Boswell's Bus Pass (4 page)

After spending four excruciating days in Edinburgh, hobnobbing with an array of toadying local dignitaries, hangers-on, and minor literary figures including a tame blind poet both men were restless to start on the journey. David and I were equally eager.

The planning had gone well. A friend of a friend had a boat and was keen to support a project as outrageous as this. He did warn us that Inchkeith Island was rat infested and unhelpfully left us with a nightmare image of a seething brown landscape circled by waves heavy with dead rats. The dangers seemed sufficiently alarming for us to have second thoughts. We could take our pick: Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS), a deadly disease transmitted by infected rodents through urine, droppings or saliva; Murine Typhus carried by rat fleas; Rat-bite Fever contracted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated by rat faeces; Eosinophilic Meningitis, a particular favourite, transmitted by the rat lung worm.

To compound the nature of the challenge he explained that unless we sought permission to land we could be summarily hanged from the abandoned fortifications for wanton trespass and, according to Scots Law, for the presumption of rat theft.

It was with mixed feelings then that David and I, shivering on the pontoon at Granton harbour, absorbed the news that the trip had been abandoned because of force eight gales. Furthermore the boat was
about to be taken out of the water for the winter. Match abandoned.

Consumed with anti-climax we stared gloomily out of the bus window at the bleak urban skyline. Not since my parents had cancelled a holiday because of my bad behaviour had I felt such acute disappointment.

Suddenly the perspective shifted; as frequently happens in old movies the screen that was the rain-dribbled window started to shimmer and we heard the strange watery music that inevitably announced a dream sequence …

… David had dressed for the part, a cross between Long John Silver and Captain Birds Eye. His voluminous pockets contained a full-sized sextant, a telescope, a cat o’ nine tails and a cutlass. On being lowered onto the frail vessel he hurled the ship’s cat overboard and sneered as it mewled its way into the spume. He fixed the owner with his good eye and bade him cast off. He proceeded to strap me to the bowsprit obliging me to sing the theme tune from
Titanic
and ordered me to report any wailing that could be attributed to wanton sirens. With water and several small crustaceans already clinging to his coat he roared loudly and vomited copiously into the face of the gale.

After a voyage made difficult by the unwanted attentions of Pirates from the Caribbean Inchkeith hove into sight. As our vessel dashed itself against the rock face David, displaying an extraordinary dexterity for a man of his age, clawed his way up the sheer cliff, ignoring the regurgitating puffins protecting their young. Finally he found himself staring at the boots of Tom Farmer the ostensible owner of the island. ‘Farmer you’re a dead man!’ he roared, sending him hurtling headfirst into the sea below.

David was keen to make contact with the descendants of the young babies abandoned on Inchkeith some 300 years previously in the company of a mute, dumb nurse as part of an experiment to determine the natural language of mankind. This was not one of James IV’s better ideas. He soon found them cowering in a small cave talking what he quickly identified as a hybrid of ancient Latin and Gaelic.

Ever quick to master new languages David interrogated them about their stay on the island. They informed him that the time had passed easily until the Middle Ages when the plague victims from Edinburgh were dispatched to the island.

Life had then proceeded smoothly for the next 200 years or so until the military had decided to establish a barracks on the island. As a
self-confessed
expert on all aspects of military history with a specialist interest in fort construction, David took copious notes and threatened to produce a small monograph on his return …

The movie faded and the images blurred back into the rain as the 38 bus entered the outskirts of Edinburgh.

The driver of the Kirkcaldy bound X58 seemed relieved to have at least two passengers as he left the still-bleak bus station to the knot of beggars for whom Fife probably seemed as distant as Nirvana or the Seven Mansions of Paradise (newly incorporated into the bus
timetable
but with a restricted service).

