Further Information Concerning the Bus

I’m always seeing important people on the bus. I see the Sleazy Cavalier with his slicked-back hair and oxblood boots, the hint of a twizzle to his ‘tache. Now there’s a man with something afoot in his cellar. The Virgin Mare gets on at the Co-op, pushing Little Baby Bluebird in his Silver Cross pram and cooing all the way to town. Poor Sad Satchel, getting the bus to school with her mum, the two of them sitting at the front like a pair of pepperpots with matching choppy bobs. The one I call Rosie, all bulging pink Kappa and ginger-grey roots, who I like to think of naked on her leather-look sofa, watching CBeebies and binging on fudge.

Do they think of me? Do they notice me every day and wonder? Do they say to themselves, there she goes again – why doesn’t she do something about that hair? What is she hiding under her coat? Why does she only have one eye open? And what is that smell? Maybe they have little daydreams like I do, imaginary cataclysms that leave The People of The 302 clamouring for survival in a post-apocalyptic Paddock. I can spend the whole twenty minutes debating which one I’d eat first.

In Which Horses Are Indeed Mentioned

I've decided inside now that I live on an island, a cold rock hunkered down somewhere in the north. I make my liquor out of samphire and my boots out of the seals, hunt soft, sweet crabs in the rock pools and rabbits in the scrub. I eat my fish in waist-deep waves, slicing them to sashimi with my knife of flint and licking out the roe.

My boat is small but he is brave and sometimes I sleep beneath him just to listen to the rain. There are goats on the island but I don't trust them and the foul-tasting puffins nest fat and useless on the cliffs. Down by the dark pool the horses stand, piebald with lichen and unsettlingly still. The dark pool has a skin on it so thick you could walk across it, if you dared.

At night I sit in my implausible caravan as the wind butts and mutters outside. I carve little scrimshaw kittens and read my murderbooks at the table, picking the faux-walnut vinyl off its top. Whales pass by from time to time and once a year the squid come, their lights dancing in the water like drowning stars.

Here on the outside I have another cup of tea. I have spent the morning corralling cats and sewing outlandish trousers and the rest of the day stretches ahead of me in a tangle of wool and hair, paper and smoke, Strictly Come Dancing and softboiled eggs. Later, though, I'll sit shivering in a salted bath and with my fingers in my ears I'll be able to hear the gulls.

The Weather Inside is Frightful

And so the snow came, whiting it all out, Tippexing us a tabula rasa for the spanking new year, then smearing it all with late-train, grit-stained, blue-knuckled chaos. I thought about making resolutions, considered self-improvement by denial, cutting out the fags, the booze, the fried food and pointless cruelty. Then I shook myself, said don't be silly, sweetie, and came up with the perfect, catch-all resolution: increase my dominion.

Be Afraid, Be Mildly Afraid

When I was a little girl, wind-up teeth gave me nightmares. I was terrified of the theme tune to Birds of a Feather. Haybales, bundled in black plastic and just waiting in the fields, made me nauseous. I was frightened of Radio Assembly as well, but that was because Gareth Minhall used to kick me in the back. I was afraid that my father would somehow get lost in space like Major Tom, or that my toy animals were sentient and sad with no way to tell me. I was scared that I would forget the words to Grace and get told off by the dinnerladies, and for some reason I was convinced that Ben O’ Brian was plotting to put me in a big jelly. I had an eye for the uncanny and an almost constant sense of unease and it was thrilling.

Now I am a big girl I’m afraid of bigger things, like money and responsibility and the cat-litter tray. I’m afraid I’ll be crushed to death on the 8.30 to Dewsbury, that I will die with my nose shoved in a fat man’s armpit. I’m scared of my potential, in both directions. I miss being frightened of monstrous trifles. Tonight my Snout and I are venturing out to the cinema, to see a scary film, and I intend to get very frightened indeed. When we come home I’m going to fuse the lights on purpose and sleep with one foot out of the duvet.

On the Buses

Sometimes it pleases me to take the bus to nowhere special. I sit on the top deck, at the back. The seat you choose on the bus is a clear indicator of your position on the snakes and ladders board of morality. When you are on the bus there is nothing you can do about it. It’s another place, suspended animation, and all you can do is sit back and wait for your stop. People can’t help but nod off, morning and night, against their will. Sleeping on the bus is like lapsing into a series of short comas. I like to watch them as their heads loll until the bus jolts and clunks their skulls against the window or they snort awake of their own accord and slyly wipe away their drool. Some winter nights when the heaters are working, the natal throb of the engine lulls us all to sleep, the whole top deck enchanted in our scarves and rain-damp coats. The bus is best in the winter. In the summer it smells of corned beef and testicle sweat.

I sit up there on the top deck and I look in through people’s windows, catch glimpses of the Other through half-drawn curtains. I like to see where they sleep. Sometimes, though, there are girls behind me talking about ISAs and weddings and what they are going to have for their tea, or gobshite chavs spread-eagled one to a seat listening to tinny trance on their mobile phones, and I can’t concentrate on my spying for thinking about standing up and turning round and exposing myself to them, pulling my trousers right down to my knees and showing them everything.