Well that just puts the tin hat on it.

Three bloody months I’ve been working on my algorithm (Warhammer II ™ © ) and suddenly the bloody levellers at the SEC and FSA are bleating on about high frequency trading and how it’s the death of proper share dealing and how stock markets and exchanges are there to provide capital for enterprise and not fat wads for casino banks, it’s so easy a monkey could do it and blah de blah de blah.

This is exactly what is killing our great nation. I’d love a fat wad me, instead my pips are being squeezed mercilessly.

My Beautiful Fucking Mind.

In 1968, in our leafy little primary school, (no snotters, no rickets, no Irish) when we were nine years old, they introduced us to the problem of the overflowing bath in arithmetic.

It runs like this.

A forgetful man wishes to have a bath so he turns on both taps but forgets (because he is forgetful) to put the plug in and is suddenly called away to the telephone. While he is away, the water keeps pouring out the taps, filling the bath. The bath fills at 10 gallons a minute and drains out the plughole at 5 gallons a minute. If the bath holds 100 gallons of water, how long before the bath overflows?

It took me ten seconds to solve it even though I was watching out the window for Batman who was coming at 11am to talk to us about road safety. My poor little classmates however, were in a right tizzy. They were pissing their pants trying to work out the answer before that fucking bath overflowed. They were troubled by the phone call to the forgetful man. At the door were three bags of bottle tops for the blind. They were frightened that the water would get in the skirting boards and flood the electrics. Do they make metal eyes out them? Help! The bath water will soak everything to fuck and back in the whole fucking house!
As the minutes passed, they blamed themselves. Our paintings on the wall looked shit. The water kept on rising in the bath. Their little legs were wiggling in panic. God, they hated the forgetful man. Forgetful? He was a fucking spastic. Can’t he hear the bath running? Is he fucking deaf and dumb as well? They couldn’t even phone him to tell him to turn the fucking taps off because he was ON the fucking phone and the line was busy and it might be a party line and anyway he shouldn’t be allowed to use the phone if he can’t run a fucking bath the stupid useless bastard, we hope he gets drowned, we will be blamed for the whole fucking mess when we got home.

It’s simple arithmetic so you maybe think I solved it by taking 5 from 10 and dividing 100 by the result, but you’d be wrong. This will become clear later. Meanwhile I watched out the window and put up my hand and said; “20 minutes.” Mrs Thompson turned over the page to check the answer and sniffed. I made her uneasy because I was always looking up her skirt at her knickers.

I have taken a police caution and we’ll say no more about it Mister Maroon.
The wheels of Scottish justice have finally come off with their judgement.
It’s most unsatisfactory. A priggish verbal warning and a criminal record and a feedback questionnaire to fill in, asking my opinion of the Tayside Police Service. (Obviously I shall lie)

Of the three, I don’t know what gets my goat the most. I think it’s the questionnaire. No; it’s the caution.

There was a time in this great nation, when giants like Douglas Bader and Brian Trubshaw strode the land, a time when two men could settle their differences with an honest punch-up without dogs fainting and PC 99 making such a bloody song and dance about it; a time when, if some crosspatch was being a pest, whammo! hard as you can onto the bastard’s nose or wind pipe - endof.

"Dead for a ducat! Dead!"

"At midnight, the drunken lout drew near with evil threats upon his breath, by 12:03, I had run him through. ‘twas nothing, a matter of seconds and his life’s blood staining the flags…" That sort of thing.

Not now. Now it’s all "you do not have to say anything to harm your defence but were the arresting officers courteous ? Were they prompt? Did the taser hurt? Was there a pine air freshener in the black maria?"

After you with the pencil please, Mad Frankie. Swing low, sweet chariot…

The Leith Police Releaseth Me

Why are constabularies of the world so against high jinks? Anyone would think that men in bars only ever played skittles and discussed their allotments. A swift punch in the throat never hurt anyone. Have they never seen a John Wayne film?

Anyway, it’s Rosh Hashanah and that seems a good place to start my 10 days of repentance; Days of Awe to you (no offence).

But I would walk five hundred miles
And I would walk five hundred more
Just to be the man who walked a thousand miles
To fall down at your door

I’M BACK! (for good)
Leshone Toyve; Lang may your lum reek.

Straightforward Saucy Seaside Postcards

Nos. 1 & 2 in a converging infinite series.

No. 1 “Judging The Vegetables.”

Let the postcard show a village fete and let the illustrator show the judging of the garden vegetables upon a table.
And to avoid any misunderstanding, let there be a sign upon the tent canvas saying: “Village Fete. ~ Vegetable Competition“.
And let the judge in this case be a cleric: A Church of England vicar or curate or somesuch.
And let him be in dog collar and black weskit and have a rosette upon his lapel with the word “JUDGE” upon it.
And let him be shewn standing close to the table such that a cucumber, recumbent upon the table, is in absentminded contact with the fly buttons of his trousers.
For good measure, let the vicar have a beatific smirk upon his face.

