It was my day off and I had already visiting Wells and Glastonbury so today I thought I would venture further afield and go to Bristol. 
I found a cafe at the dockside, sat outdoors and ordered my salmon from the menu. When the bill came I asked them to take off the “optional 10% service charge” which they printed in very small writing, “will be added to your bill”. Bloody cheek.
After lunch the heat got turned up and I decided it was too hot to walk around Bristol and that I should head back to Street. I got on the 376 to Wells and off we went. Across the aisle from me was a young chap with greasy black hair, rotten front teeth, black nylon shirt, black patterned tie and dirty black trousers. He spoke constantly in a very thick Bristol accent about everything he could see out of the window to his friend Joe, who was sitting in the seat behind me. He read extracts from the Daily Star to Joe (celebrity gossip mostly). He read very slowly, each word, one at a time and so I had him down as “a bit thick”.
After about 10 minutes I heard the tramp-like man at the front of the bus say to the driver that he should call an ambulance and I looked up from my Sudoku. The bus stopped and the driver called the ambulance for a woman sitting near the front. Everyone was calm and the woman was attended to by another passenger. The rest of us sat and melted. It was the hottest day of the year and we were stuck on a bus with no air-conditioning waiting at the side of the road for the medic to come.
The lad across the aisle from me (let’s call him Mr Black) decided to remove some of his clothes, his tie came off first and then he unbuttoned his shirt completely so that it hung loosely off his shoulders. Then the ill woman was sick. Mr Black gave me and the others at the back of the bus a running commentary. The sick was coming out of the bottom of the bag now. “Drive (short for driver) you should get another bag”, he shouted “the sick is coming out the bottom.” The driver obliged. The medic came and Mr Black ran to where the woman was and offered to carry her big bag off the bus as she was helped off by the medic. Apparently she had recently had a stroke and had just come off a long flight so I guess it might have been something a more serious than fainting.
When the woman had left, the bus driver started up the engine and without any prompting, Joe, a young lad with a pony tail, and Mr Black’s friend, walked from the back of the bus with some tissues, cleaned up some of the sick and put newspaper over the rest (whilst holding his nose).
As the bus pulled off Mr Black joked to the driver, “Hey Drive, don’t stop at any bus stops now ok, go straight to Wells” Everyone laughed. Off we went to Wells occassionally building up enough speed to get some air through the barely open windows. Unfortunately, the smell of the vomit lingered and as Mr Black announced to everyone “I get a waft of it every time we go round a corner” They laughed again.
He asked some questions about me and I told him Ilived in China. He asked “Is there a Chinatown in Shanghai?” I told him that it was one giant Chinatown. With the sick womann still playing on his mind he told his friend Joe, ” She would be ideal for my Dad. She’s a real hypochondriac.” I had to smile at that.