Boswell's Bus Pass Read online

  FOREST could use the words in their pro-smoking propaganda. The idea of beating your feet as a method of preserving the mind from total vacuity although undeniably cheaper than smoking has not caught on greatly.

  David finally achieved closure in his earlier fixation by stuffing a huge baguette in his mouth while declaring happily ‘You can stick your mutton up your jumper!’ It was unclear if this was a promise or a threat.

  There was nothing pretentious about the second hand bookshop at the foot of South Street. The proprietor seemed genuinely pleased to see potential customers and on asking if he could be of help in any way David replied with a positively Johnsonian flourish, ‘I would like to purchase the one first edition in your shop that is outrageously underpriced’. Thankfully this piece of facetiousness was received with good grace and there followed one of those perennial discussions with booksellers about the one that got away. On this occasion it was a first of Ian Rankin’s Knots and Crosses which had been unknowingly tossed into the pound box outside.

  Dr Johnson’s father had been a second hand book seller and binder before overreaching himself with a doomed paper-making venture. Father and son enjoyed a complex, often acrimonious relationship. When he left Oxford Samuel declined the opportunity to work in the family business, and on an occasion that returned to haunt him, refused even to accompany his father to Uttoxeter market where he had a bookstall. In later life he underwent a public show of repentance: ‘I went to Uttoxeter in the rain, on the spot where my father’s stall used to stand. In contrition I stood, and hoped the penance was expiatory.’

  Although it was raining when we left the shop there was no large ungainly figure in frock coat rocking and muttering to himself.

  Just at the moment when I thought I might have misjudged St. Andrews, a young man emerged from a bijou property onto the street and complained in sulky but formidably upper crust tones that ‘Apart from anything else my bloody jumper is on inside out!’

  He needed a good skelp from his mammy.

  *

  The short bus journey in the dusk to Leuchars was notable for the fleeting image of an agricultural worker, his tractor nearby, setting fire to a single small bale of hay. What was he doing? It wasn’t the time of year for stubble burning. Was he addicted to the evocative smell; was he a lone rural arsonist? Was he destroying evidence?

  Subsequent research offered a perspective on his furtive behaviour. Stubble burning is an illegal activity in England under the Crop Residues (Burning) regulations of 1993. Although there is no express ban on stubble burning in Scotland it is strongly discouraged by environmental regulators particularly when it causes dark smoke to be released. Proximity to roads is another important factor.

  I was surprised to discover that there was more to Leuchars than a railway station and massive RAF base. How many utterly tedious days had I endured at the air show over the years? Never able to reveal to my younger son the depth of my antipathy, I would enthuse over high-octane and testosterone-fuelled vertical ascents of NATO’s latest killing machines, breathe the rank burgers and put my hand into my pocket to buy yet another Airfix model.

  Boswell wrote ‘… observing at Leuchars a church with an old tower we stopped to look at it.’ We did the same.

  St Athelstane’s, built in 1182, dominates the housing scheme that surrounds it. Against the night sky it loomed black, a stranded architectural dinosaur overlooked by the reformation and left to suffer in exile from its own times. The iron ring on the door was not for turning. Just as well lest the black arch shot a hot breath of fried imps into the night before we both tumbled into the dark nightmare shaft.

  Part of the journey that didn’t happen:

  That night I dreamed not of Mandalay but of two excursions with Johnson. If I had kept a pen by my bed I could have recalled more details.

  In a forest of deciduous trees, green as a painting by Gauguin Dr Johnson’s attention was drawn by the guide to a stack of huge fallen trees piled one on top of the other and still smouldering. They were hollow. As he approached it was just possible to hear the wind playing the most delicate of tunes through the trees as if they were pan pipes.

  Then we stood on a viaduct overlooking Warrington, somewhere I’ve never visited. This time the landscape was more Bruegel with tiny figures toiling in pastel coloured fields. The whole area was punctuated by the smoke from hundreds of small steam locomotives.

  Glass’s Inn St Andrews 19th August 1773

  My Dearest Margaret,

  My heart drop to my boots when I see your beautiful face at Edinburgh window as you wave and bite on kerchief. I hope you find letter in closet. I stare at Margaret picture now.

