A bus drove past me the other day as I was walking
home. Normally I pay little heed to buses as I am a car driver now and public
transport no longer holds any enthusiasm or purpose to my life. But for some
reason my eyes ran lazily amongst its incumbents: the usual far away glances
looked right through me to whatever middle distance thoughts they were having,
while others were busy with their phones or were listening to iPods or playing
games on their tablets; a far cry, thinks I, from the days when I used to run
with the buses.
Then I spotted something that hadn’t changed one
bit from the old days; a part of life that’s hung on by its finger nails before
the curtains of modern life finally sweep it aside. It was a simple sight and
one that I was very used to when I was young. It was two old ladies, heads
inclined towards one another, and deep in conversation--- loud conversation---
and probably, if memory serves me, about theirs, their neighbours and their husbands
ailments.
It was the sight of the two old ladies---
engrossed as they were in what little old ladies have been engrossed in since
time began--- that brought a long forgotten memory crashing back through the
mists of time; a memory of a bus journey I took in the summer of 1980 between
Solihull and Kings Heath.
It was a pleasant enough day; the sun shone
through the windows and gave the bus a gentle warmth. There were probably only
twenty people all told, spread lazily throughout its interior. The bus stopped
just outside the small market town of Shirley in the West Midlands, the doors
hissed open and two old ladies got on, they showed their pension bus passes,
the driver nodded to them, waited until they were seated and pulled away from
the kerb.
Nothing unusual there, I hear you say, all was
normal, nothing untoward was happening, everything was as it should be. That
was until the first one--- the shorter and more bolshie of the two--- spoke up
in the loud tones of the old and slightly deaf.
“So how’s your Norman’s asteroids?” she began: no
one paid much attention.
“Awful” her more upright friend replied “Can’t
stop the bugger’s bleeding” Slowly I turned to look at the back of their
heads.
“What creams he using?” enquired short and dumpy.
“He’s gone past creams deary; doctor’s put him on
them suppositories”
“How’s he getting on with them?” she asked as she
popped a mint imperial into her mouth and offered her friend the pack.
“Not very well, he’s havin’ a devil of a job with
‘em” she replied as she took one and handed the pack back.
All the usual sites and activities of a small town
on a sunny Saturday afternoon had just evaporated for me as I became more intrigued by these two old ladies and their talk of ailments. I
smiled gently to myself and edged a little closer to hear more about her
husband’s problems. It was then that I noticed another passenger was trying
to get my attention; I looked towards him but kept my ears locked onto the
two old ladies. He was miming the word ‘Asteroids?’
with a quizzical look. I mimed back ‘I
think she means haemorrhoids’. He nodded theatrically with realisation
before leaning a little closer himself so as not to miss another second of this
most entertaining tête-à-tête.
“So why is he off the cream? Wasn’t it working?”
continued short and dumpy
“Well it was working up to a point but the Doctor
had to take him off it; he was getting confused”
“What d’you mean?” We both leant in closer
“You know what my Norman’s like without his
glasses first thing in the morning...”
We leant in closer still
“Well, last
week he got up and went to put his cream on, only he picks up the wrong tube by
mistake”
“What did he pick up?”
“Deep heat” she says. We both went: ‘Ooooo!’ in unison
Unperturbed and unaware of her new audience, short
and dumpy went on.
“Well didn’t you stop him?”
“You know how fast my Norman is once he sets his
mind to it; turns out he’d had a particularly heavy bleed during the night so
he thought he’d slap more than normal on” Short and dumpy winced, we all
squirmed about looking like a convention of lemon suckers.
“How bad was it?”
“At one point I thought we were going to have to
call the fire brigade to put his bum out!”
The assembled lemon suckers acted with accord.
“Dear God alive” short and dumpy sighed “he
must’ve put a fair dollop on. What did you do in the end?”
“Nothing else we could do; had to take him up the
A&E, and they referred him to the burns unit as by this point his bum was
beginning to peel. Anyway, it wasn’t the easiest of journeys, at first the taxi
driver refused to take him”
“Why, because he’d got deep heat up his bum?”
“No because he was sitting in a bucket
of cold water and ice cubes and was causing a disturbance of the peace with the
neighbours.”
It’s fair to say by this point pretty much all of
the bus had stopped what they were doing and were hanging on the two old ladies
every word. Even a skin head couple at the back---who up until now had been
carving terms of endearment to each other onto the bus seats---had stopped
misspelling their graffiti to listen; all of which the two old ladies were
still blissfully unaware of, and as the bus rolled on sedately, so did their
conversation.
“So once the nurse had sorted him out the doctor
was called to take a look at his piles. He said the cream was doing no good and
he put him on suppositories, then we came home.”
“And you say he’s not getting on with them?”
“Not a bit; having the devil’s own job getting
them to stay in!”
“How that?”
“Well” she started, as we all began to move in
surreptitiously, like international spies. “he read the instructions and they
said to bend forward, place the bullet shaped suppository against the anal
opening and gently insert” there was a pause then she carried on “didn’t say
anything about the damned thing popping back out again once he stood up”
By this point the bus had come to a stop--- not at
a designated bus shelter, but along a country lane---the air brakes went off
and the drivers little peak capped face appeared from his cab; he obviously
didn’t want to miss a single second of this conversation.
“What happened then?”
