Day 101

Dear Diary,

I can’t tell you how much I’ve been a’fretting and a’fuming over the stowaway wot’s been hiding in the back of the bus (being me). All this time I’ve been swearing up and down and backwards to the biddies that I’m giving ‘em the safest ride wot they’ve ever had and that no man’s ever been allowed to come on board and sully the seats wot they likes to sit in or otherwise molest ‘em like wot the papers says men’s do in their spare time just for the hell of it. And now I finds out there is a man lurking in back of the back seat after all, and not only that, but he’s been staring at the biddies through his king-sized binoculars and drooling outta both sides of his mouth and maybe even doing wot I won’t even mention on account of I don’t know wot you calls it. And this means I was wot they calls ‘lying through my teeth’, and as everyone knows lying’s the first step on the ladder to mass-murdering and before you knows it, I’ll be eating organic vegetables and wearing lentil shorts.

‘Course I know and you knows and everybody else knows, except perhaps for the biddies, that biddies can take care of themselves just fine. In fact, better’n fine if’n you ask me, on account of if’n they’d not been born tough as old boots, they’d’a not lived long enough to make life miserable for their daughters-in-law. However, I know you’ve got other opinions on the subject and that you’re thinking I’m nothing but a callous scrap o’steel wot ought’a be sold for scrap. In your mind all biddies is frail and helpless and they carries all their worldly possessions with ‘em like packrats and we gotta treasure ‘em on account of they might be somebody’s mother. ‘Course, as much as I hates to admit it, you do have a point, but as far as I’m concerned you can keep it to yourself on account of these here particular biddies is biddies from Hell and if anyone’s gotta be protected it’s us from the likes of them. Besides, this is my Dear Diary and I can set the agenda if’n I want to. But enough of this shit. I only stuck in this paragraph on account of I gotta be politically correct if’n I want to continue working as a community bus. Not that the job is more’n a pile of crap, cuz it ain’t, but the guaranteed perks wot goes with it sure is! Where else in the world are they dumb enough to promise in writing that I hafta get my paintwork massaged by pretty ladies such as The Widow Fartie Da Whistle and the part-Italian Greek God Signore Malvinio Da Flota-Mota? And before you go telling me he’s not officially wot they calls a pretty lady, I’m gonna tell you right back he’s got hands to die for and I can’t wait for him to manhandle my inner workings and clean my pipes once I goes to live in his garage. And whoop-dee-dee, I’m only a bus and not a human being, so when it comes right down to it I can’t hardly tell the difference between a man and a woman, so wot’s the big deal. Besides, nobody else can either, not after someone’s been stuck in the freezer for a coupl’a weeks. Where was I?

Sorry about that excursion off of the subject. I guess I got a lot o’things on my mind and forgot you was listening in and expecting to be told about wot’s going on in this part of the world. But never you fear, I’m back and with a vengeance and promise to make up for it.

So, as I was saying, this here Reverend Doctor Paisley Pisser, who you know by now isn’t so much a vicar as he sells time shares in used cars to folks wot likes to drink and drive, was discovered hiding under the back seat of the bus (being me) and pretending he was Ol’ Miss Luella Da Bunkle. Now I know I could get sent straight down to Hell for saying this about a reverend, even a pretend one, but don’t you think there’s something fishy about a man of the cloth wot disguises himself as a dead woman and hides out in a bus full of old biddies? Think about it.

Anyways, I was gonna put my bad thoughts about him to one side and simply ask him if’n he mind paying his fare to The Widow Fartie Da Whistle, on account of he’s not got no travel pass like wot the biddies has, when low and behold Ol’ Missus Milly Da Fardle, wot’d recovered from the situation with her gas, turns around and says, “Well, will you look at that, girls. It’s Miss Luella Da Bunkle and she’s come back from the dead just in time for our picnic.” ‘Course I knowed she only thought she recognised Miss Louella Da Bunkle on account of she’d lost her reading glasses and couldn’t tell who it really was, only that it was wearing the same mustard-coloured cardy wot Ol’ Louella’d been waked in, but I could’a kissed the old fart then and there for taking the problem off of my shoulders. The Reverend Doctor Paisley Pisser was now officially Miss Louella Da Bunkle and that meant he wasn’t gonna have to buy a bus ticket after all and I wasn’t gonna hafta embarrass myself by asking. Now that may have been bad for me and The Widow Fartie Da Whistle and our little cash box, but all in all it were far worse for The Ol’ Reverend. I don’t know how he’s gonna explain hisself to his wife and fourteen children when he tells ‘em they gotta call him Auntie Louella instead of Your Holiness.

Anyways, now that he was officially an old biddy and was sitting up in front with the others and they was clacking their dentures and talking up a storm about everyone I’d never heard of, I decided I could trust him not to get up to no good, and so I turned my attention once more to thinking about our future. Wot I figured was, Misther Patchouli Da Fanny and Floozie Da Smelley had already been took care of and was sleeping up on the roof. The Reverend Doctor Paisley Pisser was settling into being an old biddy and looked happier’n fleas on a dog. And The Widow Fartie Da Whistle’d finished up her hot wax job and were shinier’n a can of Spam. In the flotation department, we was all set and ready to go indefinitely, wot with Missus Milly Da Fardle cooperating and giving out just enough gas to keep us from sinking and not so much so’s we’d fly away, and we had on board enough food to get us through tomorrow’s morning fry-up. Only trouble is, there weren’t nothing left for the biddies’ boiled ham and three kinds of potatoes for lunch, or as they calls it, dinner. And that were about as bad as it could get, on account of no three kinds of potatoes’d send ‘em into a desperation and’d make ‘em dredge up all them good old famine stories, and after that we’d hafta sing all them songs about dead mammies and little girls wot fell and were sent to live in the laundries. Clearly, there was no time to waste. I had to get boiled ham and three kinds of potatoes or I’d be up the shinola and swimming in the shit.

However, just as I was taking out a new piece of paper and drawing up plans for how I was gonna come up with all this genuine biddy food in the middle of the ocean, the whole sea started in rocking and rolling and there was this glug glug glug from down below us, and I says to myself, “wot the fuck is it this time?”

Since in the ocean one glug can be the last glug you ever hears, I’m gonna put away my pencil and investigate. I’m afeared it’s a deep-sea monster or perhaps a submarine wot’s mistook me for one of them enema missiles. If’n it’s something else and I survives, I’ll let you know, but if’n it’s not and I don’t, it’ll all be endethed for me and The Widow Fartie Da Whistle and the biddies, and so I’ll say goodbyeee before I goes.