Blakey on Tour - Part 24

(An ongoing story. Part one here)


It had been a long old while since I'd been on a bus.

I weren't sure, but I seemed to recall the last occasion had featured me having a little scrap with a lad. A grown lad, I'm on about, not a youngun. Royston Blake do not fight younguns - let's be straight on that. For starters, any youngun has a pop at me, I finish it fucking sharpish, well before it moves into fight territory. And if it's me starting on them, you can bet your motor it'll be a one punch job. I can't get low enough to headbutt em, see.

But I'm on about the lad, the bum-fluff merchant I'd had a ding dong with back then. Actually, fuck him – I ain't wasting me puff on little fucksticks like him. All I wanted to say, if you'd just fucking give us chance, were that there was no lads on this here bus that me and Jock was on, heading back towards Mangel from Hurk Wood. No folk at all under the age of eighteen nor even near it. Only the one or two old fuckers you always gets on buses, hogging the worst seats and spoiling the atmosphere with their silences and their not causing no trouble and their polite thank-yous to the driver when they gets off.

'Thank you,' says one of em as she gets off.

'Fuckin' old bitch,' I says under me breath. Old folks is well annoying but you don't like to offend em, does you? I'm well brung-up, me.

'I heard that,' she says, pausing as she stepped down.

'Heard what?'

'What you just called me.'

'Go on then – what were it?'

'I'm not lowering myself to repeating words like that.'

'No? You can lower yerself to suck this, then, you fuckin' old slag. Now fuck on off my bus.'

She glared at us for half a second or so, but you could see the fight had gone out of her and she'd be backing down. That's another thing about old folk – they're fucking cowards. I flicked her a V out the window as the bus pulled away. Then I put myself away and did me flies up. Or Jock's flies, getting technical about it, me still wearing his manky slacks. Not for much longer though. Soon I'd be home, and I'd put some proper smart kit on and set about springing Kirsty out of jail. I might even don me court suit, seeing as I'd be in for some legal wrangling like as not. Kirsty were in deep shite, when you thought about it. I mean, swiping someone's babby? What kind of barmy cow does that? It's like swiping someone's leaky bag of shite that won't stop making a load of racket. In fact, it is that. And were I really up for getting involved with a bird who's prepared to do that, and therefore off her rocker?

Aye, I were, I realised as I closed my eyes and pictured what I'd glimpsed down her top back there. And I'd help her. Together we'd work out what's wrong with her swede and find a way to sort it. But no matter what it were, she weren't having the anti-wossname drugs. Not like they got me on. No matter how fucked up a person is in the head, there's never a just cause for pumping that shite inside em. Better to just lobotomise em, like they tried on me. Might work on her.

It were my stop next. Fuck knowed where Jock were headed, but he'd fell akip anyhow and I were hoping to leave him be. Worst case, he'd end up at the main bus depot and there's some skips you can doss in down there, if he were skint and not wanting to go home like I reckoned him to be. I left a bit of cash on the back seat next to him and rung the bell. Then I changed me mind and picked up the cash – I weren't a fucking charity, were I? I popped the 10p back in my pocket and went up front when the bus stopped.

'Ta,' I says to the driver as I walked past him. Fuck knows why though cos I'd paid me fare. Weren't like I were hitching a lift. And he were one of them Egyptians anyhow, like the ones in the bedsits where I lived, so he ought to think himself fucking fortunate to have a job at all.

He nodded at us, saying, 'You are wanted man.'

'You fuckin' what?' I says, turning back to him and with me hackles rising a bit. But I were off the bus by then and the door closing behind us. I banged it with me fist, shouting at him to open up and what the fuck were he on about, me being wanted? But he just smiled through the grease-smeared glass and pulled away. I ran alongside for a bit, trying to catch his eye but he weren't having none of it. Then I ran into a fucking lamp-post and had to stop for a bit and get meself together.

'Are you alright?' someone were saying to us a bit later. I'd got my nose under control with a hanky by then. Still couldn't find two of me teeth, mind.

'Eh?' I says, peering up at the blurred shape stood before us. I still couldn't see proper, but I got the impression of a feller. Sounded like one and all. Feller in a wide-rimmed hat but with one side of it bent up. I peered a bit harder, wondering if it were Clint Eastwood. Nah – no fucking way would Clint let his cowboy hat go like that.

'Do you want me to call an ambulance?' says the feller. There were summat a mite foreign about his voice. I wondered if he were another of them Egyptians. Or Scottish.

I took my hanky away and squinted at it: seemed to be clearing up nicely. Plenty of blood coming out still but no bits of bone in it now. 'Do you know what I'd really like?' I says, fishing for another hanky cos mine had got well sodden. There weren't one. It were a fucking miracle I'd found any hankies at all in Jock's strides. Who the fuck carries hankies, for fuck sake? This one had been a bit crispy in places, mind. 'See, it ain't possible, what I'd really like,' I went on. 'Cos what I'd really like, see, is for you to walk behind yerself and kick yerself up the fuckin' arse.'

'Ah, but it is not necessary to walk behind oneself to achieve that. The same can be accomplished merely by—'

'Is you thick or summat?' I says, raising me voice a mite now. 'Fuck off.'

'Your vehemence is admirable, Highlander. However, there are better ways to expend your energies than abusing old women on buses and being hostile to those who come to your aid. In considering the properties of the common lamp-post, for example. Tall and slender, the lamp-post nevertheless is rigid and immoveable as a granite outcrop. At least, it is to those who approach the world as does a mere mortal.'

'What the... who the fuck do you...?'

I gave up trying to find the right words and lashed out, doling the kind of blow to the guts that would surely have brung about major organ failure if it had landed. But it never. Fuck knows quite how, but the fucker weren't occupying the same space no more. I spun around, blinking hard and thinking about summat he'd mentioned there.

'Hang on,' I says. 'What did you just call me?'

You heard it and all, right?

Hadn't he just called me the Highlander?

'Oi,' I hollers, losing it now and quite rightly so. The number three cause of aggro in the Mangel area, after eye contact, pint spillage and looking at birds who ain't yours, is calling former head doormen Highlanders and then fucking off. Cos this one were nowhere to be clocked. Somehow, and with my peepers now working 20/20 and me scanning a full rotation of 180 degrees, he'd fucked off.

I trudged home, trying to put the episode out of my head. Some things you just have to, don't you? Everyone gets them things. I'm on about the things you know don't belong in your swede, the ones that some fucked up part of your brain has cooked up, using rotten bits of scran gathered here and there over the years. I'd had enough of them bits. From now on, Royston Blake were getting his shite together big-time. Starting with finding a proper set of togs to wear. And wiping some of the blood off meself. My nostrils had caked up now and no more was coming out, but it were all over me chest and guts.

I looked down at it as I went in the front door of my building, flexing my abs and wondering why I couldn't see em. Mind you, I do have a very hairy body. No matter how ripped you is, like me, the hair's always gonna take the edge off that. But it don't take the edge off where it counts – getting shite done and pinging swedes.

Someone pinged me swede.

I went down.


(Come back tomorrow for more...)