Road To Nowhere

Can this be true?????

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See previous blog entry for why I am actually reading this but, already three mysteries have emerged that are puzzling me...

1. Mrs Muggins leaves her village shop to run an errand, first putting on a feather boa. Is she:
A. Bonkers
B. Ridiculously affected
C. Moonlighting as a burlesque dancer.

2. A dozen aniseed balls cost a penny in her shop. Is this because:
A. Aniseed was once cheaper than chips
B. She is hellbent on rotting the teeth of Billy Blunt, MMM and little-friend-Susan and in the pockets of the local dentist, Mr Savage, who has an NHS scam going
C. The rate of inflation in Britain rockets regularly

3. Milly Molly Mandy is always being nice to people. is this because:
A. She is secretly having a Lolita-style affair with Mr Rudd, the blacksmith, and is using her do-gooding as a cover
B. She is a loving, caring Christian child brought up in a ridiculously small cottage with more relatives than the Adams family
C. She is completely fictional and has never had the misfortune to stray into a Red Riding book.

I'm reading those Red Riding books just now - by David Peace.

I'm about 90 pages in to 1974 and taking it slowly. Anyone who saw the TV adaptation and thought that was too grim should avoid the book. The book makes the TV version look like Goldilocks.

In interveiw David Peace has said that crime corrupts everyone it touchs. Victims, their families, neighbours, perpetrators, the police, journalists... everyone is tarnished by it. In the way they think, behave, carry the knowledge of human rottenness and find it reflected in their words and behaviour. Peace is no doubt right, but this book screams its message as loudly as anyone can tolerate and the relentless crawl through human faailure is hard to take. There are no happy people in this book.

I can manage about 20 pages a day and I'm reading Milly Molly Mandy books before I go to sleep to offset it!

Anyone noticed how quiet it is today on the roads... and the buses... and the trains...

Like everyone is on holiday.

And it's a gorgeous day.

Bastards!

Why any woman would insist on walking about in what looks like an overgrown pair of slippers, I don't know.

But here's another reason to avoid.

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NM is treating me to a wee break.

I am being taken to Bruges for a couple of days towards the end of the month, to make up for the fact I have to work next weekend.

And I am being taken via Chocopolis, emporium of the finest chocolates in the world (I've tracked doen so far), so I can stock up.

Hotel looks lovely...

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Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

You don't half see life from a bus.

This morning's cabaret was provided by hordes of students walking home from their end of year festivities at the Wilmslow Road SU building.

The No 43 passed two six-foot penguins and an assortment of sundry bright young things wrapped in blankets or bits of cloth masquerading as frocks.

Face painting seemed popular (no not THAT kind of face painting) with the occasional post-modern reference to Ziggy Stardust, but mostly flags - persumably of origin.

I witnessed one gentleman, outside Platt Fields, with an Irish flag penned on his cheek, ladelling white powder up his nose. In the middle of the street! At 6.40am!!

And the sun not even within winking distance of a yard-arm.

Fortunately NM can.

Otherwise he'd be worried about my trying to avoid the

'...usual bum fight at the cup stop...'

I quite like autospell humour... the way, for instance, it offers anal before cock... perhaps my phone is trying to tell me something.

Ok, I'm taking a wild stab at this particular bus passenger's mental illness, but he's definitely swinging way outside the boundaries of normal 6.30am behaviour.

Mostly it's his singing. A thin, tuneless whine which runs through some easy-listening playlist of radio stations from hell, like someone trying to tune a dial into reality. And then there's the random laughing to himself.

"'Im just a day dreamer, walking in the rain, chasing after rainbows I may never find again...' ha, ha, ha.... 'walk like a man, talk like a man, my so-o-o-o-n...' ha, ha, ha... 'And they called it puppy love, why I guess I'll never know, how a young heart really feels...' ha, ha, ha..."

There was a time when I felt some sympathy, but he has been catching the same bus in the morning as me for months. PC-ness: right out the window. The singing, oh and the fact he's stinks like the bottom of an ashtray that's been locked in a vaccuum for a month, is not endearing him to me, or indeed any other passenger. No-one's tutted out loud, but you can see their shoulders drop as he gets on in Withington.

Not surprisingly he gets off at the hospital.

Thank god for ipods. Now all I need is a nosegay.

Don't ask me why anyone with a bike wants to take it on a bus.

But you can't. Not on the 43 route in Manchester anyway.

Ask the cyclist who ended up sprawled across the pavement in Rusholme at 6.45am after a passenger lost his patience during a this-bus-aint-goin-nowhere stand-off between driver and cyclist.

Passenger gave cyclist a shove out the bus doors and the driver shot off.

Me, I'm perched up the back, reading my Guardian and tutting about Peru.

You can't condone violence but at least it got us moving. Mind you, I still missed my train.