Round the bend and on to the traffic lights. Another pub over the road. The temptation to enter was quite strong, if only to find a telephone that worked, so he could make contact with a taxi firm. He kept on walking, on past the next stop. The bus situation was truly deplorable though; there was just no getting away from it I mean it really was out the fucking question. Thank christ he was a rich bourgeoisie because it meant you could travel privately and secretively, avoiding all the terrors of being witnessed by the random populace. No doubt he would have to walk it the whole way home, a distance of let us see probably about six miles. Six miles! In the name of the fucking holies right enough. Heh you, less of that fucking whatdyemacallit blasphemy. But does blasphemy exist if the holies dont. These are the types of questioning
Nor was there any other method of getting home. Neither train nor underground rail lay within a good couple of miles of where he now was striding, having recently dumped the remaining chips in a rubbish bin opposite what looks to have been a former railway station, irony of ironies. And another bus stop, at which precisely none of Glasgow’s denizens was standing so Doyle would also be giving it the go-by. Fuck that for a game, being the only dickie shivering at the fucking stop when you’re trying to get home in the fucking rain and all that when for all ye know there’s a strike on but no bastard’s remembered to tell you. Murder polis. Out the question. A situation fraught with unreal awkwardidity, awkward unreality.
But there a bus on the other side of the road.
Patrick stopped and stared at it, hoping the person driving might infer his plight, but no, the rascally evildoer maintained pressure on the accelerator pedal. So there ye are all you believers in telepathy and the diverse forms of telaesthesia, none of it fucking exists. And how come all these tales are Greek and no Roman! Fuck off.
A wee cafe and another chip shop down by the bingo hall, plus Chinese-style food carry-outs. No pubs. Patrick could buy another load of chips. He had finished with the last lot, and the rain was become a mere trickle. So he could buy another lot and maybe it would cease falling altogether, because here you had a case where there seemed a necessary connection, a contingency, between the purchase of potatoes chipped and fried in the fats of dead animals and the rainfall of a nation albeit a nation who knuckles under to another, and ships them all its freshest fish. But he just wasnt hungry. Not even for the sake of comparing notes for a very large oil painting he was thinking of doing on the whole damn racket, a sort of survey, entitled Chip Shops of Auld Glesgi Toon. With poster sales it would transform him into a dollar billionaire overnight and he could give up the teaching game totally. Northamerican sales and our kith and kin in the colonies would go daft for such a product. He could get old Martin of the Crafts and Arts department to model some examples and really give them their money’s worth: here is a piece of chipped spud, there is a lump of lard. A crowd of teenagers stood laughing and shouting at each other. They could have appeared threatening. Patrick was used to it but and didnt find it especially awful. Although if they discovered he was a teacher they would no doubt murder him. The soaked clothes were a fair disguise. Part of Patrick’s problem and let us face it he does have a problem, is, that he actually looks like a teacher and he dresses like a teacher and he even speaks like a fucking teacher as well for christ sake there is no denying it, there is simply no denying it, and remaining an honest man. And at least he is honest, at least he is an honest man, a man who is honest, at least he
But would it be classified as murder? bringing about the death of a schoolteacher by violent means, by the actions of young folk of school age. Had Patrick been the judge he would not have found such a case clear-cut. They were also soaked, the teenagers. They didnt care. They didnt give a hoot. His mob was exactly the same. If it was thunderstorming outside in the playground that selfsame playground is the only place where you would find them all standing. And then in they’d stroll, dripping, saturated, soaked through and sitting there at their desks without catching pneumonia — not even a fucking cold! they didni even catch a fucking cold. Thus rendering all of his comments on that probability absolutely fucking ludicrous, the ravings of an aged schoolteacher.
Remember how auld Doyle used to tell us we’d all die of fucking pneumonia if we werent more careful! And then we fucking didni! Ha ha ha.
Why in the name of christ had he neglected to buy a new pair of shoes. It was just crazy. There was no other word for it, it was insane — he was insane. He was fucking outsane never mind fucking insane for christ sake this stupit rain as well now getting worse, plastering the cranium craniamus a unt. One requires to bear up stoically. Socrates was a Stoic Socrates was all Stoics therefore exeunt Socrates Socratetus masculine, one who is or was a stoical member of the male sex singular, the woman he fancies being married to a millionaire seller of double-glazed windows who drives a cadillac car with an incredible extravaganza of in-car entertainment. Okay then, fine. Okay then. Fine. No ravings of a lunatic here. An ice-cool rationality. Just a straight fucking perception of the fact.
The lights had changed. Two women passed him crossing the road. They were chatting about something. Imagine saying to them: Excuse me; what is the nature of the chat? what are yous chatting about? Yous must be chatting about something, so what is it, if ye dont mind me asking.
Of course we mind ye asking ya fucking sexist prick ye.
But it was just a simple question.
Go to fuck ya dickie.
Which is not fair. If you can no longer get asking members of the sex opposite your own a straight and ordinary question. Because if we canni get doing that where are we! Fucking nowhere! Some of the girls in Pat’s classes refuse to talk to him too — and not just the wee Muslim lassies, other yins as well, they just refuse to talk. But there again some fucking boys refuse to talk so where does that fucking leave ye? nowhere — the fucking usual. How come they dont talk! If these two women had just stopped and tried to guess at the extraordinary neural activity within the skull of that male they just passed — why then, my god! revelation! henceforth they would renounce their lives of dutiful support to their husbands and come to devote themselves to being the bedmates and domestic servants of P for Patrick Doyle MA (Hons). Okay? 10 out of 10. Tick. 
.
And here was another bloody damn chip shop at the Cross Of All The Saracens. Youths in doorways. What would happen if shop doorways were declared redundant. If Pat Doyle was to be transformed into a teenage person he would go and sit in a gutter, at a stank, and wait for something to float past on its way to the sewers — preferably a large dod of shite, and he could climb aboard and set sail for pastures new. At the bus stop round from the corner an elderly man was standing in at the mouth of an adjacent close. He was quite grumpy looking, dressed in yellow oilskins, coat and leggings/trousers — going up to him and saying: Excuse me; is it leggings or trousers you’ve actually got on sir?