Late night on Watling Street.

Radio Scotland traffic update: a loose tarpaulin on the southbound Forth road bridge which has been causing major delays has now been removed…

Bert Scoggins pressed his heavy boot further into the wooden floor eking every horsepower from his grumbling Bedford. If he could just make the border and the A6 before nightfall. Four tons of tractor parts lashed on the back of his three tonner. Rush job. If the rozzers stopped him now… He peered through the split screen at the bridge up ahead, hypnotised by the wipers and the protesting whine of the crash box straining in third and the thought of Elsie and her tea urn waiting for him in the caff at Shap.

He’d parked overnight in a bombsite just off the Fife ring road and as he slept, a gang of motorcycle thugs employed by a rival haulier had undone all his half hitches, retied his ropes in running sheepshanks and let 2 lb of air out one of his rear wheels into the bargain.
“That’ll sort you out Granddad.” sneered Spike, the gang’s leader, “Right, let’s scarper, we’ll meet at the milkbar on the B672 just before the bypass and then we can do a ton-up down that long straight that runs outside the children’s T.B. and polio hospital.”
“That’ll wake ‘em up!” agreed Snot, revving his BSA Goldstar threateningly.

Now in the grey morning, as his grey lorry stubbornly shoved its way through the grey Scottish weather, Bert, the tough cockney ex-soldier in his ex-army lorry took a woodbine from his flying jacket and smoked it. “Blimey,” he thought, “wind’s getting up.” He never heard the tarpaulin slip its bindings, to be blown off and land catastrophically on the southbound A90 behind him, blocking a major thoroughfare and arterial route vital to the economic wellbeing of the nation.

Commuters on the bridge, panicked by the sight of 10 square yards of green canvas lying silent on the asphalt, have stopped to await emergency instructions. Luckily a dashing engineer, on his way to an important meeting takes command. To the astonishment of onlookers, he ignores the risk of getting oil on his tie and drags the tarpaulin to the side, rolls it up a bit and dumps it over the railing onto the footpath where it will no doubt wrap itself around some poor pedestrian or cyclist and suffocate them to death. As the traffic starts moving again, the dashing engineer is alarmed to see in his mirror, that the tarpaulin comes to life again, rearing up in the wind, shaking its ropes in fury at him, but the wind, ever a fickle mistress, pulls the monster over the side to a watery grave, far, far below.
“Phew!” he thinks. “That’s that.”

250 feet below, the supertanker BP Hapag Lloyd III is making its way down the Forth from Grangemouth with 200 000 tonnes of high octane aviation gasoline for light aircraft and 150 000 tonnes of ethylene gas. The Forth River Pilot has control and is pointing out the normal hazards to the vessel’s master…

Maroon Island 2.

For more than a decade every bit of me was as hard as your elbow. I weighed in at 10 stone 13. (153lbs US). Pristine I was. Solid. If he had seen me, Michelangelo would have smashed up all his statues. And stamina! At the stamina, I was just sublime. I could run with the impala.
So it was around this time one Sunday afternoon that Mrs Maroon and I were reading the aspirational supplements and I found an article on Japanese naked food eating. There’s all these pot ugly Japanese company men in well cut suits and they pay over their horrid filthy money to eat seaweed off the naked skin of some fine-boned mathematics graduate (more often than not with delicate pert breasts). The degradation is so awful on every level you can think of.
The Japanese are pathetic. Oh, on the surface everything’s all neat and tidy, but I wouldn’t mind a look in their washbags. I bet every one is all gungy with old toothpaste tubes and hairy razorblades just like ours. What mingers they are.
So anyway we had a bit of a discussion about all this and the upshot was that I was sent up the street to the shops to get strawberries and a can of Anchor whipped cream. Yep. You’re there ahead of me.
I sometimes worry that today’s young people (who invented sex) get too many of their ideas off the internet. Woe to us if they do; it’ll be the end of love as we know it. We shall be like the beasts of the field, thoughtlessly rutting for status and that most transient of empty pleasures, procreation. We will flip, just like Spock did in that episode where he sat up the tree and played his space-banjo.

So you rode upon a steamer
To the heartland of the summer

That’s the trouble with midweek drink; it gives you such optimism. Our aesthetic bar is lowered. It’s like full five senses beer goggles on steroids. Up to the bathroom for a pee and the scent of toothpaste and face creams and shampoo and so on; it’s so evocative; the world is NOT a bad place, it’s a NICE place, full of nice people, just like us. (If you’re reading this Twenty Major please be assured I would beat you at arm wrestling, left or right. I have the arms of a blacksmith). Then there is the company. No matter who they are or what weird philosophy they follow, they are the best of company for the duration. Under no circumstance shall I betray my own ethos (in all its moral perfection) but I may indulge their flawed beliefs for the hell of it.
I of course, have suddenly become The Wise Seer Of The World. It’s such a privilege, an honour; I must not misuse My Gift. If I come out of this without a fat lip I will have done well. I’m on Torres 10 and Pepsi Max. It tastes better in Spain but who’s counting?
I could snog the face off Fatmammycat right now. I bet she smells really, really good. She’s a great kisser, I just know it. I am a seer.
Don’t fight it baby, we were destined…

And you see a girl’s brown body
Dancing through the turquoise
And her footprints make you follow
Where the sky loves the sea

Kim and Eryl and Pat and Justin and Devin have started an aural entertainment over at the storytellers blog.
Terribly good. Calming, exciting, fascinating, always pleasurable.
Like, check it out man. Press the button over on the right.
That's the way.

So, like, we had that panel I was talking about. Dick’s been suspended. That’s the long and short of it. Well, he was pretty rude to that girl. And, I grassed him up anonymously. It was for my own good. Stress works in mysterious ways. Caught him in the carpark jumping on cars. So I told him. Leave it man, they’re all tossers. I had to stop him. He was making a show of himself; what’s more, he was getting near my car. It’s only a Volkswagen but a car’s a car.
Another of mine enemies; for him the war is over; he is kaput.

For sale: Old lady with unwanted Victorian carved legs.

This week there is a worrying story about a very tall thief working in partnership with a very small thief. Police say they are pulling out all the stops in their hunt for the men. They’ve been mugging the elderly in their homes in and around the Forteviot area.

The crime page reports the audacious theft of the church organ and pipes from Saint Angela’s, Main Street, Luncarty while the Rev Julie Maguire, 24, had been on retreat in Ibiza. A hard pressed Superintendent McGlinchey said they were leaving no stone unturned.

Also from the crime page comes the disturbing tale of a drunken postman from Errol who had stolen a road roller from the new flyover on the A85 and driven it at police officers injuring one of them to his serious endangerment. During the chase, the villain had the presence of mind to jettison some vital evidence in a pile of rocks on the construction site. A spokesman for Tayside Police said it was a worrying development.

An unknown sex offender has been using the photo booth at Perth bus station to photograph his exposed private parts then leaving the resultant strip of pictures in the machine for the next hapless user of the facility to find. Police are puzzled.

The so called “Cross Word” poison pen pest is still making life a misery for the residents of Abernethy. In an effort to catch the rancid riddler, CID officers have enlisted the help of a forensic scientist with a successful history of psychotic behaviour. Police say to be on your guard if think you know who he is, as he may be dangerous and should not be approached by members of the public.

And finally, on a lighter note, the owner of a Chinese restaurant in Bridge of Earn called Brian Murray, had the winning numbers in the lottery but forgot to buy a ticket because he was so busy cooking Chinese food. However, in his distress he found his lost mother’s wedding ring in a food mixer used for mixing the Chinese food that he sells in his Chinese restaurant. As family friend, Morag O’Donnell, 37, quipped: ‘It has been a “bittersweet” week for Brian!’

When you are born here, when you are only seconds old, the midwife asks for a glass of water or something to get the bystanders out the room and while your mother is distracted, perhaps looking at all that funky stuff on the sheets, the midwife takes you aside and performs a secret pagan association on you. She shows you the lid off a shortbread tin and tells you you’re Scotch and forever will be. It’s called imprinting. At this point you start crying.

