Read Online Boswell's Bus Pass by Stuart Campbell - Free Book Online
Authors: Stuart Campbell
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connecting bus to Arbroath arrived so promptly as to fuel speculation that the SNP nurse Mussolini inspired aspirations for the country’s transport system. The bus’s card reading system, so efficient that it could spot a pensioner’s pass through an inch thick wallet, is a prototype for the full body scanners being installed at airports to enhance security. Angus drivers are also undertaking trauma training to prepare them for the shock of viewing the unclothed outlines of their fellow citizens.
We were privy, if that is the best word, to the staccato conversation of a three generation family who crowded noisily into several seats. As their enthusiastic discussion embraced the topics of theft, imprisonment , beatings, arson attempts and sundry judicial proceedings it was important not to make eye contact with any of them in case it was construed as an affront to the family honour, an action which would, in turn, lead inexorably to the aforementioned eyes being gouged from their owners’ respective sockets and eaten.
Once they left I told David that at this point on the original journeyBoswell had sounded Johnson out about his views on transubstantiation . Despite Boswell’s self deprecating disclaimer, ‘This is an awful subject,’ I asked David for his thoughts. After an impressive atheistic rant about all world religions he said the debate was as pointless as discussing whether fairy eyes were pink or green. I saw his point but read to him Johnson’s observation that ‘If God had never spoken figuratively, we might hold that he speaks literally when he says “This is my body’’’. This gave rise to speculation, as Boswell might have said, about the precise number of words directly spoken by Christ in the New Testament. Apart from the Sermon on the Mount we couldn’t think of many between us and both agreed, without any real conviction, that we would look up the answer.
At the ironic wave of a wand Arbroath had become a bijou après ski resort. By municipal decree puffed out pastel-shaded anoraks and multi-coloured woollen hats were now mandatory. The seagulls lined up on a wall pecked at edelweiss instead of pizza. Shopkeepers dispensed Gluhwein and bonhomie before slapping each other’s thighs and humming the chorus of
Tomorrow Belongs to Me
.
The illusion was soon shattered by one of the ugliest sights encountered so far and for which there is no equivalent in the accounts of Johnson or Boswell. We were confronted by an obese man bending down beside his car. His trousers and underpants had surrendered to gravity and sunk to an area of his anatomy best defined as lower buttock, revealing a cleavage more suited to parking a bike. It was a brave, existential, but truly shocking gesture in these sub-arctic temperatures.
Dr Johnson declared ‘I should scarcely have regretted my journey, had it afforded nothing more than the sight of Aberbrothick.’ He was referring to the ruined abbey, the size of which astonished him. It was still impressive and timeless when we visited. Its brown stones stood stark against the turquoise winter sky glimpsed through the ancient round windows.
Johnson records how his travelling companion made a fool of himself by climbing over the ruin ‘Mr Boswell, whose inquisitiveness is seconded by great activity, scrambled in at a high window, but found the stairs within broken and could not reach the top.’ We were unable to emulate his childish enthusiasm as the abbey and grounds were closed. The sign told us that they only ever opened on a whim during very hot days, and only if the local porcine society were performing acrobatics in the sky.
Frozen to the very core we sidled into the Victoria Bar near the station. To have attempted any manoeuvre more ambitious than a sidle would have disrupted the snooker game in progress. The punter resting on his cue may have modelled his stance on a Vettriano print but any attempt at cool was compromised by the pit-bull lookalike at his
We were privy, if that is the best word, to the staccato conversation of a three generation family who crowded noisily into several seats. As their enthusiastic discussion embraced the topics of theft, imprisonment , beatings, arson attempts and sundry judicial proceedings it was important not to make eye contact with any of them in case it was construed as an affront to the family honour, an action which would, in turn, lead inexorably to the aforementioned eyes being gouged from their owners’ respective sockets and eaten.
Once they left I told David that at this point on the original journeyBoswell had sounded Johnson out about his views on transubstantiation . Despite Boswell’s self deprecating disclaimer, ‘This is an awful subject,’ I asked David for his thoughts. After an impressive atheistic rant about all world religions he said the debate was as pointless as discussing whether fairy eyes were pink or green. I saw his point but read to him Johnson’s observation that ‘If God had never spoken figuratively, we might hold that he speaks literally when he says “This is my body’’’. This gave rise to speculation, as Boswell might have said, about the precise number of words directly spoken by Christ in the New Testament. Apart from the Sermon on the Mount we couldn’t think of many between us and both agreed, without any real conviction, that we would look up the answer.
At the ironic wave of a wand Arbroath had become a bijou après ski resort. By municipal decree puffed out pastel-shaded anoraks and multi-coloured woollen hats were now mandatory. The seagulls lined up on a wall pecked at edelweiss instead of pizza. Shopkeepers dispensed Gluhwein and bonhomie before slapping each other’s thighs and humming the chorus of
Tomorrow Belongs to Me
.
The illusion was soon shattered by one of the ugliest sights encountered so far and for which there is no equivalent in the accounts of Johnson or Boswell. We were confronted by an obese man bending down beside his car. His trousers and underpants had surrendered to gravity and sunk to an area of his anatomy best defined as lower buttock, revealing a cleavage more suited to parking a bike. It was a brave, existential, but truly shocking gesture in these sub-arctic temperatures.
Dr Johnson declared ‘I should scarcely have regretted my journey, had it afforded nothing more than the sight of Aberbrothick.’ He was referring to the ruined abbey, the size of which astonished him. It was still impressive and timeless when we visited. Its brown stones stood stark against the turquoise winter sky glimpsed through the ancient round windows.
Johnson records how his travelling companion made a fool of himself by climbing over the ruin ‘Mr Boswell, whose inquisitiveness is seconded by great activity, scrambled in at a high window, but found the stairs within broken and could not reach the top.’ We were unable to emulate his childish enthusiasm as the abbey and grounds were closed. The sign told us that they only ever opened on a whim during very hot days, and only if the local porcine society were performing acrobatics in the sky.
Frozen to the very core we sidled into the Victoria Bar near the station. To have attempted any manoeuvre more ambitious than a sidle would have disrupted the snooker game in progress. The punter resting on his cue may have modelled his stance on a Vettriano print but any attempt at cool was compromised by the pit-bull lookalike at his
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