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Prelude to a Bad Hair Weekend/ Bad Hair Weekend by Chris Chapman
“Wrong bus mate,” the Driver informed me. When he smiled the wrinkles of his face made his Mexican style droopy moustache vanish completely into his flesh folds.
“The 377 took me to work yesterday,” I replied curtly. “Why won’t it do that today?”
“Number’s changed its mind mate,” he answered flatly. His face looked like rotten meat with splodges of green mixed with raw red patches and all this topped off with sporadic clumps of beard. The Driver scratched at his chin and remarked under his breath about ‘how those damn pinkies won’t be wriggling out of here this time.’
I could see the rest of the morning passengers were all hiding badly behind the seats in front of them. They were the exact same crowd of passengers that I had travelled with for the past five years, at this exact time, using this exact bus. They were all puff cheeked with giggles pounding at the back of their teeth desperate to burst free. Even so none of them made a sound. All they did was try and tuck their high hair behind the padded headrests whilst getting a good view of me being made to feel like a right tit.
I gave them all a good glaring whilst tinkling the money that had been nestled in my hand into the coin slot close to the driver.
“Just take the money and go will you?”
“377 told me this morning it doesn’t feel like going to work,” the Driver replied. “It feels like crouching and shuddering all day, that’s all this bus will do today mate. The 377 is the crouching and shuddering type today.”
For approximately ten minutes I eyeballed the driver with what I deemed to be my best steely glare. In return he stared, but his stare was as hard as butter and it dribbled from his eyes down to his cheeks. As I watched the traces of this piss poor stare zigzag down his chops, it disappeared momentarily in his moustache and then collected on the bottom tips of his facial hair. It was then that he took the opportunity to punch me in the stomach and push me off the bus. The door closed and the whole vehicle pulled away from the bus stop. The laughter of the Driver could be heard over the roar of the engine.
This seemed like the perfect time to end Monday and so I returned to my flat to sleep. The walkie-talkie that had materialised on my bedside table the day after my parents had gone missing began to crackle through its usual white noise. I responded affably with the call sign, ‘Seven-a-three cord boy down’, which seemed to make it happy for the time being, and so I managed to fall asleep.
I decided not to go to work the following day as a way to reaffirm my sense of independence and to present the two-fingered salute to ‘the man’. I decided that the kind of ‘man’ who saw fit to employ such impetuous bus drivers did not belong on my shelf of idolatry. However upon waking I saw it was ‘the man’ and the world that he ran that had the final say in the matter as it saw fit to erode my attempts at dissidence by jumping straight from Tuesday to Sunday. Having missed a whole week of work I thought it wise to consider myself an ex-employer, therefore I burnt my uniform and took pot-shots with potatoes at anyone that walked passed my home that looked even vaguely like a former work colleague.
But of course the tuber tossing was just a distraction, as any activities involving vegetables tend to be. My mind did its best to make me forget that the troubles I had in the week were there for a reason. Indeed what my mind didn’t want me to realise was that these weekday troubles themselves were a distraction. They were there to keep my mind off the troubles of the weekend.
The great trouble I have with weekends, and the very bane of my existence is the fact that although I stir from slumber around seven or seven thirty, my hair never wakes until well after nine. Instead it sits shivering on my head, letting out the odd yelp, as it became another victim of the evil cheese dreams phenomenon. I can not leave the house until my hair had roused itself. Not until it stands firm and erect, and up to a height of at least seven inches. To flounder below the fringe line could incur a monetary fine, whilst to have slack hair that treats the scalp like a sun-lounger is punishable by death. What’s more my hair is getting lazier.
Last Sunday it wasn’t up until 11 o’clock. The week before it woke at ten, turned round, kneaded my head to make it more comfy and sank back down to sleep for a further half an hour.
Today, it lies there like brown lettuce leaves snoring loudly. Soon I will have no weekend to speak of at all. And soon I will run out of potatoes.