In Between Talking About the Football by Gordon Legge (Polygon 1991)

There he is again. It's raining, I better stop. He's not even got his hood up. Toot! Toot! Oh, come on, Tony. Stop pretending you don't see me. Coo-ee. Yes - it is me. Yes - I am offering you a lift. Does the gentleman require written confirmation? Twenty-four hours notice? Passed by the House of Lords? Tony, get a move on, will you. Do you think I would leave you dyyyy-ingggg . . . You're not going to get run down. At last, Watch out! Jesus! Finally.

'Come on. Get in.'

'Thanks.'

'You're soaked, Tony.'

'It's okay. I'm spongy, I'll absorb it.'

Eh?

'What's up with the bus the day?'

'Well, I missed the 42 so I just got a 26 to the complex and walked. Didn't think it was going to rain, like.'

'That's a two-mile walk, Tony.'

'Done it often enough. Just half an hour into the wind. Save 30p as well. That's three quid a week if I do it all the time. Now that's something that appeals to my nature, cause I'm dead mean, so I am.'

And you're weird, Tony. Well weird. That skinny face. A cagoule that's too wee for you. A brown cagoule. Those trousers. I don't know. You don't have any shoulders, Tony.

'Is that a new jacket?'

What!?!?

'Eh, yes. Yes, it is. I got it on Saturday.'

'Pretty smart. It looks new.'

What does that mean? Everything I wear is new.

'I'm hopeless with clothes. My mum still buys mine.'

From 'I Don't Have Any Friends But I've Got a Cat Called Napalm Death'

Repetitive Beat Generation by Steve Redhead (Rebel Inc. 2000)

G. L. I think it was Simon Frith that told me this, that when he was working with Melody Maker the editor's idea of the ideal very loyal reader was somebody (male) who stayed in a town just outside Middlesbrough who didn't have a girlfriend. This was what they looked forward to every single week, this was the highlight of their week - reading Melody Maker or NME. Most of the provinces, and the towns that surround the provinces, things like the music they take a hold. Punk was still strong for a long time up here. Acid house was still very strong up here. The Scottish hardcore scene, the happy hardcore scene, it is basically acid house what 'oi' was to punk - it's that kind of boom boom boom all the time. It's just taking the basic elements. Things like that do stick longer in the provinces. We rely more on this. We don't have the same input from friends and all that to change us. My friends who I talk with about records are very good but there's not an awful lot. It's not a matter of somebody saying 'Have you heard this great new record?' and all that sort of stuff. That doesn't happen all the time. It happens with my good friends fairly regularly but then again I'm getting the same sources as they are - through the radio, through the papers, whatever. It's not a case of people I know going to clubs and saying 'I heard this great tune at a club blah blah blah'. Again the money thing came into it. You didn't have the money to go out and see too many bands. You can also tie that in to a love of the journalists from the music press at that time. The stalwarts - the Nick Kents, the Charles Shaar Murrays, the people who came in with punk, particularly Tony Parsons, Julie Burchill and Paul Morley - a 'Manchester' man, still a big hero of mine. He could have done anything. I once sent stuff off to NME where I reviewed a couple of records. It didn't get printed. It was probably rubbish. That was just after my mother died.

Gordon Legge in conversation with Steve Redhead

The Big Man by William McIlvanney (Canongate Books 1985)

Dan felt a liberating affection for his father. Poor, old, hard, honest bastard. Having lashed himself to his principles to survive, he couldn’t be blamed for not being able to move, though the times did. Dan’s love of his mother, never compromised, came back to him. He wished he could speak to them now to reassure them that he wasn’t lost entirely to the past they had believed in, that he hadn’t quite forsaken what they stood for, that he, too, had his pride. It wouldn’t have been an elaborate speech – they never were in his parents’ house. It would have been something gruffly cryptic, in a code they would have understood, something like: ‘Don’t panic, Feyther. Mither, Ah’m still me.’

But he had to admit to himself that his pride, if it was still there, was in a funny place. His parents’ pride had been like a medal they could wear, one they had earned. His own was something he felt was still with him but he couldn’t have pointed to it. The explicitness of their experience had bestowed on them a kind of brute heroism. His experience had been different, still was. If their lives had been as clear-cut as trench-warfare, his was as confusing as espionage, a labyrinth of double-agents.

