– how everyone who ever tries to scrounge a quid off you in the street is always trying to get home to Bathgate?
I mean, is it just a thing – people from Bathgate never leave the house with enough change for their bus back?
Or is it some elaborate conspiracy by the scroungers of the world to make it look like Bathgate is full of chancers?
Seriously. Bathgate. What’s with that?
ninetysix and ten 
Although I used to fall for this line of begging I think I lost sympathy with it after being accosted multiple times from people trying to get back to Dundee / East Kilbride etc. The best incident being at Schipol Airport by a man from Glasgow (who even though I didn’t utter a word was able to mysteriously home in towards me through a multitude of Dutch people) claiming he needed 10 euros (or something) for a flight back home!
So now when confronted with it I tend to set face as flint and think it’s probably a lie.
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Well, I put the flint strategy to good use myself this time – when I tried to mutter something to the effect, “Tremendously sympathetic to your plight, old chap, but not on this occasion in a position to provide anything in the way of financial assistance,” he winningly replied, “Will you no have a wee look in your purse for us anyway!”
Aye right!
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I’ve never seen Dario Franchitti or Bernard Gallacher hanging around the bus station looking for a sub!
Ross
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Shame you can only buy tickets on the bus. Otherwise you could stock up on tickets to Bathgate in advance, and hand them out on request.
The worst effect of this kind of scrounging is that when one really has e.g. left one’s purse at one’s friend’s flat at the other end of town, and it’s an hour till your last bus home (in the general direction of Bathgate, as it happens) and you screw up the courage to ask someone at the bus stop for the fare …
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