  My body aches, Joseph’s bones are bruising because we spend whole day bumping our way up Scotland. The chaise is made for dwarf, tiny persons like child not three big men. The Doctor, as you know, is a big, big man with big books and a stick like a tree that he will not be parted with. The master is like mad puppet weasel pointing and jumping every time we see countryman with no shoes or pass a field of not very good cabbages.(1)

  As you know there are no seas in Bohemia. I am not a friend of seas and big water. So when we get on little boat to go to the island I am very feared. But I am not coward like my master. He close his eyes whole journey and is very sick. The Doctor is very pleased and standing up shout at the waves, I think it is Latin like in church. But he stand up and the boat goes under the water little way. My master is screaming like a baby and puts his head under a blanket. (2)

  Scotland is very beautiful. I think happy thoughts that I am in Bohemia lands. The master does not let doctor rest but always asks him question in silly voice that he use in London when he want to seem full of clever and wit. I think he wants to hear own voice. At last the master fall asleep and the doctor he speak to me. Joseph, he says in voice my home priest use when he see me come from inn, Joseph you are a good and kind man but I think sometimes you would rather serve your mistress than your master but he give me big smile and push coin into my hand. He man who see all things.

  St Andrews is fine place but too much sea for Joseph. The Doctor will stand in front of old church buildings that have fall down and go very silent I think he prays so I also cross myself and ask God to shine on my Margaret.

  A strange thing happen at night. My master is not in his room. I try to find him. The innkeeper he say that my master is gone out. I go look for him. I see him going back to old woman we talk with during the day. I think she is witch. She is very poor and has no money. She lives in a cave. I wait for long time then I see my master leaving. He tying up his breeches. My dearest Margaret I say this not to upset you but this lady is not clean and you tell me in past that you get pox from your husband. You must not go with him when he return. (3) (4)

  This thought make me sad and my taper is dying. I will leave you now my dearest but I know you will come in dreams to me and to make me sleep I will think of when you

  sighed as we

  and put your

  THIS PART OF THE LETTER IS INDECIPHERABLE

  Sleep Well

  Your loving Joe

  (1) Both shoes and cabbages frequently feature in Johnson’s narrative.

  (2) This anecdote if true would appear to anticipate the later voyage to Coll during which Boswell became so consumed with panic that the boatman, intending to distract him, gave him a rope and insisted he hold it for the duration of the trip.

  (3) This would explain why Boswell strangely makes no mention of their meeting with the old woman although Johnson in his account waxes enthusiastically about their conversation.

  (4) This concern is not without foundation as Boswell’s sexual health remained an issue throughout his life. By his own calculation he experienced nineteen manifestations of venereal attack over a period of more than thirty years.

  STAGE THREE

  FIFE, ANGUS AND ABERDEEN

  A lorry driver Behaving Strangely – A brief Theological Speculation – A Truly Shocking Sight,
not for the Faint-hearted – An Abbey – A Deluge of Spitting – Kindness from a Deaf and Dumb Woman – A Flagrant Violation of the Rules – Orangutans and Satyrs – An Unpleasant Bigot – Several Popular Road Kill Recipes – Revolting Eating Habits Described – An unsettling Encounter with Ghosts

  Leuchars – Dundee – Arbroath

  When David and I resumed our journey North from Leuchars we had both survived Christmas and Scotland was in the throes of its worst winter for fifty years. Gas supplies were being rationed, roads closed, the prospect of ever being able to watch football again had become a distant fantasy. The transformation of Cowdenbeath into an Alpine haven was a miracle only normally achieved with the aid of Class A drugs or a psychotic episode. Even Sodom and Gomorrah would look attractive in these circumstances, dependent of course on their proximity to good schools.

  A small sense of euphoria was enhanced by sitting in the front upstairs seat with the hip-flask strategically positioned on the window ledge, presumably in breach of numerous by-laws and regulations; repeat offending would render the perpetrators liable to having their bus passes publicly shredded and their bits cut off.