What did you trust these days? You couldn’t vaguely trust the historical future in which his parents had believed. Part of it was already here and it was unrecognisable as what had been foretold. Better material conditions hadn’t created solidarity but fragmentation. Working-class parvenus were at least as selfish as any other kind. You couldn’t simply vote Labour and trust that Socialism would triumph. The innocence of his parents’ early belief in the purity of Socialism couldn’t be transplanted to the time that followed Socialism’s exercising of power, however spasmodic. In power, Socialism had found it hard to recognise itself, had become neurotic with expediency, had forgotten that it had never merely been a policy but a policy growing from a faith founded in experience. Lose the faith that had been justly earned from the lives of generations of people and Socialism was merely words and words were infinitely flexible. You couldn’t trust the modern generation of those who had formerly been the source at which Socialism had reaffirmed its faith. All around they were reaching private settlements with their society’s materialism in terms that contained no clauses to safeguard others of their own who might be less fortunate.

If you were honest, you couldn’t even trust yourself. He had often enough expressed his contempt for people he had known who, coming from his own background, had succeeded academically or in business and had turned their backs on where they came from. He had heard them at parties and in pubs preaching the worthlessness of their own heritage and he had despised them. But he also knew that you couldn’t trust yourself not to be like them until you had been to a place where the temptations were real, where you too had the opportunity to make a purely private enterprise of your life and the rewards were sufficient to put such principles as you had to the test. He had never been to such a place.

The Busconductor Hines by James Kelman (Phoenix 1984)

On the platform the two entertainers in red trousers, tartan waistcoats and red bowties, singing a song and accompanying themselves on accordion and rhythm guitar. At the next table Sandra was smiling at something being said by McCulloch's wife; and she smiled at Hines when she noticed him watching. He prised the lid off the tin. The waitress had arrived again, her face perspired; quickly she transferred the drinks from tray to table and collected the empties. Why don't you join the Foreign Legion, he grinned. Either she failed to hear or she ignored him. He reached for the water jug and added a measure to his whisky.

Reilly was talking. He was saying. No chance, they'll never give in without a fight. Look at that last bother we had over the rise; I mean after the autumn agreement it was supposed to be a formality, but was it? was it fuck?

Aye and we're still waiting for the backpay, said Colin.

What they'll do is toss it into us at Christmas week then every cunt'll think they've had a bonus!

Hines laughed with the others.

McCulloch shook his head at Stewart. You're just encouraging them.

Ah you cant escape politics.

Dead right Stewart, but it's no good telling this yin.

What you want to do is get a transfer down to our garage, said Hines, then you'll find out: bunch of fucking houdinis so they are.

They laughed again. Rab's right but, continued Reilly. It's murder polis. You've just got to mention the word strike and no cunt'll speak to you for six months.

No wonder. Union union union, muttered McCulloch.

See what I mean?

Aye well fuck sake if I started talking about the job yous mob'd soon be shooting me down in flames.

Hines frowned. That's actually true.

I know it's fucking true!

Pack Men by Alan Bissett (Hachette Scotland 2011)

Let us blame nostalgia. I was born in 1984, two years before Graeme Souness took over Rangers and caused a sea-change in Scottish football. Rangers were thinking big and spending big, and the rest of the Scottish league trailed in their red, white and blue wake for well over a decade. I had a phase of Rangers-supporting, which lasted from about the ages of eleven to fifteen (until I grew out of it, y'know, like proper adults should) coming just at the end of the Nine In A Row era, when Rangers won the league year-upon-year and the only thing Celtic fans had to cheer was Ireland winning Eurovision, and when they were still challenging to be a major European club. That kind of thing leaves a mark on a boy, which even the deep mental cleansing of an arts degree can't quite wash away.

Let us blame: Colin 'Frannie' Franton.

WhoHasBeenwaitingForThisDayAllofHisRangersSupportingLife

AndWhoHadtheBusBookedtheMinuteNachoNovoScoredThePenaltytoPutRangersintotheFinal

That'sRightAlvin

TheUEFA!

C U P!

F I N A L!

Let us blame: Wee Jack. Neil took Jack to a game at Ibrox last month, and Dolby, incensed, demanded of Leanne that he, as the boy's own father, should be the only one permitted to take Jack to a football match. This is despite the fact that Dolby can't even stand football, let alone Rangers, and that Jack described his Ibrox experience with Neil as both 'boring' and 'weird'. So how does Dolby top Ibrox? Manchester. All to get back at some other fucker.

