Poverty in all its forms

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.

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.

Work in Progress (Part Two)

The Rusty GullThe scrap yard looked much as it always did; piles of automotive detritus, tempered with side servings of oily pools and a fug of London fumes which emanated from the Westway and beyond. Mickey John wiped his dry mouth with a clean paper towel and discarded it on the almost black earth. He'd been at the game some 15 years and was heartily sick of the whole murky, dull enterprise. His old man, Josie, had snuffed it in a bar fight in Bayswater, one of Millwall's boys tumblering him in the public bar of The Bonaparte and Mickey John had never really got over that night. He'd been due to meet the old man with the lads from the amateur football team, all the old Ladbroke Grove faithful; ex-roadies, recovering acid casualties, ex-dealers, some members of The Pink Fairies, Hawkwind and himself, just a year off the brown and doing well. The old man had liked to sink for England and was onto his 7th Directors when some young team had descended from up The Gate, football casuals on the razz. The old man had been jostled several times and being the heavy Black Irish geezer he was, challenged them. They mocked his lingo and when he squared up, bare-knuckle champion throughout Ireland in the 70s and London up 'til the early 80s, one runt hit him a dull blow with a dimpled pint glass. Result: severed jugular. Dead in less than an hour of frantic bar towels being applied, the casuals legging it back to Millwall. Fucking scum bastards. The old man was 62 and a bear of a man. He'd have fought his corner and doubtless won, Mickey John played back the scene pace Bosch as he wearily did a loping circuit of the scrappy. The old man was gone. Frankie Joe, his older brother had gone inter-continental ballistic and redded several drinkers down south of the river. Got 5 years for eventually tracking down and breaking the neck of the main boy from the Millwall firm. Died in Parkhurst. Smacked out of his tight brain on cheap Pakistani brown and any downers he could place his big mitts on. Poor Frankie Joe. Good at fighting and counting, but useless inside. He'd panelled a few screws and a few top men in the general population and got a bad rap and rep. They put him in with the high-rolling dense cases; real wild men who had a taste for oblivion. He followed in their wake; hash then onto the Paddy McGowan. 'Twas ever thus, the boys in the O'Donnell clan never got much luck. The luck of the fucking Irish. And the Black Irish at that. Heavy Paddies they got dubbed and that was the fate sealed. Mickey had made it to the fringes of the music game; gigs on the continent and then off to The States for a summer tour in '86. Nice work and a cast iron contract with some east coast Mafiosi. Different country, same old routine. Mickey rubbed his heavy brows and walked the 40 tortuous yards to the jerry-built office as he could hear the feint peal of the old Bakelite 'phone. Saturday. August. Autumn was coming early as town gulls circled, some floating suspended as if on some trick wire. He smiled thinly at one of the gulls as it shat on a 1995 Jaguar lying at the top of a pile of dross “Poetic!” he gasped in asthmatic cockney vowels. 11AM. A long day of quantum boredom lay ahead he reckoned as he entered the dank office and picked up the ancient receiver “O'Ds yard. Mickey speakin'” the line was dead, save for static and some far-off breathing “Oo's 'dis, eh?” he rasped as he coughed out the lines “Issss, issss Viv, maaaate, Vivvvvvvvvv....” the other end sounded already as if he had joined Frankie Joe and the old man “Viv? Pricey?” Mickey John was frantic now, as he recognised the febrile larynx at the other end “Gotta get dahhhn 'ere, maaaate. Portobello Star, nah, mate, nah!” It was Viv Price an old band mate and face in the roll call of Ladbroke Grove worthies. Mickey grabbed his old bike leather and headed for the Star, not bothering to lock up as he left “Davie, sort the fuckin' gate, will ya?” he shouted to a lad welding a bumper to a Ford rust bucket “Yeah...” was the laconic reply from behind a thin roll-up.