From then on we are cursed, for all our lives, to be crashing bores about our mystical land of haggis. If you let us, we’ll tell you how we invented the atom bomb and the chandelier, penicillin, the bath plug not forgetting the steamship and the soup spoon. We become as welcome as a Rechabite at a highland wedding. The Greek tragedy is that we know we do it. We just can’t stop.

If you are foreign, you may have experienced us at first hand. Let’s say you are from Milwaukee on vacation driving across the Mojave Desert to the Joshua Tree National Park. You’ve borrowed a forty foot motor home and it is running like silk. It’s a duplex on wheels is what it is. Just the open road and the wife and you’re like teenagers again; you’re both wearing Stetsons for the hell of it. Made love on the roof last night under the stars, it just happened. She really does suit that hat. Up ahead in the distance, through the shimmering light, looks a good place to stop.

“Whatdya say honey? Shall we pull over for the day?”
“You’re the driver Hank.”

You downshift early just to hear the growl of that diesel; it’s like music, makes you feel good, makes you feel like Burt Reynolds in the Bandit films. As you pull in, you can’t stop grinning. This is turning into the best trip ever. There’s a mini mart for stocking up and a gift shop selling souvenirs made out of rattlesnakes. There’s a custom Peterbuilt with polished rims in the parking lot. You must get a picture of that. They’ve got cool shaded bays where you can plug in for the night, and the rest rooms and showers are as clean as an operating theatre. Best of all, there’s a grill restaurant and a flashing neon ‘Budweiser’ because suddenly you are hungry and you’d love a beer right now. Caught up in the moment, you put on your best John Wayne voice.

“I’m gonna have me the biggest steak - smothered in onions!”
“Gotta keep your strength up hon.”
“Care to join me for a beer ma’am?”
“Don’ mind if I do, pilgrim.”

By God you swear you love her more each day. She is the best, and you are the luckiest man alive. Your appetite is rumbling out of control as you enter in search of dinner. Coming in from the desert, the interior of the grill restaurant is impressive. There is a lot of cedar and maple and oak. They haven’t skimped. It is a distillation of the Continental United States in timber. Movie starlet waitresses carry plates piled with steaks and mashed potato, pitchers of beer, frozen martinis. The room is filled with the comforting background hum of a world now replete and thinking about another glass of wine. Here is America in repose, at peace with herself. Hey, we really lucked out, finding this place. Except. At the bar, two red-faced sunburnt Scotchmen with red arms and accents are explaining to themselves how they invented the jet engine, the aeroplane, the windscreen wiper, the doorknob…

“Honey, what say we press on? It’s only 300 miles to the next stop.”
“Amen to that.”

Bret and Gemaine and Joe Pesci

Me an’ Dick were standing at the cooler yesterday and I wasn’t on good form at all at all. Must say that straight off. He’d been trying to strongarm me over some accounting disaster and I wasn’t buying it. It’s typical of the man, discussing stuff like this in public, it’s right up his Clydeside expressway, he’s got no class.
So anyway there we were, shootin’ the shit, me with a face like thunder and up comes the office asshole. You know the type. All collar and cuffs; young go-getter smartipants straight out the college thinks they know it all; thinks everyone finds them funny; buffalo briefcase with brass buckles bastard.
As I say, I wasn’t in the mood.
So we clammed up while this young office wit grinned at us and bent down to fill one of those shitty paper cones with water, but that wasn’t enough was it? Oh no, Bozo the junior executive, she just had to make a comment about us.

“You two look like ‘flight of the conchords’ standing there.”
“You saying I’ve got a big fucking nose or something?”
“Sorry? I didn’t mean…”
“My nose is offensive to you?”
“That’s not what I…”
“Because you are no fucking Rembrandt my friend.”
“I meant the TV show.”
“Go on, take a fucking hike.”
“What?”
“Keep moving - while you’ve still got some fucking teeth.”

Well, off she runs to The Mekon which is what we call the MD. The union’s up in arms about it and I might have to face a panel. I’m not bothered, I’ll tell them she had the painters in or something. Nice looking girl.

Not a little discord in the household the other night. We were watching some cookery programme on the TV waiting for University Challenge to come on and I made a foolish remark. I’ve met Bamber Gasgoine twice. Once officially and once coming out the tube at Euston station. He remembered, which was most gratifying. It’s the little things. Anyway, back to the discord. I cannot for the life of me remember any of the recipes except a disgusting mixture made in the liquidiser for breakfast. It had a frozen banana and instant coffee powder in it. Grue. I can’t recall the recipes because I spent the whole programme wondering what it’d be like to have good kinky sex with the presenter. It wasn’t Gordon Ramsay. Obviously sex with Gordon Ramsay would be a foul mouthed tedious affair; he’s too working class for a start. Anyway I’m mildly homophobic, Jesuit schooling you see, so I find the whole gay thing upsetting and I don’t have the social sophistication to enjoy their company. Back to the discord. I wasn’t just wondering about those few blissful seconds of the actual sex, I was taking a holistic approach. I was wondering what perfume she might be wearing, how she’d look pulling off her tight sweater, she’d probably toss her hair and turn and gaze at me over her shoulder, would she fold her jumper or just throw it on the

“What’s up? You haven’t spoken for five minutes.”
“Sorry, what? I was miles away.”
“Like cooking do you?”
“I was wondering what it’d be like to have sex with her.”

Oh, fool, fool, one hundred times fool. When o when was blunt honesty the right course with a woman? Not only had I admitted the thought but also seemed to have reached the conclusion that having given it my consideration, sex with her would be very agreeable indeed. I couldn’t hide it. It was all over my face like guilty chocolate. I followed to her bedroom and she pulled back her fluffy duvet and lay down in all her naked yearning magnificence except for the briefest pair of flimsy

“You’re still doing it!”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Look at her.”
“Who?”
“She’s a ridiculous slapper for God’s sake.”
“Um…”
“Face painted up and hips like…she should know better.”
“Uhuh.”
“This isn’t even about food it’s soft porn for tits like you.”
“She is a famous cook.”
“Her puddings were good everything else is shit.”
“Give us a kiss.”
“Fuck off.”

I’m not one to draw attention to myself but in recent days I’ve noticed two separate references to Achilles the Superb, the great warrior of old They’ve been rather disparaging references to be honest and I won’t dishonour the guilty parties here, but perhaps Mr Ayres and Mr Bananas aren’t quite as smart as they sometimes think. Surely by now they know how sensitive I am regarding the name Achilles.
There now. That’s that.
We’re all friends again and we’ll say no more about it.
All I’m saying is some of us carry the burden of an altogether more iconic, some would say ridiculous, nominative. Every day some of us have to see it on our credit cards, our passports (I can not return to Corfu) and drivers licences. Try talking to someone when they’re staring at your security tag, reading and re-reading your name, mouthing it silently. The so-called friends who write out your name in full for the amusement of the postman even though you’ve begged them not to.
I mean, I think we’d all agree that I’ve been pretty supportive when Kim bemoans his name; I keep telling him straight that it’s common.
My father says that Gorilla Bananas may be the best essayist since Orwell. Well, could be, but he’s never getting on the South Bank Show with a name redolent of an East End Glasgow hood.
Walk a mile in my shoes my friend.
That’s all I’m saying.
Walk that mile.

Talking about the great English essay, I often wonder how that book got on.Remember the one they put together for charity last year? Yeah, how’s that whole thing going? I wonder how they are handling all that fame. Haven’t seen it on any reading lists yet, don’t remember it on the bookshelves down the supermarket. Yeah, wonder how that’s going. Yeah.

So Tony Ryan dies and wakes up at international arrivals.