The road out of the city did yield a few surprises as the vantage point from the single decker was at least a metre higher than that provided by the average family saloon. It was possible to gaze fleetingly into the more obscure parts of Edinburgh Zoo and in particular its border with the posh hinterland of Cramond. David insisted that in living memory a family woke to find that a wallaby was already sitting upright in their home, paws on the table, waiting for its breakfast. More speculation followed: marmosets in the tea caddy; orang-utans in the Wendy House; a toad eating macaw in the bread bin.

The road to the Forth Bridge provided a brief glimpse into a caravan site normally hidden from view. Caravans to a vanishing point were tightly packed into a grey-white shanty town. Seeking to woo the popular vote the Scottish government had moved quickly to remove all caravans and mobile homes from the face of Northern Britain. The cull happened overnight. There had been little resistance. Never again would their owners move in infuriating convoy through the Highlands at a snail’s pace inducing apoplexy in all motorists condemned to follow in their wake.

The X58 was largely free from the tumble-weed detritus that habitually roams bus aisles wrapping itself round feet and insinuating itself into shopping bags and conversations.
The Metro
represents a publishing masterpiece that appeals equally to football obsessives, celebrity gossip junkies and a few strange people with a genuine but residual interest in affairs of the day. Each samizdat paper will pass through many hands before disintegrating into crumpled illegibility.

Lonely travellers take a copy with them when they leave the bus,
having chosen to savour the best bits later, during an unofficial toilet break or over the lunchtime Prêt a Manger cured Wiltshire ham-filled half baguette. What will they treat themselves to today from the single copy tucked neatly into the arm support? The extraordinary article on page 7 won hands down.

A pensioner who performed a sex act on a horse has avoided being sent to prison. The man was spotted with the horse’s head in his groin by the animal’s owner. ‘The witness was shaken and disgusted by what he saw’ prosecutor Noelle Brockbank told Teesside Magistrates’ Court. ‘He picked up a stick and struck the defendant. That startled the horse, causing it to run off, dragging the defendant with it … The Chairman of the bench said the defendant ‘caused stress to the owner and the animal itself.’

Arguably it wasn’t the act itself that caused the horse distress, rather its new friend being hit with a stick by its owner. What if he had been jailed? Barlinnie’s corridors would have echoed with endless neighing and whinnying. There would have been a waiting list for
Black Beauty
in the prison library, and the conversations in the lunch queue would have been punctuated with cries of ‘Ye did whit?’

Some ten million or so separate human beings would have read that article. Many would have at least mulled over the moral and logistical aspects of the case. We can only guess at the impact on the collective psyche.

Johnson was not a stranger to this type of journalism. Despite his subsequent cerebral contributions to
The Spectator
and
The Rambler
he had an early grounding in the popular press. One of his first jobs was with
Warren’s Birmingham Journal
. An edition from his time with the paper includes the following highlights:

‘In Kent a grampus landed on the flats at Sandwich, proved very troublesome and made a hideous roaring … while a workman from Mr Tomkins’ glass-house, being cheerful and seemingly in good health, suddenly trembled and died … in Stephen’s Street in Dublin the five year old son of Jones the plasterer fell down a well of a very great depth … in Hammond Lane a shoemaker named Terryl poisoned himself being jealous of his wife …’

Boswell could have saved much time, effort and printer’s ink if he had, instead of publishing his vast and swollen biography, taken a leaf
out of the
Metro
and confined himself to the column space used in the daily
60 Second Interview
.

After a brief sojourn in Kirkcaldy we travelled the few miles to Kinghorn where Boswell and Johnson landed after visiting Inchkeith. The Sassenach Mohr was unimpressed. He declared in a letter to Mrs Thrale, ‘A mean town … consisting of horse hirers and boatmen noted all over Scotland for their impudence and meanness.’ In the pages of his more measured
Journal
he confines himself to a description of the meal they had at Munros, probably at Pettycur harbour, of ‘fish with onion sauce, roast mutton, and potatoes’. Johnson eating was not a pretty sight. Boswell noted how he would make an interesting range of sounds with his mouth including ‘chewing the cud and clucking like a hen’. Sadly we had no opportunity to practise our repertoire of hen impersonations. There was not a greasy spoon in sight, let alone a restaurant.

