Jasmine Gardosi
Brumm
“My type of girl will like Dairy Milk Buttons”
he says to himself. He’s a Cadbury boy, see.
Bourneville born and bred, his childhood
well-chocolated. He thinks he knows his taste.
Day by day he takes bus route number 11A
and C around the outer circle of Birmingham –
well, a small portion of it, anyway. Look at a map and see
how he tick-tocks back and forth from home to Harborne
like a second hand stuck with a broken battery.
He knows he’ll find his girl on this bus.
“She’ll live in the same vicinity, be about as pretty as me,
and she will like Dairy Milk Buttons,” he says.
As the wheels on the bus go round and round,
Pretty little visions get on, sit down – he makes no sound,
just leans across and hands them a bag of chocs.
But they grab for the buttons – the stop bells I mean
and each time he finds himself bus-ted. Girls, strangely,
are not kind to strangers poking faces from behind.
But it’s okay. He doesn’t want a girl with loose buttons
anyway. He’d been too choosy; he goes for something fluid –
Crème Eggs are way better. But the girls respond the same.
And like magic, he changes his mind to Cadbury slabs
when an absolute Turkish Delight sits beside him.
But the girls are too… square. He gets desperate,
romantically sticks Roses under their noses – you know,
those ones in boxes. Once, a total stunner sits in front of him,
– but she’s obviously talking to her girlfriend on the phone.
He doesn’t really see himself ending up with a lesbian,
but he offers her a Twirl anyway, because you never know.
He tries to see the Glass and a Half Full, even when one girl
threatens to grab his Curly Wurlies if he thrusts another bar at her.
He is just trying to be sweet, but there’s something wrong
with his pick ‘n’ mix. Today, he decides his type of girl
will like Freddoes. He’s five minutes from home
when a woman boards the bus. She is a head-turner –
in the opposite sense. As in, his face swivels 180 degrees
the other way when he sees her. To him, this lady
looks like she’s escaped from a bag of Cadbury Mis-Shapes.
And when this double-decker of a female
takes the seat next to him, he feels as squished
as a melted Wispa. He does not offer her chocolate.
And here’s his stop. Excuse me he mutters. The lady shrugs.
He says it again. She does not budge. He tries for a while
to wiggle through, but her size is non-negotiable.
And too late. So fast. The Cadbury Factory flashes past.
Bus route number 11A goes over the hill and far away
– with him still in it. His world stopped back there.
He doesn’t care for these residential areas, those signs,
that bridge… there’s a place in Brum called Cotteridge?
This hostage now riding down Watford Road
almost gets squashed when the bus takes a murderous turn:
you see, they’ve hit the bottom of the watch. This trip
is dragging him anti-clockwise, backtracking
through time. He is about to see it all.
But the wheels in his head go round and round.
He plans his escape without a sound.
The light in his eyes says please please please
a sign for help for others to see. But they sit there.
They kick chairs. Obliviously.
And what’s worse, it’s urgent – he needs to pee.
He physically feels the sheer miles they’ve ridden,
“I can see the Shire, Sam,” he whispers in delirium
as they whiz by Sarehole Mill. Such is his hunger,
he hallucinates real spaghetti in that junction.
And it’s made worse when they take a turn
down Soho Road, a clash of cultures,
mosques and convents, jumbled
as a Brummy’s accent. It reminds him of home,
in the factory – how he’d almost forgot
that life is a luscious melting pot.
The juice in his gut goes churn churn churn
his lack of lunch is starting to burn.
He rips open the purple wrappers
and force-feeds himself frogs,
his little Prince Charmings. Eating back
the fantasies, he passes by Her Majesty’s
Prison, thinking perhaps that all along
he’d been captivated by women all wrong.
The Freddoes have just about settled
when our good lady gets up and stretches.
And with a press of the bell and a drop out the door,
his jailer becomes pedestrian.
He steps off at the next stop.
Back in Bournville, he’s come full circle.
But has he made a revolution? He stands
at a crossroads as the bus trundles off,
rumbling
Brumm… Brumm
© Jasmine Gardosi