by Irvine Welsh
– Must go Clell, I say, forcibly freeing my wrist, – Carole’s pulled out aw the stops wi the turkey dinner this time roond. Call ays a traditionalist if ye like, but there’s something aboot that faimly Christmas dinner.
– Jackie never came in . . . she phoned but . . . he says.
– They tell ays that they fair dae the business on Christmas Day in these places. Yir in the right hands Clell, I tell him. I clock that wee nurse again. – Especially wi her there! Ah’d git a bedbath fae her . . . never mind a bedbath, ah’d git a fuckin enema off her! And return the fuckin compliment! Phoa! Anyhow, see ye Clell! Merry Christmas! Keep the pecker up, I wink departing, – Mine would be up anywey, in a place like this! Too right!
As I leave the gibbering oaf I see the nurses start to serve up the Christmas nosh for some other enfeebled lunatics on the ward. They’re mostly stupid young cunts; anorexic, junkies and what have you, inadequates who can’t cope with life. They should sling the fuckin load of them oot intae the snaw instead of wasting the taxpayer’s dough pampering them wi turkey and trimmings served up by rides in seamed stockings. It’s a fuckin disgrace. We’d aw like that!
I consider trying to take one of the dishes, but there’s too many staff around.
Instead I go back hame and re-stoke the fire, Toal’s manuscript now reduced to a pile of ashes. I heat up some more beans which I spice up with curry powder and do some toast. I listen to that daft, smelly, rich auld cunt talk her usual shite at three o’clock. I’m a mason awright, and I swear allegiance to the crown as an institution, but as people the Royal Family are the saddest shower of spastics that ever walked the third planet of the solar system.
Thankfully, for Christmas night there’s a do up in the club at Shrubhill. No many people in though, it being Christmas and that. Brother Blades is present though, and we both get three sheets. He has to hold me up for ‘God Save the Queen’. He’s droning on about Bunty, something about an argument and his mother but I can’t make out a word of it. I lose him and stagger out into the cold. The chill revives me a bit and I get a taxi from a guy in the Lodge and head back home. I get in and I snort back some more charlie and I’m tanning another bottle of Grouse. I stick on Van Halen’s Women and Children First as loud as it will go and play air guitar, specialising in the Jimmy Page chicken dance. Inbetween tracks I hear a loud knock at the door.
Stronach and his wife are on my doorstep. He’s playing tomorrow, against Motherwell, I think. Boxing Day fixture. I can’t hear anything, because the next track’s started up and it’s really loud. I can just see the two mouths opening like fish. They’re both in their tracksuits. I raise my hand to silence them then I go through and turn the music down before coming back out.
– Merry Christmas Tom! Julie! I shout.
– God Bruce! Cool yir jets man! We’re tryin tae git some sleep! Stronach whines, his stupid belligerent face scanning for signs of me registering his plight.
– Don’t fuckin trespass on my property Stronach! If you’ve a complaint to make about the noise level, call the fuckin polis! It’s Christmas fuckin Day!
I push him in the chest and he jerks backwards off the doorstep. I slam the door shut in his daft face.
That cunt’s got all fuckin year tae sleep. I work aw fuckin year.
I try to watch some telly through one eye. There’s a Channel Four film on, where you get a brief flash of some wee French slag’s fanny, arse and tits. I think about that wee nurse again and I resolve to keep up these visits to my mate Clell, on a regular basis. It’s impossible to read the Teletext to see what’s due on, and just as hard to read the fuckin Radio Times.
I’m cunted.
Car Stereo Chews Up Michael Bolton Tape
Big Ben chimes, Radio Times. Meant to be fucking Christmas and the telly is shite, all repeats. Stronach’s got the right idea with that dish of his. I bitterly resent paying a licence fee to those BBC wankers for absolutely fuck all. I’m feeling rough this morning, channel-hopping rough, my heid nipping. I try to light the fire and get a reasonable blaze going. I’m almost tempted to shelve my plan to get Bladesey. The fool seals his ain fate though, by phoning me up, reminding me of the Boxing Day game of tenpin bowling we’d arranged when we were three sheets the other night at the Lodge. Iain McLeod from the craft has gied me the keys for the alley, he reminds me. I was wondering what these things jangling in my pocket were.