  Either way it was a far cry from the days when only Nicotinics and dogs climbed upstairs to suffocate in the heavy green fug of fags. Did buses have ash trays then or did everyone stand in a mulch of damp discarded filters, a foul carpet of yellow scarabs? Certainly, small children regularly disappeared into the acrid pea soupers never to be seen again and the life expectancy of conductors was approximately three journeys. Even Y-fronts had to be fumigated after a journey upstairs.

  There would have been no stopping at snowy woods and speculating as to their ownership for Johnson for whom the lack of trees on the East coast of Scotland, despite my dream, remained both a source of perplexity and a confirmation of England’s innate superiority.

  ‘The roads of Scotland afford little diversion to the traveller, who seldom sees himself either encountered or overtaken, and who has nothing to contemplate but grounds that have no visible boundary, or are separated by walls of loose stone. From the bank of the Tweed to St. Andrews I had never seen a single tree … The variety of sun and shade is here utterly unknown. There is no tree for either shelter or timber. The oak and the thorn is equally a stranger, and the whole country is extended in uniform nakedness, except that in the road between Kirkcaldy and Cowpar, I passed for a few yards between two hedges. A tree might be a show in Scotland as a horse in Venice. At St. Andrews Mr. Boswell found only one, and recommended it to my notice …’

  He would have been pleasantly surprised then to gaze on the fir plantations laden with their white and heavy harvest of snow. He would have been even more surprised to have seen the single palm tree which was plonked in the middle of a strange complex, well off the beaten track but obviously on the itinerary of the 96A, which apart from the tree consisted of a Dobbies Garden Centre, a MacDonald’s and a David Lloyd Sports Complex. Why would anyone want to explore the wider world beyond this consumerist oasis? By accident we had stumbled on the inspiration behind Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs.

  Elsewhere an entire field was sown with geese resting on their flight across oceans to warm lands only glimpsed in dreams and toddlers’ story books. Their grey messiness was an affront to the unspoiled whiteness. There were two other cameos that had not featured on anyone’s Christmas card: for some reason a plantation of sprouts had refused to succumb to the snow, the stumpy growths flaunting their anomalous greenness; in the adjacent field the worlds of rumination, defecation and fertiliser were evidenced by three monstrous yellow steaming heaps of dung.

  From the bus it was possible to spot other occasional violations caused by foot and hoof prints. There were long lines of indentations mostly leading nowhere or etched like Spiralgraph patterns round the occasional swing park. There was a surprising lack of children; there were no sledges, no cold tantrums. This was conclusive evidence that we live in a cosseted age where children are kept indoors by anxious parents swayed by Daily Mail tales of a world peopled in the main by paedophiles and predators. The lure of virtual snow on Winter Apocalypse, or whatever computer software Santa had brought, proved greater than the real thing. There is much more fun to be had from staining the landscape with the blood of slaughtered Yetis and nomad Zombies.

  In a lay-by a lorry driver was glimpsed kneeling down and scooping up handfuls of snow. Was it his first trip abroad from his native Namibia? Can you develop a snow fetish?

  Johnson and Boswell paid four shillings to have their chaise ferried over the Tay which when we swept over the bridge was floating with ice and providing temporary shelter to two North Sea oil rigs.

  Neither traveller had been especially impressed with the city: ‘We stopped a while at Dundee, where I remember nothing remarkable’ from the one and ‘Came to Dundee about three. Good busy town’ from the other. Johnson was less neutral in his letter to Mrs Thrale in which he describes the town as ‘dirty, despicable’.

  The connecting bus to Arbroath arrived so promptly as to fuel speculation that the SNP nurse Mussolini inspired aspirations for the country’s transport system. The bus’s card reading system, so efficient that it could spot a pensioner’s pass through an inch thick wallet, is a prototype for the full body scanners being installed at airports to enhance security. Angus drivers are also undertaking trauma training to prepare them for the shock of viewing the unclothed outlines of their fellow citizens.

