Bus station altercation.

Two main things happened today, I took Heather to see Loch Ness, which was my first proper visit too. Secondly my brother and I had very minor (seemed major to me because I'm a big softy) altercation with some random who wanted 50p for an imaginary bus.

First off, Loch Ness was great. We went out on the boat for an hour, but I was still a bit of a mess from the night before. I was all over the place to be honest - I even lost the first boat-trip ticket in the gift shop with a horrendous carpet. A vomit coloured tartan monstrosity that stretched as far as the eye could see. For a start, this made me feel weird. Then I realised that I had been looking down for too long so I looked back up. I suddenly felt dreamy as I looked at the wall of stuffed Nessies. The head rush came on faster and I had to hold the counter near me. We didn't have a lift back sorted and no buses ran, being the sabbath and all. We ended up sticking our thumb over the road to get back into town. We got a lift after half and hour with a guy called Ralph Crook who has a hairdressing place in town, who at first I thought was hard of hearing because when I asked what he did for a living his Invernesian accented phrase "cut hear" sounded like "can't hear".

[personal note, if you are ever thinking about picking a hitcher up - please do. It's an awful feeling to have empty cars ignore you and it'll make their (and possibly your) day. That is unless they look they the guy I'm about to describe].

After seeing some comedy at Eden Court and walking Heather back to her hostel me Theo went to sit on a bench waiting for a lift. A guy approached us from behind. I'd seen him a few days ago bugging people for money around the bus station. As expected he came over:

"Here lads d'you have 50p for the bus"
"Nah mate sorry" (I was jingling money in my pocket)
"Are you being cheeky eh? I can fucking hear it"
"Look I saw you asking people earlier, I'm not giving you 50p and there is no bus"
"I'll punch you in the head and then him" He came round in front of us, probably to size us up more

My middle classness kicked in here. I thought with such a well observed an timely retort like that would have scuppered his plans. As if he would be like: "Ahhh you got me, good one, I can see that I won't be getting from you eh? I'll be off now then, take care, bye bye now". Pah. He just got more persistent. I've only been in this same situation a couple times before in Krakow with a junkie and La Rochelle a few times, and frankly I'm shit at dealing with them. I'm not a fighter I've never fought anyone in my life, which I always thought was a good quality to have. All confidence drains from me I don't know what to do/say in these situations. Like do you hit me and then I hit you? Do we take it in turns? I just hold my beautiful new camera tightly and hope that the guy politely fucks off.

On the other side of the bench though, my rugby-playing, gym-going brother was trying not to laugh. He was fine. I have a suspicion that he almost wanted the guy to hit one off us as an excuse to then hit him back, probably three or four times as hard. Mum pointed out though that this guy has probably been hit about all his life. Which I can imagine, and I sympathise with, but you don't think like that when it happens. You become reactionary and want to shoot him in the face so he'll go away. In hindsight this guy was probably no threat at all, seeing as there was two of us. But I did have over a grand's worth of equipment hanging off my shoulder (which Old Scruffy did actually inquire about). And we walked away.

I wish I was braver though, sometimes, and had said some cool lines like "I'm afraid you're going to have delay that bus journey" Boom headshot.

I still have a stonking hangover by the way.