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Tilbury Plus

As it happened it wasn’t great for either party. Lawrie and I struggled with rides and Roly had a pretty nightmarish ride to New Orleans then a daunting stay in the bus terminus. We’d told him to just wait and we’d turn up sooner or later. If this meant sleeping there, so be it. I seem to recall Lawrie and I arrived a day or so after Roly who was naturally a very relieved and happy boy, seeing as we didn't really have any backup plans or instructions for him should we not appear. He recalls he’d had to adopt a tough streetwise persona so as to not appear vulnerable. He’d done well for a scrawny little boy from Berhampore. A ranting ‘shell-shocked’ fellow passenger had kept him on edge for most of the 24 hr ride.

We had quite a few days to wait before we could uplift Bessie so we settled into life living in the New Orleans Greyhound Bus Station. It was a busy and vibrant place with buses coming and going at all times which meant that we could merge with the people waiting for connections. There were always passengers in transit, as well as people awaiting arriving kin etc, an ever-changing throng of humanity. We soon realised that we were also part of a community of the lower-levels of society or itinerants who were using the station as somewhere to live. Nights were times to be wary, as the police would often do a sweep. Word would spread quickly and quite a number a people would discreetly as possible, arise and make their way to the toilets. Here we would cram into a cubicle and have only one pair of legs showing under the door. This took some gymnastic ability for the non-feet show-ers, involving standing on the seat, crouching to keep your heads from showing over the top of the partitions. We didn’t quite manage a week there before we decided we were beginning to stand out, so we moved a few streets over to the Continental Trailways’ terminal, amusingly finding some familiar faces there. We’d investigated cheap and skody hotels but in our price range even Lawrie was daunted and he was my arbiter for this sort of thing. The fear-factor was adjudged to be too high, especially as we witnessed what looked to be a knife-standoff outside the one we were considering.

One night the police arrived catching us unawares and woke the black guy next to me. “Ticket!”

The guy convincingly mumbled in a slumberous fashion and fished out a ticket.

“Hey, this is for Toosday!”

The purported rider didn’t open his eyes but again mumbled under his breath.

“Hang on, this is for last Toosday … no, it is not, it's for last year! On your feet!"