"The Bus Driver's Knee" (part two)

Slowly, I turn to stone and set upon you as a long lost anchor might in the sands of our vast empty oceans. My face is a blur as I encase you with my Love and never ever let you go!





"Part Two"


This is Rob, The owner of this fine looking boat, said Neil.


The boat was indeed a fine boat! All shiny, where there was brass. And beautiful bright paint that covered the rest of her. Well hidden from the river Thames proper. One couldn't see her if you were to find yourself passing by on a leisure boat or maybe if you were taking a stroll along the tow-path across the other side of the river.

I just looked at the ground and went all shy. I was a very shy person and would always look at the ground when confronted with new people. When I was very young and my Mum had visitors in the house, they would think there was something wrong with me! Why doesn't he talk? Can he talk? What does he do there hidden away between the wall and the sofa?
I couldn't move. If I moved so much as an inch then my presence would be detected and my cover would be blown! I would then have to say hello or even worse sit on someones lap or have my cheek squeezed or god forbid, kissed! I was good at keeping still. I don't need a solid wall to Hide behind.
In fact, I would on occasion go back to my hiding place there behind the sofa when I was all alone and play with matches! I used to Love playing with fire! I still do.

This was a man who I admired already though! He was the owner of an actual WW2 torpedo boat and to top it all off, he was a fucking bus driver too! I have caught a few buses in my pre-car years and I would either be found up stairs on the top deck, right at the front sitting right over where the driver would be. I would look down into the little glass window that the driver would use to see if someone was being murdered or was smoking up on the top deck or drawing on the windows. I could just make out the face of the driver through the numerous prisms and mirrors that joined up the two windows. And if I wasn't upstairs, I would be down stairs actually watching the bus driver with my very own eyes. Especially his arms and hands steering the giant bright red machine around the tight narrow streets of Twickenham. It always amazes me how they get those things around those tight little corners. I imagined I would be a fantastic bus driver!

Come in, come in, said Rob the bus driver, as Neil & I both stepped onto the deck of the boat. Make yourselves at home.

Yeah right, I thought. I'll go up to my room and have a wank shall I?

I could never make myself at home in a strange mans house, let alone a strange mans boat! What if it floated away downstream and ended up in the middle of the ocean! As I looked at the floor I did manage to see that the brass that was so magnificently displayed on the outside of the boat had also exquisitely crept into the cabin area too. Amongst all the brightly polished brass and various post cards from all over the world that were neatly displayed on the shelves and sort of Dashboard area, were a whole bunch of circular glass dials about five inches across set in beautiful frames of more brass. I didn't ask, but I presumed that these were the dials that told the Skipper how fast or how slow he was going. The rest of the room looked dark in comparison. Almost black. Coming inside from the bright sunshine made everything apart from the brass quite difficult to see.
Neil had gone off into the kitchen area, I could tell it was a kitchen because I heard a kettle switch on and start boiling and the sound of metal tea spoons clinking against china. I just kept looking between the floor & the brass and saw Rob had shuffled over to my side and asked me what I thought.
I said that it was quite impressive. As my eyes got used to the light change I saw that he was not wearing any shoes but still had his socks on that were white. His trousers were the distinctive light grey colour of a bus drivers uniform. He said, Impressive only?, it takes hours of elbow grease to keep that brass as shiny as that.
I eventually looked up from the dark coloured carpet, polished brass in my peripherals and up along his legs, past his belted waist to his face. He was jacketless and just had a crisp white shirt on, just like the kind a bus driver would wear, although I had seen some of them wearing grey shirts. I always thought the white ones much better.
His hair was grey and neatly cut, his chin covered in a whitish prickly stubble, which reminded me of my dad.

So this is what bus drivers looked like when they weren't driving buses I thought.



To be continued...





Jason








(C) JPT 2008.........

"My Cycling for July 2008"

Phil & I near Holmbury St Mary, Surrey, 13th July.


Well, as you learned in my last cycling post, I came down with the lurgee which lasted most of the second half of July but that didn't stop me from getting out there on my bike with a bit of a chest infection! I even think it helps to clear it if you can get out and work those lungs a bit. So thats what I did. And besides, I was positively going mad having not ridden my bike for a total of 10 days in a row!!!

The rest of July saw me out a few more times between going to a music festival and school reunion with an old friend:) It seemed to take me ages to recover fully and get back into the swing of things where cycling was concerned. I even managed to dent my frame (Elvis) when I nearly came a cropper down a particularly technical rooty section of single track in Swinley Forest. I was momentarily distracted for a split second and almost went over the handlebars, but instead managed to step off to the side as there was a steep bank there, but unfortunately it was covered in roots that my bike fell on. The dent is only small and won't effect the strength of the tube, which is good:)

As I write this (sort of mid August) the weather has been alright I suppose, so far. I should have been taking part in a sponsored bike ride in aid of the Haemophilia Society but have thought long and hard about it and decided to knock it on the head. Mainly because my right knee hasn't been feeling quite right the last month or so and the mileage involved and the unpredictability of the terrain I thought it better to not take any unnecessary risks! I'll talk more about the sponsored ride in next months post, by which time Matthew Moulding (ride organizer & lead rider) will have finished his amazing 1200 mile off-road adventure.

Congratulations to Phil by the way for doing his bit (the first week) in a midgey infested Scottish Highlands! I saw the evidence just last Sunday when we rode Holmbury & Leith Hills together. His legs are absolutely covered in midgey bites still!!!!