Aye well that's men for ye, son.

Leanne only let Dolby on the condition that Jack wasn't going to be subjected to drunk men pishing against buildings. 'Never mind the songs,' she'd said. 'He cannay understand whit they're about anyway. It's the pishin in public I cannot abide. Dirty.'

Let us blame: given Dolby's a father, I've been working like a pharoah's slave on the pyramids of books at the front of Potterstone's, and Frannie's out spinning discs in Falkirk bars most weekends - fuelling his dream of swapping the early-morning shifts in Tesco for the Radio 1 Breakfast Show, ignoring the playlist with a crisp wink and a thumbs-up to the webcam - we just hardly ever see each other any more. Trying to get the bastards twenty miles from Falkirk to Edinburgh requires the summoning powers of the One Ring. We have to take an opportunity for Lads' action where we can, especially with Brian gone, the same way everyone rushes outside when there's sunshine. I didn't want Dolby being the only poor, lone, not-that-fussed-about-the-Gers-refusenik on the bus, so I came with him. Why not? It's the sort of thing we would've done, way back, when both Brian and I were still in Falkirk and all four of us were presuming our eternal presence in each other's lives.

Reheated Cabbage: Tales of Chemical Degeneration by Irvine Welsh (W. W. Norton & Company 2009)

As far as it went wi me it wis aw her ain fuckin fault. The cunts at the hoaspital basically agreed wi ays n aw, no that they said sae much, bit ah could tell they did inside. Ye ken how it is wi they cunts, they cannae jist come oot and say what's oan thir fuckin mind like that. Professional fuckin etiquette or whatever the fuck they call it. Well, seein as ah'm no a fuckin doaktir then, eh! Ah'd last aboot five fuckin minutes wi they cunts, me. Ah'll gie yis fuckin bedside manner, ya cunts.

Bit it wis her ain fault because she kent that ah wanted tae stey in fir the fitba this Sunday; they hud the Hibs-Herts game live oan Setanta. She goes, - Lit's take the bairns doon tae that pub it Kingsknowe, the one ye kin sit ootside, ay.

(from 'A Fault on the Line')

Walking Wounded by William McIlvanney (Sceptre Paperback 1989)

He looked at the litter on his desk and wondered how he had come to be manacled to these invoices, how many years he had spent transferring days from the in-tray to the out-tray. It would be some time yet before he could go home, but the thought was merely a reflex, no longer carried any deep regret. Marie would be waiting there with a detailed report of how much hoovering she had done today and what the Brussels sprouts cost. Jennifer would be doing her usual impersonation of a foundling princess who can't understand how she has come to be unloaded on such a crass family and Robert, fruit of his loins and heir to his ulcers, would be playing songs in which the lyrics only surfaced intermittently and incomprehensibly.

From the short story 'Waving'.

Bucket of Tongues by Duncan McLean (W. W Norton 1992)

Open the door and out, out and away, he doesn't mind, he doesn't care: time for a cup of tea before the next victim. Hope it's that lassie with the screaming infants ya bass. Through the waiting-room: those about to, we salute you. Somebody reading a book for fuck's sake, bad move, looks like a student: get to the back of the queue wanker, make way for the genuine article, you'll get a grant cheque in three months anyway, whadya needa giro for? Totally unjustified assumptions there, totally unfair one is being, but who can blame one? I blame society. Down the stair and out into the rain. Which has now stopped. I blame sobriety: if I could be drunk more often, or maybe all the time . . . but in this day and age thirty-seven pence purchases absolutely no alcoholic beverage of any amount or kind whatsoever, except for those wee bottles of Dutch lager well there you go my point proven, except in France or Spain of course where you can take your billycan along to the vineyard and they'll pour out the vino for you straight from the fucking tap, what a place, and no need for a roof over your head either: sleep rough without your extremities turning blue.

(from 'Loaves and Fishes, Nah')

Stone Over Water by Carl MacDougall (Minerva 1989)

Tuesday, Aprll 22:

Helen ls too attentive. I think she knows more than she pretends to know which would not be hard since she pretends to know nothing.

Miranda's eyes are everywhere. On Monday I phoned her and she phoned me today. The message is always the same.

Last night I went to the attic and found three pages typed on the Underwood. It's bad enough discovering your father was a closet radical without extra evidence arriving daily.

If I find more of my father's writings, I'll burn them.

