"The night bus to London is a Glaswegian rite of passage. Most people try it once, attracted by the twenty-quid ticket, the comfortable seating and the promise of arriving in London as fresh as a daisy early in the morning. Only the poor or desperate do it twice. Maureen had done it many times. She always forgot how bad the journey was until she got to the station but her experience had given her a number of tips. The upstairs deck was the most comfortable because it was far from the smell of the chemical toilet and was usually warmer, which made it possible to sleep. It tended to attract the crazies but it filled up more slowly, making it easier to get and keep a double seat to herself. The double seat was the big prize: it meant she could stretch out and leave the bus without aching everywhere."
[p. 187 of Denise Mina's 'Exile']
5 comments:
Very attractive paragraph.
I used to do it back in the days before cheap advance rail tickets - what a fucking nightmare!
I once recall an 11 hour trip on board a National Express coach from Newcastle to London with a broken loo. Christ, the things you do for Socialism!
Just like Maureen, the character in the book, I've always been a drunk magnet when I took the bus from London to Scotland.
It wouldn't matter if I was to book a coach trip with the Temperance Society and there was only 7 people booked on a 64 seat coach. Just as the coach would be pulling out the station, Bobby Bottle would turn up, three sheets to the wind, plop himself down next to me and then promptly fall asleep on my shoulder before we get out of Victoria.
Happened every bastard time. ;-)
I found that it was always better to be the drunk rather than the magnet. It was the only thing that made that nitemare bus journey bearable.
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