See you all next time:)


Tuesday 1st July 2008 @ 16:00pm, RP, 16.54 miles, av 14.3, max 28.5 mph, 1h 9mins, during my ride I came across a mountain bike lying on the road in Kingston by the bridge and a skip lorry, all of which was cordoned off by police tape and being photographed by police photographers! There had been an accident where the cyclist was knocked off by the lorry and the bike was bent like a banana! Apparently, it wasn't all that serious. I found the incident in the local paper the following week and the cyclist escaped with only a minor leg injury!! Lucky fucker or what!!! Temp 27. Total 1373.68 miles.

Friday 4th July 2008 @ 17:00pm, SF, Lee Ian, 16.84 miles, av 9.3, max 21.3 mph, 1hr 39mins, dry, warm, temp 19. Total 1390.52 miles.

Tuesday 8th July 2008 @ 18:00pm, 12.85 miles, RP, av 13.9, max 26.1 mph, 55mins, mild, windy. Total 1403.37 miles.

Sunday 13th July 2008 @ 13:00pm, HH, LH, Phil, 21.10 miles, av 8, max 38.8 mph, 2hrs 37mins, warm, sunny. Right knee didn't quite feel right! Developed a rotten cold & chest infection the next day! Total 1424.47 miles.

Thursday 24th July 2008 @ 14:00pm, Jac, RP, 21.26 miles, av 11.5, max 27.4 mph, 1hr 51mins, temp 28, wind 11, very hot, still had cold & cough and knee playing up (right)! Good to get out though! Total 1445.73 miles.

Sunday 27th July 2008 @ 20:00pm, Lee, HH, PH, 11.82 miles, av 7.9, max 22.5 mph, 1hr 29mins, very warm, temp 25 (30 during the day), right knee hurt again! Total 1457.55 miles.

Tuesday 29th July 2008 @ 20:00pm, Lee, SF, 14.39 miles, av 8.4, max 21 mph, 1hr 42 mins, warm, right knee hurt after 10 miles, used lights for the first time since winter. Total 1471.94 miles.




Jason








(C) JPT 2008.........1471.94 miles (to end of July)

"The Bus Driver's Knee" (part one)

Come, child. Come sit on my knee!



"Part One"

What's it going to be then, eh?

They were the words that were left floating around my empty mind!

I can't decide, I thought to myself. You decide for gods sake, decide!, I said out loud.

Well, I know this bloke who owns this WWII torpedo boat. He lives with another man down by the marina next to Radnor Gdns and he says I can come round and see it anytime I want, he's well generous and said he might even take me up the river in it.

What, near where the old bags play bowls?

Yeah, thats the place, You wanna go?

Fuck Yeah!

Well that was enough for me! We were halfway through our Summer school holidays and bored shitless. I had know idea how Neil new this man with the torpedo boat, but how on earth could I turn down an offer such as this. I couldn't wait to see it. It certainly beat setting fire to railway embankments and spying on homeless weirdos who live in secret tunnels under the roads of Twickenham. Not to mention the hours wasted talking about American custom cars, reading BMX magazines, talking about kissing girls, tits and wanking.

I found out the owner of the torpedo boat was called Rob and he was a bus driver. He always wore his grey uniform. The man that lived with him, I didn't know his name, was never there when Rob was in. Just Rob and his Dalmatian dog, who was as deaf as a post.
The first time I saw that boat I was speechless! It was immaculate! The brass that covered the boats wonderfully preserved surfaces, inside and out, were always polished and although it didn't have any torpedoes anymore, it did have a history in that it used to ferry supplies over to the French coast for the men fighting in the Second World War. I have always Loved battleship grey. It reminds me of the ocean. I could only stand in wonderment as to the sorts of magnificent ships that this tiny little boat had chugged between. The sun was high in the sky and made a b-line straight for the shimmering brass fixtures & fittings.

I was very young at the time, maybe about 9 or so. Neil was a year older than I, but much more mature and unlike me, he could already produce something called Spunk from his penis. He once showed me a polaroid of his Mums boyfriend. He had an erection in it! I never looked at the man in the same way again! I was quite jealous that Neil was able to do this kind of stuff. He also showed me what this spunk looked like once whilst he was showing me his penis. He had an erection, bigger it seemed than mine would ever be, and pulled his foreskin back, something else I couldn't do! He pointed to this tiny amount of white stuff that resembled cotton fluff around the edge of what he called his German helmet. I was amazed at what I saw and wondered when I would see some of my very own. Much later on, about three or four years, I came to realize that it was in fact cotton fluff from his pants that he was showing me and not spunk at all! Real spunk was, still is a wonderful substance that if it were humanly possible one would continuously spray it over anything and everything, including oneself! I never saw my German helmet until I was circumcised some 20 years later! I wasn't allowed one because of my bleeding disorder! Of all the many trips to hospital over the years, I often found myself wondering if my foreskin would ever grace the inside of one of those 'Hospital Waste! For Incineration Only' skips outside the back of the hospital. And then, when I finally did have it cut away, I imagined what a thousand foreskins might look like all in a single pile, with mine flopped on the top like someones discarded chewing gum.

Thats all we did back in those days. Talked about erections, spunk, cocks, girls and wanking and listening on his record player to the sounds of drag cars screeching their way up the rubber scorched, twin black strips of Santa Pod's 1/4 mile stretch on a flimsy 7" record that he'd gotten free with an old copy of Custom Car magazine.
But a trip to see Neil's new friend Rob and his amazing torpedo boat seemed like a wonderful idea. Something different. Something to boast about when we eventually went back to school later on that year.


To be continued...



Jason

P.s. Happy Birthday to my best mate Lee tomorrow:)








(C) JPT 2008.........