Angel: Thank you for flying Ruin-air…
Ryan: Very funny, is this Heaven?
Angel:…we hope you had a pleasant life.
Ryan: Yeah I get it. This doesn’t look like Heaven.
Angel: It’s near Heaven.
Ryan: Is it Purgatory?
Angel: We prefer to call it Heaven South.
Ryan: God help me, it’s not Hell is it?
Angel: No, but there’s a regular bus service.
Ryan: How regular?
Angel: Every Tuesday.
Ryan: You’re splitting my sides, where am I?
Angel: Limbo.
Ryan: I didn’t know you could fly to Limbo.
Angel: Neither did your passengers.
Ryan: What I mean is; how did I get here?
Angel: Again, a question your passengers have often asked.
Ryan: Look, let me speak to your supervisor.
Angel: Did you pre-order a supervisor?
Ryan: Please, no jokes; what do I do? How do I get out?
Angel: Alas, there are no return flights.
Ryan: Well what about an onward connection?
Angel: Full scheduled fare, cash only.
Ryan: Book me on it.
Angel: Please proceed to the designated waiting area.
Ryan: What about coffee?
Angel: There’s a vending machine.
Ryan: Now we’re getting somewhere.
Angel: It only takes doubloons.
Ryan: This is Hell isn’t it?
Angel: It’s Hell North…

Euripides?
No, they justa fall aparta.

Being tagged is sweet and sour. On the one hand, you’re invited to the wedding, thanks Eryl http://thekitchenbitchponders.blogspot.com/,

on the other, it suggests you’re not grand enough to refuse. The blogging greats, the heads of our order, never reply to memes. Stuck up ratfinks. That’s right Hutton, it’s you I’m talking about.

My seven blog rules.

Rule 1. Poetry. Don’t try it. I am a poet in the Classical tradition and have often tried to elevate the dismal lives of my blogging friends via that medium. They hate it. It’s not worth it; they can set you back years; so fuck them.

Rule 2. Swearing I wish you’d been here two years ago when we all swore like Mexicans. We went straight for the ‘C’ word. It was very liberating at the time. Everything and everybody was a ‘C’. It’s tailed off, now we know that Matron isn’t going to come bursting through the door and send us all back to bed. The very best of people swear like thunder sometimes.

Rule 3. Rants. Ranting is only valid when the target is valid. For example; mentally shouting at ditzy young women with too many children in SUVs parking in supermarket carparks. That’s right dearie, OPPOSITE LOCK when reversing. Yes petal, there IS a reverse gear. REVERSE. NO NO NO you’re doing it all wrong. Don’t look at me like that, it’s your fault for having all that sex in first place. Did you actually pass a driving test? OK poppet, you’ve parked, you can open your eyes now…

Rule 4. Musings. “musings” is the most common word in the Blogosphere (after “Blogosphere” and “I” and “me”). It implies wisdom. What pearl has our sage thoughtfully abstracted for our delight? Turns out The Sage is “musing” on his latent alcoholism and the hyperbolic curves to be found on intermediate compressor blades. Big fat hairy yawn! Is that a musing or a random thought that fell into your empty head? Keep it tight, people.

Rule 5. Flaming: most bloggers hate flaming. It doesn’t bother me, I like the whole thing about blogging, I don’t want to analyse why, I just like it. I’ve always wanted a resident flamer, it sort of means you’ve arrived. That’s not an invite, it’s got to be spontaneous.

Rule 6. The Harry Hutton Double Bluff Impasse.
Beware.
Personally, I think warm-hearted sarcasm is the utter pinnacle of humour but virtually no one else shares this view. A lot is lost in translation and they can’t see the clever smirk on my face so they take it seriously and fire back their own witty sarcastic comment, but because I can’t see THEIR clever smirk and they are just plain rude and offensive I feel justified in escalating with a sharper wittier retort which they totally take the wrong way the petty bastards…

Rule 7. Mortals only. The BBC and other media groups now run blogs. This is totally counter to the whole idea. To them I say: You’ve already got an infinite outlet for your crap, leave us this bit for ourselves! Go on, piss off! You just don’t get it.

Killer Fact!

Top five countries by per capita beer drinking.

1. Czech Republic 278.2 pints
2. Ireland 265.4 pints
3. Germany 216.6 pints
4. Austria 188.1 pints
5. Luxemburg 177.6 pints


OK so Luxemburg’s what we maths nerds call an anomaly. Let me explain; you and three of your friends stop off in Luxemburg and have a small refreshment; before you know it you’ve totally skewed the results. That’s right numb nuts, skewed, without the ‘R’. But look at Ireland! Big respeck. In the week that Scotland tops all the BAD polls for ugliness and obesity and early death and black depression and suicidal thoughts and the low self esteem thing, Ireland’s back up there in a GOOD top five, second time in a row. See what independence does? Look and learn Scotland. I’m surprised Britain never made it. In the north of England beer is all they drink, especially at lunchtime. Remember Pie and a Pint? You can still get that in England but not up here; up here it’s Pie and a Pie. I’m ashamed to say that the lunchtime pint is no longer a Scottish institution; The roads are safer, mind.

Killer Fact!

Top five per capita baked bean consumption by country.

1. Ireland 5.6 kg
2. Britain 4.3 kg
3. New Zealand 2.3 kg
4. USA 2.0 kg
5. Australia 1.3 kg

What’s Ireland thinking about? I’ve been to Ireland once or twice and I can’t remember baked beans on the menu. In fact I can’t remember seeing an Irishman eating beans. It doesn’t ring true. Irish cuisine is that strange modern European mixture of the welcoming native traditional and the mean stateless nouvelle. It’s as if they leap frogged from the optimistic sixties to the cool dude nineties missing out the fish fingered seventies altogether. So I can’t believe they eat all these beans. There’s been a mistake. No pun. Maybe they feed them to the horses.

Then there’s us. 4.3 kg is about 10 tins. Now I like beans, always have. I’m common, I can’t help it, I do like a baked bean, but I don’t eat 10 tins a year. Maybe I do. It’s certainly worth thinking about.

New Zealand. Doesn’t surprise me. What else they got? Nothing to look forward to, poor little kiwis. Beans on toast is still a treat to them.

USA, well we all know their diet is the pits so I suppose the baked bean is the only proper nourishment they get, big fat lumps that they are. They think they invented them as well but we know better don’t we?

Australia, that’s a surprise, don’t know why, but you’d think they would avoid beans just on a matter of principle. They’ve got a terrible cussed nature when they’re given time to think about anything, your average Australian, but the weather’s good or so I’m told. Round the coasts. Not inland; inland it’s all flies and sand and those big long road trains driving across the desert looking for backpackers to murder. Or so I’m told.

Spanish brandy and Pepsi Max and daytime TV…

is the abyss.

I’ve had a touch of peritonitis this week, or was it impetigo, pleurisy, typhoid? Who cares I can’t remember. That’s the trouble with duvet days; sickies to you and me. You see, the working class suffer such a poverty of ambition when we phone in sick on Monday mornings that we usually blame ‘flu’ or ‘upset stomach’. What a crock. Any manager will see through that in two seconds flat. Worse is getting the wife to phone in for you. Don’t be a simp. Stand up man. Grasp the phone and tell them straight you’ve got nodular brain pus coming out your ear and you’ll be in by Wednesday afternoon once you’ve seen your doctor. Always tell them you are going to the doctor whether or not. Then, when you limp in at 2.00 pm, immediately start moaning to anyone who’ll listen about the foreignness of Britain’s GPs and how the waiting room was full of smelly addicts waiting for methadone. Remember to ask off early, “so you can get your prescription before Boots shuts.” All this adds verisimilitude to your barefaced lies; any lingering suspicions about your weekend proclivities will be expunged and your boss will reconsider his cynical nature.
It’s totally win win.

Blame Kim Ayres.

Interior: English newsagents circa 1982
Sound: background level “Blaydon Races”

Enter cheery faced paperboy shoplifting (as we all did) and getting caught by sourfaced newsagent.

Cue the Geordie accent.

Paperboy: Can ah have a coupla bagsa chew-dah oot me wages?

Surely the acme of British televisual advertising.

Up there with Cadbury Smash and putting a tiger in your tank and the man on the Hovis cobbled hill on the bike with no brakes. Actually I hated that one. As a child I really loved the polar bear on the Fox’s glacier mint and the polar bear in the Cresta adverts. I must have had a thing for polar bears, although now as an adult I’d shoot one without compunction. I’d shoot it twice. In the eye. And the cubs.

These days British adverts are totally, and I do mean utterly, CRAP. The only one I like was the recent campaign for MFI where ‘ordinary’ people are seen arguing at home, as we do, then it turns out they are in an MFI showroom. Oh how I smiled at that. To be fair it was done well. I liked the teenager coming home late and the older couple in bed, they both got a snicker out me. Still, I don’t need to buy a couch right now, so bit of a wasted effort there.