Ten-pin bowling on Boxing Day. With Bladesey. How sad and nae-mates can you get? Decline and despondency in all I see. The house is like a toilet, there’s rubbish and smelly auld clathes piling up everywhere. Even I’m beginning to notice the Judi Dench when I come into the hoose. Those irresponsible weak suicide cases, those druggy kids and those fuckin jakeys have got a better deal than me at this time of the year. Carole wants to get it sorted. If she could only see the inconvenience she’s fuckin well caused me . . .
I’m shaking, sick and jumpy. I won’t drive today. The car stereo chewed up the Michael Bolton tape. I must get a fuckin CD fitted in the car. The thing is, you get fucked as the issue of storage always raises its ugly head. That smart wee cunt Bladesey’s gone and got one, the wee bastard. He’s roond for me early doors for the ten-pin, as planned.
I look witheringly at his CD. – I considered switching to compact disc but then I thought: storage of discs. The same rules apply, I tell him.
– Well, I um actually find that they don’t really take up that much more room than cassettes.
– No go. Storage, I snap at the wee cunt.
Then this spastic’s smiling like the retard he is and pulling out this drawer below the stereo unit that’s crammed with fucking discs. – They fit this storage unit underneath. Takes up to fifty discs, he smiles. Cock-eyed wee cunt.
– Right, I say, my voice coming out gruff and duty-polis like. We go indoors and I’ve accidentally on purpose got the box on. The little creep’s looking around disdainfully at the mess, but he kens better than to say anything.
I fling out a pre-emptive strike, in case he asks about Carole and the bairn. – So how do things stand with Bunty . . . you were trying to tell me the other night, but I was cabbaged.
– Not so well Bruce, Bladesey looks mournful. – Actually, I’m driving down to my mother’s this evening, down in Newmarket. Just for a few days. See the family and all of that. Bunty’s decided she’s staying up here. She’s making such a song and dance. I mean, I only see them once in a blue moon for goodness sake.
– Hmm, right enough, I nod. – It does seem a wee bit much.
So old Cunty Bunty’s going to be on her own for a few days. Well, we can’t have that!
– Yes . . . it’s a real problem . . .
– A tough one Brother Blades. So, this creep that’s hassling her, what does he sound like? I ask.
– Actually I believe it’s sort of a nasal accent, um North of England, Manchester actually . . . Bladesey says.
– Man-chesh-tehr, I say crappily, – I’m shite at accents, I’m afraid, except for the Cockney cause I used to live down there. – Orlroight moite? Dahn the old frog n toad . . .
Just then, as I had planned, Frank Sidebottom’s large head appears on the screen as the announcer of the next dire pop act on. The Radio Times does have its uses.
– My God . . . that chap on the box . . . that’s exactly the way Bunty does his voice. That puppet on the television.
– Eh? I say, turning up the volume. Frank’s going on about how this act’s usually on very late at night on Jools Holland and his mum won’t let him stay up to see them . . .
– The chap in the mask . . .
– Right. Somebody’s obviously impersonating that television personality.
We wait for the credits to come up. – Gosh, says Bladesey, – his name’s Frank. Frank Sidebottom.
– Right, I say, standing up and moving to the phone. I pretend to dial the operator, then I pretend to ask for a number for Granada studios, – Just getting their PR people on the line . . . R
ight, hello . . . I’m wanting to enquire about Frank Sidebottom who was on your show . . . I stand talking for a while to a dead line going, Mmmhhmm yes and doodling on the notepad, occasionally winking at Bladesey’s huge startled eyes. Magnified under that glass, they look bigger than Frank Sidebottom’s. Meet Bladesey’s new specs. Same as the old specs.
We slam down the phone and give Brother Clifford Blades the thumbs up. – Right, we have to take off to the record shop and find some of Frank Sidebottom’s albums and tapes. This is where this cook conducts his fantasy world from. The lassie on the phone was saying that it’s easy to do his voice. You just put your fingers over your nose. Mahn-chestehr, I go, again sounding crap deliberately.
Bladesey’s away though, – No, listen, I’ve got it. Muhn-chiz-tih! He’s chuffed.