  We were privy, if that is the best word, to the staccato conversation of a three generation family who crowded noisily into several seats. As their enthusiastic discussion embraced the topics of theft, imprisonment, beatings, arson attempts and sundry judicial proceedings it was important not to make eye contact with any of them in case it was construed as an affront to the family honour, an action which would, in turn, lead inexorably to the aforementioned eyes being gouged from their owners’ respective sockets and eaten.

  Once they left I told David that at this point on the original journey Boswell had sounded Johnson out about his views on transubstantiation. Despite Boswell’s self deprecating disclaimer, ‘This is an awful subject,’ I asked David for his thoughts. After an impressive atheistic rant about all world religions he said the debate was as pointless as discussing whether fairy eyes were pink or green. I saw his point but read to him Johnson’s observation that ‘If God had never spoken figuratively, we might hold that he speaks literally when he says “This is my body’’’. This gave rise to speculation, as Boswell might have said, about the precise number of words directly spoken by Christ in the New Testament. Apart from the Sermon on the Mount we couldn’t think of many between us and both agreed, without any real conviction, that we would look up the answer.

  At the ironic wave of a wand Arbroath had become a bijou après ski resort. By municipal decree puffed out pastel-shaded anoraks and multi-coloured woollen hats were now mandatory. The seagulls lined up on a wall pecked at edelweiss instead of pizza. Shopkeepers dispensed Gluhwein and bonhomie before slapping each other’s thighs and humming the chorus of Tomorrow Belongs to Me.

  The illusion was soon shattered by one of the ugliest sights encountered so far and for which there is no equivalent in the accounts of Johnson or Boswell. We were confronted by an obese man bending down beside his car. His trousers and underpants had surrendered to gravity and sunk to an area of his anatomy best defined as lower buttock, revealing a cleavage more suited to parking a bike. It was a brave, existential, but truly shocking gesture in these sub-arctic temperatures.

  Dr Johnson declared ‘I should scarcely have regretted my journey, had it afforded nothing more than the sight of Aberbrothick.’ He was referring to the ruined abbey, the size of which astonished him. It was still impressive and timeless when we visited. Its brown stones stood stark against the turquoise winter sky glimpsed through the ancient round windows.

  Johnson records how his travelling companion made a fool of himself by climbing over the ruin ‘Mr Boswell, whose
inquisitiveness is seconded by great activity, scrambled in at a high window, but found the stairs within broken and could not reach the top.’ We were unable to emulate his childish enthusiasm as the abbey and grounds were closed. The sign told us that they only ever opened on a whim during very hot days, and only if the local porcine society were performing acrobatics in the sky.

  Frozen to the very core we sidled into the Victoria Bar near the station. To have attempted any manoeuvre more ambitious than a sidle would have disrupted the snooker game in progress. The punter resting on his cue may have modelled his stance on a Vettriano print but any attempt at cool was compromised by the pit-bull lookalike at his feet ravaging a plastic toy.

  On the train back to Edinburgh David realised that he had left his souvenir packet of Arbroath Smokies, a token gift for his wife Jan, in the pub close to the snooker table. Ever resourceful and generous he rang the barman suggesting that he give the fish to a deserving customer but not, under any circumstances, to the dog.

  Montrose – Laurencekirk – Aberdeen

  Something also needs to be said about bus shelters; they deserve closer scrutiny. The current trend is to install a sloping ledge as an alternative to a full blown seat. Sitting is clearly to be discouraged as conducive to sloth. This puritanical urge finds a precedent in the ropes slung across the dormitories of nineteenth-century doss houses where sleep was frowned on as an unnecessary indulgence.

  The shop window behind the shelter carried adjacent messages, one encouraging all depressed passersby to make contact with Angus Association for Mental Health and the other a warning to dog owners that the local vet will only treat previously registered animals. Melancholia and dogs again.

  I was already regretting the decision to travel this section on my own. Other potential travelling companions had much better things to do involving families and pleasure.

  The only other traveller on the M9 bus was being evacuated from a First World War sanatorium. The pulmonary dredging suggested that his tuberculosis was at an advanced stage. Mercifully, having successfully realigned his lungs, he lapsed into a coma. Great expectorations, Pip old boy.