…and gazuky

I’ve been playing Odour Roulette on the bus this past week. Unintentionally, of course – I’d never willingly seek out odours on a bus – it’s likely to end in tears. Let me explain.

For some reason, I’ve recently found myself subjected to multiple assaults on my nostrils from people who share a portion of my journey home. It’s become so bad – and so frequent – that I’ve started to strategise as to how I should best seat myself to avoid another spate of stink.

Three days ago, I found myself sat in front of a drunk. As well as breathing on the back of my neck with the kind of aroma that a bar slops-tray has, I swear that at the same time, another more sickly smell was permeating from his pores.

So, the next day I decided to sit somewhere where there was no seat behind in order to avoid a similar experience. I felt very pleased with myself as I sat down in front of the rear doors, anticipating the odd blast of cold air from outside as people exited, peppered with nothing worse than the aroma of exhaust fumes. Alas, my plans fell apart as a small, unkempt-looking man sat down in front of me with the most excrutiatingly nauseous body odour I’ve ever had the misfortune to breathe.

It wasn’t so much the smell itself that made me want to throw up, more the thought that a particle – any particle – that had emanated from the greasy, slimy, bacteria-filled crevices that adorned his body, could find its way into my nice, clean, fresh-as-a-daisy lungs. “Have a bath!”, I felt like yelling. But I didn’t. I just sat there, sulking, and breathing through my mouth.

“Lightning doesn’t strike in the same place twice” as the cliche goes. So, with that in mind, I took my seat on the bus yesterday fairly confident that I couldn’t be so unlucky as to spend another commute picturing fields of daffodils and other sweet-smelling images to mask the horror of what hung in the air. Then there was a flash, a rumble, and a man with the worst hallitosis possible – seriously, I think he’d just eaten some faeces – sat down on the seat behind me.

How can someone have morning breath at 6.20pm? Has the credit crunch forced the price of Crest up to unaffordable levels? Is it now only the privilege of the rich to be able to speak to someone without rendering them unconscious with fumes?

After this walking roadkill had taken his seat, a second man then plonked himself down on the next seat and started tucking into a kebab.

So I’m rather worried what tomorrow will bring. Perhaps an old-aged pensioner will shuffle along the aisle until he is level with me, and then douse himself from head to toe in TCP. Or maybe a party of schoolchidren will surround me whilst on a school trip and open their lunchboxes simultaneously, revealing hard-boiled eggs, some Stilton cheese and an onion.

And don’t even start me on the gallons of rain I’ve had to endure standing in bus-queues over the past few weeks. I’ve been getting home looking like an extra from Tiswas.

Never mind. The end is nigh. No – I’m not looking forward to death (although don’t think it hasn’t seemed an attractive prospect during some trips) – I’m looking forward to finally becoming a member of the Great British Driving Public. (10 years late – but that’s for another blog, another time.)

So I’ll soon be taxed in a hundred more different ways than I am right now – but to be honest, I don’t care if it means never having to sit next to another foul-stinking drunk ever again. It’ll be worth every penny.