– That’s more like it Brother Blades! Nice one! I start to choke as the hangover from last night is really coming on. Now that my kidneys are so inefficient with pish over the years it takes later and later to kick in, and you sometimes feel that you’re going to escape, but when it comes it comes harder and longer than ever and I’m as jittery as fuck as we drive into town. Fuck the ten-pin, Rose Street here we come. Hair of the dug that mauled you. Bladesey’s on orange juice, as he’s driving south later on. I don’t try to discourage this as I want the wee cunt to leave Bunty on her lonesome.
Although it’s Boxing Day, there’s loads open in toon. Some of the shops have decided to start the first day of the January sales today. Bladesey gets a couple of tapes from Virgin and HMV and listens to Frank Sidebottom Salutes the Magic of Freddy Mercury and Queen and Kylie and the Timperley EP. We hit a few more Rose Street pubs with me getting semi-pished and I give a couple of criminal cunts the eye, particularly that fucker from Oxgangs, Fingers Billy, who’s dressed in his regulation white coat and carrying the clipboard he always uses when he rips oaf shoaps.
Fingers Billy’s usual M.O. is to just stride into a shop and order the backroom staff to load up his white van. Then he gets them to sign and he’s away. – Billy, I nod.
– Mister Robertson. How’s business? the shifty cunt asks.
– Oh very good. Yourself?
– Fine Mister Robertson. You, eh, working the day?
– Would ah tell you if I was? And you? Dressed for it I see.
– Mister Robertson . . . Fingers Billy smiles and turns up the palms of his hands. Then he smiles and departs.
– A friend of yours? Bladesey asks.
– Of sorts, we smile.
We get back to mines with the tapes and a carry out and spend the entire afternoon doing the impressions of the recorded material. I deliberately screw up, but Bladesey gets it off-pat. The wee cunt really seems to be having genuine fun. I’d say it was sad, but in reality it’s way, way beyond that. – Yeah, you’ve got it Bladesey. I think it must be because you’re English.
– Would that mean that the pervert’s English too? Bladesey asks eagerly.
We choose to humour the doss wee cunt. – Sharp Brother Blades, sharp. But we don’t know that. He might just be better at impressions than the likes of me. But on the balance of probability it might be a good starting assumption to at least entertain the possibility. We have to start from the principle of the application of the same rules.
Bladesey gives a pathetic knowing nod and grin. – Well, I must set off. South of the border down Newmarket way.
My friend Brother Clifford Blades departs for the bosom of his spastic family in England while I give Hector a bell, to make sure that we’re still on for Monday morning. Then I check with Claire at the Fish Factory. It’s all systems go.
Just the thought of Monday’s frolics sets up the horn in me. I consider calling in at Bunty’s, seeing as she’s on her tod, but I decide to leave it till the morn, let Bladesey get further out of sight and mind first.
I just realise that he’s left the tapes he bought from the record store on the coffee table. I chuck them out with the rubbish, embarrassed at being party to something which gave that simpleton his petty pleasure, no matter how fleeting. I throw some McCain’s oven chips into the tray and heat up some beans, adding curry powder.
To my great elation, my friend Brother Blades realises that he’s left the tapes too. I thought that this would take a while to happen, but no, the stupid little twat is cutting his own throat for me. He phones up later that night and I don’t lift the receiver, letting him babble into the answer machine. Fate can be a cruel bastard, especially to the likes of Bladesey.
– Hello, is that Bruce Robertson. This is Frank ere. I should be sal looky, looky, looky, looky, I should be sal looky in loove . . . I’m on my way to my mam’s . . . but I left me bloody tapes. Look after em for me, will ya!
And he does it all in a beautiful, impeccable Frank Sidebottom voice. I rub my hands together and press the ‘Save’ button on the answerphone.
Gotcha!
To Lodge A Complaint
Sunday. For some a depressing day, for me the happiest day of the week: it means big-time OT. I can’t find my slippers. I go through to the front room and my heart skips a beat. Her picture’s gone from the sideboard. Of course. The top drawer.
I open the top drawer and put it back.
It was Christmas and I never got her anything.
That was
I look at the picture for a while then push it back into the drawer and slam it shut. That poor wee lassie, what a fuckin legacy. I’m better away from her. I’m better away from them all. It’s a dormant virus and it’s becoming more manifest.
