Day 4

Dear Diary,

Another horrible night’s sleep, dreaming that the large, well-dressed man was cutting me into strips with a blunt tin opener, boiling them up in a tank of potheen and feeding the scraps to the cows. Only, the scraps of metal (my flesh, mind you) had turned to slurry. I don’t know what that says about my opinion of the cows, but there they were, slurping away, chugging gallons and gallons of the fragrant brown. Oh dear, it really was most upsetting.

As a result of my dream, I awoke this morning with a ghastly headache and an upset stomach. I’m also standing in a pool of liquid – a horrible state of affairs for a bus – which means I developed some sort of oil leak or petrol leak, or both. It is not a good start to the rest of my life!

Not-so-owld Fergal Da Fecker is behaving in a most suspicious manner, and I’m not sure what to think. I am trusting him less and less and wish he’d either go away completely or develop an interest in vegetable marrows. At the moment, he is spending rather a lot of time talking into his mobile phone, which is to my mind extremely rude, especially since he hasn’t as much as said ‘hello’ to me all day. He’s also carrying a clipboard and is making rude scratches on a dirty piece of paper. I call them ‘rude scratches’ because you couldn’t really call ‘em writing, not after having caught glimpses of owl Fingus Da Flatulator’s elegant script. Oh, dear, I do wish he hadn’t gone and blown himself up!

Not-so-owld Fergal Da Fecker annoyed me so much at one point that I had no alternative but to hold my breath and fart through my tailpipe, which startled him and made him drop his phone into a cowpat. He said a lot a bad words, including several I’d never heard before, and then kicked me in the backside, possibly denting my elegant, chrome bumper. He then yelled at me some more and wished all sorts of bad things on my mother, which isn’t a bit nice considering she’d never done him any harm and he’d never met her. He really is a most objectionable person, and that’s saying something.

I don’t think he’s noticed that the cow’s have gone.

Anyway, after yelling at me and wiping his phone on his trousers, he disappeared into The Petrol Station, presumably to attend to personal matters of an offensive nature. I can’t hardly bring myself to write what he did in front of me the night he arrived. That was when I decided to revive the ancient art of farting through my exhaust. Since then, he’s spent most of his private time where I can’t watch.

After he went back into The Petrol Station (following the incident with his phone), it went all quiet in the field. Not a bird singing or nothing. I really do miss the ewes and cows dreadfully! It’s horrible having no one to talk to, especially since I spent most of my life in towns where there were plenty of cars and motorbikes and dogs to bully, as well as cats to squash. But such is life. I guess we all gotta learn to adapt or go mad or roll over a cliff. Anyway, as I was saying, I daydreamed for a couple of hours (or something like that), after which I got terribly bored and distracted myself by blowing raspberries and farting through the whole of “Rule Britannia”, something I’d learned to do when I carried American tourists around historic sites in Windsor. That was way back before the tour operator went belly-up after investing in a racehorse and sold me to the man who lost me in a card game to owld Fingus Da Flatulator.

After “Rule Britannia” I tried as best I could to remember the dramatic bits of “Il Trovatore”, which had been a favourite of one of my drivers on a trip to Rome a very long time ago, even before doing the rounds of historic sites in Windsor. In fact, if I remember correctly, I went to Rome just after being retired from a regular route in deepest Devon. A doddle that job was. Beautiful scenery, fun, winding roads, and plenty of cars and motorbikes and dogs to bully (as well as thousands of cats to squash), especially in the summer. But enough of that.

I eventually gave up on “Il Trovatore” and was thinking about the advantages of being a cow, who could at least escape from a field without persuading some human to start its engine, when low and behold, the very large car with the large, well-dressed gentleman pulled up in from of The Petrol Station. The car beeped its hooter in a snobbish manner (how I’d like to bully him), and sooner or later not-so-owld Fergal Da Fecker staggered to the door of the shop carrying a tankard of potheen in one hand, and with a disgracefully smarmy grin on his face. He walked over to the car and leaned in through the window (if I’d been a car and he’d behave in such a fashion, I’d have rolled the window up and cut his scrawny neck in two).

The car, however, obviously has better manners than I, and pretended he didn’t even notice the drunken state of not-so-owld Fergal Da Fecker, which is just as well because after a few minutes the very large, well-dressed gentleman got out and shook Fergal’s hand (without even wiping it off first).

After that things started happening. Things involving me! The large, well-dressed gentleman and not-so-owld Fergal Da Fecker, talking in low voices (obviously so I couldn’t overhear), came straight round in back of The Petrol Station to where I was standing minding my own business.

The two men stopped to admire me for five or ten minutes, extolling my virtues, which was okay in a way but also irritated me because they hadn’t bothered to say ‘hello’ first. They then walked round and round me a dozen or so times, touching me with their fingers in sensitive places and stroking my paintwork in what I thought was an over-familiar manner. And then – just as I was about to let out a really awesome blast from my exhaust – not-so-owld Fergal had the nervy to open my door. The two climbed in, without so much as a by-your-leave, and proceeded to bounce up and down on each one of my seats in turn.

And then, without even throwing a sly compliment in my direction, the large, well-dressed gentleman rose to his feet, farting tenderly into my driver’s seat - which almost made me laugh out loud - and climbed down from my innards. Not-so-owld Fergal Da Fecker then took the opportunity of staring around my insides and sniffing rudely, before he followed. One of them, I presume Fergal, slammed the door and locked it with a key. And then, in front of my eyes, the large, well-dressed gentleman extracted a large roll of (obviously dicey) banknotes from his pocket and counted a reasonable number into not-so-owld Fergal Da Fecker’s outstretched hand. I say a ‘reasonable’ number, but actually – considering the fact that it concerned me – it was a most paltry sum. An insulting sum. A sum which got me so angry that then and there I let off the blast I’d always dreamt about.

And did it do any good? Not on your effing nelly. Made ‘em laugh even louder than I was laughing. I took it as a lucky sign, at which point not-so-owld Fergal Da Fecker embraced the large, well-dressed gentleman enthusiastically and walked him to his large, slightly pompous car.

And now, Dear Diary, I don’t know what to think. I’ve got no one to talk to and am really afraid for my future. What if the large, well-dressed gentleman took to ewes to the abattoir after all. And what if he’ll do even worse to me.

Oh, well. If I’m still alive and in one piece tomorrow, I’ll let you know what’s happened.

And so endeth another day (hopefully not my last).