Day 63

Dear Diary,

For all those wot reads this diary entry and wonders how I ever survived the farewell tour I mentioned I was gonna be took on, I want to tell you here and now I not only survived but am at this very moment riding on the back of a shiny black trailer on the other side of the water from the island. In case you can’t read between the lines, this means I escaped. Not only am I living and breathing, but I’m not mangled or savaged into shredded shards o’guts and gore. The only reason I’m writing this prologue is to set your mind at ease. It would’a been unthinkable to give you the wrong impression and allow you to go to bed tonight fretting that I might be dead or dumped in the scrap heap, and sick to death that after so many days together it had to end like one o’them loud Italian operas where the folks with the best voices dies the most horrible deaths. Anyway, like I said, I’m alive and kicking and don’t have even a single bruise or dent to show for my latest adventures. And I’m happy to say that, unless the unthinkable happens and I’m sold back to wot I now thinks of as The Turd in the Northern Seas (‘The Turd’ being the island, in case you’ve not been paying attention), I’ll never hafta meet any of my old inbred friends again. ‘Course, never seeing them again means I can say wot I wants without any danger of wot they calls retribution. And even if any of ‘em wants to sue me for every euro I’ve got tucked under by upholstery, there ain’t no country wot’s got a law for taking a bus to court for slander. Not even if’n it’s a classic Daimler CVD6 with handcrafted Burlinton 33-seater coachwork and a pedigree to prove it. So there! And now that you know I didn’t die or expire or get shredded up into little bits or fall off the cliff or get skewered by the sword of Damicackelees , I can go back and begin this diary entry at the moment I first woked up. And you don’t hafta get all worked up about me or nothing (unless, of course, you feels like it). The only folks wot died you’d wish was dead anyway, and that’s from the first moment you met ‘em.

So here we go! The day started early, or at least it did for me and The Widow Fartie Da Whistle. She got me up, just like Ol’ Finian Da Fabricator’d taught her, with a big ol’ slug of high octane special smooth engine oil of the kind mixed up special by those wot knows how to treat a bus just right. And while I was chugging this down, she helped herself to a handful of espresso beans, just so’s she could keep her eyes open and her brain a’hopping all day. I think it’s a trick showed her by Signore Malvinio Da Flota-Mota, at least that’s wot his Ducati, my new friend Benvolio Da Trampolio, told me. The Widow Fartie Da Whistle’s spending more and more time with Signore Malvinio Da Flota-Mota, in fact perhaps too much of it, on account of this morning she looked like something a dozen cats’d dragged in through a hedge of brambles. Fortunately, after she’d ate about a pound and a half of them espresso beans and smeared wot they calls slap all over her face with a slapper (sorry about that, I really meant to say a trowel), she looked as beautiful as a wot them so-called celebrities look like after they’ve had their pictures took through a foot or two of burlap. She was also bright and cheerful and her eyes was out on stalks, but I suppose it’s an improvement over Ol’ Finian Da Fabricator after he’d drunk a coupl’a gallons of his special morning preparation outta his polystyrene container. I never did find out wot was in it, but, as they says, potheen stinks like potheen and so did his special preparation. My heart still has a lonely hole in it for him and his magic fingers, but he shouldn’a up and betrayed me for a trunkful of money the way he did. The way I sees it now, him and Ol’ Howard Da Fardle and Elmer Da Snog will gets wot they don’t wanna get just as soon as Mister Old Wanger Nose and his confederates catch up with them. Not to mention the ways Missis Milly Da Fardle’ll think up to get even, at least after she gets outta the prison farm for her part in selling off dead people to The Gnu-Fanny Deluxe Luxury Premium Cat Food Company. ‘Course, she ain’t been arrested yet, but between you and me, Dear Diary, we can count the days on a finger’s worth of fingers. From wot I’ve been told, the police were waiting for her at her little concrete bunker bungalow when she got back from my farewell tour through the island. ‘Course, the way I’m writing this down, Dear Diary, this hasn’t happened yet. I shouldn’a said it in the past tense on account of it’ll only spoil your fun and the tingle of anticipation over what’s gonna happen. I’m sorry about that and I’ll try to remember not to spoil the ending for you. Besides, she might been among those wot dies, but you’ll hafta wait and see, won’t you.

