Clive Sprawly lives in a cave shaped by four erect walls of flaking plaster board. A helium balloon crinkled with age rests on a circle of damp emanating from the corner of the ceiling. On its surface is a crippled smiling face etched in faint black marker pen. The room has one window with no net curtains yet covered by a piece of damp carpet, put there to keep the sun from getting through. Outside in the street each minute of the day is defined by a million different shades of colour. In Clive’s ground floor bedroom flat each minute is transposed into shadows; a room of constant shadows.

When Clive moved into the flat four years ago he did not have any curtains. His room looks out onto a huge overgrown garden. 3 Rusted prams, one washing machine and two fridges. At night he can not see them. He can not see anything. Just because he does not see anything doesn’t mean that he is not being watched. The damp rug was used to hide from prying eyes. It hasn’t been taken down since.

His bed is two matrices joined together with only a single duvet. Little felt palm trees adorn the walls, each one rotting. The landlord last decorated the flat in the eighties, an era defined by felt palm trees. Clive pays little attention to the tress. When ever he is in his bedroom his eyes are forever closed. It is not that he is blind or handicapped, it is just that with his eyes closed he is able to see things. The visions become clearer when the bed springs begin to ache. She has all the particulars, this one. He is in total control. She wants it. No better stimulant for a Monday morning.

The aftermath is mist in the air. He breathes it. The special man that comes to see him once a week did not fix the boiler again. It would not matter even if he did. The living room is forever cold what the windows with not even been framed properly. The problem is that the rain always finds a way in. It runs down a crack in the wall. The walls sweat as its cousin the paper shies away. Bubbles pop on the damp solid service. Clive once used blue tack to keep the paper on the wall, that didn’t work so he tried cello tape. That did not work either. Damp sits heavy on the chest.

Clive walks past the living room in his stifled colourless underwear preferring instead to sit to on a silver chair in the kitchen. He found it in a skip. He likes to eat toast whilst sat on it (and if the table looks like the rats have paid him a visit) off it. It cheap. Twenty six pence a loaf. Hidden away underneath the chair are disgruntled looking page 3 girls. Their faces appear broken. The newspapers they live in are wet. Green stuff grows on the kitchen door. Its cracked in several places. Old bones sit in soggy boxes on the kitchen surface. “Kentucky Fried Chicken” written in celebratory colours on the side.

Clive is naïve. He believes in things. Mostly bus time tables. Most mornings he finds himself waiting for a bus that rarely justifies his faith. This morning is no exception. Once again he leaves his flat at approximately eight fifteen in the morning. As always Joyce from next door stands on the side of the pavement voicing contempt at coloured boiled sweets. One by one she throws them at the floor telling them to “fuck off”.

A young woman with two children, an old man with a sprit level, and a postman late for work gather at the stop, all stepping side to side in desperate attempt to prevent the cold biting their rusted ankles. The little girl, belonging to the mother looks at the people stood years above her. She is grinning. Every so often Clive catch’s her eye. She takes it back, burying her head into mothers hip. The little boy slouches at the side, weight heavy on his shoulders, stealing glances from inanimate objects. A pretty blonde girl with magnanimous white teeth, beams at them from the advertising display. Eat gum, she says. The boy might well want to disappear. His school uniform looks new. Possibly first day at school.

The number twenty five is seen coming in over the flyover. It is twenty minutes late. Clive’s shoes look clean. The rain has made it so. The crowd nestles into a particular order. Each person acknowledging who arrived before them. Clive stands at the back. He always stands at the back..

The doors open. Fucked faces stare out from behind the black-bird-shit-stained windows as Clive and the people in front approach, clutching pre-paid bus tickets and braised pound coins. Looking at his watch Clive considers waiting for the next bus. He doesn’t have one.

As Clive waves his state paid bus pass in the drivers miserable face, the driver signals for Clive to get in a move on. Having seen about a million already this morning he does not seem to care.

The doors close. Clive fears an unkempt shoelace may have got caught in the door. Trying to raise his knee up to a sufficient vantage point Clive attempts to look at his shoe. Impossible. Too damp. Bodies stand closed and erect anywhere they can. The floor is an urban assault course littered with Bags, suitcases and super deluxe push chairs, forcing people into inappropriate positions. Women’s backsides impose upon men, seated, trying to read their newspapers, Caressing the paper edge. A stray crutch stokes the loose hairs of an unkempt woman’s wig. The bus stops. Clive edges further into the mess. Two get off. Another ten get on. Broken faces bare the brunt of irate mothers voicing their contempt at mindless children, whining and crying. In the carriage box designed explicitly for super deluxe pushchairs with power steering, a cross legged man sits. Anger festers on the faces of those that surround him. There is room in their for two.

As the bus edges regretfully down the road Clive non-existent watch informs him that his journey is an hour away. At the prospect of being stuck and standing in the same place for an hour Clive feels his face gradually tighten. Cheap face wash making it crack. All there is to do is to stand still. Act Gormless. The bus stops again. Through the void of limbs, newspapers and hair Clive can see the bitter faces of those stood outside, bleeding from the cold, desperate to get on.

