stop. I alighted from that bus with a notebook full of scribbles and a feeling that what I’d just experienced couldn’t possibly have happened …but it did. I was there and what you are reading is my tidied up version of my notes that day.
I don’t think that it can ever happen again. Surely this journey was a once in a lifetime experience, or maybe I really was on The Magic Bus so favoured by The Who (the English rock band) way back in the 1960's.
