Day 86

Dear Diary,

Now is the time for me to tell you all about Problem Number Three, so if some of you’re out of the room and making yourselves peanutbutter’n coleslaw sandwiches, you’d better eat ‘em all up and pay attention double quick. I’m a busy bus, what with me whirring my wheels to beat the band to keep me and The Widow Fartie Da Whistle and the Ol’ Biddies wot’s inside of me clinging on to their seats for dear life from sinking down to the bottom of the seat, and I ain’t got no time for shilly-shallying. And that’s the truth or my name ain’t Misther Classic Daimler CVD6 Bus with custom-designed Burlington insides and outsides.

Hum hum humbledy diddy hum (waiting around music, only you’re gonna hafta think up your own tune) …

Well, I guess I’ve waited long enough, and if you’re more interested in the fate of your peanutbutter sandwich than in wot I’ve gotta say, I guess there ain’t nothing I can do about it, and I ain’t about to get depressed. Anyways, here I goes.

Whooee, am I tuckered out! The last thing I was prepared for was for the flotation devices, formerly knowed as Miss Parsley Da Onker and Missus Malla Oda Odipossipous, to get punctured so quick and sink and leave us on our own. ‘Course, as soon as I saw wot was happening I knowed we was in a shitload of trouble and so I called out double-quick to Misther Patchouli Da Fanny and Floozie Da Smelley. I said (in a real loud voice through my classic loudhailer system), “Help, Misther Patchouli Da Fanny and Ms. Floozie Da Smelley! Help! Help! We’re gonna sink and die right before your eyes if’n you don’t help us!” But, of course, by that time they was in their deluxe luxury pink and gold jet ski wot they’d been keeping in a secret compartment under the portable toilet holiday boat house they’d been using as a lust cave and business office ever since we was swept away in the great flood of 2007, which in case you’ve got memory problems was last week. And when I seen wot they was up to, planning to desert us like a rich man running away from a herd of beggars, my heart sank and my jaw dropped, on account of I had no idea they was so sneaky. In fact, if I remember it right, I yelled out to them, “Hot damn Misther Patchouli Da Fanny and Ms. Floozie Da Smelley, you’re sneakier’n a bottle o’fart juice! Blow me away in the wind and call me Myrtle!” Unfortunately for me and the rest of us, before I could regain my thinking organ and beg ‘em to reconsider our fate and offer to be their love slaves for forever and a day, Floozie Da Smelley pasted one of her smug smiles on to her face and sneered right back at me. “Fuck you Misther Bus and fuck Ol’ Miss Widow Fartie Da Whistle and especially Fuck Missus Milly Da Fardle, on account of you’ll all be dead and we’ll be rid o’the lot of you.” And there I was, floating with my radiator grill of a mouth hanging wide open, my struts paddling like mad and my wheels whirring in desperation and my mind generally expiring from the worry and anxiety of it all. I guess by that time my head was plum outta ideas, because instead of coming up with one of my usual witty and cutting remarks wot habitually slays those wot treats me with contempt, I swear I was as dumbstruck as a marble honey bucket. I couldn’t even figure out how to answer her real polite and bid her and Misther Patchouli Da Fanny a sweet goodbye and not an ‘adios’, on account of we’d never see ‘em again, at least not in this life. And because I couldn’t even gibber like an idiot, wouldn’t you know but Floozie Da Smelley got in the last word. And even though I’ve tried erasing wot she said from my poor addled brain, it’s still hanging around. “If’n you knows how to pray, Misther Smarty Farty Snooty Classic Daimler Bus, I suggest you try it out now, on account of you’s now owned lock stock and barrel by that there woppy Eyetalian and you ain’t our responsibility any more thanks be to Jeezus,” is wot she said, and I felt lower’n a potato left at the bottom of the fryer. And after she’d said her and Misther Patchouli Da Fanny’d fond farewell and damned us into hell, or at least to the bottom of the ocean, they revved up that Ol’ Deluxe Luxury Pink and Gold Jet Ski and prepared to vacate the premises.

Whooee was we scared. At least I was. And I think The Widow Farte Da Whistle would’a been too, if only she hadn’t plugged herself into her iPod and downloaded the entire Glastonbury festival, rain included, into her head at that very moment. Whooee, we was sinking fast and all her attention was sucked into the mosh pit and we was all gonna see our lives flash by our headlamps and she weren’t gonna know wot’d hit her.

Or at least that was wot I thought was the plan, but then I’d forgot all about Missus Milly Da Fardle and Miss Cabbage and Mrs. Emily Da Onion and Ol’ Missus Drain, hadn’t I! There they’d been, back there complaining over their little mobile phones to the call centre over the way they was being neglected, as well as leaking all over the seats and demanding to know when they was gonna be served potatoes and turnips and carrots and boiled mutton gristle for their tea, when secretly they was hatching up a plot, an amazing fabulous, wonderful, stupendous plot, to keep our gizzards from being boiled up in The Great Stew Pot below!

Oh, Bless You Forever Missus Milly Da Fardle, and Bless you too Miss Cabbage, and Bless You Only A Bit Less, Mrs. Emily Da Onion, on account of I know it’s not your fault your brain don’t quite reach the top of the stairs. And as for Missus Drain, well let’s just say I want to have her babies.

‘Course, Dear Diary, I know you don’t have the first idea of wot I’m talking about, but you will after I catch my breath and serenade the biddies wot saved the day. I thought I’d start off with a medley from The Swingle Singers (wot is their all-time favourites). You might join in, if’n you have a mind to. You never know, it won’t do you no harm and it might perk up your love life when you’re old and grey.

I’ll be back after wot I’m gonna call my Celebration Recital, and next time I pick up my pencil the first thing I’ll say to you is so endeth my joyful musical interlude.