Boswell's Bus Pass by Stuart Campbell Read Free Book Online Page B

being a heap of turf for burning and ‘balls of coal dust’. When she told Boswell that her main occupation was wandering though the graveyard at night he asked if she had met any ghosts. She replied that although her evening strolls were largely ghost-free she always had premonitions before hearing that a relative had died. Perhaps her sons had chosen to avoid even this method of contacting their mum.
    I struggle with St Andrews. Yes, it’s attractive and smart but I can’t get beyond my own prejudices. It still feels elitist and unnecessarily exclusive with pretensions beyond its status. Although Glass’s Inn where the two of them enjoyed ‘a good supper of rissered haddocks and mutton chops’ is no longer there we had agreed to buy a pint in the pub nearest the original site. This was easier said than done. The Castle Tavern was bricked up. Most of the adjacent premises bore names such as Psychic World, The Miller’s Tale and Anyone for Tennis. Not a decent boozer within 100 yards. Eventually we settled for the Central Bar and squeezed in alongside troops of yahs happily braying their way through the menu and ordering food that should have been beyond the means of your typical student.
    There was one other customer who looked as if he might join us in a quick burst of class war if push came to shove but even he displayed odd tendencies. He would disappear at intervals but not before carefully placing beer mats on the top of each of his three pints. Was he fearful that passing bats might defecate in his ale? Was it a defence against someone spiking his drink with Ritalin? On reflection , unless he had bladder problems he was sneaking out the back for frequent smokes and was using beer mat semaphore to warn unsuspecting bar staff against pouring his temporarily neglected drinks down the sink.
    Samuel Johnson chose St Andrews to deliver his thoughts on smoking; ‘To be sure, it is a shocking thing-blowing smoke out of our mouths into other people’s mouths, eyes, and noses, and having the same thing done to us. Yet I cannot account why a thing which requires so little exertion and yet preserves the mind from total vacuity should have gone out. Every man has something by which he calms himself: beating with his feet or so.’
    FOREST could use the words in their pro-smoking propaganda. The idea of beating your feet as a method of preserving the mind from total vacuity although undeniably cheaper than smoking has not caught on greatly.
    David finally achieved closure in his earlier fixation by stuffing a huge baguette in his mouth while declaring happily ‘You can stick your mutton up your jumper!’ It was unclear if this was a promise or a threat.
    There was nothing pretentious about the second hand bookshop at the foot of South Street. The proprietor seemed genuinely pleased to see potential customers and on asking if he could be of help in any way David replied with a positively Johnsonian flourish, ‘I would like to purchase the one first edition in your shop that is outrageously underpriced’. Thankfully this piece of facetiousness was received with good grace and there followed one of those perennial discussions with booksellers about the one that got away. On this occasion it was a first of Ian Rankin’s
Knots and Crosses
which had been unknowingly tossed into the pound box outside.
    Dr Johnson’s father had been a second hand book seller and binder before overreaching himself with a doomed paper-making venture. Father and son enjoyed a complex, often acrimonious relationship. When he left Oxford Samuel declined the opportunity to work in the family business, and on an occasion that returned to haunt him, refused even to accompany his father to Uttoxeter market where he had a bookstall. In later life he underwent a public show of repentance : ‘I went to Uttoxeter in the rain, on the spot where my father’s stall used to stand. In contrition I stood, and hoped the penance was expiatory.’
    Although it