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below.
    David was keen to make contact with the descendants of the young babies abandoned on Inchkeith some 300 years previously in the company of a mute, dumb nurse as part of an experiment to determine the natural language of mankind. This was not one of James IV’s better ideas. He soon found them cowering in a small cave talking what he quickly identified as a hybrid of ancient Latin and Gaelic.
    Ever quick to master new languages David interrogated them about their stay on the island. They informed him that the time had passed easily until the Middle Ages when the plague victims from Edinburgh were dispatched to the island.
    Life had then proceeded smoothly for the next 200 years or so until the military had decided to establish a barracks on the island. As a self-confessed expert on all aspects of military history with a specialist interest in fort construction, David took copious notes and threatened to produce a small monograph on his return …
    The movie faded and the images blurred back into the rain as the 38 bus entered the outskirts of Edinburgh.
Kirkcaldy – Kinghorn –St Andrews – Leuchars
    The driver of the Kirkcaldy bound X58 seemed relieved to have at least two passengers as he left the still-bleak bus station to the knot of beggars for whom Fife probably seemed as distant as Nirvana or the Seven Mansions of Paradise (newly incorporated into the bus timetable but with a restricted service).
    The road out of the city did yield a few surprises as the vantage point from the single decker was at least a metre higher than that provided by the average family saloon. It was possible to gaze fleetingly into the more obscure parts of Edinburgh Zoo and in particular its border with the posh hinterland of Cramond. David insisted that in living memory a family woke to find that a wallaby was already sitting upright in their home, paws on the table, waiting for its breakfast. More speculation followed: marmosets in the tea caddy; orang-utans in the Wendy House; a toad eating macaw in the bread bin.
    The road to the Forth Bridge provided a brief glimpse into a caravan site normally hidden from view. Caravans to a vanishing point were tightly packed into a grey-white shanty town. Seeking to woo the popular vote the Scottish government had moved quickly to remove all caravans and mobile homes from the face of Northern Britain. The cull happened overnight. There had been little resistance. Never again would their owners move in infuriating convoy through the Highlands at a snail’s pace inducing apoplexy in all motorists condemned to follow in their wake.
    The X58 was largely free from the tumble-weed detritus that habitually roams bus aisles wrapping itself round feet and insinuating itself into shopping bags and conversations.
The Metro
represents a publishing masterpiece that appeals equally to football obsessives, celebrity gossip junkies and a few strange people with a genuine but residual interest in affairs of the day. Each samizdat paper will pass through many hands before disintegrating into crumpled illegibility.
    Lonely travellers take a copy with them when they leave the bus,having chosen to savour the best bits later, during an unofficial toilet break or over the lunchtime Prêt a Manger cured Wiltshire ham-filled half baguette. What will they treat themselves to today from the single copy tucked neatly into the arm support? The extraordinary article on page 7 won hands down.
71 YEAR OLD AVOIDS JAIL OVER HORSE SEX
    A pensioner who performed a sex act on a horse has avoided being sent to prison. The man was spotted with the horse’s head in his groin by the animal’s owner. ‘The witness was shaken and disgusted by what he saw’ prosecutor Noelle Brockbank told Teesside Magistrates’ Court. ‘He picked up a stick and struck the defendant. That startled the horse, causing it to run off, dragging the defendant with it … The Chairman of the bench said the defendant ‘caused stress to the owner and the