'Have a nice day,' she said. 'In fact have a folderiddledee day.'

The day was jolly and joyful and the newly risen sun pampered Big Bob's baldy head as he sallied forth on his way.

His way led him down to the bottom of Moby Dick Terrace, where the flowers (many pink) in their well-tended beds prettified the memorial park and the sparrows, their chorusings over and their minds made up regarding their plans for the day, were putting those plans into practice.

One nearly did a doo-doo on Big Bob's baldy head, but on such a day as very good as this one was, it didn't.

Big Bob took to a bit of whistling. Nothing fancy. Just basic stuff. Basic old stuff. None of this newfangled Runey-Toons nonsense. Big Bob favoured the classics. A hint of Sonic Energy Authority here. A touch of the Lost T-shirts of Atlantis there. And a smidgen of the Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of Death when no-one was likely to hear him. Today he whistled 'Why is there never a policeman around when you need one, but always three buses turning up at the same time when you've given up waiting and just got into a taxi'. A tune Mr Melchizedec the milkman had taught him. And in fact had whistled earlier this day, after placing two pints of the finest gold-top onto the well-worn step of the Flying Swan.

Whilst acting in the capacity of milkman in residence to the borough of Brentford, Mr Melchizedec always wore his official cap. Big Bob also wore a cap, but this was not a milkman's jobbie. Big Bob's cap was the cap of a tour guide. An official tour guide. The official tour guide. The official tour guide of the Brentford guided-tour guide.

Big Bob did not wear his cap whilst not in his official capacity and as his official capacity did not begin until he clocked in at the depot, he was not wearing it now.

Hence the naked baldy head that didn't get the sparrow's doo-doo on it.

Still whistling, and still bare and baldy-headed, Big Bob perambulated his ample frame, with its generous chest and broad, yet hitherto unmentioned shoulders, onwards towards the depot.

The flowers continued with their prettifying and the sparrows with their actionable plans.

The depot was more of a shed than a depot. In fact it was a shed. A large enough shed to house a bus, but a shed more so than more less. It was an aged shed and had been an engine shed, in the days when trains still ran at all, which were days that were now far gone.

Trains had been a very good idea at the time. A time that lasted for more than one hundred years. But at some period back in the late twentieth century, some unqualified Prime Minister or other had thought it would be a very good idea to privatize the system. He'd sold off the railways to various business concerns, run, curiously enough, by fellows who, although very good at business, were totally unqualified to run a railway system.

So now there weren't any trains any more and those who had run them and run them down, ran other things instead and those who missed them, missed them, and missed them very much.

Big Bob didn't miss them at all. He'd never actually travelled on a train, having had nowhere he ever needed to go upon one. Buses were Big Bob's thing. Big buses with open-topped upstairs regions. Old-fashioned buses, painted in cream, with chromium-plated radiator grilles and a special place for the conductor to stand. Buses that went in a circular route and ended up where they began. But there weren't many of those around any more either. Big Bob knew of only the one. The one in the depot in Brentford. The one that he took on guided tours. Tours with a circular route.

Big Bob crossed over the bridge that had once crossed over the railway and made his way down the narrow flight of stairs that led to the yard and the depot.

The yard, ex-railways and now the property of Brentford Magical History Tours Ltd, looked just the way such a yard should look. Decoratively decked out in rusted ironwork of the corrugated persuasion, flanked around by tall fences topped with razor wire. A sign on the gate which read beware the savage dogs that roam these premises by night, and a great many of those corroding oil drums that always look as if.they must contain something very very dangerous indeed.

Big Bob ceased his whistling and smiled the yard a once-over. He really loved it here. This was his kind of place. Old and mellow and one foot in the past. And one foot was all you ever really needed, as long as you knew how to balance upon it and weren't going anywhere else.

Big Bob pushed open the gate with the sign that warned of the nocturnal growlers and entered the depot's yard. The double doors of the shed stood open, the double-decker stood within.

Beneath the double-decker on a long tray affair that moved upon castors, somebody tinkered with tools at the brakes of the aged bus. No saboteur, this somebody, but Periwig Tombs, the mechanic and driver.

'Morning Bob the Big,' called he, espying the large approaching footwear of the large approaching tour guide.

'Morning Peri my lad,' called Big Bob. 'Applying those touches that finish?'

From beneath the bus came that head-clunking sound that mechanics' heads always make as they clunk upon the undersides of vehicles, when the owner of the head raises it without thinking, to answer some question or other. Why mechanics do this few men know, and those who do don't care.

'Ouch,' said Periwig. 'Why do I always do that?'

'I don't know,' said Big Bob. 'But I do believe that I care.'

Periwig Tombs slid out from beneath the bus, upon the long tray affair with the castors. He was rubbing his head as he slid. It was a head of generous proportion. A lofty dome of a head. Sparsely sown with sandy hair and flanked with large protruding ears. Given the scale of such a head, one might have expected a goodly helping of facial featurings. But no, the nose was a stubby button, the eyes were small and squinty and the little kissy mouth seemed always in a pout. The neck that supported this head was of that order which is designated 'scrawny' and the body beneath was slim and lank and undersized and weedy. At school, fellow students who knew of the Eagle comic had christened him the Mekon.

Periwig Tombs eased himself into the vertical plane. Wiped his slender hands upon an oily rag, which increased their oiliness by precisely tenfold, and grinned kissily at Big Bob the tour guide.

'You have strawberry-milkshake stains on your tie,' he observed.

'And I wear them with pride,' said the big one. 'Wouldst thou care for a fresh spam sandwich?'

'No, but I'd care for an aspirin.'

The depot had a roster board with Big Bob's name upon it. Big Bob clocked in and consulted this board and then he tut-tut-tutted.

'Why do you triply tut?' asked Periwig Tombs, as he sought the tin of Swarfega.

'I tut for this roster,' said Big Bob, taking down his official cap from its official peg and placing it upon his head, which now made it official. 'I tut for the fact that upon this joy-filled bank holiday there is to be but one official tour of the borough and that this one tour has but six tourists booked in for it. Woe unto the house of Charker, for verily it will come to pass that small tour numbers mean small tips and small tips mean small beer.'

'Well, it's a dead'n, ain't it?' said Periwig Tombs, who having located the Swarfega tin was now at a loss as to how it would be opened. His puny hands being oh so oily and all.

'A dead'n?' quoth Big Bob. 'What meanest thou by this?'

'People don't want bus tours any more.' Periwig worried at the tin's lid with his teeth. 'Bus tours are old-fashioned. People can now sit in the comfort of their own homes, at their Mute Corp PCs, and take virtual trips around the globe on the World Wide Web. Ouch, there goes a filling.'