On the bus 1

The cattle car closeness of London transport means it is difficult to even open up a tabloid, so many folk read books. I find this comforting; the world might be a more sane and safer place if people ignored the constant shriek and wail of the daily newspapers. Trade magazines should still be read scrupulously, though.

Today on the 176, I'm uncomfortably sandwiched in my seat in the wilderness of the back row, upper deck. A large woman opposite, her thighs spill over into the next seat, is reading MacSweeney's 24. I have a finely tuned Ameri-dar - the ability to pick out my countrymen by sight - and even before she speaks into her mobile and I get the flash of tell-tale American pearly whites when she smiles, I know that her voice will have the metallic twang of those square wheat producing states out west.

A teenage black girl is next to her, almost edged out of her seat by the American woman's ample thighs. The girl has a long scar over her face, a diagonal slash from right eyebrow down to her jaw. I try to imagine what caused it, and the pain. She probably doesn't think this when she looks into the mirror, but the scar gives her a haunting beauty. She is rather furtively reading a library copy of Black Lace Quickies 1, her eyes darting around as if expecting someone to catch her.

Across the way a pink cheeked jolly looking woman - I imagine her being an enthusiastic, if inexpert karaoke singer - is chuckling at Stuart Maconie's Pies and Prejudice. A tough looking, blocky fellow with a ruddy face that looks like it has seen its share of bar fights, is nearing the end of Elizabeth George's What Came Before He Shot Her.

A large, floppy haired indie boy - think Jack White's beefier brother - next to me is engrossed in the The Brothers Karamazov, a hardcover edition with yellowing pages, from Oxfam, I notice approvingly as he flips to the front page with the price. For some reason I hope desperately that he is reading on his own and not for some course. And me? Well I'm writing this all down in my Moleskine and I notice that Brothers Karamazov is surreptitiously looking at what I am writing. Can you read my scrawl, O Jack White's beefier brother? Can you?