"What's that?" said a passenger as we went through the volatile and misbehaved town. "What the bleeding hell's that new shop?"
The object of fascination was a new shop, not open yet, whose facia stated: 'Oriental Body Shop'.
"Is it a Chinese garage?" asked one lady.
"Naw," said another. "It's a massage parlour."
"Can't be. It says acupuncture, feng shui and all those other Chinese things in the window. Must be a Chinese person running it"
"No it's a local person from one of the pubs."
"Oh - it could be THAT sort of massage then." And that's how rumours start in this neck of the woods. It will no doubt be a great and valued business helping to cure all kinds of ills such as back pain and stop people from smoking.
"I had a Chinese doctor, once," said the passenger, returning to a less scandalous topic. "He was so expensive. Wanted to charge me £120 a month. I wasn't having that."
The discussion came to an abrupt end as a very old lady was reversing her car into the middle of the road, while looking only in the opposite direction and failing to notice my bus bearing down on her. She had a fur hat pulled down halfway over her eyes. Under the hat you could just make out that she was wearing glasses. I stopped. When she was in the middle of the street she finally turned her head and saw a bus feet from her door. She jumped a foot in the air in shock. Her glasses were knocked sideways by the force of her head hitting the car roof and her fur hat ramming down completely over her eyes as a result.
"Aye, that's drivers for you aroond here." The passenger sitting behind me audibly sighed. "Don't look - just pull oot."
The lady driver rearranged herself, gave a nervous wave and grin and drove away with the car jerking up the road.
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