But it was Christmas and I never got her anything.
It was cause of Carole that I . . . she usually gets her . . . she would have, surely, she would have bought her something from the both of us.
Surely.
Maybe though, that’s the way her mind’s working: trying to turn us, me against the bairn. She’s living in a fool’s paradise. Same rules. I do not give a Matt and Luke Goss about her. Not an Aylesbury Duck.
I pull on my stinky old clothes and defrost the Volvo. Getting the motor charged up and storming round the city bypass to Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell album restores some cheer. Jim Steinman, probably the greatest rock composer of all time. That cunt is operatic.
When I get to HQ, I find that most of the crew are in; they’ve had their fill of that Christmas shite. For all the bullshit talk of the family, close friends and the festivities, I’ve always found that most people can’t wait to call a halt to all that garbage and get back to the two-slice. I find that polis can’t function for very long in the company of non-polis.
– Who’s in the Screws the day? I ask Peter Inglis who’s got his paper open.
– Nikki from Somerset. Good tits like. Fill paps. Dirty cow’s been tweaking her nipples fir the photae. Like fighter pilot’s thumbs, he says in the fake-coarse way of the closet homosexual in desperate fear of being outed. Mister Inglis has recently dropped his application for the promotion. On the advice of a certain Mr Toal, no doubt. He holds the page up for my inspection. Thinks that keeping a low profile and talking dirty aboot birds will set up a smoke-screen. Such an obvious attempt to be one of the boys just grates and only serves to isolate him further.
– A pump and a piece thon, I nod appprovingly.
You fool nobody, Mr Inglis.
I open my file wallet and pull out my own Screws for closer study. No bad, worth forty wanks later on. I’m as itchy as fuck in the genital region. I go downstairs to the bog and wipe the sweat from my arse-crack. Then I line my buttocks and thighs with toilet paper, putting my y’s over them. That should absorb the moisture generated. I put the flannels I washed back on, and catch a whiff of detergent from them. They seem discoloured as well.
business remains as unsolved as ever. Yes, there are clues, but it’s working out what they mean . . .
ACROSS DOWN
1Urban dweller (8) 1Outer garment (7)
5Stinging insect (4) 2Narrow part (5)
8Gave money (4) 3Pon
dered (5)
9Joined using a hot iron (8) 4African river (4)
10External (7) 6Fruit (7)
12Bumptious (5) 7Short form of Patrick (5)
13Holy place (6) 11Eyot (5)
15Hand gun (6) 12Dry, brittle (5)
17Trainee (5) 14Wine or cake (7)
18Pain-killer (7) 16Archer’s weapon (7)
22Friendly (8) 17Category (5)
23Dingy (4) 19Water vapour (5)
24Lodge (4) 20Scarcer (5)
25After today! (8) 21Aid in crime (4)
– Gus, I shot, – Urban dweller, eight letters . . . N dinnae say citizen cause that’s only seven.
– Aw . . . that’s what ah would have said. Citizen. Here, what did you get for that nine across?
– Soldered. Join using a hot iron, I tell him. There’s a fuckin good one here for ye. Twelve across. Bumptious. TOAL! Pity it’s five letters but.
Gus’s laugh ricochets around the open-plan like a workie’s drill in a built-up area.
I turn to the football pages. BOXING DAY DISASTER is the headline.
an anonymous, lacklustre performance by Tom Stronach, normally so full of endeavour in the visitors’ engine room, led to his substitution in the second half.
Dougie Gillman looks over my shoulder. I shake the paper at him. – Did ye go Dougie?
– A bloody nightmare. That Stronach, he’s a fuckin imposter, Gillman scoffs.
– Ah ken why he was so crap yesterday, I tell him knowingly, – the cunt was up till the wee small hours on Christmas Day, off his fuckin tits . . . no just on bevvy either by the look ay things.
– Aye, thir aw it that fuckin cocaine . . . they fitba players, Gillman shakes his heid.
– Thing is, thir short-changin the fans Dougie. We pey they cunts’ wages.
Gillman nods in bitter agreement as Lennox comes in. He has a copy of the Screws as well. He sees Gus at the crossword. – Seven doon, he says, – Short for Patrick. That’s easy: Dirty fuckin thick fenian terrorist bog-wog cunt.
