Day 102

Dear Diary,

I know you’re dying for me to tell you why and how Ol’ Reverend Doctor Paisley Pisser secreted hisself behind the back sea of the bus (being me), but it’ll hafta wait. There’s too much other stuff going on and some of it’s even worth listening to.

As I was saying yesterday, no sooner’d I got to grips with rescuing everyone wot was riding in me from drowning and was starting to think about how I was gonna get everybody fed with the sorta food that’d make ‘em happy and content, when wouldn’t you know it but another dog came along and bit us on the butt. Well, not literally, of course, on account of I don’t know of a dog wot’s gonna swim all the way across the ocean just so’s he could nibble a bus on its tailpipe, but you know wot I mean. It’s like there’s always gotta be something to go bump in the night, ain’t there, and just when you’ve finished your cocoa and are finally getting to sleep. In this case, it were in the form of a violent earthquake wot came on all sudden and unexpected, and made the ol’ ocean heave and ho and glug so bad I nearly turned upside down and inside out. The poor Ol’ Widow Fartie Da Whistle, wot was painting her toenails and pushing up her cuticles, smeared about a bucket of that red toenail paint all over her seat and left tit, and boy did she let out a string of bad words wot turned the sky bluer’n mould on a tomato. And, of course, that made Ol’ Missus Milly Da Fardle snap herself outta her seat belt and come right on up front so’s she could box The Widow Fartie Da Whistle’s ears black and blue, but I’m afeared she never made it, on account of at that moment a second earthquake from way down under the ocean threw us up in the air and Missus Milly Da Fartle was hurled outta the skylight and up in the air and disappeared. And I must say I admire her determination and grit almost as much as I love a good slab o’chocolate cake, on account of she never stopped yelling and telling The Widow Fartie Da Whistle wot she was gonna do to her when she caught up with her ears! ‘Course, I didn’t hear her final word, on account of that’s when the loudest of the glug glug glugs came and I sorta forgot myself and said to no one in particular, “Oh, fuck and cherry upside down cake, mama come and help us.” Well, needless to say I don’t have a mama, even though I’m a classic Daimler Burlington CVD6 bus and not a ignorant Ford Transport wot’s never had nobody wot loves it, and this meant there was no one to succour me in my hour of need.

This isn’t to say nobody come up from the sea floor on account of somebody did. In fact, to tell you the truth, it were a whole shitload of somebodies wot comed up and said “Surprise! Here we is!”

As I was saying, when something sudden happens at sea you sits up and takes notice, on account of it could be just about anything under the sun, from sea-monsters to whales wot wants to sea you, to secret enema agents wot wants to steal your personal details and PIN numbers, to bubbles of gas from undersea volcanoes or even giant squids wot want to climb on board and suck out your entrails. And anybody wot ignores a horrible scraping underneath your hulls or a reef cringle wot goes missing without permission, is gonna end up wet and possibly deader’n a whale on top of a mountain. So, as I said, in the ocean you’re ready for anything and you’re never caught with your pants down. But whatever I was expecting to come outta the sea at this moment, it sure as fuck weren’t wot come up and rammed me on the underside in a painful place and lifted me up practically all the way to Heaven.

And do you know wot it was, Dear Diary? I bet you can’t guess in a million years. In fact, if’n you had any money, I’d bet you your last nickel that wot it was was the last thing you’d ever think of.

You give up? Well, Dear Diary, you remember them one hundert and ninety-nine pink and gold-painted portable toilets wot Floozie Da Smelley’d made over into deluxe touron holiday rental cottages, and how they mysteriously got attached to my tailpipe when the floodwaters came and how they followed me out to sea like a line of rubber duckies? Yeh, I know there was originally two hundert of them, but Ol’ Misther Patchouli Da Fanny and Floozie Da Smelley had moved into the end one and was using it as a real estate office and their centre of international business operations, which means I can’t really count it, can I? In any case, I think it sorta blowed up or fell apart or something when Misther Patchouli Da Fanny and Flooze Da Smelley tried to roar away from it on their super duper deluxe luxury five thousand horsepower turbo pink and gold jet ski. Only, if’n you was paying attention, you’ll recall that the jet ski weren’t really all that powerful and in fact it were made outta paper and came outta one of them cereal boxes, which meant that when Misther Patchouli Da Fanny lit the match to its fuse like it said to in the instructions, it sorta went ‘Phwitttt’ and somehow, I don’t know how, the portable toilet wot was being used as their office exploded. Nobody said nothing, but it’s my personal opinion that Misther Patchouli Da Fanny and Floozie Da Smelley was too stingy and lazy to empty out wot was supposed to be emptied out when we passed wot they calls the ‘dump station’. Could be that wot was in the toilet combined with wot they’d had for lunch and then combined again with flames from the jet ski fuse, and all together it caused wot they calls a fatal attraction and a spontaneous combustible. Anyway, that’s why I was saying there was only a hundert and ninety-nine portable toilet deluxe touron holiday self-catering cottages instead of two hundert.

I hear you saying under your breath, “Well, dumb fuck bus, yes we remember them even though they was a bad idea to begin with and shame on you for wasting so much pencil lead on ‘em. But wot about ‘em?”

Don’t you worry your little pea brains about them toilets and I’ll tell you all you needs to know when I’m good and ready. In the mean time there’s no need for you to get so rude and stroppy, Dear Diary, and in any case Missus Milly Da Fardle hasn’t come back down and I don’t rightly know wot to do about it. If’n I goes somewhere else, like in the direction of a beautiful tropical island, and she comes down and I’ve left, there’s no telling wot she’ll do outta revenge. Ho-hum, it never rains but it pours. I’m gonna put away my pencil for a while, but I’ll be back. Perhaps if’n I’m lucky enough, you’ll have left here and gone somewhere else by then, and then I can say, so endeth my responsibility to my Dear Diary, and I hope it gets ate by a guppy.