We did though pass Alexander Drive en route to the harbour. David explained that in 1286 King Alexander III, aged 44, was returning on horseback to be with his young second wife at Kinghorn Castle after meeting his council in Edinburgh. It is alleged that in the dark and in foul weather his horse stumbled and pitched him to his death over the cliffs. The consequences were huge as the crisis of succession led directly to the Wars of Independence with England. Growing into the role of a medieval Rebus David became
increasingly
animated propounding all manner of conspiracy and
assassination
theories. Judging by the unsavoury state of the Kinghorn pavements it was surely more likely that the poor man’s horse skited on the abundant dog mess and tumbled into the harbour. Either way it seems slightly strange that the event is not referred to by either Johnson or Boswell.

The jetty is now an extension of someone’s scrap yard. The defensive wall of bicycles, bedsteads and old sheds would deter all but the most hardy and recently inoculated from attempting to land.

Out to sea was the odd spectacle of a fire tug preening itself, an aquatic peacock, shooting plumes of water in spectacular but pointless arcs. On the horizon was the newly reinstated Rosyth ferry. It seemed unlikely that the lorry drivers on board would be misled by the one-ship nautical cavalcade into mistaking the Forth for the River Hudson.

By now the pursuit of mutton and onions or the equivalent was becoming something of a priority. A café on the High Street promised us an unforgettable breakfast which, in the circumstances, seemed an acceptable compromise. It certainly lived up to the hype. The fact that it was served by a waitress wearing latex gloves should have warned us. The gloves were necessary to prevent her from being
contaminated
by the sausages that had the unwelcome, if novel, consistency of pâté. To avoid staring at our congealing and rancid plates we looked with interest at the building opposite whose roof was shimmering ominously, as if at any moment it would be lifted off by sheets of flame. Every square inch was covered in pigeons.

By now David’s diatribe on the forgotten pleasures of mutton was becoming repetitive. To prove his point he ventured into the neighbouring Quality Butchers where he confronted a refugee from the eastern European state of Monosyllabia;

Did he sell mutton? Na.

Did anyone ever ask for mutton? Na.

Can you buy mutton anywhere? Na.

On the way up the hill we passed one of the least inviting churches on the planet. Declaring itself the RHEMA Christian Mission it had gone to considerable lengths to take inclusivity to new heights by wrapping every wall in barbed wire. The Truth must be kept safely inside and not under any circumstances be allowed to escape into the streets and the lives of ordinary, unchosen people.

Entering Kirkaldy I looked for the floodlights of Stark’s Park, the football stadium which parodies in miniature the one at the centre of Lowry’s
Match Day
. Its turnstiles will still only admit one
whippet-thin
supporter at a time. Soon a gloomy son of the manse will cower anonymously on the terracing sucking warmth but no comfort from a polystyrene cup. Prime Minister no more, a paunchy wraith,
condemned
to wander the wastelands of Fife for the rest of his days. He will find the perfect reflection of his own fallen glory in the fortunes of Raith Rovers.

Striking up an innocent conversation about free travel with an elderly woman in the bus station queue was a mistake. Animated with genuine bitterness she embarked on a loud tirade about the grannies down the town who could easily afford to pay for their fares if they didn’t spend all their money on toys for their spoiled grandchildren. Seeking, but not finding, support from others in the queue for her rant against families in general she developed her increasingly
self-absorbed
monologue. Yes, she had lived in Kirkcaldy for 59 years but no, she couldn’t lose her English accent. She wasn’t to be deflected. No, she and her late husband had not had any children. And why would they, given what it had been like for her being brought up in a family of fourteen? Her parents had no time for any of them, and fought all the time. And what about people who claim it’s great living down the road from their sons and daughters? How often do they actually see them? How many of the kids will even go to visit them unless they want money? With these rhetorical questions hanging in the air we joined the embarrassed line to board the X54 Dundee bus.