The 64 Auchenshugle Bus

People are usually like mud in the morning, slow and plodding. That's when I'm at my best.

'Fuckin' hell Frankie,' I said, 'don't start'.

I knew I had to wear the blue jacket and the matching blue skirt provided by the bus company for all its female employees, which meant bus conductors, which meant me, but, as always, I was willing to compromise. I was willing to wear the hat. I liked the hat. The blue band pushed up nicely onto my red hair. It could be tweaked into a jaunty angle and used as a kind of hair band, which was especially good when I didn't iron my curly hair, like today and most other days, if I was being honest and I usually was. I don't know why, but I thought it made me look like a kind of pirate. I suppose the effect was helped by the bumble bee jumper I wore with green and yellow stripes. I think the colours gave me extra zing energy and allowed me to dance all night.

I could have still danced, but poor old Frankie, in the official blanket of his long looking, bus inspector’s coat, which made him look older and extra stern, wanted me to stand still, while he lectured me.

'The bottom line is Frankie,' I interrupted him, mid sentence, because I didn't want him getting worked up and upset. It wasn't good for him. It made his face go all red and blotchy. It would be even better if he could have got his upper dentures fixed properly to his mouth, so that they didn't keep slipping when he talked, mopping up his siblant sssses, which showed up that he really needed to shave a bit more, get out of the house a bit more, live a bit more, understand a bit more and care a little less: 'I've not got time to go home and get changed.’

I patted the side of the Corpy Bus, as if it was a live animal that needed an extra bit of my loving.

‘We’re out of here in ten minutes!'

I think Frankie secretly liked me. He certainly liked talking to me every morning. So I gave the young man, mischievously peeking out, inside him, a bit of time.

'Yehhhh,' I said, stepping onto the bus, after he had come to the right decision, the only decision, giving my shoulders a little samba shuffle in memory of the night before and ringing the bell twice. I might have kissed him, if he wasn't so crotchety.

'Hey George we're out of here' I said, but George wasn't listening. He was safely ensconced in the fortress of his cab, like a sleepy schoolboy, with The Daily Record opened at the Sports pages, folded in just the way he liked it, so that he could read his paper, while the passengers got on and off and I brought him back to life with my bell.

George had his cab. I had the rest of the warmth of my bus, both upstairs and downstairs. The whole of life was pickled in our circular route. We passed Will's cigarette factory. Tennat's brewery with a pub on every corner, from the snug working man's to the preposterous, pseudo-trendy, brewery owned. Beattie's biscuit factory for a bit of sweetness in our life. A couple of hospitals. The Necroplis and back, unless you only had a single ticket punched. We followed the route of the Clyde, with a shipyard stuck on every river bend.

We picked up our first passengers, at the bus stop just across the road, outside the garage. They moaned that we were late and they had to wait, of course. And they moaned when that we were early and they had to run for the bus. And they weren't slow. They blamed me, because they couldnae run and needed to sit down and have a wee fag.

They were all old timers, which didn't mean that they were old, although of course they were, as most of them were in there thirties, or even older. They were at that advanced stages of decline, the bus soon became like a hospital ward, an amorphous mass full of farting, gummy neonates, and although they didn't wear cloth caps they might as well have. No, they were old timers, because they knew the sketch. After we got away from the garage I got the front seat, beside the luggage compartment, which nobody used and they were to just fling the money in my conductresses’ brown leather satchel.

I couldn't be bothered with all that running up and down after them. That was what there sad wives were for and I wasn't married to any of them. It was a shilling to the shipyard. I just left the tickets on a roll, on the seat beside me and they were to take one. There was no change. I couldn't be bothered with all that hassle of dealing with pennies and pennies and half- pennies. They could fling money into the bag, but they couldn't take anything out. If they didn't have enough they could pay tomorrow.

I didn't like being cheated. But the regulars did. They loved it when someone tried to sneak past, or even worse fling in three pence or a half- penny and kidded on it was a shilling while I was half- dozing, with one hand on the steel pole, holding myself upright, like a marionette. They thought I was a witch, or something, because I knew. Right away I knew. I could tell by the noise, the weight of the coin hitting other coins, the song it made. But I liked them thinking I was a witch.

When some man tried to cheat me, I rung the bell that many times, other traffic moved out of the way. I made the bus like a fire engine, but George, my driver, usually over reacted, in the way that men do. He was liable to make an emergency stop in the middle of Dumbarton Road and block the traffic behind us.

I would just shake my head to clear it of all that sleep debris and I'd be up that quickly that my hair would fall loose and I'd look as if I was ready for a square go, but of course I wasn't brought up like that. I'd just follow the culprit, usually one of the younger, Brylcreme boys, trying to impersonate a spotty Elvis, and jump on his knee, like a real lady. It was always the same movie. It was always the younger guys that chanced their arm. If he'd chosen a windy seat, all the better, then he was trapped. I'd kiss him again and again, like I would any little boy, powdering his face with my vermilion Marlyn Monroe lipstick and just say some loose line that came into my head.

That usually worked. I'd wave very nicely, if he was equally nice and blow him a kiss, but sometimes there would be a standoff, or a sit off, but I wasn't in any particular hurry. I'd just sit next to him and wait. I had the edge. I was born lucky so that I could always fall asleep, even although the bus wasnae moving, wasnae rattling along nicely, in its little lullaby, wasnae going anywhere until the culprit got aff. Everybody knew that.

As my mammie used to say 'It a harsh lesson that is often best learned'. Although, of course, I was never in any hurry everybody else was. I'd never met a man yet that stayed on the bus mere than five minutes, but that's men for you. It was a bucking bronco of a seat with me sitting next to you, with my eyes open, even when they were shut.

I suppose I was helped a little bit by Tam Scobie. I don't know what Tam did in the yards. I think he was some kind of blacksmith, although I'm sure that they called it something different in the yard. I imagined him spending the day chewing iron bars. He had lots of hair, but it didn't disguise the muscles on his muscles so that he resembled a throwback to Neanderthal man. I knew that he liked me, because he was always looking at me, with adulation, rather than simple lust. Any time I spoke to him, even a simple, 'here's your ticket Tam', would make the human equivalent of a Robin Redbreast. So I wasn't sure whether the pain of talking to him was better than the pain of not talking to him. One thing I was sure of, if anybody messed me about, they would have Tam to deal with.

'You've got eyes like a cat!' one of the old fossils laughed, getting off the bus at our final destination, the yard. He stepped down wearily, the thought of work sinking in, wearing him down, making him more hen toed, as he walked towards the grave of the yard gate, just as the hooter blasted out its final call. I rung the bell twice in acknowledgement. It was a pity that some people had to work.