SOME OBSERVATIONS ON SCOTTISH DEFINITIONS WITH A VIEW OF THE NATIVE PHILOSOPHY

The ensuing remarks are not intended to trespass upon the domain of such specialist publications as The Scottish National Dictionary or Dwelly's Gaelic-English Dlctionary. I merely wish to inform our English and foreign visitors of certain usages which are common throughout the Lowlands, Borders and most tracts of the English-speaking Highlands and Islands.

HOW SCOTSMEN DEFINE EACH OTHER

A Braw Bugger(1)

One who can shite(2) with the best of them.

A Dour Bugger

One who cannot shite yet refuses to take the medicine.

A Thrawn Bugger

One who can't shite, takes the medicine yet refuses to shite.

A Canny Bugger

One who can't shite, takes the medicine, still can't shite, returns the medicine and has his money refunded.

An Uncanny Bugger

One who can't shite, takes the medicine, won't shite, returns the medicine, has his money refunded, then shites.

Note that the Braw Bugger and the Uncanny Bugger, the alpha and omega of this spectrum, have one common characteristic - their bodily functions are unimpeded by normal imperatives.

1: The term bugger when applied by one Scotsman to another has no sexual significance, even even in sheep-rearing parishes. Since, to the Scot, a man is the highest form of created life, to call a man 'a man' is to overpraise him.

2: The male Scot prefers excretion ro sexuality because, although both are equally inevitable, the first is less expensive.

Mr Alfred M.A. by George Friel (Calder & Boyars 1972)

He saw a new rash break out on the scarred face of the city. Wherever the name of a gang was scribbled the words YA BASS was added. The application of the phrase caused some dispute at first. Nobody doubted YA BASS meant YOU BASTARDS. But the grammarians who discussed it were undecided about its vocative or apostrophic use. Some said COGS YA BASS meant O COGS! YOU ARE BASTARDS! Others said it meant WE ARE THE COGS, O YOU BASTARDS! A fifteen-year-old boy charged with assault and breach of the peace, and also with daubing TONGS YA BASS on a bus-shelter, said in court that YA BASS was an Italian phrase meaning FOR EVER. But the sheriff didn't believe him.

Some of the intelligentsia seemed to believe him.

Following a fashion, as the intelligentsia often do, they wrote the names of miscellaneous culture-heroes in public places and added YA BASS. Thus soon after the original examples of COGS YA BASS, TOI YA BASS, TONGS YA BASS, FLEET YA BASS, and so on, which were plastered all over the districts where those gangs lived, a secondary epidemic occurred on certain sites only. SHELLEY YA BASS suddenly appeared in the basement of the University Union. In a public convenience near the Mitchell Library MARX YA BASS was scrawled in one hand, LENIN YA BASS in another, and TROTSKY YA BASS in a third. When The Caretaker was put on at the King's Theatre PINTER YA BASS was pencilled on a poster in the foyer. BECKETT YA BASS, later and more familiarly SAM YA BASS, was scribbled on the wall of a public-house urinal near the Citizens' Theatre the week Happy Days was on. When the same theatre presented Ghosts somebody managed to write IBSEN YA BASS in large capitals on the staircase to the dress-circle.

Weekend by William McIlvanney (Sceptre Paperbacks 2006)

She paused the tape and started to spool forward. She was looking for a moment during the question time that followed Harry Beck's lecture. Mickey Deans had asked a question in a tone of such aggression it had stirred the room from somnolence into tension. Eventually she found it.

'You mentioned in class once that you still regard yourself as a socialist. How is that possible when you have such a jaundiced view of humanity?'

She thought she could almost hear Harry Beck's sad smile.

'First thing is, I don't think it's jaundiced. I think any kind of hope begins in honestly trying to confront what you see as the truth. That's all I've been trying to do. It's the darkness of that truth as I see it that makes me a socialist. After all, the dark is where the dawn comes from. I don't believe in Utopia. You won't find it on any map we can ever make. And if it did exist, we couldn't breathe the air there. It would be too pure for us. But I believe in our ability to drift endlessly towards dystopia. We seem to be programmed for it. As if we were saying to ourselves: if we can't beat the dark, let's celebrate it. I'm against that. I'm a dystopian socialist. Socialism is an attempt to share as justly as we can with one another the terms of human experience. Don't do the dark's work for it. If it's only void out there, let's write our own defiant meaning on it. And make it a shared meaning. I think believing in good is the good. Against all the odds. Even if I'm part of the odds against us. I think it's what makes us what we are.'

