The bus from Berwick to Melrose ...

I slept well in the Travelodge - I dreamed I put a yellow feather upon my tongue - 

In the morning I put on Look North weather - 

Penny told me she had been kept awake - boys from the pebble dashed houses had gathered outside the 24 hour MacDonalds - 

They were having a party in the car park Penny said - revving their motor bikes - 

I imagined the pale skinny boys, astride their buzzing Suzukis, drinking buckie - 

We walked to the railway station, to wait for the Perryman Bus - 

A father and son were talking like wily chancers about footballers - 

The dad said he's done well - never gets nutmegged - he'll lift the silverware - 

The bus took us north, over the border - we went through Coldstream and Kelso - 

For a while we drove along the valley of the Tweed - the river ran through bright fields - noble fish moved upstream - high walls enclosed ancestral parks - 

The courtly driver stopped the bus outside a rustic public lavatory - excuse me for a moment ladies and gentlemen he said - 

After Newtown St Boswells, a large gingery baby roared and roared - 

His gentle tattooed mother held him in her arms - his father rocked him in his buggy - 

The baby's doing my head in said a thin woman behind us - she had wild hair and a shrill voice - 

The baby carried on roaring - 

I sat listening to the Scottish accents and the short fierce sentences - 

Galashiels, Dalkeith, Musselburgh I murmured, as though I was remembering the words of a spell - 

Wednesday 1 July 2015

Perrymans Bus

Route 67

Berwick to Melrose