Calvin and the Virgin

This morning, it was unkind. Just as I was leaving, I remembered I was supposed to be bringing the groceries my officemate forgot at our house after Saturday's barbecue, plus the milk I picked up for her last night (while I was waiting to meet up with a friend who never showed... grumble, grumble).

Kitchen. Milk - check. Balsamic vinegar - check. Broccoli - check. Grapes - check. Margerine... there are two unopened margerines. My brain siezes up. What do I do? Take both? Take neither? (I didn't sleep too well and early-morning decisions have never been my strong point.) I call her mobile. A strange, unintelligable and sleepy-sounding man answers. He says something about a computer. I stumble through in Spanish and hang up. It later transpires that I have somehow saved the wrong number as her new number. I fervently hope that the man I woke up was not someone I know.

I miss the bus. I wait in the cold (the weather gods have gone mad, such that I have a sunburnt neck from house hunting on Saturday, but I really wish I had some gloves on). I get the next bus, get off at the entrance to campus, and start walking to the offices. Numerous cars pass me and I inwardly curse them. A couple (or at least a couple of people) kindly stop and offer me a lift.

I get in the back. There is something brown on my hand. There is something brown on my bag. I pick up the plastic bag of groceries, which I had put down next to me. There is something brown very definitely on the seat. The plastic bag is covered in vinegar. Resigning myself, I rest it on top of my bag. I quietly panic and run through my options. I cannot face explaining what's happened to the nice couple (I am a coward, and it is early). There is a strong of vinegar. I wonder if they have noticed. Vinegar is one of the smells I hate most of all in all the world. This does not help.

Subtly and with disgust, I begin to mop up the carseat with the sleeve of my jumper. It seems to end up not significantly more stained than the rest of the seat.

I am extremely glad to get out of the car. I beat a hasty retreat to my office and the bathroom, where follows much washing of things before I can have breakfast. I am hungry. The vinegar smell proceeds to make me feel unwell for a remarkably long time.

In conclusion, no matter how much of a rush you are in, I recommend that you always check that the lid of the vinegar bottle is tightly closed.

Anyway... what I WAS going to talk about was the bus. Mexican buses (the rattletrap local ones) seem to be personal to their drivers, and I always enjoy all the paraphenalia they decorate them with. This morning's was both typical and quite special, and it made me grin to myself much of the way to work.

This guy had at some point decided to pimp up his bus with a red and black theme to match his bad-boy image and reckless driving. Hence big red speakers, glossy red seat-backs and black seats and a big red knob on the gearstick (snigger).

To the left of his head (on the "wall") there was the obligatory little shrine: a picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe with two vases of fresh flowers fixed underneath - often chrysanthemums but today orange lilies - with a rosary dangling from it. The window underneath was decorated with a tasteful rendition in simple black of a weeping Jesus.

The rest of the windows were also decorated in black, with a kind of frame inside each window and a weird kind of dynamic splotch.

In front of the driver, the area between the roof and the windscreen was decorated as follows:
- in the top at the centre, a large sticker of an "ADO" bus - long distance, first class coaches with toilets and air conditioning and TVs. The kind of thing that might once have been given away as promotional material, or sold as the kind of souvenir that attracts only transport geeks (and as someone with a particular fondness for Scandinavian Seaways playing cards and Caledonian MacBrayne merchandise of all kinds, I cast no stones). It made me laugh because it seemed as if the little bus was dreaming about what it might one day grow up to be.
Below, from the ouside in:
- two glossy red speakers.
- two identical stickers depicting the Tasmanian Devil cartoon character... with a broken leg and crutches.
- a weird cartoon bunny sticker with too much nostril and not enough eye, spoiling the otherwise careful symmetry.
- a sticker of the ubiquitous cartoon of Calvin (as in Calvin and Hobbes) pissing, this time in front of a logo of the football club Chivas, wearing a Chivas strip and pissing on the logo of Club America.
Below:
- a super-cutesy sticker of the Disney version of Tigger at school, with an apple and a blackboard, and flowers.
Below:
- two big speaker boxes (also symmetrically in the middle) beneath, partly obscuring the windscreen, with mirrored fronts. On the mirror, sparkley red stickers with cursive script saying "Porque te conoci" - Because I knew you, or Because I met you.
- on the windscreen itself, those semi-transparent strips to cut down the glare from the sky, decorated with Nike ticks, applied symmetrically ticking outwards - so some will always be the right and some the wrong way round, whichever way you look.

I really don't see how anyone could not fall in love with Mexico.