A Darker Domain by Val McDermid (2008)

It had been a few years since Karen had last taken the single-track road to Newton of Wemyss. But it was obvious that the hamlet had undergone the same transformation as its sister villages on the main road. Commuters had fallen ravenous upon all four of the Wemyss villages, seeing rustic possibilities in what had been grim little miners' rows. One-bedroom hovels had been knocked through to make lavish cottages, back yards transformed by conservatories that poured light into gloomy living-kitchens. Villages that had shrivelled and died following the Michael pit disaster in '67 and the closures that followed the 1984 strike had found a new incarnation as dormitories whose entire idea of community was a pub quiz night. In the village shops you could buy a scented candle but not a pint of milk. The only way you could tell there had ever been a mining community was the scale model of pit winding gear that straddled the point where the private steam railway had once crossed the main road laden with open trucks of coal bound for the railhead at Thornton Junction. Now, the whitewashed miners' rows looked like an architect's deliberate choice of what a vernacular village ought to look like. Their history had been overwhelmed by a designer present.

Boiling A Frog by Christopher Brookmyre (Abacus 2000)

Given her pedigree, she was also a Tory target for accusations of selling out in endorsing Tony Blair's reforms. She had become yet another New Labour robot, they said, and had betrayed everything her father stood for simply to further her own career. Yeah, sure, and the band played "Believe it if You Like'. Labour politicians had always been accused of abandoning their principles in pursuit of power, since long before Tony Blair appeared on the scene. It was part of the Tories' time served pincer-movement strategy: if you took a hard line you were a dangerous lefty out to wreck the economy; if you softened your position, you were an unprincipled chancer who'd do anything for a sniff of power. The Tories knew they'd never face the same charge because they didn't have any principles in the first place. How do you ideologically compromise a stance built on greed, materialism and xenophobia?

Consequently, she didn't mourn Clause Four's passing. Holding on to it was a futile gesture of stubborn and misguided faith, like wearing the medal of some mediaeval saint whose canonisation had been rescinded. It was an anachronism and an impossible dream, but far more damaging, it was also a stick with which their enemies had too often beaten them.

Compromise was always depicted as a political sin by those in the grandstand. Those in the game knew that politics is compromise. If you want a party that believes in all the things you do, and with which you disagree on nothing, you'll have to start it yourself, and the membership is extremely unlikely ever to exceed single figures. In binary.

Near Neighbours by Gordon Legge (Jonathan Cape 1998)

Adam switched off the motor.

'Oh,' said Geordie, 'you're back again.'

'Back to listen to you and your blethers, aye.'

'By God, see if I was a younger man - I'd take my hand off your face before you could say Gazza. I've battered bigger than you, mind. Plenty bigger.'

Aye, I think I mind you telling me - hundreds of times.'

Geordie was the type as would probably be quite happy if Adam were to headbutt. He'd live off it for years. 'Aye,' he'd tell folk, 'just right in front of my face. What a mess it was and all. Blood and brains all over the shop. Never get that cleaned. That's what the polis said. Said to me, "Geordie," they said, "long as you live, and as hard as you try, you'll never get that cleaned."'

Adam replaced the seat. 'Well, want to give it a go, auld yin?'

Geordie made to get up. He adjusted his legs. He adjusted his legs like they were artificial. To all intents and purposes, they were.

(From the short story, 'Past Masters'.)

Quite Ugly One Morning by Christopher Brookmyre (Abacus 1996)

'My grandfather always maintained that where there was muck, there was brass,' Parlabane said. 'If you're not afraid to get your hands dirty and put your back into your work, you'll get a fair reward. However, throughout the tenure of our present government, I discovered a valuable reciprocal to be true: where there's lots of brass, there's usually muck, and I've made a career out of looking for it.

As Michael Portillo fearlessly said, in this country, as opposed to those wog-ridden foreign sties - I'm paraphrasing here, although only slightly - if you win a contract, it's not because your brother is a government minister or you blatantly bribed an official. Of course not. That would be corruption. In this country, you win contracts because you are "one of us", you went to the right school, give money to the right party, and have awarded an executive post to a member of the cabinet's family, or have promised a seat on the board to the appropriate minister when he resigns to spend more time with his bankers.