Note for Americans:

Chew-dah is Tudor, a defunct potato chip manufacturer which did odd flavours like hedgehog or mint sauce, you get the picture, it was when we were unsophisticated and less concerned with image; when we took ourselves less seriously; you know, way back then.
So,
Newspaper boy from the north east of England: May I have two bags of Tudor in advance of my remuneration?
Cadbury Smash was instant mashed potato. It was considered groovy.
Tiger in your tank was Esso gasoline. Bengal tigers were liquidised and mixed in with the fuel at the refinery.
Hovis is bread with sawdust in it that sticks in children’s throats and makes them choke.
Cresta was a soft drink that was frothy man and came in weird colors.
MFI is a discount furniture warehouse. No one knows what MFI stands for.

Careful with that axe Eugene


I
was wondering why we all had knives as boys. First off was the availability. Every newsagent sold them. They had them on cards hanging up beside the pipe cleaners and those red petrol capsules for lighters. There were always three types and they ranged from about four inches long down to about an inch and a half for the really small kids. They had tartan or pearl handles or they were flat and silver, though those ones were dearer. I always liked the 2 ½ inch tartan handled ones. The perfect little penknife for little hands and little pocketsies. Second, they were cheap. They only cost pennies so were easily replaced. Thirdly, people were always giving you them as small treats, like crème eggs or postal orders. I got scout knives with tin openers on them, souvenir penknives with thistles or “Bonny Scotland” written on the side and, when I was ten, a visiting American aunt gave me the first Swiss army knife anyone had ever seen. My friends and I had never heard of the Swiss army and were enthralled by the tweezers and toothpick. It was almost James Bondian. We thought the scissors were girly but admired totally the workmanship in the overall package.
There was hours of enjoyment to be had with a knife. There was knifey. Knifey is played like twister. The object is to make your opponent do the splits or fall over. We’d play knifey on any bit of grass. Also you could make a knife blade venomous by sticking it in the eye of a dead cat. We would dissect worms quite dispassionately; there was no malice in it. At the seaside we could shuck mussels for bait quick as any fishwife. If you found yourself near a tree or on a bench especially in one of those shelters where old people sit on the promenade, you would carve out your initials on it. You did it without thinking; the brave bit was inscribing “loves S.M.“ below. Mmm, Susan McMillan, my first true love. Then there was whittling. To a nine year old boy, making a pointed stick is the essence of pleasure. When just right, you took the finished stick along the shore looking for jelly fish.
I still carry a penknife. I’ve lost a couple at the airport, I keep forgetting. Talking about that, not long after 911 I was queuing up behind this old pensioner you know the type, he looked like Harry Lauder and when he emptied his pockets into the tray, he pulled out the biggest penknife I’d ever seen. It was ancient. Of course they took it off him, he was furious so they took his lighter as well, he was totally bereaved. Silly old bugger, what was he thinking?

Funny how I find myself
Alone with you


In Iceland they’ve got this outdoor swimming lake that’s heated by geo thermals. They make a big thing about it but it’s quite pongy and disappointing actually. It’s a rotten thing to say but there it is. Sorry Iceland, but it’s true isn’t it?
There used to be an outdoor pool in every British seaside town. Arbroath had a great one, a big lido affair in white art deco concrete with ice cream kiosks and changing booths with saloon doors so you could see the girls’ pants coming down past their ankles. I think the kiosks sold toffee apples and candy floss as well.
Back then a small bottle of strange pop with a straw and a packet of salt ‘n’ shake crisps kept me happy for ages.
If I got two straws, so much the better.
The Clyde resorts were sub tropical in comparison to east coast Arbroath and our crisps and pop of a higher standard. At lunch there was always water and you weren’t allowed to dip your bread in the soup. The soup was never heinz tomato although I lived in hope. After lunch I was totally unsupervised. All the kids were. You ran across the railway line to get to the beach, the piers were all working piers with no handrails or anything gay like that, the rocks were lethal so we’d fish off them, they would hire you a motor boat by the half hour, on your own at nine years old, it took all your pocket money but was totally worth it. We were always standing on broken glass or rusty nails sticking out of driftwood or getting fishhooks stuck in our arms. All boys carried knives back then. I had a sheath knife with a tartan handle that I wore scout style on my snake belt. It had Red Indians stamped into the leather sheath. I was only eight or nine but you would have to have killed me to stop me wearing it. During the day everyone had factor a half Ambre Solaire rubbed on them and at night it was calamine lotion.
At night in the hotel for dinner, you had to be on your best behaviour which meant smiling and using the cutlery properly and keeping your mouth closed and your elbows off the table and not playing with your food even if it tasted funny and not staring at any old residents. You could tell the residents because they had hp sauce on their table at breakfast. Then you might be released to the arcade for an hour and more often than not it was off to see Johnny Beatty or Jack Milroy in some variety show. We saw Andy Stewart once which was as big a deal as Led Zeppelin.
What’s all this about? I’ll just tell you. I’m having a look through the archive. I’m clearing all statistical registers. Emptying the RAM. It’s full of stuff and if I don’t have a rake through every now and then, I’ll get Alzheimer’s and I won’t have any room left for the important things like this new blade geometry which looks counter intuitive but could increase efficiency by a full percent.
Tundra! That’s the word I was looking for. Never mind why. Yeah, tundra.

As the population of the world increases, so must our individual significance diminish. Is this is a worry? In Britain we are all to be bar-coded soon. Our DNA will be databased and we will carry identity cards like in the war against the Germans and our cars are to be satellite tracked and our dogs chip and pinned and all our towns c.c.t.v.ed and our stealthy movements in the bushes monitored by heat sensitive cameras in helicopters. None of this is an imposition but it does feel like it. Most of us aren’t murderers but in a free society we’d like the option and we’d like a sporting chance.

Another worry is that it’s the wrong sort of people that are increasing. They might come here and take our jobs. They can’t have mine because foreigners aren’t clever enough but they might get jobs as functionaries of these new databases. Foreigners have no idea that the whole strength of the British administrative system is the pernicketiness of our officials. They are virtually incorruptible.
It’s not like America where you can bribe any official with a few bucks and a dolly bird (Sopranos series 2 & 4) or eastern Europe ditto or Africa don’t get me started or Spain or Italy or any hot catholic country when I think about it, or the grasping Chinese or crackpot Indians with all that karmic shit going on, or heaven forefend your Islamist Arabic hellholes where nothing works, no, in north western Europe it is our little jobsworths with the pencil moustaches and the clipboards that actually make the place worth living in.

Otherwise it’s like Brazil. Not the country but the film by Terry Gilliam, which was good but not nearly as good as Napoleon Dynamite which was the best film ever but by someone else.

Sweet.

Bonzo goes to Bitburg and has time for a cup of tea
as I watched it on TV
somehow it really bothered me


In the week that ex First Lady and fine actor Jane Wyman [see above], died, Thatcher our ex prime minister was invited to Downing Street for tea with the Browns. This kind of revisionist shit really kills me. Just so we don’t forget: Thatcher and Reagan were nut bars. A Labour leader talking to Thatcher sucks ass.

pick up the pieces…

Come on down to the river of sound

In about eight weeks or so, some time in November, we,
the cul de sac of the Maroon Diaspora, shall receive the
Fall Newsletter from our west coast American relatives.
We got the first of them in 1995. It was a shock. Not only
did the world not end at Kirkintilloch but we were exposed
as chronic under achievers.
Even the document itself drew astonished gasps. The production values were slick to say the least.
American flags, embedded photos, typefaces, it had it all.
It was the American Vogue of round robins.
Well, no.
Actually it wasn’t. When we read it, we scoffed.
We scoffed in our inverted snobbery. When we read of their success in school, on vacation, in real estate, did we feel pride however vicarious?
Uh-uh, being Scotch we ripped them to shreds.

‘ I’m surprised it doesn’t play “The Star Spangled Banner” when you open it.’ We smirked.
‘ Uncle Tommy passed a kidney stone - bit like reading this newsletter.’ We sniggered.
‘ It won’t win a Pulitzer.’ We sneered. We, who couldn’t string a note for the milkman.