The Portobello Star had barely changed in decades. New clientèle came and went, but the rust of the past remained. Old stagers, whores, comic singers, fly-by-night financial cowboys, slack-wire artistes, piss artists, old dealers; of antiques and industrial strength chemicals, the full spectrum of Portobello Road social life. You didn't read the intimations in The Times or Telegraph, you drank in The Star and got the info there. The Star and The Castle, where Patrick the Tip lived and thrived. Patrick once gave Mickey John 3 tips at £10, £10 and £20 and he pulled in nearly a monkey. Patrick was a Cork boy, he floated in a tide of Gin and Guinness, funded by his insider trading. Great, ageless boy; somewhere near 80, but with the sharp Sam Beckett flat top barnet and sharp tailoring. Mickey spied him heading for Ladbrokes bookies and waved a sharp salute as he loped up the road to The Star and hopefully Viv Price. Viv bloody Price. A plaster, as they say over the water, a nuisance of epic proportions. But a great comedian and soft-hearted Man of Kent, who Mickey thought of as nothing less than a brother. They'd got tattooed the same pissed-up afternoon in Camden and both got lamped by Mickey's old man. 15 and hairy-arsed teenagers with a cider and hash habit. Both got the ubiquitous ace of spades and Mickey went further and got the quasi-Reich flying eagle, more Hawkwind worship than any love of the cunts that killed his great auntie Maud in Buchenwald. Mickey breathlessly entered The Star. Midday. Viv was in corner, rapping exaggeratedly with a commodity broker about the collapse of kapital “Oi! OD, over 'ere, sahn!” Pricey was on his feet, greasy locks swaying in the dull oxygen of this busy drinker. Mickey wandered over, sheepishly and gave Pricey a weak embrace “Ohhhh, Mickey, baby....Pricey don't like the wet fish hug, mate...if I want that, I hang out with Bowie!” he slapped Mickey's emaciated back and kissed him Russian-style on both cheeks and then the extra one. One for luck? Who knew...Pricey was in his cups and pushed a double rum and pep in Mickey's direction, before losing himself in the convo with the City boy. Fucking standard, I turn up, big hello and a large rum, then off....Mickey gazed at his thin countenance and sighed, pulling on his powder inhaler to relieve his incipient asthma symptoms. Pricey rabbited 19 to the dozen as Mickey sidled up to the bar. Moses Collier was in. He looked down his snout at Mickey and nodded almost imperceptibly. Mo was OK, but his mates were those upper-middle class Southern English cunts Mickey felt a forelock-tugger around “Ohhh, Michael, such an apposite look, v rustic...” Clare, one of Mo's company fired off the back-handed insult, with batting eyelashes and the look of the faded hippy beauty she once was. Lord's daughter. Ex-junkie. Walking late 60s cliché “Aye...fine Clare, I'm still here” Mickey reverted to heavy Irish argot when talking to these sorts. Nothing worse than an ex-junkie pisshead; they were unbearable, always talked shite and at length. Full of English hubris too...Mickey sighed, slugged his rum and headed for the bogs. He was now really heart sick of this Saturday and wanted deliverance from it. Jerry the Queer was in the gents, applying mascara and winking at Mickey in the filthy mirror “Fine fettle, Mick?” Jerry was a lovely lad, but today, Mickey wanted peace at any cost “Not today, mate, I'm just about to fall off the junk wagon, son” Jerry placed a crimson finger-nailed hand on Mickey's shoulder and kissed him on lips. Mickey recoiled a tad, but smiled when he remembered Jerry knocking out a 6 foot builder with a Cardin handbag in The Castle. Hard as flint was Jerry. Ladbroke Grove born and bred, went to school with Kathleen, Mickey's young sis “Go on give me a flash of those Irish blues, Mickey me darlin'” Jerry affected a Ronnie Drew from The Dubliners heavy Dublin brogue and they both creased with laughter “I see Vivian the Prince of Portobello is in....” Jerry murmured as Mickey headed for a much-needed piss “Well, Micky, be lucky....” was Jerry's parting shot as Mickey's piss-steam headed for its murky apogee. The quantum of fucking solace? The advert almost hovered incongrously over the urinal Quantum of fucking boredom more like Mickey ruefully mused as he zipped up and headed off to attempt to pull Pricey down from his amphetamine orbit.