'We don't have anything as vulgar or primitive as a bribe. It's a matter of trust. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. For every contract, there's a kickback. It's more noble, more gentlemanly. A matter of mutual understanding. And very, very British.'

Sarah stared across, unimpressed. 'Once again, hot-shot, this much I know. Not an exclusive. Cut to the chase.'

'Fair enough. I got a bit of a reputation for myself through in Glasgow, sniffing out scams, investigating dodgy deals. But what I really wanted was to go after the big game down south, and I was head-hunted by one of the big broadsheet Sundays. I thought it would either make my career or turn out to be the worst move south by a promising young Scot since Charlie Nicholas. In the end it was both.

I Love Me (Who Do You Love?) by Gordon Legge (Polygon 1994)

'Captain what?' said Neil.
'Captain Trip, best band ever.' Deke switched on the machine and the music came out of the speakers: muffled tribal drumming; mumbled tribal vocals; a really loud guitar that sounded as if it was recorded best part of half a mile away; and a bass that appeared to have been set up all of two inches from the mic.
'Fucking brilliant, eh,' said Deke.
Neil gave a serious nod like he was into it and said, 'Bit like Can.'
'One of our influences,' said Deke. 'Mostly we just made it up, though. Well, us and the drugs, like.'
'Listen,' said Gary, coming in at just the right moment so at to drown out his famous missed beat, 'we've got to do something and get this thing going again.'
Deke shook his head. 'Nah, it's gone, Gary, finished. Had to be of its time. Let the bastards catch up and then we'll fucking show them.'
'Oh, come on,' pleaded Gary.
Deke turned to Neil, though. 'Listen to this,' he said, 'just listen to this, listen to it. This was a 12" before there was a 12", this was rave before there was a rave, this was baggy before there was a baggy. Listen. Telling you, I'm hearing all this new stuff, and it all sounds fucking familiar to me, you know, and I just goes back and plays the old tape, and, bang, there you go, there it all is, it's all there. Listen to this bit.'
Neil listened. 'Nirvana?'
'Exactly,' said Deke. 'We were Nirvana,, we were Nirvana years ago, years ago, we were doing all that grunge stuff years ago. We were Nirvana before they even knew they existed, and they've made millions out of that, by the way, millions. That three and a half seconds there, that's their fucking career. Hold on, this bit?'
'My Bloody Valentine?' said Neil
'There you go. More fucking millionaires. Telling you, you want to have seen the reactions we got when we were on stage. The kids just loved us.'
'Mind Kirkcaldy?' said Gary.
'Mind it? Come on, how am I ever going to forget Kirkcaldy?' Deke turned to Neil again. 'You ever heard of anyone getting themselves a life-long ban from the Kingdom of Fife? No? Well. wait till you hear this one . . .'
Hearing his past so gloriously described almost made Gary forgive Deke for not wanting to get the band going again. Maybe though it was for the best to consign all this to the past, not to want to recapture it but, like Deke said, to move on, to go for the future.

The Distant Echo by Val McDermid (St Martin's Minotaur 2003)

And they were off. Like wizards casting combative spells at each other, Sigmund and Davey threw song titles, lyrics and guitar riffs back and forth in the ritual dance of an argument they'd been having for the past six or seven years. It didn't matter that, these days, the music rattling the windows of their student rooms was more likely to come from the Clash, the Jam or the Skids. Even their nicknames spoke of their early passions. From the very first afternoon they'd congregated in Alex's bedroom after school to listen to his purchase of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, it had been inevitable that the charismatic Sigmund would be Ziggy, the leper messiah, for eternity. And the others would have to settle for being the Spiders. Alex became Gilly, in spite of his protestations that it was a jessie nickname for someone who aspired to the burly build of a rugby player. But there was no arguing with the accident of his surname. And none of them had a moment's doubt about the appropriateness of christening the fourth member of their quartet Weird. Because Tom Mackie was weird, make no mistake about it. The tallest in their year, his long gangling limbs even looked like a mutation, matching a personality that delighted in being perverse.

That left Davey, loyal to the cause of the Floyd, steadfastly refusing to accept any nickname from the Bowie canon. For a while, he'd been known halfheatedly as Pink, but from the first time they'd all heard "Shine on, You Crazy Diamond" there had been no further debate: Davey was a crazy diamond, right enough, flashing fire in unpredictable directions, edgy and uncomfortable out of the right setting. Diamond soon became Mondo, and Mondo Davey Kerr had remained through the remaining year of high school and on to university.

