Boswell's Bus Pass

by Campbell, Stuart

  We were warmly welcomed into the club house by a courteous, enthusiastic PA called Vicky who showed us places normally only seen by those who have spent £55,000 on their membership fee and £1,900 on their annual subscription. In one of the lounges the settees still had collapsible ends to accommodate ‘ladies with bustles’. They would equally suit the morbidly obese. Our attention was drawn to a monstrous portrait of Sir Alan Colquhoun whose left foot, bizarrely, pointed at us wherever we stood in the room. We had been rumbled. Forget those Mona Lisa eyes, get a creepy foot.

  What would Johnson have made of all of this? Arrested for debt in his early days and deeply ashamed of the holes in his shoes while at Oxford he would neither have applied for membership nor indeed would have been accepted; after all how would he have fared in the ‘world thinker’ examination?

  The clincher for Johnson would have been the fact that he once met a man who had lost a leg as a result of a golf injury.

  Vicky invited us to visit the Colquhoun family chapel, a cold place to spend all eternity, and the ruins of the 18th century laundry which never got to grips with the doctor’s smalls as presumably he never removed them.

  Despite the warmth of our welcome we were sternly warned not to take photos of golfers. The prohibition left me initially confused. Could my name really be added to some sort of register for downloading pictures of golfers?

  ‘Hi Golfperv, I’ve got a lovely pic of a fat one in a checkered sweater, it’ll cost you though. How about a swap for the one in the Macdonald’s cap with the love handles?’

  I was quietly tempted to compile a small illicit album of world thinkers.

  *

  Daunted by the long walk back David waved down the first bus that passed. ‘Drop us off at the nearest pub’ he commanded. ‘There isn’t one,’ came the illogical reply from the driver who sped away.

  Eventually a 501 arrived to take us to Cameron House Hotel, the posh stately home next on Boswell and Johnson’s itinerary. The only other person on the bus was a distressed woman, clutching a stick and staring at us through over large red eyes. She felt obliged to apologise for her slightly disheveled state and blurted, ‘I’ve got a six month old dog and it’s filthy.’ David gently told her there was no problem and asked about the dog. She clammed up and looked away.

  We passed an improvised roadside shrine, an ever-growing feature of our byways; triangular bunches of fading flowers still in cellophane wrappers pinned to the fences or lamp-post nearest to the violent death; football scarves and, unbearably, children’s teddies. As councils are understandably reluctant to remove them they must in time join up until every inch of the road network bears witness to unimaginable human loss.

  Sir James Colquhoun provided a coach for this leg of the jaunt. The joy of lowering saddle-sore bottoms onto upholstered seat after the trials of being on horseback for many weeks can only be guessed at. Boswell emerged from his depression just long enough to reveal his true feeling about the journey so far, ‘Our satisfaction of finding ourselves again in a comfortable carriage was very great. We had a pleasing conviction of the commodiousness of civilisation, and heartily laughed at the ravings of those absurd visionaries who have attempted to persuade us of the superior advantages of a state of nature.’

  The ubiquitous blue helicopter parked on the hotel lawn prompted the thought that it was a rich man’s trompe l’oeil, a cardboard cutout calculated to set the tone of opulence. This impression was reinforced by the falconry lesson being conducted on the grass. David foolishly expressed interest but not having paid for the pleasure of watching a bird the size of a turkey perch on an asbestos glove, he was ignored.

  Cameron House was the home of Lord Smollett, a relative of Boswell, and allegedly ‘a man of considerable learning, with abundance of animal spirits’. How the latter attribute was apparent we have little clue. Perhaps he would swing from the chandeliers with a fag in his mouth, waving a bottle of gin. The chandeliers in Cameron House Hotel were consistent with the dead animal motif. In each lounge whole forests of antlers twisted towards the ceiling providing cover to a seemingly random plague of light bulbs. Those animals whose antlers were not lopped off to enhance the illuminations have been mounted at intervals along the walls. Part of me wanted to look at the rooms on other side of those walls to see if the space was dominated by deers’ rear ends. Perhaps poorer but aspiring people had to be content with an array of buttocks from which single candles protruded.

