Time for a sharp exit. Lager advert from the 80s. The worst era for us auld duffers. But then, at least we had socialism and some kind of communities then. Working class oblivion in the backyard of Empire. It seemed to change when I hit Donegal in the summers and autumnal breaks. More elemental. More natural. Away from urban purgatory in Barrhead. But then this too is narcotic nostalgia. The physicist in me hates this, the shaman likes the conflict. The anarchist chides. The gun is in my hand. McPhee squeals a tad as his bounds are twisted and as the transit van rushes us to the Ayrshire coast. Human shite. That was what Big K cried him. I know what is required. A swift nutting. Bag over the swollen skinhead and despatched to the next life, presuming there is one for him.
In New York, in 1986, it was glibly easy. On the run in the town of clowns without make up. Sympathisers gave me and Big K shelter, cash, arms etc. It was like a fucking holiday camp for us. Lassies threw themselves into our Celtic twilight politics and I had not even shed first blood. I was only the quartermaster in this pantomime. I joked about it in the Disney Irish boozers there and plenty of 4th generation idiots applauded my cause. I only joined the organisation to appease pater. Stupid kid of 19 with bitter fruits and a palpable background in the Province. Derry in those days was still under siege. None of this photogenic film setting for a hard done by miscarriage of justice Loach job. No harm to the lovely bleeding hearts of the good British media. After all I was reared in south Glasgow. The Province was merely a get out from the encroaching gang culture. One frying pan traded for another. Now real escape. Pater thought that joining The Boys would make a man of me and stop me from teenage glue sniffing and brawling in Queen's Park. Balls. I was an above average schoolboy with an interest in quantum physics and lassies from the private school across The Clyde. St Al's. The moneyed hacks sent their offspring there in the hope that Jesuit led brainwashing and nine grand fees to feed the Vatican monkey would do the required. To hell with that. My comprehensive didn't even register on the bloody radar. Shit. Nostalgia again.
I see McPhee stagger onto this nameless Ayrshire beach. K hands me the burlap hood. It's all too late this backwards glancing. This tube killed more Irishmen than a lifetime of Jamesons and Guinness ever could. Fuck him. In the last moments I see my own hell emerge. A constant sense of loss. Damn the auld fella. I cannot erase the future, nor the past. Fait accomplished. The latest bullet in the thousand year war. Hoist by mine own petard. I await more purgatory as K and I leave the corpse at low tide.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
New Work in Progress
Adventures in Hynagogia.
Leach and Roe. Newcastle tickets. Pat Harkins in Glasgow: shotgun diplomacy. Genotti in Jersey. 12 minutes of criminology in terse sentences. 1744 Newcastle to Morpeth. The softly spoken, insinuation of a Glaswegian brogue carries its audio wave over the double seat in front. “Representative” i.e. lawyer/functionary/facilitator of the crime demi monde. Alibis given and bail paid? The Cramlington lad is in rapt silence, only the cropped skull and Crombie are visible above the plastic mould of the train seating. The Glasgow spieler is visible in the curtain-of-night mirror of the carriage window. Greying boyish side shed and bovine eyes. Cheaply expensive mufti. St James’ Park hospitality stickers on a faux combat jacket by Paul Smith, or some such. The monologue continues. Saturday night tales of combat uttered from a tight gullet and the well fed bread basket of a spreading late-middle-aged gut. Familiar strangers on an unfamiliar journey. Self-penned histories carrying the scars of Rangers’ fans ill-thought revenge for centuries-dead religious and social lies and blood ties. Micro domains and the manors of machete-wielding Machiavellian 2 bob 2nd generation Irish chieftains of the bad old days of hazy nostalgia and ill-remembered re-casting of hoary old clichés. I’m dozing in a post-retail service overload of the senses. The emerging 6th sense foisted on me by mobile phone sales staff and online interstitials. The accompanying ersatz synaesthesia of confused responses to train vibration. Mobile phone setting or muscles tensing naturally after a day on one’s feet trying to punt AV equipment to unsure victims of the slow dazzle of LED or 3-D heaven firing 1080ps of ultra-brightness into already hypnotized orbs. Downloading myriad conversation from portions of the pre-frontal cortex or maybe even the medulla, as I quasi-sleep on this short ride in the capsule of choice. Doubts? I carry on listening in voyeur mode to the Glasgow functionary’s personal odyssey. I laugh inward, a dry rasp as I realize I’m never far from home. The magnetic pull of the city of my childhood attracts and repels in equal measure. The ambivalence is hard to nurture as I shut my eyes tightly in a despairing orison and banishing ritual. The wraiths alight at Cramlington and the paper-thin equilibrium I’ve been wishing for returns albeit for a mere 7 minutes.
Leach and Roe. Newcastle tickets. Pat Harkins in Glasgow: shotgun diplomacy. Genotti in Jersey. 12 minutes of criminology in terse sentences. 1744 Newcastle to Morpeth. The softly spoken, insinuation of a Glaswegian brogue carries its audio wave over the double seat in front. “Representative” i.e. lawyer/functionary/facilitator of the crime demi monde. Alibis given and bail paid? The Cramlington lad is in rapt silence, only the cropped skull and Crombie are visible above the plastic mould of the train seating. The Glasgow spieler is visible in the curtain-of-night mirror of the carriage window. Greying boyish side shed and bovine eyes. Cheaply expensive mufti. St James’ Park hospitality stickers on a faux combat jacket by Paul Smith, or some such. The monologue continues. Saturday night tales of combat uttered from a tight gullet and the well fed bread basket of a spreading late-middle-aged gut. Familiar strangers on an unfamiliar journey. Self-penned histories carrying the scars of Rangers’ fans ill-thought revenge for centuries-dead religious and social lies and blood ties. Micro domains and the manors of machete-wielding Machiavellian 2 bob 2nd generation Irish chieftains of the bad old days of hazy nostalgia and ill-remembered re-casting of hoary old clichés. I’m dozing in a post-retail service overload of the senses. The emerging 6th sense foisted on me by mobile phone sales staff and online interstitials. The accompanying ersatz synaesthesia of confused responses to train vibration. Mobile phone setting or muscles tensing naturally after a day on one’s feet trying to punt AV equipment to unsure victims of the slow dazzle of LED or 3-D heaven firing 1080ps of ultra-brightness into already hypnotized orbs. Downloading myriad conversation from portions of the pre-frontal cortex or maybe even the medulla, as I quasi-sleep on this short ride in the capsule of choice. Doubts? I carry on listening in voyeur mode to the Glasgow functionary’s personal odyssey. I laugh inward, a dry rasp as I realize I’m never far from home. The magnetic pull of the city of my childhood attracts and repels in equal measure. The ambivalence is hard to nurture as I shut my eyes tightly in a despairing orison and banishing ritual. The wraiths alight at Cramlington and the paper-thin equilibrium I’ve been wishing for returns albeit for a mere 7 minutes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)