Day 17

Dear Diary,

You’ll be happy to know I acquired a new pencil, on account of the old one having rolled onto the floor. ‘Course I coulda picked it up after finishing off the day, but Missus Milly Da Fardle (I refuse to call her Susan), being mean and greedy as a grouse, spotted it first thing she got back on the bus and shoved it into her handbag. I really felt like bumping her out the door right then and there and running over her for goods measure, which woulda given the others something to celebrate, on account of them loving nothing so much as a good funeral. Anyway, when we stopped for petrol later, after dropping everyone off at their ugly concrete bungalows (whose windows have all been washed to death to prove to their neighbours they’re better than them), I nicked a new pencil from an old man who was snoozing by the pump. I don’t know who he was, cuz it weren’t at Fergal Da Fecker’s petrol station and he didn’t look more’n a little familiar, meaning he was most likely a first cousin of owld Fingus Da Flatulator or anyone else, for that matter. It’s embarrassing what they’ve got up to over the years. This pencil is fairly new and recently sharpened, so please forgive me, Dear Diary, if the lead pokes into you in a bad way. Being that buses don’t have opposable thumbs and hafta hold their pencils between our tyres, I’ve not got the best control, and can barely write in joined-up letters like they teach you in school.

But back to the day I’ve been writing about for longer than my memory serves.

After picking up the old biddies at Missus Barley’s Hair Mess and Finian Da Fabricator telling ‘em how nice they looked, and them yelling at him for keeping them waiting, and Missus Barley lecturing him on the dangers of leaving old biddies out in the sun after a day under the dryers (even though it was raining), we finally set off for Mr. Fungus Da Filcher’s SuperMarket, which is located exactly a mile from Missus Barley’s Hair Mess. ‘Course, it’s not really a mile any more, more like a coupla kilograms, but you know what old biddies are like. If miles were good enough for Saintly Old Father Plentybottoms before he finally died and became a bishop, then miles are good enough for them. Something ungodly about kilograms anyway. You never know wot they mean.

No sooner’d we reached Fungus Da Filcher’s SuperMarket than old Fungus came out to greet them, rubbing his hands together like the stoat wot’s spied the chickens. I should point out that ‘old’ Fungus is not really ‘old’ Fungus at all, more like ‘young’ Fungus, who’s been through a two-week course on marketing and retailing at the college at the other end of the island (where they washes their hands after having a good time), and knows biddies’ll take advantage of you if your plums haven’t dropped. As it was, even as ‘old’ Fungus Da Filcher, all the biddies said he was too young to be outta nappies, what with him having a greasy face and a nose decorated in blackheads. However, with him rubbing his hands together like he was, they set aside their prejudices and remarked on how much he looked like his aunt, Sister Mary Flatulina of The Weeping Madonna of Naples, who’d forced ‘em to memorise their multiplication tables way back in the days when their fathers still beat them regularly and made ‘em do pelvic floor exercises. This was, of course, to prepare them for holy wedlock and for bearing sixteen children in the first two years. Pardon me while I sigh. Around here, they never get over the old times, and miss all the poverty and turnips. That is, as long as it’s their neighbours’ poverty and turnips. If, however, their neighbours can afford shoes, they want to know why and how, and who died and left them the money they shoulda left someone else. But that’s for another day when I can and will talk about their ways forever. It must be hard to be human when you’re inbred and don’t know how to think two nice thoughts in a single year. But such is life. I’m glad I’m a bus.

Anyway, the biddies were in Fungus Da Filcher’s SuperMarket for about an hour, buying all the two-for-one products (even if they didn’t want them) and just about catching up with ‘Old’ Fungus and his wifeen, Mary-May Da Fecker (as she was before they got married in a ceremony I might talk about on another day, providing someone reminds me) as they ran around the shelves putting up the prices. This is a weekly contest, and sometimes Fungus and Mary-May win, but more often the biddies get the better of them.

After they were finished buying up all the expired items, which they planned to boil up with the ham (itself labelled ‘extra mature’), Finian Da Fabricator came inside and wheeled all the trolleys out to the bus (the bus being me). The biddies wouldn’t let him stow the shopping bags in the boot (and I’ve a lovely boot, better than wot modern Transit vans got). They told him they wanted the bags inside the bus, right by their legs where they could keep track of them. I won’t tell you exactly wot words they used, but it showed too much about the inner workings of their minds. I don’t mind a little bit of suspicion, but they must be a riot to live with.

After everyone was strapped back in so they wouldn’t slide on to the floor, Finian Da Fabricator drove me all around ‘their’ end of the island (the end where all the smaller farms and minds live) and, one by one, dropped the biddies off at their houses. At each house we were met by a border collie (or maybe it was always the same one; to me they all look alike). On seeing us, the collies immediately jumped up and down until their own biddy kicked ‘em in the balls, after which they’d follow the same routine: first biting Finian Da Fabricator on the ankle (which made him dance and say words I’d never heard before) and then peeing on all my tyres. Only they called it weeing cuz they got no class and don’t know any better. By the time we got home I stank like a pub urinal at the end of Saturday night, and I wasn’t best pleased. Fortunately, Finian Da Fabricator saw how uncomfortable I was and hosed me down. He then cleaned the seats where the biddies’d been sitting and disinfected me until the spray ran out. After that, he patted me on the boot and said I was the best bus he’d ever driven, and only then did he fill his polystyrene container full of potheen and scrub his ankles with lye.

He is now sleeping soundly in one of my back seats. Because he was so nice to me, I’m gonna try not to wake him ‘til dawn. I’m told (by Misther Patchouli Da Fanny, who let it slip in my hearing, even though he’d wanted to keep it as a surprise) that we have an early start tomorrow. Floozie Da Smelley is gonna take some of her Prized Collectibles to a Special Market. Of course, she’s driving herself and little Missy Candee Da Smelley-Fanny in her pink and gold American convertible, and making me do all the heavy work. It might be a good day to get even.

Anyway, I’m gonna get some rest. Goodnight Dear Diary, I hope my new pencil hasn’t hurt you too bad and that you don’t have any bruises in bad places. As they say, so endeth another day.