The bus station is a stinker. Bolted onto a 1980s shopping centre, the only way to access it – or, indeed, to make your escape – is by going through Crowngates’ dingy confines, which are drenched in more seagull muck than anywhere which is almost seventy miles from the nearest beach should be.
As soon as we step off the bus in Ludlow, we are haughtily sniffed at by a pair of immaculately brushed Afghan hounds who are straight out of Timotei central casting.
Each member’s socks have crumpled into a heap by their ankles, the elastic presumably giving up somewhere around the fifth pint. Their dancing is just as ragtag, but they’re having a great time while dodging the huffy looks from those who do actually know what they’re doing. Those people are wearing flowery hats, though.
I’ve never seen anybody in Bolton smile. I must’ve been here at least a dozen times and have come across shoppers grumbling at the foot of the Fred Dibnah statue, a set-to outside Wilkos, and most chillingly of all, a pair of little girls skipping down the street with angry scowls on their faces.
Judging by the spade the giant has sticking out of a canvas bag, he’s either on his way to an allotment or to bury a body. Possibly even to bury a body on an allotment. I hear they’re good for the soil.
Nobby Stiles’ son taught me science for a term, the highlight of which was when he answered a sincere question on the contrary etymology of blow-jobs without any hint of embarrassment.
Yes, I’d just been mistaken for an Everton fan, and therefore, a scouser. It was one of the worst moments of my life.
Happy to be out of the rain, but with my glasses fully steamed up, it takes a few seconds to suss out that we’ve accidentally gate-crashed a funeral.
“Here you go,” Pat says, pointing to a clump of dots on his camera’s viewfinder, “I’m pretty sure that’s the top of Muhammad Ali’s head there. I waited hours for that and he’s pixelated to buggery.”
We pass a cafe called The Scotch Egg, which must have the most magnificent sign in the entire SK postcode. The ‘o’ in ‘Scotch’ is a cartoon of a scotch egg dressed in a kilt and tam o’shanter, while the wayward nature of its eggy limbs suggests it is mid-Highland Fling.