Megabus in July

Some kind of very human smell. Unmistakably pungent to the point of a certain acidity, like garlic sweating through the soggy yellowed armpit of a once-white tshirt sleeve and stinging the mucous membranes as strongly as when an eyebrow hair is slowly but forcibly plucked from the inner corner of the eye.

A strangely familiar cheesy smell on the upholstery that brings to my attention the Other People. Fellow passengers, all in their own frustrated traveller’s bubble, pretending they don’t know that cheesy smell too. Staring dimly into the thick haze ahead. The air: made no less dense by the rasping air-conditioners that seem to chuggingly pump only warmer, thicker substance back into the stagnant air sitting, gloopily, directly in front of my face.

An unmoving stickiness. Even the hot waves that appear to visibly ripple over the fields in the middle distance have a stagnant sort of vibration about them, despairingly stuck in their unending motion.

The warmth of my sweat, which drips now, rhythmically, down my back, brings to my mouth a stringy, gooey dehydration not to be quenched until my destination has been reached. 4 hours from now.

Breathing: regular, smooth, controlled. A kind of false calm, verging on hysteria. Should my breathing become irregular, should a sigh of irritation escape me, I have lost the epic battle to stay this side of certain madness.

An incessant beeping: someone’s digital wrist watch? Can no one else hear that? The man in front of me adds to this piercing drone a percussive accompaniment with his impatient fingertips. 3 hours 55 minutes.

A bronzed torso is revealed between some trees by the side of the M6; the man to which it belongs appears to be fruit-picking. A mirage? The sizzlingly sharp burst of sherbet sweetness that I immediately summon to mind causes me to salivate desperately. Lying in a field eating raspberries.

The tension headache begins to subside as I slip into a stage of acceptance. The half-inch of arm-space I once had has been stolen by an AS-Level Chemistry textbook, opened to reveal a diagram of a Glycine molecule. I no longer fear what may happen to me. 3 hours 50 minutes.