Most uncomfortably for us guilty Scots, it had lots of brazen little catholic references to prayer and God and being blessed.
Our shame was exposed.
At the end of an uninterrupted line of Scottish Catholics with more than our share of rebel Irish mixed in, we, that is my sister brother and I, have been secret Taoists for years.
We’d never risk our souls with protestant Calvinism,
you have to draw a line somewhere, but we’ve turned our back on Mother Church.
I remember introducing Mrs Maroon to my parents, explaining that she prefered not to follow The One True Faith.
“Good for you!” they said in wonder, ” how terribly brave.“
Paradoxically, they think the sun shines out her ass which strengthens my belief that all Scottish are atheists.
We just pretend.
Not so our Americans. They have the evidence before them. Their faith works.

In the succeeding years we have grown to love the
Fall Newsletter as much as we always loved them,
our American branch, with their patriotism and their faith
AND all that real estate.
God bless them.

For Andraste.

In one of my levels of Hell, Andraste the Rabbit Girl comes through the door and she’s into the Bruins locker room and they’re all semi naked, horsing around, having a celebration with tons of Guinness and the Pogues are playing in the corner with the Dubliners or something…
BUT,
as she moves through her throng of heroes, she notices that all the players are the ones who failed her beloved Broons in some way, the bush league wannabes, the ones who miss the puck, swiping at thin air like twats, the ones who couldn’t hit a barn door, the injury prone, the druggies, the useless ones that can’t pass, block, fight, or just plain skate and should never have been permitted to put on a sacred Bruins shirt in the first place! And the good looking ones are gay and bitchy and the rest are weedy or fat and now that she’s looking, they are all like GI Joe ‘down there’, they got nothing, nada, and the Guinness is actually a fake concoction of root beer and coca cola and big mental Shane the Pogues front man has been soberised and he’s combed his hair and pressed his jeans and has perfect teeth and is singing about puppy dawgs and it’s not the actual Dubliners but a shit tribute band called the Dub-LAND-ers…

I can keep this up for weeks, Rabbit Girl.
Release my red hot chillis forthwith!

* * *

I just read “this book will save your life” by a.m.homes; a disjointed yet pleasing Los Angeles adventure.
But,

have a look at this little extract.


‘I’m still not sure you’re not that asshole,’ the guy says to him.
‘What can I say to convince you?’
‘Very little. Do I look bad?
‘You look…rough,’ Richard says.
‘I go in phases; right now I’m in a fight with my body. Do I smell?’
‘Not from here.’
‘I’m on a deadline.’ He dips his fingers into a bag of lettuce and puts some in his mouth. ‘Greens, very good for you.’ He eats them as though he craves them, as though greens are the new candy, the new Swedish Fish. ‘Where have you been?’ he asks.


Dearest comrades, didya spot it? Didya?
For many this side of The Pond, the reference to Swedish Fish would have gone right over their heads, but not us, eh gang? And why not? Because our good friend SafeTinspector introduced them to us a year ago, that’s why not.
Truly, our corner of the Blogosphere is without peer. We are the new depository, the new Alexandria, the light of our collected knowledge shall blind the troglodytes!
When I saw the words “Swedish Fish”, my face was a picture. Talk about smug. SafeT. I salute you.

LATE UPDATE: If yer wonderin' why I ain't replyin' to all yer witty comments an' suchlike, I keeps losing Haloscan. I don't know if it's a general problem or peculiar to this machine. I've even lost the comments shortcut off the main page now.

Typhoon

Midnight on the Pacific and skimming through surf and flying fish, two dolphins are on their way home from a school reunion that turned into an anchovy hunt. Although the evening has gone superbly, something is evidently weighing on the mind of the female dolphin as they glide along. Something she must get off her chest:

‘I thought you said we’d leave when the moon came up?’
‘It would have been rude, we couldn’t just leave.’
‘Well you certainly couldn’t.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘You should see yourself sometimes.’
‘Oh here we go. I wondered how long it’d take.’
‘That school are my friends, you’d think for once you’d…’
‘They’re my friends too.’
‘Not any more they aren’t.’

Her lifelong mate, a dashing bull despite his age, vents in exasperation and is about to sulk when he spots an escape. He points with his nose.

‘Look, the flying fish are changing course.’
‘That’s right, change the subject.’
‘They’re heading south, I wonder if Ian and Denise are still up.’
‘Well if they are, we’re not staying all night.’
‘Race you.’
‘No, OK-1-2-3-Go!’
‘Cheat! I wasn’t ready! Come back! Start again!’

Some flexing of their eager flanks and they leave the surf, heading off over unbroken sea. And as we watch them go, our view widens and we see that the surf the dolphins were riding is the bow wave of the largest moving object on the surface of the planet.

In one of those cataclysmic events that happen in every age; events that bring misery untold to countless generations; Pat had booked some musicians to provide entertainment in her tavern. They were the first folk band in recorded history. The bosun, a great hairy armed brute of a man called Bananas had inveigled his way into the band. With his unopposed thumbs none was better on the concertina. The ensemble was murdering “Brennan on the moor” as the captain slipped in the door.

Hennessy took in the layout as he made his way through the gloom towards the bar. As swashbuckling custom demanded, the inn was lit by rings of dripping candles set on dangerously heavy cart wheels. These had been hoisted into the rafters on ropes secured Flemish style with cleats on the wall. His shrewd eyes settled on a half dozen rough sailor types playing pinochle under just such a perilous hazard. He allowed his cruel lips to part in an enigmatic smile revealing his perfect teeth.

Setting the standard for the next 210 years, ‘The Claymores’ were taking great care not to smile or move any part of their bodies as they played. Being folk purists they understood the difference between music and pleasure, so before each song the earnest bandleader would also try and explain its significance. He was keen for the drinkers to know what had inspired every composition that they might appreciate it more, but setting their own standard for the next 210 years, the audience ignored him and continued to talk and laugh among themselves.

‘No, no, Mr Burns, I’m not that sort of girl’ squealed Ayres in the corner.
‘Call me Rabbie!’ cried the poet, making a grab for Ayres’ cabbages.
‘Naughty!’ replied the botanist, hitting the poet square in the face with her tankard.
‘I love spirit in a lassie’ was the inevitable reply as The Bard redoubled his efforts.

Aren’t hotels shit?

There are no good hotels in Scotland. There is always something that totally ruins your stay – the staff. There is a morbid slapstick to the service in a Scottish hotel that makes you want to kill yourself. As a nation we should admit right now that we can’t do it and shut all our hotels with immediate effect. They are all crap.
For me, hotels that are not untrammelled luxury are a penance. The only hotels I like to stay in now are posh foreign ones like the Frankfurter Hof. It is fabulously expensive but they accomplish that effortless comfort so elusive elsewhere. And they do it with such bland efficiency. The thought, forever unspoken, pops inevitably into one’s head, “is this how they managed their genocidal mania?” But then they treat you in such an adult way that you’d forgive them anything. You begin to wonder about fascism. You start to think; these people aren’t all bad. It creeps up on you. I loved it; every godamn Nazi minute.
Then there’s the Savoy. Talk about anal. Of course it’s my class insecurity talking, but for two grand you’d think they could put me at my ease. Everything they do for you is a fucking chore, or else it’s revealed to you in a patronising flourish. Oh look darling, running water! Even the cut flowers are shit. The arrangements are all amateurish funeral parlour floribunda disasters. And the tipping! At least have the decency to put a smile on your smarmy faces you cheap smelly bastards. The staff smells of old carpets at the Savoy.







Ayres, man of letters and ship’s botanist had been sent ahead disguised as a woman of easy virtue. As always, half the crew had advised on his wardrobe.

More rouge!
Bigger bust!

