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

I am the one that waits by the end of your bed whilst you sleep. I wait until you notice me standing there in all my grotesque beauty! I shall wait forever for you!



"Part Four"




As I stepped out from the hot but glorious cabin of Rob's boat, I noticed Beechams look up from his silent, sun induced sleep and turn around to see us.

I thought Rob said his dog was deaf? I said to Neil.

He is deaf, he can feel us through the vibrations of us walking on the deck, said Neil as we walked side by side to the shop. It is only about one minutes walk away. All the people that own boats in the marina shop there. We passed their very nice looking boats along the way, but none as cool as Robs boat.
After jokingly looking at all the beers and spirits on sale we opted for several cans of Shandy Bass "British style lemonade mixed with the world renowned Bass Beer" it said on the side of the can. The fridge they came from was very cold and hummed steadily like a little twin prop plane a mile up in the sky at three in the morning. Along with the shandy, we also grabbed a couple of packets of Wine Gums. On our way to the cashier I took a quick look up at the top shelf of the magazine section. The dirty mags displayed there looked promising, like a bottomless bag of sweets or a big box of colourful fireworks. I thought how much I would like a pile of those under my bed for later on when I was alone. The one thousand butterflies in my tummy felt as though they were all holding hands and kissing. Erections came and went like the 281 bus in those days! It didn't take much either. The sound of a womans high heel shoes clicking along the pavement and I was there peeping through the curtains to see. The underwear section in my mum's catalogue was my favourite section, not the bikes nor the toys.

Neil soon dragged me away from the magazines and we made our way to the man behind the till. He was Indian and wore a turban on his head. After we bought our stuff we made a b-line for the exit thinking that we had just bought real alcoholic drinks. In fact, it had only 0.05% alcohol in it but that didn't stop us from gulping the stuff down with great speed, as funny as it seems we really honestly began to feel more and more drunk by the second. It was a great feeling as we ran back, frothy shandy spilling down our suntanned knuckles and down onto the sun scorched concrete of the ground. We skipped back like a couple of little girls, burping like mad and enjoying every second of it.

But before we made our way back to Robs, we went for a little walk to Radnor Gardens which was right by the shop. It is a kind of fenced grassy area wedged between the main road and the River Thames, used mostly for fishing, taking your dog to shit and where old people could play lawn bowls and get bitten by red ants! There was also a playground for kids and a sort of old concrete gazebo thing where heroin addicts would go to eat their sweets.
Also in one overgrown and well hidden corner, by the road, was a man-hole cover where, if you lifted it up and crawled down inside, you could creep along the pitch black tunnels that stretched under the main road to Twickenham and Popes Grotto. We had been down there before with only a box of matches and an old newspaper for light and only had the courage to get to the first corner after spotting a strange man hiding down there in the dark, before running back the way we came at record speed and scrambling back out of the hole back into the safety of daylight. We scared each other even more by convincing ourselves that he wasn't a man at all, nor even human, who would wait for small vulnerable but ultra curious children to walk into his lair where he would grab you, undress you and cover your mouth with a strip of smelly, dirty old rag and then hang you up on rusty old meat hooks that were screwed into the dark damp walls of the tunnel like trophies. Sometimes he would sit you up by his side whilst he held a match close to your naked trembling body and stare at you! And when he'd finished with you he would cut you up into tiny little bits and at midnight would climb out of his hole and feed you to the ducks in the Thames! We didn't go in there too many times!
As we walked along the foot path right next to the rivers edge, we came across a fisherman sat by the steep sided bank. The concentration smeared across his face was almost as still as the float that was attached to the end of his line. He jumped and quickly looked around at us, almost breaking his neck as Neil said to him, Oi mister! Caught anything good?
No, not yet!, said the fisherman, as he looked back at his dead still, bright orange tipped float. Just a maggot. he sarcastically went on to say.
Alright Grandad, keep your fucking hair on! Neil burped back as he grabbed me by the arm and said Come on! lets leave the old bugger to play with his maggots.

With our bellies full of shandy and our gobs stuffed with Wine Gums we bloatedly walked back to the magnificent torpedo boat.





Jason








(C) JPT 2008