I had performed Ayrtonesque manoeuvres to outwit the hairpin of the dole queue at the Post Office, a Zidane turn past the stallholder chasing a watermelon making a break for freedom from Ridley Road Market. I'd even made up time from a tailback behind a wall of two rhino-sized ladies transporting their daily intake of their own body weight in Iceland Bags down Kingsland Road, creating a bottleneck that stretched all the way to Stoke Newington, arriving at the bus stop having skipped across Balls Pond Road with a blatant disregard for self preservation in moving traffic.
Content that the frantic game of grumpy musical chairs had less velocity with the options on offer, I took my seat in a leisurely way, nodding to myself in approval at the seating arrangements.
I first caught sight of my aisle neighbour when someone accidentally knocked him as they passed. He jumped up, "Cunnnttt", the last syllable stretched as long as his half-extended tiny legs could hold, buckling back into his seat as he crossed his final 't'.
He was wearing the signature footwear of a lunatic, those shoes that look like special issue, the type that make you wonder where you get them in adult sizes, the laces pulled so tight that the eyelets look like angry eyes.
He looked like a frenzied combination of Pee-Wee Herman, Mr Burns, and the banjo-playing boy from Deliverence. He was wearing a baseball cap with its dilapidated leather strap pulled as tight as his laces, producing a protruding cushion of flaky scalp. I watched as he eyeballed his free paper, a Steptoe grimace spread across his face. `It quickly became apparent that he wasn't actually reading it, pinching the pages to turn them with ear waxy long fingernails, which oozed cuticles that had the appearance of nicotine stained Polyfiller.
Suddenly an almighty cough erupted from opposite me. I looked up to see a smartly dressed Indian recoiling from a seemingly blood-draining inner explosion. It was swiftly followed by another that nearly lifted me out of my seat. He was in his fifties, immaculately turned out, sitting with his hands resting on his knees. Next to him sat his wife, in equally splendid Indian formal dress, looking calm and, perhaps somewhat resolutely - though there was no hint of it in her expression - staring out of the window, her gaze never faltering despite the velocity of the eruptions next to her.
I could feel my shoulders tensing with each gap of silence. I couldn't help but imagine, with my limited yet vivid biological understanding, that the silence was the phlegm sticking to his lungs before dripping and filling his air passages.
My eyes then wandered nervously over the shrinking aisle, as I noticed first that the lunatic had crossed his legs, and then that he was tapping thin air furiously with his foot. As we pulled past Angel tube, the Indian gentleman let out a rib-splitting cough, causing the lunatic to protrude a vulture-like neck over the aisle to stare at him. His aged skin was almost completely hairless, his lack of eyebrows accentuating the wrinkles that looked as if they had been filled and left stained by Iron Bru. Dark hairs protruded from in and around his nose, like angry black thorns standing in line. He kept on staring. For two more stops his tiny eyes pierced the coughing Indian, motionless, his mouth hung open. During this time, the Indian's wife continued to look calm, gazing through the window, admiring the rain polished pavements of Roseberry Avenue while her husband caught explosions from within on the palm of his well-cuffed hand, his neatly trimmed moustache twitching like an angry cat, before returning to still serenity between each outburst.
My eyes were again nervously drawn to the lunatic, who was now facing me from across the aisle, his eyes transfixed on a tissue in his hands. He meticulously started to extract the contents of his nose with his long, long fingernails, laying out each find like a piece of cold meat ready to be seasoned. Now I was aware of the term, "searching for rubies", when you subconsciously check the contents of your tissue post blow, but he was lining his grotesque treasures in single file.
As another cough whistled past me like a stray bullet from an air gun, I frantically searched for my nearest exit. As we passed Grays Inn Road, I knew I only had a couple of stops left. Jumping out of my seat, I performed a mini high jump kick to avoid the newspaper and tissue that spilled off the lunatic's lap, brushing against me. I saw the tissue land treasure side down and stick to the newspaper on the floor. As I stepped off the bus onto Clerkenwell Road and freedom, I saw the bus pull away, and thought to myself how much I'd like to see the look on the face of the person who innocently picks up that free newspaper.
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