Now there weren’t no breadfruit nor guava to be ‘ad onboard, so Ayres improvised wi’ a brace o’ cabbages. An’, as is the tack in these ‘ere yarns, on his entrance to the aforementioned Clatty Pat’s Tavern, he come under the rovin’ eye of a romantic poet who were a-sittin’, scribin’ his poems, in the corner…

If I don’t, get some shelter,
Lord, I’m gonna fade away…

Perhaps you may be interested to hear how I fell in love with a beautiful lesbian. It was on Monday night past. Of course back then I didn’t know she was a beautiful lesbian. That came later. I knew from the moment I saw her she was beautiful. I’m not blind. I was back in Croydon. Here’s the rub, she was pretty fat. As to her lesbianism, I hadn’t yet put all the facts together. She WAS wearing sensible shoes but so did Mrs M at her age. Five of us sent to Surrey for two days. She was positively elfin back then AND she loved sex; she had a one track mind. Mrs Maroon that is, not the beautiful lesbian, I’m getting to HER in a minute. I can’t remember the name of the joint but it’s right across the street from Croydon town hall. Big round tables, nineties wine bar. The beautiful lesbian was sitting side on talking to her girlfriend when I saw her first. What love is love if not at first sight? From then on it was over for me. You’ve seen the sort of thing, of course you have; four men out drinking in their office clothes acting the bigshots like the Sopranos or something. Christ, let me forget. Did I mention we lost one? That’s right; one of our number didn’t come out to play. He was from Warrington in Cheshire. That left four. Four men standing at the bar [which I hate] scanning the place like twenty year olds. What were we thinking? I had put my wedding ring ON before we left Gatwick and was feeling a bit conspicuous. I should explain: Me and Mrs Maroon aren’t married but years ago we bought wedding rings one weekend. It was fun at the time. Mine cost £35.00. We sometimes like to wear them together, I don’t really know why, we just like to. So I’m even less proud to tell you. In this sort of situation, ie out drinking in a strange town, I’ve been known to put mine on as a repellent and as bait. I know it’s a pretty crummy trick but I figure either way you’re covered. Think about it. Yeah? I told you it was crummy. I was deliberately drinking with my left hand. Everyone in the bar must have seen that ring. They would have seen it in Mordor. By this time I’d had a couple of subtle eye contacts with the beautiful lesbian. Each time it was like a wave of adrenaline. A band of Vikings from Technical Development we were. So I had just turned to the bar for more drinks when the beautiful lesbian decides to press in behind me for a bottle of wine. I’m not some masher but I could feel them on my shoulder blades. So I turned around facing her, to give her some room and they sort of rubbed my arm as I did so, sort of one after the other but she never noticed and she said cheers or something when I stood back to let her in. I didn’t tell you about them before because I didn’t want to give you the wrong idea. It wasn’t just about them. They were only part of the picture. Her name was Florence. Yeah I know, you’re thinking and she had a friend called Zebedee, look it’s after 3 o’clock, I’m going to have to continue this later.

Pedalpushin’

I’m up on the eleventh floor
and I’m watchin’ the cruisers below…


Watched the Tour of Ireland go through Limerick and Westport and all the other picturesque bits and I for one was mulling it over. I bet none of you remember Sean Kelly. The great Irish Champion? Thought not.
For a shallow man, I run pretty deep sometimes. It was obviously A Sign.
Time to get riding!

I’ve got an official Benesto jersey and padded cycling pants which are most flattering. I should post a picture. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve stopped at the other pub to the admiration of their womenfolk. Sluts so they are. They ALWAYS make some comment and come over to look at the bike. It’s the saddle. They can’t keep their mitts off it. It’s a gel-filled masterpiece of the erotic saddler’s art. I always feel funny watching them handle it, pinching the gel through the neoprene with their firm competent hands and long fingernails…

Anyway, I couldn’t stop on Sunday night because I was red and wheezing like a set of old bagpipes. I was Humpty Dumpty, in fact his fat ugly brother. The lycra was squeezing my stomach to death. And anyway I wasn’t sure I could get my feet free of the cleats (oh yes friends, I ride with cleated shoes) without falling over because my legs had gone all that jelly way and my bottom was very hot and slippy. Too much information? I agree.
Stick to the facts.
15 miles (24 km) dead flat, no wind, perfect evening, 49 minutes.
That’s 18.36 mph or 29.38 kmph in new money.


Oh God, I could do better than that.
You betcha!

Late sports update: see below

Aleksandr Pushkin! Yury Gagarin! Doctor Zhivago! Boris Godunov! Mikhail Lermontov! Ivan Denisovitch! MAGGIE THATCHER!
Can you hear me?
Can you HEAR me?
Your boys took a hell of a beating here tonight.
A HELL OF A BEATING!


(trad.)
oh it’s a grand old team to play for,
oh it’s a grand old team to seeeee,
and IF
you know
The History
well it’s enough to make your heart go “oh oh oh OH…”
we don’t care what the ******* say
WHAT the hell do we care?
for we only know
that there’s gonna be a show
and the Glaaas-gow CELTIC will be there…


cue the tinkling piano…(Rodgers and Hammerstein)
When you walk…
through the storm…
hold your head…
up high…

What a night.

Footnote: Last weekend The Bhoys utterly and totally thrashed the Edinburgh club, Hearts (Rangers Lite) 5-0. What did the witty scamp of a DJ play over the tannoy at Paradise? Why, the theme tune to Hawaii Five-O of course. Oh how the Hearts team laughed. Actually they didn’t. They’re all poor Lithuanians and have never seen a TV let alone Steve McGarrett. God bless them.

******* insert pejorative name for city rivals here.

It’s Thursday !

Aren’t Thursdays tops? While they are nowhere NEAR the full blown Gregory Peck of Fridays, there is nonetheless a buttery pleasure about them. They are the Natalie Wood of the week. They have, to my mind, totally supplanted the Jack Lemmoness of Wednesdays; you know, that midweek celebration you give yourself for surviving Brad Pitt Tuesdays.
That just leaves Mondays. Harumph.
See now I’ve annoyed myself by re-living the Joan Crawford of Mondays past while worrying about the Dame Judi Dench of those yet to come, when instead I should be planning the nineteen year old Lauren Bacall of a weekend.

Hmmmmm, Lauren, of course I know how to whistle heh heh heh oh you are naughty Lauren…

Feisty philosopher triumphs in bruising battle with beastly bureaucrats!


Last night there was an item on the Scottish news about how the Crichton Campus of the University [Via Veritas Vitae] had been saved.
Why did that ring bells with me? I’ll just tell you.
A contributor to these pages, the well known philosopher and acolyte of Antonio Gramsci, namely Eryl Shields the kitchen bitch herself, had been campaigning for just such an outcome.
I’m sure I speak for us all when I wish her our hearty congratulations.

As Gramsci himself might have said while fading in gaol,

“…pre-history ends and history begins.”


Anyway, it’s still 1798 and our brave ship Shannon is lying off the Ayrshire coast at Ballantrae. In a spirit of open friendship the guns have been run out to cover the quayside and the custom house in an arc of genial fire should the need arise.
Onshore, swashbuckling captain Barney (Barnacle) Hennessy with three of his most trusted crew, have tracked down the objects of their pursuit to a cavernous alehouse called “Clatty Pat’s”…


Call it morning driving through the sound
In and out the valley

So far this week, I have been mainly listening to Yes.

transference /’trans(t)s-/fer-ən(t)s, 1 : the redirection of feelings and desires to a new object. 2 : symptom of being a total arse.

I am a long-time sufferer of this debilitating condition and now that the Tour de France is ended, my transference is raging, like, all over the place.
For example, I extol Ayres to get on HIS bike because I have a bike that I never ride. You see how it works? I keep it in the shed. The bike. It’s totally made out of plastic and exotic metals. Ayres has an excuse; he doesn’t know that after 4 or 5 days on a bike, it becomes addictive, that you end up thinking of any excuse just to ride the thing. I have no such defence. I’ve seen the Promised Land. I’ve looked down from the hilltop at the sleeping plains spread below, ready for plunder.
That bike is put together like a lever watch, it really is. If I sat on it, it would break. It is utterly silent. I don’t mean in the shed, I mean when I ride it. It doesn’t squeak or click or clank, the brakes come on with a whisper. When I bought it in 2003, I put it on my visa and I’m still paying it off.
Sitting here, facing the facts like this has been good, although my chest has tightened with embarrassment and my face is totally scarlet. In the Scottish idiom, I’ve “taken a pure beamer”.
Confession always drains me emotionally. Must have a cuppa. Tomorrow we’ll discuss procrastination.

procrastinate \p(r)ə-‘kras-tə-,nāt \ prō vt~ to put off intentionally and habitually, vi~ to put off intentionally and reprehensibly, the doing of something that should be done…

‘Give me a break! I’m DOING IT!’