“As I’ve always said, my Norman may be old but
he’s always been proud of the power of his bowel movements; reckons he has the
Arnold Schwarzenegger of bum muscles”
“So it popped back out again?”
“Oh if it had just ‘popped’ out there would’ve been no problem. But we’re talking about
Norman’s supersonic bum here; and what with his bum being as powerful as it is
the damned thing came out like a bullet from a Magnum .45 and took out three
photos from the sideboard”
“Never” short and dumpy replied. Her friend nodded
with finality
“Two of the frames were part of a set, and the man
from the framing shop said we’ll never get the impact dent out from the photo
of my mother”
“Oh and that was such a lovely picture of your
mother with all her old work mates at that spot welders reunion. So what
happened then?”
“He got another one out and tried again”
“Did it work?”
“No, same problem, only this time he’d moved to
his left and when this one came out it hit my old Dad’s antique piano!”
Her friend winced, as did we all: “Much damage?”
she asked
“Never be able to use the middle ‘C’ key again”
“Didn’t he come and ask for your help?”
“No, he had another three cracks at it before
consulting me: the first removed the lampshade from the ceiling, the second hit
the light switch on the wall, plunging him momentarily into darkness, and the
third...well that was the worst of all; that’s what got the *RSPB and Police
involved”
By this point, it is fair to say that nothing else
mattered in the lives of all the passengers on board the 165 to Kings Heath
from Solihull. The world could spin off it axis, the universe could implode and
Moscow could release its nuclear arsenal and no one would be even the slightest
bit interested. All that mattered to everyone on that bus, on that particular
warm and pleasantly sunny summer’s day afternoon was Norman, his suppositories
and his Kalashnikov backside.
“The Police and the RSPB? What brought the Police
and RSPB to your door?”
Our note books came out; no one was going to get
this bit wrong, we all felt that this was going to be pivotal to the re telling
of our story later on in the pub that night.
“Well, as you may recall, last Thursday night was
very warm and as a result we had our front room windows open and Norman was, by
this point, reloading his fifth suppository and his bum was facing the open
window. It’s fair to say that this last one went the same way as the others and
flew like a rocket from his backside and out of the window, exploding a Lesser
Spotted Woodpecker from our Cherry tree”
“No!!” gasped short and dumpy as all our pencil
leads snapped in surprise
“Scouts honour” she said raising her hand, making
the girl guides salute by mistake
“But how did that involve the Police and RSPB?”
“Turns out that one of them bird spotter’s was outside
on a moonlit walk--- had heard the bird and tracked it down to our cherry tree--- he’d just fixed his binoculars on the bird when Norman’s suppository took it
out. He called the police and told them that a man had shot a bird out of a
tree and judging by how the bird exploded he must’ve had a high power snipers
rifle: he’d apparently added that seeing as he’d done his national service and
knew a lot about these things they should proceed with extreme caution”
Outside the bus, even nature had stopped what it
was up to and was listening in as this incredible story unfolded.
“So within ten minutes, the whole street was
cordoned off, the S.W.A.T. team was in place and the SAS were on standby. Of
course me and Norman had no idea what was going on outside and it was while I
was reading the instructions from the packet and Norman was half way through
inserting his sixth suppository of the night that the bedroom door caved in
and the room was suddenly swarming with police officers wearing heavy duty body
armour and machine guns with pistols aimed at us”
Short and dumpy gasped; we held our breath and
nature blinked in anticipation.
“What happened then?” she asked, even though she,
like the rest of us all had a pretty good idea.
“Well Norman’s backside went off, shooting a
special issue Sig P220 from a SWAT officer’s hand, and then all hell broke
loose: gun’s were blazing, ornaments flew everywhere, the lampshades danced to
the gun fire, the curtains were smoking with cordite, my hot water bottle was
shredded and the whole room will need a complete re papering; but amazingly no
one got hurt”
The whole bus fell into an awed silence. Short and
dumpy was the first to regain control and she asked: “How did it get sorted out
in the end?”
“Well eventually Norman was released, but not
until he’d spent a very uncomfortable night in the cells, made a full statement
and forensics had done an autopsy on the woodpecker and found minute traces of
Hydrocortisone Acetate Suppository in the bird”
“Well I never” said short and dumpy “so how’s your
Norman dealing with the bleeding piles now?”
“Matches”
“Eh?”
“Well he had another incident with the suppositories---this
time in the broom cupboard where he couldn’t damage the local wildlife---when
it shot out again he tripped the electricity box. So he struck a match to see
what he was doing with his next one, got a little too close to his backside,
the flame set fire to the hairs on his bum and within three seconds they’d all
been singed off and the flame had cauterised his haemorrhoids stopping the
bleeding”
Well , what can I tell you, the whole bus simply
erupted into applause, we even stood up to give them a standing ovation;
forgetting that the two old ladies were still blissfully unaware of the fact
that we were all listening in. They turned at the raucous sounds in genuine
shock but we carried on in our appreciation of their entertainment in its
purist form. I swear if we’d had flowers they would have been presented to
them.
I’ve since spent many an hour on trains or sitting
in motorway cafes listening to other people’s conversations, and although
some have been genuinely entertaining and indeed enlightening, nothing has ever
come close to what those ladies did for our Saturday afternoon. Ladies, your
were one offs; the genuine article and great story tellers.
God bless y’
*For my
readers from outside of the UK, the RSPB stands for Royal Society for the
Protection of Birds
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