As the bus doors open a sudden flux of people force Clive in to an array of predicable and ultimately offensive positions: head nestles briefly into several pairs of voluptuous braless damp breasts whilst his backside finds the fresh faces of several children. More school children all wearing the same uniforms as the boy from the bus stop storm the bus. Either through fear of potential missed possessions or of children themselves Clive throws clutched fists deep into his ink crusted pockets. Seeing a break in the traffic the driver makes for it forcing the mass to sway forward, every urgent hand clutching randomly at everything from Shopping bags, push chairs to untied shoe laces. Small children lay in wait for cautious feet. In the frenzy of frantic hands a woman’s left breast is grabbed. Hearing the scream the bus driver grounds to a halt. Parts of the crowd flew back. Hands not desperate enough. Leaning out from his perch the bus driver shouts at everyone for pushing. Step back. It’s a dangerous game. The man in the carriage box laughs at the bus driver’s futile demand. Back on his perch the bus driver hollows,
“Push chairs are meant to be in their not you!”

For everyone that leaves another ten get on. The bus driver doesn’t care as long as they pay the correct fare. As he waves more people on his gold wrist watch exhales white light from the morning sun. Grinning fiendishly. The lower deck resonates with the sound of his small fortune amassing. Crying children cry even louder. Impatient mobile phones sound off. The fear of brushing clothed flesh proves too much. A polyphonic pop extravaganza can be heard amongst a field of aching faces.

At the back of the bus people sit engrossed in newspapers and books, complacency bruises their smug faces. Some sat on the right side of the bus, aware of the injustice occurring on the lower deck stare out the window spying pigeons with rabid feet, fighting amongst themselves for cold chips now made soggy by the rain, were as those on the right steal glances from small children who clutch at random hands, hoping that it belongs to their parents; their parents themselves unaware of where their children are, just an arm that may lead the way.

Bright light engulfs the lower deck. Faces thaw. Clive is blinded. He feels light, a shadow has lifted. Half-baked utterances, meant only for the mind, had now been answered. Everything from the bus driver who took peoples money, to the people who lined the stairs to the upper deck, everything became one and the same thing. Like a chain of equivalence, that elusive connection between Clive’s everyday routine and it’s place in a grander, mentally unforeseeable, grander scheme of things became evidently clear. This was no longer a simple bus journey to work this was a quixotic stage on which unseen historical forces where now acted out.

Grabbing the children by the hand Clive makes a charge for the stairs to the upper deck, yelling hellishly at people, enticing them to come along.
“It should be better than this”
They remained quiet, not yet ready for their own epiphanies, let alone Clive’s. The man in the carriage box sensed what Clive was trying to do and rallied him on. Forcing his away through the penguish herd Mayhem ensued. Elbows slung carelessly, push chairs transformed into tiger tanks. He lost one of the children. His fingers had slipped from Clive’s over cautious grip. No matter he still had the girl. People now gathering momentum behind him. His hair feels pulled. Drunk on hysteria, the mass becomes savage, wanting Clive for their own moribund ends. Clive’s eyes wince in pain as the culmination of every missed opportunity, from the past thirty five years explode in Clive’s mind.
“My god there is a monster in here!”
Infringing eclipses of youthful dreams, violent and frustrated encounters with random women, forever passed upon, bludgeon his rational thought process. Mentally traversing every possibly conceived notion of what is right and what is wrong… “who gives a…I do”, beguiles Clive. Forever swathed by shadows in the guise of abstract ideas. A remanding eclipse. Just act.

Finding the stairs to upper deck Clive spies it to be heavily guarded by dark shadows. Throwing himself into the abyss Clive fends of savage attacks from welded suitcases. Exposed broadsheets cover his face only to be ripped apart by his miss-placed fury.

Careless of anything he reaches the top stairs spying a seat next to a crippled old man. He offers it to the little girl. She is not there. He goes to step back down the stairs to the lower deck where the revolution has now surely begun but the seat proves too strong, emanating comfort. Barely has he sat down before he forgets. Tense legs heavy from the final push now anaesthetised by the sudden loss of weight. From a half opened window a hard breeze flows unchecked. People are not bothered. For nine o’clock in the morning it is already hot. The harsh breeze prevents sweat forming on their ignorant brows. No pushing or shoving on this deck. The old man, sat next to the window, rocked to sleep, unintentionally offers Clive a view to the outside world. It is glorious. The bus now going over Westminster Bridge, has the sight and splendour of Big Ben before it, whilst buildings that belong to the city sit far of to the right. The river Thames looks welcoming this morning, its colour characteristic of a Mediterranean blue rather that an estuary greenish brown. Feeling slightly at odd from seeing the sky for the first in a long time, Clive feels relaxed. Total calm. Seeing the bigger picture of London life Clive feels an powering sense of complacency. Now awake the old man leans towards Clive,
“It all makes sense from up here”
“That it did” thought Clive, “That it did”
Suddenly the bus came to a stop. Blue lights flashed outside. The bus driver, now stood at the bottom of the stairs accompanied by two police men shouts,
“It’s time to get off!”