Dear reader, how often have we shouted those words up the stair to our loved ones, when we had no intention of doing whatever it was we said we were doing? Perhaps you’ve just found another number in your sodoku, or maybe that beer is particularly hopsome, or maybe you’re just plain lazy and too scared to begin.

‘The longest journey starts with the shortest step.’

Wouldn’t it be great to hang the man who first came up with that? Or make a pyre of cheesy greetings cards and sling the bastard on.

‘procrastination is the thief of time’
Fred, you’re right! Here, hold this can of petrol.
‘never do today what you can put off till tomorrow’
Fred, that’s the wrong way round.
‘tomorrow never comes’
How true, got a light?
‘strike while the iron’s hot’
I shall Fred, could you stand on that straw bale?
‘make hay while the sun shines’
Time to shut up, Fred.
‘car...’
Don’t say it Fred.
‘carp…’
Don’t Fred, I won’t be responsible
‘CARPE DIEM!’
You just had to, didn’t you? WHOOSHHHHHHH


Deedle-deedle-deedle-dee…Layla! You got me on my knees…

You may be interested to know we were at a lock-in the other night. Remember them?
Free jukebox and the Devil take the hindmost.
All the old crowd have turned out and your mind and body returns, way…way back to the days when everyone had summer suntans and we could dance and we weren’t afraid to show it and the sex we had was better than the rubbish that young people put up with these days and you had a black futon and a big black couch to go with it and black wooden shelving units that you were dead proud of and a pioneer stereo and tons of scratched LPs and while you were waiting to go out you’d have a can of lager and a weak doobie and your girlfriend would be taking ages to get ready and she’d take a couple of puffs and a couple of slugs out your beer and give you a snog for about an hour and it was hot and passionate and cool and innocent at the same time and you thought you were the only man who ever had the luck to feel that good.
Christ, it was only a lock-in. GERROVERITT!
Sunday night, Mr Parker called, said; listen son you’re wasting time, there’s a future for you in the fire escape trade…

Foot Eater 1 AHK Maroon 0

Humble pie must be eaten quickly. It now seems the man fighting for his life with 90% burns is an engineer. What a bummer. Worse, he was a PhD student at Cambridge. You couldn’t make this stuff up. Please God, tell me it wasn’t Trinity.
I don’t know what bothers me more; Foot Eater being right or my upcoming medical. My previous plans are kaput.

‘Right Maroon, spread ‘em, I want to see those two veg. Christ, you’re fatter than ever and still drinking I see. No excuses Maroon, my patience is pretty thin with engineers right now, especially hoity toity Cambridge ones. Bend over, this is going to hurt…’

On the upside, the Tour de France has started and wasn’t the Garden of England looking just perfect for it? I bet Ayres threw his TV out the window.

It’s true what they say about ill winds. My medical’s coming up and for the first time in years I’m really confident. The boot’s on the other foot Dr Mustapha!

I’ve got some duty free carrier bags from Glasgow airport and a very smart Icelandair bomber [sic] jacket that I never wear. I shall arrive at the examination a little out of breath with some empty bottles clinking in the duty free bags.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ I’ll say, ‘but I was held up at the airport, there were a lot of extra checks for some reason. What’s been happening?’

While he’s stumblin’ and mumblin’, I’ll slip in my confession about all the alcohol units and ciggies and suet puddings.
There’s no way he’ll be able to pull me up about anything.

‘Just tick all the boxes Doctor Chandra and we’ll say no more about it, there’s a good chap. I don’t think you need to see Bertie this time, do you? Thought not, splendid fellow.’

1776 and all that.


A long, long time ago, four fathers with white collars and blunderbusses arrived on American shores. They preferred to be dull and never sang or played cards. They were puritanical. They had come on three ships; the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Barbara and were seeking religious persecution in Boston. At the time they were very hungry so the Indians fed them soft cheese called Philadelphia. They were so happy they made a huge bell.
Back in England the king was angry and spiteful so he sent forth his redcoats to make taxes upon the white settlers. The Americans responded by declaring the War of Independence and crossing the Delaware. The Americans won the war because they were fitter having been brought up in fresh air. The English had scurvy because of the limes.
After the war they had a president not a king and everyone signed the constitution except John Hancock who was a traitor. Benjamin Franklyn invented electric lightning, while Benedict Arnold discovered a new way to cook eggs. In England the king went mad.

From Frontline Scotland:

Day 5

We had an aunt who was a bit of a nut bar and she always said “Never trust anyone from Paisley”. We used to laugh at that but I wish she could see me today, because I’ve learned a bitter lesson.
At this point I should probably come right out with it. I don’t like them.
I don’t mean people from Paisley, although to be honest, there’s no love lost there.
No, I mean the other lot.
THEM.
You know who I’m talking about.
That’s right; I mean doctors. All of them. Those who Joe Public calls real doctors. I know it’s prejudiced and it’s not ‘p.c.’ but I think recent events have proved me correct. We give them social status, reserved parking bays, even our sick and ill to play with, and how are we repaid?
It’s official; doctors are a shower of shite. I feel vindicated.
They walk around in funny clothes talking their funny language among themselves. What’s wrong with good honest Scotch? Too much to ask? And the beliefs they hold, they act like Lord God Almighty some of them. And what about the way they treat women? Arrogant bastards, ask any Jewish mother. Even today in the 21st century, women doctors or “surgeons” are expected to remain covered head to foot, with only their eyes showing. Pathetic.
I say round them up and force them to work for a living. The lazy bastards want to try life at the sharp end for a change, improving Britain’s balance of payments instead of swanning about in hospitals “Hey, look at me, I’m a real doctor. I’m George Clooney…”
May God forgive me, I truly hate them.


To reflect the upgraded security level, our landlord is now searching us on the way in and out of the bar. His “Stop ’n’ Search” policy will seriously delay my efforts to complete that set of wine glasses. Just another way in which the men of death are trying to upset normal life in Scotland.
And that is the problem. In their eyes, and I mean the evil harbingers in their fancy-Dan Jeep Cherokees, all they are doing is blowing up an airport or nightclub and no offence intended. Yeah well, fine; what they don’t realise is that their selfish actions bugger up life far removed from the initial planned outrage. It’s like ripples in a pond spreading watery fingers into every cleft and crevice of Scottish society. A bit more consideration next time Mr Terrorist thank you very much.


A top notch July 4 to all our American chums and for everyone else let’s keep our heads down.

Lots of love,


Ack. xxx

Picture if you will, the scene;

You’re queuing up at check in.
That pre-flight lager seems an eternity away.
You’re counting the kids and the luggage [not necessarily in that order].
You are making sure that your trolley rubs the heels of the people in front, while scowling at that ratfink behind you who is going to get a fat lip so help you God if he keeps bumping your ankles.
You have delegated ticket and passport duties to the lady of the house who shows no outward sign of taking her responsibilities seriously.
If she carries on like that you will be robbed by Romanian pickpockets, it was on the TV…

Man: I mean why not just wave all the…the…[searches for word] the fucking valuables, in the air and shout “here it is !”?
Woman: Valuables? Who do you think we are, Lord and Lady Muck? What valuables for God’s sake?
Man: You know what I mean, - the passports and stuff.
Woman: Wait! [clutches throat] My pearls! They re missing! [clutches head] so is my tiara !
Man: That s right, make a fucking joke about it. We’ll see who’s laughing when that bag gets snatched
Woman: For the love of Christ, Ack will you calm down? You’ll get a drink shortly.
Man: I’m only sayin’…

At last!
You’re nearly there.
You’re next.
Once that ghastly family in front load up their house flitting onto the scales, it’ll be you.
Then you can have that drink and spend all your money here in Glasgow Airport on silk ties and shortbread and perfume and watches and cigars and spirits and burgers and coffee and cufflinks and Jägermeister and all the crap you never normally buy.
When suddenly;
Two young lads drive a burning jeep into one of the doors and all flights are suspended.
NOOOOOOO, you have got to be kidding me!



