Free Boswell's Bus Pass by Stuart Campbell Page A

other passenger who was in his nineties, with a lurid account of the bomb scare at Aberdeen Station earlier in the day. His subtext was that it is safer to travel by bus. Behind a hayrick I caught sight of three thwarted Mujahideen sharing a kebab and a packet of Camels.
    The further North you travel the better the quality of books in charity shops. Not only did the Montrose Shelter boast a 1903 Gaelic dictionary for £10 but also Macaulay’s
Essay on Johnson
for £3. It had to be bought. It proved to be a difficult purchase as the gently shaking assistant insisted on inspecting every page lest an unpleasant aphorism or surprise lurked in the Notes, Glossary and Aids to Study.
    As I waited for the 113 to Aberdeen I was disappointed not to be greeted by my friendly gurning guide. She was probably dozing somewhere, tilting in her dreams at bus shelters.
    The boy racers were warming up in the High Street after their anonymous suburban sojourn. The trophy cars throbbed incongruously and prematurely with the aural after burn of fighter jets. For the drivers the twilight was the harbinger of octane-fuelled conquests ahead; the girl from third year who was not usually allowed out after dark and the blonde from the chip shop whose perfume could not mask the day job.
    My fellow passengers on the Aberdeen bus included an androgynous punk with deep carrot coloured hair and more piercings than a High Church martyr. Despite exuding aggression she nursed a small white cardboard box as if it held the Holy Grail. Inside were her hopes for a future unclouded by family hatred, untainted by an abusive partner, and a tiny seed of happiness which if kept in the dark might, just might, grow and blossom years from now in a better place.
    The bus driver was either sporting the ripest of black eyes or had a secret life as the only member of the Aberdeenshire Panda Impersonation Society. Perhaps he too was a victim of domestic violence living with some huge woman from the pages of the
Beano
whocounted the notes from his wage packet with the rolling pin tucked under her ample armpit. The speed at which he drove suggested that he was eager to seek consolation in the bosoms of his mistress who had already bought the fillet steak to drape over his wounded eye.
    Black eye notwithstanding, he was able to josh the two pensioners who fumbled with their bus passes, accusing them of having broken the automatic reader. As a consequence they laughed like haddies for the rest of the journey.
    The spirit-level horizon kept its equilibrium despite the bus ducking and diving down braes. The North Sea was battleship grey smudged with white where the tide messed with the wooden groins.
    The Macaulay proved even more of a bargain that I had hoped. For some reason I had assumed that the essay would be a stuffy and pompous piece of hagiography. This was not the case.
    ‘He had become an incurable hypochondriac. He said long after that he had been mad all his life, or at least not perfectly sane; and, in truth, eccentricities less strange than his have often been thought grounds sufficient for absolving felons, and for setting aside wills. His grimaces, his gestures, his mutterings, sometimes diverted and sometimes terrified people who did not know him. At a dinner table he would, in a fit of absence, stoop down and twitch off a lady’s shoe. He would amaze a drawing room by suddenly ejaculating a clause of the Lord’s Prayer. He would conceive an unintelligible aversion to a particular alley, and perform a great circuit rather than see the hateful place. He would set his heart on touching every post in the streets through which he walked. If by any chance he missed a post, he would go back and repair the omission.’
    Even the benevolent driver of the 125 would have struggled with him. ‘Look pal, I understand that for some reason you feel obliged to finger every seat on the bus and touch ma ticket machine every time we go round a bend but if you dinnae sit down ye