“Adventures in the afterlife?” Renny Hipp asked incredulously, as Frankie Joe O'Donnell playfully blew the head off of his pint of porter “Well It's been noted that I've been dead this past 5 years...” he winked solicitously and took in the Helsinki street scene “Yes...but you appear to be here and very much alive” Hipp's logic was empirically correct, but Frankie Joe was no longer in the realms of the 5 senses, or so he thought. Maybe this was the life he should've had, a life not punctuated with regular bouts of violence and run-ins with the law; a calmer, more ordered life. This was also the last 5 minutes of his actual life as he hovered between nullity and existence. Mickey had heard the febrile last few sentences and tried to make sense of Frankie's deathbed soliloquy, there did appear to be some form of logic to it all. In the prison infirmary, surrounded by his remaining family, Frankie did try to impart something to Mickey...Mickey and Pricey were now rolling and tumbling down Portobello Road, Mickey capitulating to the day's suffocating drunken flow, 6 rums aboard and the heady unease they delivered “Hey! Mickey sahn, you're slowin' up mate...never 'ad you dahn as a Sat'day lightweight...remember NYC?” Pricey, brotherly arm around Mickey's thin shoulders tried to jolly him along, blissfully unaware of the melancholia that Mickey was drowning in. NYC had been a nightmare trip; bad coke, even worse rotgut hooch and a paranoia that bordered on outright madness. A typical tour with Pricey and the band. In some respects the scrapyard was a sheet anchor, no more the dubious pleasures of the flesh that touring and whoring provided. Mickey's Catholic guilt always caused him grief, his stomach ulcers a reminder of Sundays spent at St John's up in Bayswater, his father practically booting his arse out to do his altar boy bit with drunken Father McGill, a Glaswegian with a full-on speed habit, who snuck off to Ronnie Scott's with the offertary money whenever he could. Yeah, Catholicism for all its faults made you a great hedonist...good teachers, certainly in McGill anyway, geezer ended up in a skiffle duo with Dave Brock, later of Hawkwind. Pricey and Mickey made it to The Castle, just in time to see Patrick the Tip head off to collect more winnings at Ladbrokes, a wave of the Standard as he exited “Same again, Lorraine?” Pricey mockingly waved a tenner as he raised a quizzical eyebrow at Mickey. Mickey nodded, resigned to an afternoon-bleeding-into evening session with the bold Pricey. Pricey still hadn't mentioned the purpose of the trip out, stalled Mickey at every available opportunity, hailed every punter in The Star and left Mickey trailing in his speed-fuelled wake. He hadn't set eyes on Pricey for 7 years and last time they met it was for Sheriff Jameson the blues player's funeral purvey, a 5 day bender, which almost pitched Mickey back onto the gear again “Pricey, Viv, man, what is all this in aid of...and don't palm me off with some old malarkey about the old days” Mickey pulled Pricey closer and was giving him a level 9 stare, when Pricey burst into song “These foolish things...remind me of...” and bowed to the 3PM Saturday throng, pitch perfect, the bastard “of...YOUUU!” he pointed at Mickey and kissed both of Mickey's now crimson cheeks “Come on, son, fun NOW, business later...” he sunk to a whisper. Mickey slow nodded and headed for a seat. A long day's boozing lay ahead. A marathon.