So back to first thing this morning. After The Widow Fartie Da Whistle and I finished up with our breakfast, she polished me up like a mirror and put special plastic all over the seats so’s the biddies wouldn’a get my upholstery flooded. I don’t care if the old seats is gonna be ripped out at the end of the day, it’s the chafing wot gets to me when their little old biddy acid pee seeps down between the cushions, and I asked The Widow Fartie Da Whistle to please help me out in this regard. It’s hard enough driving over the potholes and craters wot they calls roads on this island without the chafing in my seat stretchers distracting me and sending me round the bends. Fortunately, The Widow Fartie Da Whistle’s on my side when it comes to intimate discomfort. Whether or not she knows about chafing, she says she’s experienced wot she calls vaginal itch and says it’s enough to drive a man to suicide. I asked her if’n she didn’t mean it was a woman wot was being drove to suicide, on account of that’s wot she is, but she says she got it right the first time. She told me if’n a man misbehaves on her during one of her special bouts of vaginal itch, he’ll wish he was dead. And if’n he’s so drunk he tries it on a second time, she’ll make him commit suicide right then and there. She’s gotta great sense of humour, has The Widow Fartie Da Whistle. I only hope Signore Malvinio Da Flota-Mota knows about this, on account of if’n he has to commit suicide before I’m all paid for, I’ll be sent back to live in the lopsided pink flatpack building with Floozie Da Smelley, and I might have to run her over and push her off a cliff on account of I can’t stand how ugly she is. And then where’d I be? I bet you didn’t notice I left out a mention of Misther Patchouli Da Fanny just then, but I would’a, wouldn’t I, on account of he’s at the prison farm along with Missus Milly Da Fardle and Mister Doctor Bernie Da Gnu. Or at least that’s the way I’m telling it for now. Only you’re not supposed to know it yet. And then again, they might all be dead and turned into cat food by now, but only the cheap stuff no cat’d be caught dead eating and not the Deluxe Luxury Concoction.

Anyways, like I started to say, The Widow Fartie Da Whistle and me finished doing the breakfast thing and the polishing thing and the getting me already to go out thing, after which she put on her special bus driver chauffeuring uniform with the extra tight white lycra trousers wot’re so tight you can see everything wot Signore Malvinio Da Flota-Mota likes to play with and wot Misther Patchouli Da Fanny’d like to get to know, only she won’t let him if’n he wants to live another minute. I made a joke when I sawed her and asked if her white lycra trousers was made special for her vaginal itch, and she laughed and said it were more for blue balls. I didn’t know wot she was talking about, on account of my being a bus, but I laughed anyway. She told me she likes us buses better’n men on account of we don’t try in on with her, so I asked her if that includes Signore Malvinio Da Flota-Mota and she said he was something else. Perhaps one day, when I knows her better, I’ll ask her wot that means. If’n he’s something else, does that mean he’s not a man but some sort of flower or scientific experiment? He’s certainly pretty enough, if you know wot I mean. Human beings is full of mysteries and they’re always liking something wot doesn’t fit right (at least in my opinion). Like Fergal Da Fecker and his duck or Misther Patchouli Da Fanny and his sheep (which is why Floozie Da Smelley mostly makes him sleep in the barn).

Anyway, I’m gonna leave you for a bit, Dear Diary, while you digest everything I’ve wrote down just now. We’ll be getting to the exciting bit any minute and I want your mind to be rested up. When you’re ready, all you gotta do is say to me, “so endeth my rest and recuperation and I’m ready to hear some more.” And if I don’t hear you, you can just whistle. And you know how to whistle, don’t you?