  After waiting for a small but very expensive eternity drinking coffee from an ostentatious silver pot we were greeted by Grant the urbane concierge who had been consigned to answer our questions. Despite being harassed by the endless demands on his time and skill he patiently outlined the history of the house with undisguised enthusiasm. We learned that Bill Clinton had been told that he and his entourage could not be accommodated as this would have meant inconveniencing loyal guests.

  At the other end of the phone in the Oval Room the president smiled wryly and resumed his under-the-table activities. Had George Bush been similarly rejected he would have launched a full amphibious assault from the loch with Tony Blair’s total support. Every member of staff would have been waterboarded and Grant would have found himself kneeling in an orange jumpsuit, his feet tied to his black hood by a thin wire.

  Yes, there was a ghost. A young girl had been frequently spotted wandering a corridor in the recent £32m refurbishment. On cue a passing tradesman interjected with his corroboration; his mate had seen it.

  We asked Grant about the stuffed things on walls, in particular the badger with a pipe in its mouth and a fairground bear, its jaws clamped on a limp salmon. ‘Talking points, Sir, talking points’ he muttered with a breathtaking display of brand loyalty and tact.

  In the reception area an ugly red-faced guest with a bad taste jumper was berating an obviously innocent member of staff, ‘I didn’t appreciate the way you brushed past me in the car park,’ he fumed. ‘I do apologise,’ replied the young woman demurely.

  Boswell describes how Dr Johnson took advantage of his captive audience at Cameron House to deliver a spontaneous sermon on the nature of evil. It is odd though that neither account of the original journey mentions the tragedy that befell one of Lord Smollett’s ancestors. It is a cautionary tale for all teachers who even think of taking kids on a school outing. In 1603 Tobias Smollett, a Baillie of Dumbarton, took a party of 17 schoolboys to witness the battle of Glen Fruin between the Macgregors and the Colquhouns of Luss. Unfortunately they encroached on the battlefield and were massacred.

  In some way Cameron House seemed more true to itself than Rossdhu. It was still a very lively building full of guests getting away from things, eating, celebrating, making love, falling out.

  We watched a new bride and groom running in slow motion towards the helicopter, their faces suffused with joy, secure in the knowledge that their mutual good fortune would without question simply last forever.

  We proffered our bus passes more in hope than expectation at the water-taxi man who looked as if he had been waiting for a passenger since Loch Lomond had first filled with water. He explained that as concessionary fares were still subject to ongoing negotiation we would have to pay £3 each.

  Boswell and Johnson had also taken a boat onto the loch. Johnson remembered how ‘The heaviness if the rain shortened our voyage, but we landed on one island planted with yew, and stocked with deer, and on another containing perhaps not more than half an acre, remarkable for the ruins of an old castle, on which the osprey builds her annual nest.’ We couldn’t persuade the taxi man to land on either Inchlonaig or Inchgalbraith; he was en route to Shore Lomond, and that was that.

  David mentioned how in his previous life he had paddled in a Canadian canoe to one of the islands where he camped for the night. In the morning as he cooked his sausages he heard something snuffling through the undergrowth. Hopeful of an amorous encounter with a mermaid or loch sprite but equally fearful lest he and Ben Gunn would be stuck with eac
h other he was confronted by a blind black Labrador. The dog had swum to the island but couldn’t get back. After sharing his sausages he bundled the beast into his canoe and took him to the nearest village where it was recognised and reunited with its disbelieving owner. According to David the dog sent him Christmas cards for many years.

  At first we were the only passengers on the 205 from Balloch to St Enochs in Glasgow. Despite or perhaps because of the small poster near the driver showing a squashed juice can improbably uttering the words, ‘Please take us with you, it’s rubbish being left behind’, the bus was filthy.

  Prominent among the detritus was a small tide of shrink-wrapped plastic packaging recently ripped from newly bought children’s toys. Had the toys been bought as a bribe for restless kids with a hatred for fresh air and a desperate need to get home to the Xbox? Were they symbols of the inexpressible guilt felt by the single father who had invested so much in this infrequent access to his boy who already treated him like a stranger? The kids may have just stuffed the toys in their jackets and run out of the shop.

