Travelling with a family on a lorry

I'm travelling with a family. They have a young boy, 5 or 6 years old. I have an old Super 8 camera that I give to him. I don't know if it works. There's a battery in it, so when you press the button you can hear the clicking, but I don't have any film for it. It's hard to find film for these things nowadays.

Nowadays is not a word I would usually use. I would usually say these days, but then saying these things these days might sound a bit strange, two theses so close to one another. Not that there's anything wrong with sounding strange.

We've been travelling on a lorry. I have too many bags, and at each stop they unload everything and then load it back up the next day. I'm worried about losing things. I tell them the only things I really need are in my rucksack, all the rest can stay on the lorry overnight. It'll be alright. There's a load of other stuff on there. No one's going to steal it.

I've been reading about some islands out in the Atlantic, out beyond Ireland, that are very sparsely populated, but which are now advertizing themselves and trying to attract tourists. They're really just ridges running North to South, one above the other, and only populated along the leeward easterly side. Apparently you can rent a small cottage there, no electricity and outside toilet, for £20 to £30 a week.

But now we've passed through a portal and we're staying in an abandoned aeroplane, crashed perhaps, but still intact, in a desolate (but not quite desert) landscape. The boy plays with the super-8 camera, pretending to film the security guards in their glass pods 1000 feet above the ground. One of them moves away from us, the spike-like spindle that supports it making an angle of 45 degrees with the ground. Mostly they stay between 80 and 90 degrees since this is the most energy efficient place to be, and being higher is much safer of course, but sometimes they do need to come down close to the ground.

We appear to be the only ones on the ground so far as I can tell, though it's not dark yet. When it gets dark, if there are other people around, we'll see the lights of their fires. I set down another armful of twigs on the pile. There are a few trees around but they all appear to be dead or dying. This area obviously used to get a lot more rain than it does now. It probably is technically a desert.

We have enough water to last us for several days, but after that we'll either have to find some here or move on.

On the other side of the portal is New York, or what someone claimed was New York but it didn't look much like New York as I remembered it. It was dark, around dusk or dawn, I'm not sure which, and I was standing in a doorway looking out onto a stretch of murky water. There was a steep rocky slope between me and the water. I had my bike with me. Someone, the same someone, was telling me there was a path along the rocks and if I got my bike down there I could cycle all the way around the island, but the first step, lifting my bike through the doorway and down onto the rocks, was proving to be too difficult. I could see where the path was, a flat area on the rocks, but before that the rocks were steep and wet. Some were covered in green slime. It would be easy to slip and find myself in the water at the bottom, or in one of the pools halfway down.

Number 12 bendy bus, London, UK

On the number 12 bendy bus heading up to town a gang of ticket inspectors backed by police get on at Trafalgar Square. One of them scans my Oyster card, which seems okay - I assume he can tell whether or not I swiped it on this bus, which on this occasion I did. (The other day, coming home when the bus was packed and I had to stand among people eating fast food and shouting into mobiles, I decided not to fight my way past them just to swipe 80p off my card.) Someone on the back seat doesn't have a ticket. He says he's homeless. You'd better get off the bus then, says the inspector. He says he's homeless, he tells the policeman waiting outside. They have about three people out there. One is struggling. They put hand cuffs on him.

It's time to start cycling again. I've got my old bike back, and have just bought a D-lock for £29, which is probably almost what the bike's worth.

Sitting in Golden Square at lunch time there are more police. They stop and question a couple of women walking across the square carrying tabloid newspapers. One of them starts shouting, repeating the word allegations, wanting to know who's made allegations against her.

After spending some time in cafes on the internet I head for the Oxford Circus bus stop. It's getting on for nine, usually quite a busy time, but if I get on there, which is where the number 12 starts, I'll be able to get a seat. I take out my paper and try to finish the sudoku I started earlier but my eyes won't focus.

A woman gets on, talking, and sits in the empty seat next to me. Her handbag digs into my ribs. I shift over, up against the window. She's not talking to anyone in particular, just to whoever will listen.

A woman behind us is shouting into a mobile: I'm on the bus now, but I just want to sit down and have something to eat. Why don't you just sit down then? snaps the woman next to me, and then starts going on about Hitler, how if Hitler was here you wouldn't be able to just sit down. As she's getting off the bus the woman on the mobile snaps back: Why d'you keep going on about Hitler? Are you racist or something? You shouldn't be racist. I'm serious. The woman next to me denies being racist and says that her old mum scrubbed floors during the war. Down on her hands and knees she was, and now she's talking to me because the woman with the mobile has got off and the guy who was sitting opposite has moved to another seat.

I wasn't causing trouble, was I? Well, I think you were, I say. I don't know if she was actaully racist or not, but later she did say she thought there were too many foreigners in the country so maybe she was. Too many bigots, I should've said, but only thought of it after I'd got off the bus. I wasn't sure whether to ignore her, move to another seat, or argue with her.

She didn't talk about Hitler any more. She put on a posh accent and started asking me if I had my own residence. My old mum always told me to make sure I had my own residence. Do you have your own residence or do you live with friends? Do you drink? I don't look 54 do I? Does this bus go to Peckham? That's where I'm going, Peckham. I'm sorry, I'll let you get on with your crossword.