Day 128

Dear Diary,

Will wonders never cease? I was sleepin’ away this mornin’ and I half dreamt it’d be a good idea not to wake up again. I mean, wot if’n I’m the last bus on earth and stranded on a shelf o’sand alone with a tribe of metal-devouring busovours and they was very teeny tiny and it was gonna take ‘em all of three thousand years to eat me up down to my last scrap of spare part? And wot if they was gonna keep me awake whilst they ate me by performing bad Elvis impersonations? If that was you, wouldn’t you rather be dead and unawares of who was eating you up until there was nothing left? And on a more different level - this one not conjectural but a actual physical one wot were more off-putting than a smudge o’shit on a lady’s underpants, I can swear under oath that all night long the fuckin’ wind’d whined and blowed and huffed and puffed, and all the time it were pumpin’ sand into all my cracks and crevasses and caking itself on my headlamps. Now as you know by now, headlamps is wot us buses uses for eyes and so, as you can imagine, it really got me goin’, this gumming up of my eyeballs. However, I managed to hold my temper for a good half-hour or so and was just about to let loose some of them choicer words I’d learned over the years from my old friends Owld Fingus Da Flatulator and Fergal Da Fecker and Finian Da Fabricator and even The Widow Fartie Da Whistle, who had one Hell of a vocabulary when she liked to practice it, which was nearly every day, when lo ‘n’ behold something come along wot jolted me so quick, I actually squirted somethin’ you don’t wanna know about outta my tailpipe. Shit fuck I’ve never been so scared in my entire life, and I’ve been around for a long time, even before the fifties. ‘Course I realise now it were only scufflin’ and snufflin’ noises comin’ from somewheres nearby, but Jeezus shittin’ hot potatoes I was more or less sound asleep at the time the noises started and up ‘til then I was convinced I was aloner’n the last orphan in the world. Fuckin’ crap ‘n’ let it run down your leg, I tell you I started to panic as I’ve never panicked before, and that includes the time I was watching that TV show about foreign aliens landin’ on the planet and kidnapping buses! Anyways, I must’a cried out in my sleep or said somethin’ like “Oh Jeeze Louise, please don’t let me get hurt and please protect me from dumbfucks from outer space wot might want to experiment on me when I says I doesn’t have no leader to take ‘em to.” As I said, my blood were running cold, or to be more accurate I should say it were my oil wot ranned cold at the thought of a bunch of evil-smelling wrinkly creatures with bad dispositions probing in my exhaust and takin’ me apart with a tin-opener. But then something occurred to me and I had to stop myself and chuckle, on account of there’s nothing new on that score wot I ain’t experienced before and so why the fuckity fuck fuck fuck should I be afeared? I mean, there can’t be no evil-stinking evil-dispositioned wrinkly creatures from another planet wot can be any worse’n them evil-stinking evil-dispositioned creatures wot’ve been filling up my life for the last coupl’a years. Thank my chrome ‘n’ pearly sphincter for them biddies is wot I says, on account of after them, there’s nothing out there anywhere wot can frighten me at all, and there’s nobody wot can do me no harm wot hasn’t been done to me already. “Glory’ll put it to ya, if you ask her she will do ya,” as they say.

Well, just about the time I was feeling better about things in general, a whole bucket of water came a’sploosh on my headlamps and then immediately after that a foreign and strangely alien towel or cloth of some sort started a’wipin’ ‘em clean. And blink-a-blink, wot do you know but the blackest night I’d ever saw was suddenly the brightest day I’d ever seen since the time I used to transport ancient old people around the continent for Golden Twilight Years Tours. And boy oh boy was I surprised!

I’ll tell you this much, it took me a while to get my vision apparatus sorted out, on account of I’d accidentally set it permanently to “Black As The Inside Of A Lump Of Coal” mode and I’d forgot where the lever was, but between you and me, I needed some of this extra time to sort out my head as well. You can imagine my annoyance, then, when whoever or whatever it was who’d been splooshin’ and wipin’ my headlamps, started in a ‘wipin off my body parts and cleaning off every last nook and cranny of my outsides and insides as well. You’d better believe right then and there I said, “Hold it right there Bub, on account of you ain’t introduced myself, and I don’t never get intimate with nobody until I knows their real name and not the one they calls themselves when that big old girlie on the stripper pole wot’s really a copper in disguise, sidles on up to you and says, ‘My oh my wot a big boy you are, may I call you Donkey Da Elephant?’”

At this point, whoever it was wot was massaging me with lemon oil burst out laughing and then suddenly so did I. In fact I laughed so hard I forgot to control myself and had my second embarrassing accident of the day. This made him laugh even harder’n he startin’ in a’snortin’ and a’heein’ and a’hawin’ and when my vision finally got cleared from the soapy water he’d sloshed on my headlamps, all I could see clear as day and twice as beautiful was Ol’ Finian Da Fabricator. And all I could think to say was “Jeezus fuck I thought I recognised them hands.” And both of us laughed and laughed and laughed for most of the rest of the day and into the night.

Needless to say, Dear Diary, I’m having to put away my pencil and spend me some quiet time with him. I thought for sure he was dead in the flood, which means we’ve gotta lot of catching up to do. Ya gotta bear with me. I promise I’ll check in with you as soon as he’s told me everything wot’s happened with him and after I’ve done the same thing from my side. In any event, for once I think I can honestly say, so endeth a whole shitload of tribulations and it looks like I’ve got my friend back.