Portion Control

Buses in Birmingham don't give any change. None whatsoever. This isn't advertised to the visitor, you have to find out yourself by getting on the bus with a tenner, maybe it's slightly too much but there's a chance he'll have a fiver and there's always a load of coins and you don't mind coins really they're good for buying snacks so everything'll be alright, but it wasn't and I had to get off dejected and sweaty with two bags having jogged from the hotel thinking I wouldn't want to not be on that bus because it could make me late and I don't want to be anything that isn't early, but I was because I had to go to McDonald's because it was the nearest place and quite far away too to hassle the moonfaced hunchback for some change from the till that doesn't open if no-one's making a purchase which I definitely wasn't because it was McDonald's so we had to wait for a girl with one earphone still in to umm and ahh and oh I'm not sure until she decided on a coffee at which point kerching and he slopped out some change and I went back to the bus stop with my two bags and less sweatily got the next bus and sat down upstairs until I saw the Audi garage the driver told me to look out for, I thought he was saying Irie garage, you want the Irie garage mate, right cheers, but when I saw the Audi sign I thought ah this must be the place, and I went back downstairs and the air was thick with schoolkids in uniforms tittering and I had to smash all their foreheads off just to reach the exit. Then I wasn't anywhere I should have been and I went into the garage and consulted an a to z and then another one and got a man who drove a lorry to point me where I needed to go then I went there and arrived.

The ferry was grey and we bought food that strongly resembled disaster and Beth paid nine euros ninety nine for a decomposing yellow shoe with some green beans round it and after we'd all finished we stuck our fingers in each other's mouths and brought the whole mess back up onto the plates and took it to the hatch for a partial refund. I still had some change left from the bus and thought about buying The Book of Mince which featured a martini glass full of meat on the front cover and contained "the" seventy-two recipes you'd be needing in your new mince-based existence.

We drove to Ardres which Geoff calls Calais' armpit. The local speciality is kebab on a grand scale deep fried and served with chips on a plate the size of Russia.
The next day we worked on the site and there was some confusion about a shed.
The day after that twelve tons of gravel arrived and some of us spread it and some of us did more cement-based things, while the shed-centric befuddlement escalated until eventually it was decided we should smash it to fucking pieces so we did and then burned it and went out for another massive kebab.

Much

Another year slides off the face and into the bin.
The bus ticket was one pound of money and fifty pence of despair more than I had imagined the upper limit could possibly be even in this new modern world we currently live in nowadays before I jogged to the bus and got on board. I regretted the jogging, and did an impression of the driver saying to me the number he'd just said, and before I'd finished he was saying yes, yes and looking at me like you're going to pay anyway, so just pay, I have to parade this robbery machine around the local area all week and say that price to people every day, and every day I discover that there isn't a way of saying it to someone who hasn't heard it that doesn't result in their doing an impression of me saying it to them but in a much more sarcastic voice than I had in fact said it.

Stubble and Thin

The man next to me on the bus was unprepared for the schoolful of kids who rushed in to squawk and fill the aisle. He started murmuring to me and himself about what can be done. Weren't there exclusive buses for the yelping shits? Aren't there still?
I unfogged the window and said yeah. And I dunno. He muttered something about maybe strangling one or two, while a solution was negotiated. He asked me what my thoughts were.
I said my thoughts are not my mind like the clouds are not the sky, then asked him if he played violent computer games. He didn't. He'd assumed they were for kids.
Not so, I said. They are big fun. Their killing takes your mind off your own killing, plus there's bad acting and explosions and rewards. You should definitely start.
He asked me what ones I played. I explained I didn't. That doesn't mean I don't want to. And I used to, a lot. Bang. Recently I've been thinking I should start playing Chess. I wish it was an outdoor sport like it is in New York, y'know, have you ever been?
But he didn't like Yanks, apparently, and left the bus more agitated and quieter than he was when he got on.