The word 'bollocks' springs to mind. Outside the landscape is flying past. Well, flying, it moves anyway. Taking its time though. It moves as fast as possible on the inland roads of South Australia. Funny sight, that is, Friesian cows. As their name hints they are not particularly native to these shores. For some reason it is just not feasible to imagine kangaroos hopping about in the north of Germany, yet these future steak burgers seem to feel quite at ease around here. Mind you, it would seem everyone is at ease in this country. It's just too hot not be relaxed.
   Right, let's try and move as to let the blood circulation flow as it was intended to by God. If She exists of course. I wouldn't want you to think I am fanatically religious, or extremely atheist for that matter. I've just never given it much thought. Well, until now, obviously. It's amazing what a coach ride like this can do to the human mind… In between attempting to fill out these crosswords I keep trying to remember who on earth could have suggested to take the coach when travelling from Adelaide to Perth. And what I'd like to do to him. Or her. I'm not trying to be PC there, I just have this feeling it was a woman that came up with it. Must have been. Only they can be this cruel.
   So far I've managed to finish four of them. Numbers two, seventeen, thirty-four and forty-nine. I'm currently working on number fifty-eight; nineteen across: Part of the body, eight letters. B-O-L-L-O-C-K-S. Damn, doesn't go with seven down, 'euthanasia'. Second letter should have been a U. Ah well, it's not like completing one leads to ecstatic sensations of joyful victory anyway. I mean, the coloured squares in puzzle seventeen made out the name of a famous person and I had to enquire with the lassies in the seats behind me who the Hell Jason Orange might be. Or have been for that matter. The remaining three successes led to the Millennium Dome, second only to the Sydney Opera House in my all-time list of least favourite buildings around the globe, Gouda cheese and a duck billed platypus. Life is grand.
   Ah, it would seem my girlfriend has awoken. She's blinking her eyes looking about her. Probably to establish whether we have neared our place of destination. For your information, since she has fallen asleep we have driven a rough one-hundred-and-fifty kilometres, which, in comprehensible terms, means we have moved up about a hundred miles. In relative Australian terms this equals the vehicle having stood still with a flat tyre for the entire duration of her slumber. She looks at me and smiles, for lack of any sensible thing to do. I smile back. It would seem we have already exhausted our entire stock of anecdotes and childhood stories, which were supposed to last us an entire relationship, in the past part of this ride and we're not even half way. She smiles again and then looks away to admire the Aussie view on the other side of the coach, which consists of… Friesian cows grazing in a green field.
   "How about 'bullshit'?" suggests my girlfriend. At my confused gaze she points at the crossword on my knee and my crossed out 'bollocks'. True enough, it does fit, but I'm not positive as to what extent excrement is considered part of the anatomy. I can see how she got there though. She's American, you see? And she's only very gradually catching on to our daily slang terminology and street lingo. So to her it's an expression of disbelief or unwillingness. Much like the Yank 'bullshit'. I don't feel like explaining the biological implication of the term.
   We met on a holiday in the south of Spain. That was two years ago. By now we're sick of constantly having to travel across the Great Pond to see one another so we've decided to go travelling Down Under and if afterwards we can still stand the sight of each other she's going to move in with me in Britain. Which would be a big step for her considering she's from Missouri [pronounce as 'misery']. And as you know it's mighty difficult to get out of a swamp once you're in one.
   Missouri, even by Yankee standards, is not the ideal breeding ground for intellectuals as you might know. Any person that manages to get a dead man elected into the House is very unlikely ever to win a Nobel prize, unless we introduce some brand new categories. This is of course where all the jokes about inbreeding come in. I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint you here. My girlfriend is not an inbreed, nor are most of the rumours jokes.
   Her father is actually the disgrace of the family. Until he had married an immigrated Irish lass the family had been one hundred per cent American. Proper Yankee Doodle Doo. According to her grandfather, who, judging from the sight of him, had started teething at sixty, the family had been there since the Lord Almighty had planted man on this planet. Ever since one home-shot stew dinner I pointed out the white man did not land on the continent till approximately five hundred years ago the story has been somewhat altered. His ancestors were now on the boat with Columbus himself. And they had (in)bred a wonderful line of red, white and blue Americans ever since. Her great-great-great grandfather had fought bravely in the Civil War, though, considering they're from Missouri I'd hate to think on which side, following in the footsteps of his grandfather, who had been a key figure in the war of 1812. This has always puzzled me. How can being a key figure in a war you lost possibly come to your credit?
   Ah, a kangaroo. A black one. On a yellow traffic sign. This inspires hope. Not that we haven't seen any yet. The whole country is full with stationary and mobile petting zoos, where you can pat a kangaroo on the head, or, the ladies' favourite, cuddle a koala bear. Or wombat. Whatever they're called. They're furry and would climb up trees if it weren't for the steady stream of female tourists who can't resist their motherly instinct and just have to press it up to their chest and feel, running through their emotional system, a warm stream of whatever bollocks it was Mills and Boon are always on about. Smart creatures they are by the way. Koalas, obviously; not women. It is a very common misapprehension these creatures hang from trees all day because they're lazy. They live off eucalyptus you see. They're not lazy; they're stoned! Now if you or I would be caught with a daily portion of koala feed we'd be chucked in prison for a considerable time, but they get hugged all day by big-breasted blond-haired beautiful… Steady… Don't get overexcited. There is not much room in here as it is; definitely no space available for expansion of the nether regions. Wonder what koalas call the person feeding them. The dealer?