  The bus lurched into the ground of the Vale of Leven Hospital where we seemed to have a stark choice between the mortuary and the Elderly Mental Health Clinic. I looked at David. The former hospital building on the main road had reinvented itself as a factory outlet, an odd claim given the one dimensional nature of its red stone façade.

  The Levenvale estate specialized in wooden clad bungalows with front doors shaped like pentangles for residents with oddly shaped heads.

  A once proud church stood roofless in Renton, burned by evangelical flames of religious fervour or torched by bigots with a petrol can. The analogy may have been with rural crofts whose roofless state precluded having to pay council tax.

  The granite-faced Victorian Institute stood alongside the Healthy Living Centre and the Learning and Development Shop, silent witnesses to 120 years of municipal aspiration to nurture self-esteem and hope where these had been disabled by poverty.

  Without exception all passengers over the age of thirty joining or leaving the bus lavished thanks and good wishes on the driver. The drunken punter in his fifties with a huge and dripping moustache overdid it with ‘Good night, driver, God bless, much obliged’ as he lurched off into the early evening. The ‘Thanks pal, see you later,’ said out of habitual politeness by the woman in an overlarge coat, hinted too at her need for company.

  ALL ANIMALS AND CHILDREN TO STAY IN CARS. The sign had been erected after several small children and numerous family pets, including on one occasion a midget pig, had wandered into the waste-disposal crushers never to be seen again.

  GET WATERED NOT SLAUGHTERED H2O! would have presented a challenge to those who had missed their standard grade general science exam.

  The SHELTER DEFECT HELPLINE remained a source of linguistic irritation for those who preferred the term Shelter Challenges.

  OFF LICENSE (sic) ‘Ave spelt it wrang!’

  The ANIMAL RESCUE AND REHOUSING CENTRE operates a points system that allegedly favours unmarried dogs with a penchant for bungalows.

  FIRE REDUCTION PARTNERSHIP – SAVE A LIFE Evidence strongly suggests that this particular bill board has given many a young arsonist pause for thought.

  The WOMEN ONLY GYM offered respite from the growls of criticism and the endless demands while offering the real possibility of operating a TV remote control.

  SCOTS GRANNY KEPT KIDS IN CAGES All good ideas develop their own currency.

  And the over familiar TWENTY’S PLENTY … FORTY’S NAUGHTY … FIFTY’S NIFTY …

  The bus bowled through Bowling past long rows of red tenements blighted with black wall-mounted pizzas all pointing towards the Skye. A young Down’s syndrome girl in a pink sweater sat on her doorstep talking into her mobile phone.

  A pack of feral youths burst onto the bus pummelling each other and using language that would have graced a medieval flyting competition. Their glazed eyes suggested that those monks at Buckfast Abbey have a sin to answer for, as do the manufacturers of Tippex and Domestos. They were wired to the moon, howling and spitting abuse without focus. David and I both adopted the brace position as they menaced their way down the aisle. The driver, schooled in survival methods, said nothing. Likewise the shaven-headed body builder with gold ear rings big enough to support a full, heavy drape.

  St Margaret’s Hospice faced the six floodlit football pitches in front of Clydebank college seething with energy and movement; another example of ironic architectural juxtaposition. The sign over an empty betting shop was being changed to God Is Love. 2/1 on the existence of angels, fixed odds on hell fire. A young couple seemed to be enjoying full sex in a bus shelter. No one could have cared less.

  STAGE 10

  GLASGOW AND AYRSHIRE

  A Gratuitious Reference to Brentford – A Discussion with a Learned Professor – A Brief Visit to an Inn and an Account of its Astonishing Array of Arms – The Bus Station from Hell – A Tiny Castle – A Dreadful Argument decided on the Toss of a Coin – An Uplifting Display of Fireworks – an Odd Incident with a Dead Bird.