The Shoe by Gordon Legge (Polygon 1989)

They always had good rants, Mental and Richard. The miners' strike provided eighteen months of debating material. Mental was completely disillusioned with the Protestant work ethic and found the refusal to hold a ballot smug and disturbing. Richard blamed the miners' loss on their amateurish use of the media and the media's innate bias. He talked of camera angles, interview locations and distorted emphasis. A ballot was useless, Richard said, since the media determined the information supply and the media was biased. The miners had elected leaders to make decisions on their behalf. That's what Scargill's job was. But Mental was unimpressed. The miners represented everything he hated about the 'mince and tatties mentality': 'All these places are Hun cities. Take Bo'ness, for example, typical fucking mining community. Hun bastards. You've got all these fat bastards moaning about not having any food. And I hate the word "scab". People degrade themselves by using that kind of attack.' They all wanted to see the miners win and they all agreed that Leonard Parkin was a fascist. But mostly they wanted to see Margaret Hilda Thatcher melt.

Children of Albion Rovers edited by Kevin Williamson (Rebel Inc. 1996)

Gillian stepped back, put her feet together and described an area of the pavement with her hands. It was here, she said, that Carlyle saved himself from despair. He'd become a man with an emptiness where his spirit used to be. He'd lost faith in God, and belief in the Devil. He'd lost faith in love. He saw no rewards in heaven or punishments in hell. His sense of right and wrong seemed like rubbish left behind by illusions of God. It seemed that people just lived afraid of pain, and wanting pleasure. He could imagine people finding a reason for living in their work, but he had no work to show for his time on earth, He was 28 years old. Something inside him was angry but it didn't seem to have anything to do with the boredom of the universe he was stuck in. He hardly noticed other people, they were like parts in a machine to him. The world was the machine, and it didn't do him the favour of wanting him to suffer. No, because it ground him down automatically. He would have killed himself, but there was a small bit of religious teaching stuck in his brain, and anyway, he couldn't be bothered. And all the while he felt frightened. He didn't know what he was afraid of. Until he came here, to Leith Walk, and one moment he didn't know and the next moment he knew. He was frightened of death, nothing more or less, because in the end that was all there was to be afraid of. And when he knew it, he looked at death, and said: Come on, then. I'll meet you and I'll take you on. He stood there, a man still young, miserable with the grey world and his being lost in it, and he reached out over forty years ahead and shouted at death that he could see it hiding there and it might as well come out because he could look at it and still live on as a free man until the final reckoning came. And he felt so strongly and angry after that, burning up with hatred for death, and so he was alive.

John was quiet for a bit. Then he said: Let's call our first child Leith.

My surname's Walker.

Well. mine's Keith.

Come on, finish your bridie and go back to work.

John got up and stood closer to Gillian. Your hair's just like the adverts, he said. It smells like turkish delight.

(From 'The Brown Pint of Courage' by James Meek)

Fresh by Mark McNay (MacAdam Cage 2007)

Fresh chickens to be sold in butchers and supermarkets for the ease of the purchasing public. Fresh chickens you assume have been killed recently. You picture a redbrick farmyard with purple foxgloves growing in a corner. The healthy smell of shite. An old 1950s tractor quietly rusting on flat tyres, only useful to the robins that nest under the seat. The farmer's wife comes out of the door, pulls a chicken from the ground it was idly pecking, and twists its neck with her fat powerful hands. She sits on a stool, places the quivering bird on her lap, and plucks it while it's warm. She sings a song of somebody's lover lost in a foreign war. She stuffs hand-stitched pillows with the feathers and sells them on the local market on a Wednesday afternoon. The plucked and dressed chiken is trussed ready to be hung that afternoon in the butcher's and you walk in and buy a bird whose pulse has barely died in its throat.

The fresh chickens Sean handles are driven to the factory in shoebox-sized containers packed on the trailer of an articulated truck. The driver flicks a roll-up butt out of the window and calls for Rab, who sidles out of his hut and guides the lorry into the loading bay. Strong forearms reach into the shoeboxes and drag their prey into the artificial light and hang them by the ankles on a hook. They fly along, upside down, flapping their wings, trying to escape, shitting down their chests, squawking and pecking at their mates. The hooks drag them into a tank of water where an electric current stops their hearts moments before rubber wheels grind the feathers from their skin.