   Stretch time. My god, it's even difficult to get your arms up without hurting yourself or the person next to you. And… you can't stretch, because the ceiling is too low. Ah, maybe the air vent has started working since we left. It has. Hoorah! It's amazing how one can be pleased by such little things in life. Nice and cool stream of air in your face. Lovely. I could do with a nice cooled lager. With a wee slice of lime in it. Aye, that sounds excellent. The sticker in the front of the cabin expressly forbids it though. No hot food, no alcohol, no ice cream, no smoking, no dogs… Basically the only thing that isn't illegal is fastening your seat belt, which is mandatory. In a coach! A seatbelt. In the TV commercials you always see people flying through the windshield when they don't fasten their seatbelts. I'm on row 19, seat A. If they want to manage to get me flying trough that huge piece of double glazing in the front, I'm afraid they'll have to start putting their foot down. Pedal to the metal. No objections here… My belt is securely fastened.
   Oh, thank you. The headrest of the seat in front of me has just moved back about a foot. Which means my view now consists of the top of the head in front of me and the area in which I can move the parts of my body below the neck has been reduced from none at all to far less. Maybe I should ask him to… No hang on, he's German. No point. Might as well try and get up at a big Chinese gathering of politicians and try to address them in their native tongue. If there's one thing I've learned about Krauts it's that they either don't speak English, or refuse to speak English. What's he reading there? Patrick Süskind. Boring… Aye, turn up the volume, why don't you? Sure, sing along. We don't care. Die Toten Hosen. I don't like Die Toten Hosen. Mind you, I don't like any form of punk. Especially German punk. Where's my Walkman? I'm dying for some Eric Clapton. Oh, it's in my rucksack, which is safely tucked away, under the seat in front of me.
   Right, safety helmet… Torch working? Pickaxe, rope, supplies; I'm going in… I feel like a baked bean in here. Mangled, overheated, under appreciated and, most of all, tinned. Didn't know my body could fold like this. Hang on, that sounds like my girlfriend up there. What I am doing down here? I'm reconstructing Ypres. I'm digging a tunnel, will lay mines and then blow Jerry sky high. That should break the Front… They'll never know what hit them. Ah, Walkman. Ow! My head. The rest of my body probably hurts as well but I think I've lost all feeling. Right, working my way up to find myself staring in the face of…the German. What are you looking so upset about? With his music still blasting into his ears he finger points at the seat, probably indicating that when I nearly crushed my cranium his musical performance was momentarily slightly distracted. Unbelievable. Thank Christ we won… Twice.
   Ah, yet another little town we wouldn't even bother naming in Britain, but is considered the major industrial capital of the whole region around these parts. The coach stops every few hours, at these sort of hamlets, to let off the lucky bastards and take on a fresh set of sardines. Slowly and carefully the new load shuffle through the isle, looking for an unoccupied seat somewhere. The bloke in the front is wearing a black shirt with white print, claiming 'I'm the man your mother always warned you about'. This is good. My girlfriend was complaining earlier we forgot to bring candy…
   It would seem my girl has dozed off again. I wonder how she does manage it? What I would need is a few shots of vodka and a good knock on the head. Sounds quite tempting actually. Wonder if the lassies behind…bugger, they're asleep as well. I wonder what Perth is going to be like. Mind you, if there's a swimming pool I'll be happy for at least two whole days. And a bed. Ooh, a proper bed… With pillows and stuff. Apparently we exchange fantasies telepathically because just when I thought of pillows my girlfriend rummaged around in her seat, curled up against me and put her head on my shoulder. Well, this has now officially and effectively obstructed me from any form of movement. The only thing I can do now is practise hand signals with the arm I have put around her, but as you can imagine this soon leads to embarrassing situations involving the people across the isle. And I can't shrug, cause I'll wake my girlfriend up. Still, this is not all that bad… I'll just sit back; well, up, and enjoy Eric.
   'Said she said she was pretending…' I inspect my girlfriend, taking up the vast majority, enough to pass a constitutional altering, of the two seats and using me as bedding. She had better not be pretending. Let's see, has the landscape outside managed to convert itself into something not mirroring that of five hours ago? My word, how many of these bloody cows can there possibly be? And I thought us Brits had managed to spread, roam and procreate faster than evolution had intended us to do… Judging from the sheer numbers of these things and the area over which they have managed to spread themselves the whole world should be taught Friesian in school.
   The tape has reached the end. Three cheers for auto reverse. Can't remember what's on the B-side of this tape actually. Let's see, it's got some wild, ferocious, but very sloppy drumming to start off with. Ah, the Who. The who? Yes, them. Haha. I'm sure someone has come up with better jokes than that. Somewhere, sometime. But I bet he wasn't on a coach blocked in and pinned down by Germany, the US and, don't know what the lassies behind me are actually. They had a funny accent. Might be Danish. Or Dutch. Could be Friesian for all I know. What was I thinking about? Oh, the Who. We could do with Keith Moon in here. I bet he would make the trip seem a lot shorter. Or he'd trash the bus and put an end to this misery. I'd help. Prison doesn't seem like such a bad alternative here. Mind you, the view there would be pretty consistent as well, I guess.
   She does look beautiful there sleeping away. She's probably dreaming of Brad Pitt or some other American superhuman character with terrible imitations of various British accents, but I don't mind. After all, here she is, with me, on an infernal coach ride, on our way to eternal happiness and children with names like Billy-Bob because they have to be named after her relatives. I can just picture it now… In the meanwhile she's my sleeping beauty, slumbering away on my shoulder. With my arm around her torso and my hand resting comfortably on her backside. Ha! Part of the body, eight letters. B-U-T-T-O-C-K-S. Right, on we go. Twenty across. Natural way of fertilisation. Aargh…. Crap…