Appendix

My Friend's Story

I was on the bus. It was raining outside and before being on the bus I was not on the bus, I was outside in the rain. My feet were wet, my shoes were soaked and my socks were damp. I was trying to read a short story but I had bigger things my mind than the death of Ivan Ilyich, I was thinking I'm going to have to go to work with wet feet. Then I hear a friendly voice,
"Oh, ello."
The friendly voice was my friend's voice. I put aside my book and we talked. I asked him what he thought of the new 38 routemaster buses. He told me that he's always felt kind of nauseous on the bus and on these new 38's, he feels even more so. The ceilings are lower than they are on the older 38's, you see. Anyhow, Boris has got back in. Good for him you could say. A different friend of mine was once complaining about how Boris promised to lower wages somewhere or other, his office or something, but failed on this promise and instead raised these wages. It strikes me that raising wages is not the problem, it strikes me that it's wages not being raised that is the problem. What would I know about politics though? I'm not paid to think about these things. My friend and I were both heading to our jobs to be paid minimum wage.
By the time we reached Essex Road we were talking about the night bus. The 38 at night has been nicknamed, by my brother, the dirty-eight. My friend went into a story about waiting for the dirty-eight in the centre of London. It went like this,

"Man, waitin' for the 38, man. I was waiting for the 38 last week... There were these two lesbians arguing; 'you don't love me', 'I don't love you'. Just goin' at it. Lesbians can argue man. Could you imagine having two girlfriends? Could you imagine those girlfriends bein each others girlfriend? That's how bad lesbians can argue man. Then there's this girl sat there, pretty much passed out but just about awake. She gives me a wink. Well not a wink, but she was trying to. She was alright you know. I'd have gone along with it if she hadn't thrown up all over herself. Then this guy comes up to me and he's all like, 'They fucked me bruv, fucked me' and I'm just 'OK' and he goes 'you don't understand, they fucked me, they stuck their dicks up my arse mate' and now I'm thinkin' I've had enough of this. He keeps goin' on, 'they fucked me, what should I do' so I tell him 'well you could find some cops and tell them but if it was me I'd find out where they live and I'd burn their house up and make sure they're in it at the time'. He keeps going on. I just ended up walking to the next bus stop."

"Cool story", I said, thinking if only I could write something like that.