I figured I should post something to get the ball rolling (or the engine started, haw haw), so here’s one of my vintage posts from 7th December 2012, Facebooked live from my seat on the bus as the episode unfolded…
I got on the number 9 this morning, and about half way in to the journey a humongous fat stubbly man got on and decided to sit beside me (but when I say beside, I mean mostly on top of me because the seats are tiny and he was what the Daily Mail might call “morbidly obese” and what the Daily Record might call “Dave from Cessnock”) and he starts hacking and coughing and spluttering all over me, violently snorting his snotters and then doing that phlegm rattling thing in the back of his throat until eventually he’s got too much of it swilling about in there that he has to lean forward and gob the whole thing up between his legs, right there on the floor in front of me. Now I usually have a pretty good constitution, but by this point I’m feeling a bit green at the gills with this huge smelly disease ridden beast practically sitting on my face. My overactive imagination starts to project those giant germs off the Domestos advert, launching themselves with every splutter and crawling their slimey way down my face until I am infected and catch lurgy and die. And just when I think things can’t get any worse, a mobile starts ringing and vibrating against my thigh—but I know that my phone is in my bag, and my ringtone doesn’t sound like someone playing Copacabana on a 90’s Casio keyboard, and next thing I know Man-Beast thrusts his big hairy hand in his pocket and starts rummaging about and is elbowing me in the face and bashing me in the leg and breathing fags and germs and coffee and tuberculosis in my face as he attempts to get the bloody thing out of his pocket. Eventually he does. And in his deep, gruff, pleuritic voice, he says “Hullo?”, and amidst heavy breathing and panting I hear a distant muffled voice on the other end ask a question, to which Man-Beast replies “Aye, this is Shiela.” And I find it hard to hide my look of utter astonishment as I spin round and look Man-Beast square in the jowly face and discover that, yes, in fact: Shiela is a woman.