"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.........