Harefield man Roger de Gama, 45, a retired pancake inspector from Milney Way, has discovered that life exists outside the village. One day over the long Christmas break he got on the U9 bus at the Mount Pleasant stop and instead of getting off in the village he stayed on. 

A creature of habit, de Gama catches the bus to the High Street every day to get his tea from the chip shop. On this particular occasion he decided to discover the mythical Dolphin Fish and Chip shop he had heard rumour of. He explained. 

“I knew the U9 goes to the hospital before the High Street but a bloke on the bus once told me after that it goes to the other end of the village too where they say there is an even better chip shop. Imagine my horror when the driver didn’t  stop and just kept going towards the dump which is like the edge of the unexplored world as we know it!”

In fact Mr de Gama carried on along the Harvil Road all the way to Uxbridge. He continues. “There was like a robot voice announcing all these foreign place names. Roker Park, Warren Road, Harefield Road, I thought we were back home then but no, Clare House until we got to High Street Uxbridge. I assumed the driver would take us back again like they do at Shelley Lane but he made us all get off!”  

He then spent several hours wandering the streets of Uxbridge, lost and trying to find his way to a bus stop from where he could make his escape back to civilisation. 

“I’d never been to a big city before but I tell you it was a wondrous place! They had two bakers shops! Two! And they were right opposite each other. One was owned by Mr. Greggs and the other by Mr. Wenzels. I didn’t know which one to go in so I went in both! Mind you they weren’t as good as the Harefield bakers. No way.”

“And every other shop is a coffee shop! With cakes! And you can sit outside and have a fag. And a cup of coffee. And a cake! And in Windsor Street there was a cafe called the Wanky Tea Pot. And three pubs! Three! They must all be alcoholics in Uxbridge. I bet they need all those coffee shops to sober up after drinking in all those pubs”

“And there was a bloke selling balloons, hundreds he had, and a scruffy bloke sitting on the pavement all wrapped up in a sleeping bag and a dog on a bit of string who kept shouting ‘bee gisshoo!’ whatever that means? And a bloke with long hair playing a guitar and singing about a girl called Valerie. And people were giving him money! I said play something we all know!”

Eventually Mr de Gama saw someone he knew waiting for a bus outside Tescos. “I saw old Badly Drawn Roy standing at a bus stop. I goes to him where you going Roy he turns round and says I’m going home Rog what to Harefield I says yes he says to Harefield that’ll do me I goes so I gets on the old bus and goes home 

We asked Mr de Gama if he now had the taste for foreign travel and would be going back to Uxbridge or maybe even try somewhere else like Ruislip. “Probably not” he replied “It’s a bit shit innit?”

The Wanky Tea Pot

‘They’ve got two bakers! Two!’