Tuesday 13 July 2004

The Most Revolting Man in the World

A whale of a man dragged himself huffing and puffing onto the bus, searched in his pocket for his bus pass leaning heavily on the bus driver's coin shelf, on pulling it out dropped his lighter on the floor.
"Know what I mean?" he growled to the driver by way of telling him off for jerking the bus and causing it to happen. He waited until the bus was stationary before bending over to pick it up. He leaned down with great difficulty holding on to the rail for support stretching a fat hand down to pick it up.

When the lighter was finally back in his pocket he turned to find a seat, he had a half smoked cigarette lodged in the gap where a missing inciscor should have been. And then his enormous grey liverspotted belly revealed itself from between the flappy sides of his open shirt. The most revolting specimen of man the world has ever seen. Blinded by the sight I tried hard not to stare and fixed my gaze on something out of the window. He slumped into a seat opposite a man with some shopping bags.
"You gowin shoppin?" His booming 60s gangster voice addressed the man. The man ignored him. "SHOPPIN?" He said again waving his own green plastic carrier in the man's face.
"Yes, shopping", the man finally replied.
"HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN HERE?"
"20 years"
"You ain't doing very well with the old english are ya?"
Before it got any worse I was glad we pulled into Finsbury Park and I could alight. One glance back through the bus window left me with the vision of him slumped in his chair, his shirt hanging away from his massive round belly, huge sloppy pecs sliding down either side, a vile grimace on his face.

I breathed deeply, having only just realised that the stale ashy smell that had caused my nose to close up and my breathing to become shallow was eminating from him, relieved to be released from what could have turned into bus hell.

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