Work in Progress

Only loved by drunks, lunatics and marginal wastrels? An advert. You view a fleeting effulgent blip in your peripheral vision. Wednesday morning. You might as well follow the advice given by the interstitials as you compose the day’s PR slurry on your way to the office. The Metro here resembles Helsinki’s in some senses and as you glide from station to station you are aware of the subtle differences only in hindsight. Pelaw: you alight here for a spell as a crippling migraine fringe headache is inserting its needles into your eyes. The stress of the daily grind in and out of hours is hard to bear and you reach for the hipflask you realize is still at home. Happy days! Onward PR soldier marching as to war! South Shields is your last port of call as you finally tipple to the fact that you no longer have a job, a career, or indeed anything approaching any kind of income stream. You’ve been staring at a blank screen all the way from Sunderland, a redundant laptop black hole reflecting an unsure future. Happy days!

Compatibility: A quick snapshot.

“Try as I may, I never seem to get to the nub of what I'm supposed to do, or be, or...all permutations of the above. What's sure, as the traffic flows beneath my feet, is that I can decide now, whether or not to make that decision to become one with machine and metal and concrete, in other words my manifest destiny lies with me. I light a cigarette and, disgusted by its nicotine inflicting head rush, crush it into the bridge's dull tarmac and keep an equally dull eye on the river of vehicles 30 feet below. Tavernier imagined a post apocalypse in Glasgow. However, it's more unimaginatively dystopian than that now, in the decades since the film Deathwatch was made. A shopping haven, homogeneous chain hotels and bars, a commercial epicentre of service industry and empty tax dodge office spaces. Whither the knowledge economy? Sure, everybody can attain a degree in anything from medicine to film and TV studies, but where to go after the qualifications are gained? I hear a lot of well educated voices inject snippets of classical verse and offer post-modern analysis as they serve cocktails and produce measly Scottish versions of US sandwiches. Or PR bods translate screeds of conversation drunkenly on an unwinding Friday junket. And me? I'm the never-was sort. Glasgow's awash with ex-band members, masquerading as journalists and cultural gatekeepers; the rock n' roll, or post-rock self-consciously arty brigade and I know a fair few, acquaintances sipping memories from glass tankards and shot glasses, suspending post-adolescence that little bit longer, guying themselves into believing that there will be a comeback. 21 is musically middle-aged, despite old stagers in and out of music endeavouring to raise retirement age to some ludicrous upper limit, working 'til we die, or are farmed out to the waiting rooms, where our pensions are siphoned off by the public and private sectors and we dribble our last into reheated portions of ready meals and a cocktail of the psychiatric industry's finest. Shirley Williams I read in some bullet point interview was espousing the old age work ethic; fine, but why stoop to conquer? Some of us are defeated years previous and look forward to what I'm viewing now; a non-future, nullity, utter nullity. The glib would call this self-loathing, self-defeating, vain. Other would say this is paralysed analysis, lazy self-indulgent cynicism. I can't escape my own failure. If I wish to cull myself from the herd, I shall. It provides a bizarre comfort to know that if I can't function on any level I can take myself out of the human equation. No drunken slow capitulation either; fast and swift, no mouth to bottle agonising...” Jill Helenius' voice was sure, steady, even on a mobile outdoors in 11AM Tuesday city traffic “Have you been to your GP? Are there family, friends that you can talk to?” The Depression Alliance line male voice spoke in measured, well-trained tones. Jill sighed, the sigh of a resigned person who'd heard all the requisite cliches and was heartsick of them; this was only an exercise in gallows humour, a last, faceless attempt to lighten the load before the off “No, yes and no” Helenius' voice now rising, a touch of annoyance at the lack of originality, this was end-of-the-pier counselling, or end-of-the-rope “Hmm...” the male voice was almost humming a soothing mantra as Jill cut the ethereal link and faced the street traffic, a hissing crawl along St Vincent's Street. Not today, not today, she picked up a walking pace and headed for Central Station. Some more visits to be made before I can decide, she mulled over plans as some shafts of winter sun broke through an iron-clad sky “Would like to meet....” she muttered, writing an imaginary personals column description as she neared the pedestrian crossing.