Now, let there also be a lovely young woman in a red polka dot, low-cut, summer frock barely restraining her “rack”. And let the illustrator shew her resting her clammy little hand upon the aforementioned cucumber. And let her full red lips be parted in a saucy smile of overpowering fecundity.

She should speak thus: “Ooh Vicar, is it as big as yours?”

And let the cleric reply: “That’s not a cucumber Miss ~ I took some camouflage paint from the cadets and disguised my penis to look like a cucumber and that is what you are stroking now.”

And, if there be space still upon the card, let all reply in unison: “Stop the fete! The vicar is a filthy pervert!”


No.2 At The Greengrocer.

Let the card show an array of ripe melons in a greengrocer’s shop and to avoid confusion let there be a sign upon the wall saying : “Nudist Camp Shop” or some such.
And let there be a beautiful naked woman holding two ripe melons prior to making their purchase.
Now let there also be a shrunken, naked man leering at her, and let there be a pile of soup tins hiding his member from view and he should spake thus:

“Gosh, Darling! What a lovely pair you have!”

Now let the beautiful woman reply: “Yes, I intend to make melon boats with ginger at dinner tonight.”

And let the leering man reply to that: “No Poppet, I meant your breasts. They are fabulous. They would look so good with my dick between them!”

Now let the greengrocer shout: “Get out of my shop you filthy pervert!”



Perhaps you can think of more ideas for straightforward saucy seaside postcards?

“Without the inclination towards philanthropia, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing; no better than a kind of vermin, Maroon.”
“Well quite, but I did give at the office.”
“You gave at the office did you?”
“Yes.”
“To The West of Scotland Red Crescent?”
“Yesss...”
“No matter, roll up your sleeve. Still smoking?”

Today, Dr Al-Abri, company medic, is being a royal pain in the ass with his raffle tickets and charity tins. His manner is a disgrace. When you go in, he is always reading a newspaper or eating a Kit Kat. He just riles me. For some reason he is wearing a brown leather protector over his middle finger and he keeps touching me with the fucking thing, so, to take my mind off it while he straps me up, I read the little acronyms he writes across the cover of my file. The latest is HIBGIA; no, not a wasting of the liver, but “Had It Before, Got It Again”.

“Hypertension: it's the silent killer, Maroon.”

And, sure as Death, the examination rumbles on to The Display And Consideration Of The Maroon Private Parts and I follow like a lamb, knowing he’s going to have his hairy fingers pressing up on my sweaty groin while I look down into his liquid brown eyes. Thankfully, there is nothing like a biennial finger to fetch out the racist homophobe.

“Did you bring a sample?”

I take it out my pocket and because I have just done it in the disabled toilet, it is still hot. He holds it up to the window, quite fascinated; then he turns it over like an egg timer, spellbound,

“Is this what I think it is?”
“What do you mean?”
“It looks fine, but I was expecting pee not semen.”
“No way! Your letter is all about a “Well Man” examination. There is a whole paragraph on prostate and testicular cancer, and em, fertility, erectile problems, discoloured ejaculate, and then, then it asks for a sample in the Sterilin bottle provided. This is your bloody fault, not mine.”

I am scanning the letter as I blurt all this out and for the first time in 10 readings I see the word urine.

“How did you get it in the bottle?”
“Get lost Ali, I ain't in the mood.”
“Cough.”
*ahem*
“And again.”
*cough*
“Fine.”

And then he snarks away to himself for a full minute.

There is no oil for the lamps.
“What is truth?” said Pilate; and then, like me, he pissed off quick for fear he got an answer. Well, I shall just tell you: Truth is a very grey area; very, very grey.
I mention Pilate because oftentimes at Cambridge, I would dream of the Roman goddess Levana and wonder when her bestowed gifts would kick in. It was my Jesuit schooling impinging you see. I am positive it would have totally buggered up a lesser man. Made him shifty and withdrawn perhaps. Not me. You see, by then I had developed a strategy to cope:drugs and cunning.
My panacea, my φαρμακον νηπενθες, * was and is, strong drink and the Jesuits taught me the cunning.
The upshot is, that by my clever deployment of what might be called "turning the cat in the pan", certain things have come to light; it turns out that I am not to blame after all for our local difficulties in Araby and am to be sent back like Gandalf the White, to finish off what weak men could only begin. I am sent back out to Saudi, v soon. Can’t wait. Before you know it, I’ll be in the compound rumpus room playing Islamic bingo.

We have a local bingo caller, (works for Mecca).

“Right guys and guys, eyes cast down for a full house…

Eye for an eye…number one,
Clicketty click…car-bomb timer,
All the ones…nine-eleven
Number eight…old enough
Seven and six…seventysix, strokes of the lash, was she worth it?
Four-oh…virgins in paradise
Number ten…British pig dog Satan
Number nine…Mullah’s orders
Eighty eight…two fat ladies, how can you tell?
Six and nine...sixty-nine…oral sex
Top of the house...ninety-nine...beard of the Prophet…”

* “drug banishing sorrow” pronounced pharmacon nehpenthes.