  Johnson was underwhelmed by Glasgow. ‘To describe a city so much frequented as Glasgow, is unnecessary.’ Not Smiles better then. He was a tired old man. He just wanted to get home to his own bed, see how Frank Barber, his black servant was doing, resume his anguished flirtation with Mrs Thrale and generally bask in the unqualified adulation which was, after all, his due. Perhaps he was just scunnered with his travelling companion who had spent the entire journey recording every fart, every mouthful of mutton chewed, and every word spoken in those hideous black notebooks. He strongly suspected that he had also written down things that had not been said. How many more evenings would he have to spend in the company of a man whose whole raisons d’etre were the pursuit of women and falling down drunk. He was fed up being ushered to an early bed so that the arrogant young Scot could indulge his vices. Oh Fleet Street, where are you?

  Boswell too had little to say about Glasgow. He had started to have doubts about the doctor. He was still smarting from being called a eunuch. He of all people who had forced himself on more women than Johnson could conjure in the wildest of his twitching dreams. Hung like a horse. Despite his philandering, he was missing his Margaret and little Veronica. At least he would see his dad in a few days. He shuddered. That too could go horribly wrong though Johnson had promised to behave and steer clear of all controversial topics. To make matters worse something had shifted between himself and Joseph who had started to show a previously unsuspected surly side to his nature. It was so difficult to get good staff. What had possessed him to hire a Bohemian for goodness sake? Meanwhile they had to traipse round another university and listen to yet more boring professors.

  Johnson enjoyed recalling how years previously he had demolished Adam Smith who had innocently boasted about Glasgow, ‘Pray, sir, have you ever seen Brentford?’ That had put his gas on a peep, a bon mot to cherish. Witty or what? Brentford, ha!

  It seems that Professors Reid and Anderson had the measure of Johnson. ‘Though good and ingenious men, they had that unsettled speculative mode of conversation which is offensive to a man regularly taught at an English school and university. I found that, instead of listening to the dictates of the sage, they had teased him with questions and doubtful disputations. He came in a flutter to me and desired I might come back again, for he could not bear these men.’ How dare anyone ask Johnson difficult questions? The marketing department had clearly failed to brief the professors. Watch my lips, do not ask the doctor anything, keep shtum and look impressed.

  David and I walked along University Gardens looking for number 4. Professor Nigel Leask had willingly agreed to meet us in his office to discuss the original journey. We climbed up to the third floor making our way past gloomy clumps of impossibly young students waiting for the previous seminar to finish. Johnson had also noticed the age of the Glasgow students, who ‘for the most part, go thither boys, and depart before they are Men; they carry wi
th them little fundamental knowledge … men bred in the universities of Scotland cannot be expected to be often decorated with the splendours of ornamental erudition, but they obtain a mediocrity of knowledge, between learning and ignorance …’

  We chose not to interrogate the students about their levels of ornamental erudition, preferring, on balance, not to be beaten up.

  Nigel Leask could not have been more welcoming of two geriatric eccentrics. The professorial office exuded a faded academic chic. The bookshelves were intentionally disordered to foster unlikely connections between tomes whose authors only realized they had much in common when they found themselves squashed together. At night they would revert to type, tumble themselves from their allotted place and line up to fight on the floor; Neo Romantics v Feminist perspectives, Structuralists v the Post Moderns. At the first sound of the cleaners’ early morning footsteps they would fly through the air and snuggle down for the day ahead. The cleaners themselves had long stopped wondering why there were so many torn pages resting under the comfy seats. Toy Story Three has a lot to answer for.

  Through the large bay window the autumn trees seemed especially conducive to the study of Keats.

  Nigel thought it extremely unlikely that Boswell remained celibate for the duration of the hundred day tour especially given his fixed belief that masturbation led inexorably to madness. I could tell that David was pondering the connection with a degree of incredulity.

  Recent professorial research into Burns’ background had cast light on the connection between the wealthy mansions where the travellers had stayed in Ayrshire and the slave trade that funded them. Many of the established families had unsavoury links to the Caribbean. Johnson cannot have been oblivious to this connection yet the matter is never raised. Perhaps they had agreed to differ, Boswell being pro-slavery and Johnson a confirmed abolitionist. He spoke too of the economic background to the journey pointing out that the entire banking system had collapsed the previous year in a manner ominously reminiscent of our current predicament.