Okay, I'm up... I'm up!

Mornings on the bus again. The other day must have been exam time in the Tech, cos the upper deck was packed out with satchel carrying scarecrows of the type I used to be before I mysteriously found a briefcase in my hand.

"Audrey doesn't like me."

"Yeah, man... Two goals in two minutes. I have Spurs in the Fantasy Football...."

"DintsDintsDintsDintsDintsDints!"

"Ya bollocks."

Only DintsDintsDints can't hear Ya bollocks, because DintsDintsDints has one of those mobile phones cum music players plugged into his two side orifices, going DintsDintsDints all along the bus route.

Ya bollocks is a non-descript looking chap whose outbursts come at random moments and to no-one in particular.

Downstairs, a man in his twenties who I take to be on his way to some kind of training workshop, is hanging into the driver's compartment.

"Do you... do you... do you.... do you... do you... follow soccer?"

Audrey doesn't like me waffles on in the Champion Shallow Stakes.

I resist the urge to lick the condensation on the window pane and die.

"Ya bollocks."

"DintsDintsDintsDintsDintsDintsDintsDintsDints!"

"Ya bollocks."

Ya bollocks.

In the Square, I meet the training workshop chappie walking backwards by the cinemas. He's almost in rapture at the sight of a photo in the sports pages of a tabloid he's just bought. He grabs a random stranger and pushes the paper and its picture into his face:

"Isn't he just a big cry BABY...?"

I pass on by and go to work.

Ya bollocks.

Me Ma would be proud.