I must have one of those faces

I am battling a bit of a cold at the moment which is hardly surprising, given that the Scottish summer and the Adelaide winter are virtually identical.

Standing at the bus stop last night, sheltered against the wild wind that signalled a storm was coming, I did not notice the two young guys who had come to seek refuge by the bus stop with me.

One of them asked me when the bus was coming, and I told him. Then he asked me where in America I was from. I was going to make it up, but this is a small town and I didn't want to be found out a liar and chased out of town by goons in a ute brandishing pitchforks. So I corrected his assumption and responded to his follow-up questions by telling him bits about where I'd travelled, where I was staying (rough bus-route directions naturally), and what I'd seen in Scotland so far.

I didn't want to give this guy any more information about myself, so I turned the tables and starting asking HIM questions. Not out of any real interest, you understand, more to guard against him appearing outside my bedroom window at night, leering lasciviously at me as I slept.

As our conversation changed, so too did the wind direction. And it was then that I was able to smell the beer literally oozing out of the two of them. Boy, do I know how to pick them?

Trying to salvage my sophistication, I attempted to resume the conversation.

Putting forward the view that Scotland's geography makes it easy for people to explore Europe so easily, my new friend nodded and sagely added, "Aye that's true. But when you've got a criminal record, like us, travelling gets difficult". You can't argue with that.

But the piece de resistance came when he rather surprised himself with his political ambitions, and figured he would run for Parliament. His platform would be the end to terrorism, achieved through the mass eviction of all terrorists from British soil. Clearly a Big Brother fan. But rather than asking the British public to SMS their least-favourite terrorists for weekly expulsion, my young friend was masterminding a more direct route. Proudly, he announced that in order to rid Britain of terrorism, he'd simply "get rid of all the coloured people".

It was about that point that I started to inch away from Adolph Hitler and Gretel Killeen's love child. I figured our conversation was done. He hadn't asked me out, and I'd given him plenty of chances.

ARGH kidding. But he is single. Of that I am sure.