Transcript of pub debate concerning Scotland’s war on terror.

Jimmy: This has put us on the map!

Gerry: On a par with New York, so we are.

Voice of reason: In what way?

Jimmy: It shows we’re just as important as other countries.

Gerry: Every country worth their salt has terrorists.

Voice of reason: Jesus!

Jimmy: Mind you, they chose the wrong airport to tangle with.

Gerry: They took a hell of a risk.

Voice of reason: They were suicide bombers!

Jimmy: Christ, they’d have to be, down in Glasgow.

Gerry: They’re terrible rough in Glasgow, no offence Professor.

Voice of reason: None taken I’m sure.

Jimmy: And another thing, they’re meant to be disaffected Muslim youth but they drive Mercs and Jeeps, I don’t get it.

Gerry: 15 miles to the gallon and the insurance is sky high!

Voice of reason: Yeah but that’s…

Jimmy: My brother-in-law insured his jeep with Admiral.

Gerry: What mileage is he getting?

Voice of reason: Argggghhhhh!

Every day I promenade the Island, checking the horizon for Japanese patrol boats and suchlike. I’ve been here a while and I like to keep a weather eye for any trouble. Don’t worry; it’s not all typhoons and tidal waves, in fact most of the time I sit around waiting for something to wash up. I can guess what you’re thinking; you’re thinking the only thing washed up around here is…yeah well, I do the quips, such as they are, thank you very much. Fancy a reviver? Why didn’t you say? Come on, we’ll stroll up to the house; it’ll give me a chance to show you round. I think you’ll like what I’ve done with the old place.

See? I told you. Isn’t it great? As you can see it’s the typical Old World fantasy (nice off-white pillared façade with portico, in the colonial style). Those jungle creepers give an air of neglected opulence I think. Too tropical for you? They took an age to cultivate but the market demands it. That diastolic thumping you can hear is the antique generator out back. It powers all this. It might run on for ever or it might stop tonight. I hope it’s not tonight because it’s steak and kidney pudding tonight, with new potatoes. Let’s go inside. No, please, after you.

Well? Whatdya think o’ the fittin’s? Not bad eh?. “Eclectic” is the preferred term these days. I call it “romantic scotch revival with gothic overtones”. It’s no exaggeration to say it’s taken a lifetime. I’ll agree it’s not to everyone’s taste and that it’s heavy on the sarcastic baronial (soft furnishings are not my forte) anyway I think it’s balanced by the open aspect and the wonderful outward views. Hell, you are totally right, I shall scrap the tartan carpet in the lobby – make it more welcoming.

You’re probably wondering how all this got here to the Island, I wonder myself sometimes; well there’s no mystery there. It just fetched up, over the wide oceans of the world drifting with the Trades. Come on, I’ll show you, bring your glass, we can drink on the way. No, look, change of plan. We’ll avoid the windward shore for today, it’s high tide anyway. When it turns, we may find a 42” flat screen home cinema, on the other hand, a dozen half-dead seabirds covered in oil, so for now, I’ve a better idea. There’s this little cove where I like to sit when the sea’s combing in. When it’s running high I avoid the beach and the breakers and come here instead, to sit and have a kir and watch the dolphins.

The Lost Island Of Doctor Maroon

Father’s Day

I was just seven years old when I was struck by the realisation that my father was up the creek. He was turning into a woman and the stress was killing him. To let you know, me and Mum were in some room and the doctor had come in to give us the bulletin on Dad. I was pretty confident. This was the Western Infirmary after all, which was the best hospital in the world, ask anyone.
The doctor was tall. He had funny eyes and a stethoscope and pens in his pocket. I didn’t like that stethoscope one bit. It was black and rubber and threatening. I felt distinctly threatened. My knees were shaking.

“…so it’s really just his Jemima and we’ll keep a close eye on that…”

The affairs of adults were never discussed in front of me so I was making myself as small and quiet as possible but I must have gasped or something because my dear mamma looked over and sent me out so I tore down the corridor to Dad to tell him the bad news. He’d looked fine five minutes ago. Perhaps the strain of motor factoring and light engineering caused his Willy to fall off, but would that leave a Jemima? Would he grow bosoms? I was certain he’d had a Willy. I had seen it at swimmies, only for a second mind but there could be no mistake. It’s not the sort of thing you can misinterpret.

When I got back to his bed I saw I was too late. He looked different. Cybermen had put plastic tubes in his ears to suck out his brains and his handsome face was all twisted. He winked and waved me over.

‘Here.’ he said, sticking the hissing pipes in my ears.

It was Round the Horne, a radio programme that gave him more joy than all his beloved family put together.

“…hello, I’m Julian and this is my friend Sandy…”

This was too bad. This was whistling while Rome burned. I took command.

“Now look here Pater, Mater and I have had a chat with that medical Johnny next door and the upshot is you better pull your socks up. He’s not at all happy with your progress, and frankly I don’t blame him. It’s time to beat your ploughshares into swords and fight the fight. Gird up your loins and face the coming storm. Via veritas vitae!”

In reality I said;
‘Dad, are you turning into a lady?’
‘What? No. Don’t be silly.’
‘The doctor said you’ve got a Jemima.’
Dad was probably drugged because he just stared at me.
‘Go and get Mum.’ he said thoughtfully.

He was home the next day and the whole thing was never mentioned again.

To my mind, the “Aviation” is the best of cocktails.

I’m a convert and believe me there is nothing in this wide world that is worse than a convert. As a general rule, don’t drink this one after dark unless a long night of dancing is in store.

You mix it thusly:-
Wait. Remember, Maraschino is a clear dryish liqueur not that weird syrup you get in jars of cocktail cherries.
Right, let’s go.

1½ ounces gin,
½ ounce maraschino liqueur
¾ ounce lemon juice

Give it all a shake with hundreds of ice, strain into a chilled glass and top it off with a cherry. A link with aeroplanes however tenuous, really helps the enjoyment. .
Doors to automatic !
Tomorrow I’ll tell you about a down to earth mix that still packs a punch like Joe Louis. I call it the Buckfast Bronco.

Down the hatch!



Talking of hatches who left the hatch open?
Must have been the ground staff
Yeah but there’s a warning light, right?
Yeah but it’s on your side
But it’s on your list
I called it and you said “check”
Didn’t
Did
So we’re all the way to Sausalito with it flapping like that?
If it lasts that long
Listen to it
What a racket
You better tell them
You tell them, you’re captain
Exactly, and I’m telling you to tell them
Only if I do the landing
It’s your turn anyway
Sweet…

I looked at my watch,
It was 12 hours into Monday,
So I thought;
I better go and see the Man.
He said; Hi, you got the package?
I said no.
He smiled and he said; I understand…


Apart from pushing things to their elastic limit, I have been mainly concerned with my total lack of progress. A scan of the paperbacks in the supermarket yesterday showed a lot of unimaginative thieving swine have stolen my ideas but rather than faff about, fantasising about the South Bank Show, they have got off their hynies and got themselves printed and onto the shelves.
It was encouraging in a way. I went straight to the liquor section and asked where the absinthe was.
Young lad, weekend job for pocket money, searched all the Bacardi Breezers and Smirnoff WKDs for me. (My cruelty knows no bounds.)
Ok skip it, I said, any calvados?
The little rat found a bottle.
I haven’t opened it and nor shall I. I don’t like the look of it. It looks like medicine.

Turning left.
You know how sometimes your fat pointy nose gets all scabby with sunburn and your big baw face puffs up with the drink and your eyes are like piss-holes in the snow and you think you might have type 2 diabetes because your body shape has gone all feminine and you might have some inner ear issues because you’re bumping off the walls like a knotless thread and there’s an invisible Martian brain slug drawing out your life force like a poultice while you sleep?
No?
Me neither.
Suck it up, is what I say.
We’ll have no moaning Minnies here. Life’s too short.
If a big hearty double knit outward bound type comes near me today and says how great life is, I shall bang his head off the fake maple desking solutions.

I wish it was summer.
That’s a crock.
I wish I was eighteen.