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'

The Iron Staircase by Georges Simenon (A Helen & Kurt Wolff Book 1953)

The first note was written in pencil, on a sheet of writing paper the size of a postcard. He did not think it necessary to put the date in full.

"Tuesday: Attack at 2:50. Duration, 35 minutes. Colic. Ate mashed potatoes at lunch."

After the word "lunch," he drew a minus sign and circled it. This meant that his wife had not eaten any of the mashed potatoes. For years she had avoided starch, for fear of putting on weight.

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

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'.)

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 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)

Latest on Chomsky

In his office . . . at MIT . . . sucking on a polo mint . . . searching in vain to find a clip of Willie Donachie scoring a spectacular own goal for Scotland against Wales in a 1978 Home Championship International on YouTube.

Unfortunately, he doesn't find the clip he wants but he does stumble across this gobbet of Gordon Legge from the blog - where Legge mentions Donachie's said own goal in a short story - and he proceeds to rifle around the top drawer of his desk to see if he still has that Barnes and Noble gift card that Howard Zinn sent him last birthday.

The book looks good, and if he can get it second hand, he'll have enough left over on the gift card to also purchase a second hand copy of Colin Shindler's 'Manchester United Ruined My Life'. he feels it's time to look back on the good bad times when Man City used to be a football club.

Footnotes. FOOTNOTES. It's a post on Chomsky, so there must be footnotes . . . even if they're made up. (No, that isn't a sly dig on 'The Chom' before someone - ANYONE - write in.

*Chomsky looking for the Donachie own goal was probably prompted by this blog on classic own goals in today's Guardian.

**I thought I'd label the screen grab as 'Chomsky + own goal', so the blog will probably be getting its first visit from Little Green Footballers once the google alert goes viral.

***'The Chom' Made that one up myself. If Hitchens can be *involuntary vomit* cited as 'The Dude', then Uncle Noam can be now be known as 'The Chom'. What does it matter if it sounds like a chocolate bar? Probably just means I'm hungry.

****Proof read posts before posting. Then your hershey bar will taste better.

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

The old guy and the Rangers supporters are quizzing each other now. They start by exchanging old football jokes. Who was the only man to score past Pat Jennings with bare feet? Tony the Tiger in the Frosties ad. Name all the teams with x's in them? Choo! Choo! They rhyme off the classic sides: Real Madrid at Hampden, Brazil in '70, Leeds United at Hampden, Aberdeen in the Cup Winners' Cup final; Manchester United in '68. The pub supplies questions and debates the answers. Who was the 'keeper when Willie Donachie scored his own goal? Jim Blyth. What was the highest attendance at Cliftonhill? 27,000. How old was Arthur Graham in the 1970 Cup Final? Seventeen. Who was the only English team ever to field a side made up entirely of Scots? Accrington Stanley. Who was the only second division team ever to win the Cup? East Fife. They go on and on. Everybody's got their own special question to ask. Jim asks how many goals Falkirk scored in season 35/36. The old guy says '132'. The Rangers supporter says it was the third highest total ever. The old guy says Raith Rovers had the highest and the Rangers supporter agrees. The guy who used to hang about with the nutters asks what season Bo'ness United were in the first division. 'Season 27/28,' says the Rangers supporter. With a glint in his eye the old guy agrees and says they were relegated. This is serious. It's like High Noon without the shitty bits. The bell signals last orders but it's more like the command to come out fighting. The old guy and the Rangers supporter quiz each other about the other's team. Names fly like bullets in Beirut: Bertie Peacock, Willie Woodburn, Pat McCluskey, Iain MacDonald, Ally Dawson, Willie McStay. From where did they come and where did they go? They move from the past to the present and back again. They're naming the Cup Final sides easier than they could list their grandchildren. Games they, and tens of thousands of others, were at. They talk about matches that are twenty years old as if they took place last week. The old guy says, 'Name the side, the classic side, that lifted the Cup in '63?' Without thinking, the Rangers supporter rhymes off the classic side: 'Ritchie, Shearer, Provan, Greig, McKinnon,Baxter, Henderson, McLean, Millar, Wilson.' The old guy hollers with delight and does a jig of joy. He says, 'Fucking diddy you are, there was a replay and . . .' The Rangers supporter screams 'BASTARD!' at the top of his voice while the old guy goes on to remind him of how Ian McMillan replaced George McLean in the replay. The Rangers supporter says, At least we won. 3-0. Destroyed you. You lot left at half-time, you were that disgusted.' The old guy concedes that that was a good Rangers side but says the reason Celtic lost was cause they bottled out of playing Jimmy Johnstone in the replay. He goes on to say Rangers were always jammy in replays and blames the referees. The old guy won't shut up. He starts listing the Rangers sides involved in replays. He looks a bit demented and were it any other subject he would be more than whisked away in a white jacket. There's nothing nobody can tell him about football. The Rangers supporter threatens to empty the ice-bucket over the old guy's head if he doesn't shut up. This has the desired effect and they shake hands and agree they're both pretty smart. The Rangers supporter vows he'll one day get his revenge.

From the short story 'Baby on a String'.

"She's hanging onto one of the Willie Miller brothers!"

Found in a secondhand bookshop in Brooklyn Heights.

The Hope That Kills Us edited by Adrian Searle (Polygon 2003)

I mind seein him playin for the Huns in a European match on Sky wan night. Some bunch ae German basturts that were far tae guid for the Huns, eh. 4-3 doon on aggregate, and Tam gets the ba aff their star midfielder like sweeties aff a bairn and gans doon the inside right channel. And I'm stannin in this pub in Ferrytoon, and I'm shoutin at Laudrup, 'Make the run! Make the fuckin run!' Cause I can see where Tam wants tae play it, I can see it openin up.

So Laudrup makes the run, but the sweeper's right oan tae him, ken, Laudrup's left it tae late. So the ba goes out and the camera pans ontae Tam's pus, and he's got this expression, like, Ah cannae dae anythin wi this cunt. Ah wis pishin masel laughin in this pub. Me and Brian Laudrup! Neither of us guid enough for Tam!

[From Andrew C Ferguson's 'Nae Cunt Said Anythin']

Spamalot

Via the San Francisco Chronicle comes news of the 'Spam Valley' phenomenon reaching Stateside:

"Sales of Spam - that much maligned meat - are rising as consumers are turning more to lunch meats and other lower-cost foods to extend their already stretched food budgets . . .

"Spam's maker, Hormel Foods Corp., reported last week that it saw strong sales of Spam in the second quarter, helping push up its profits 14 percent. According to sales information coming from Hormel, provided by the Nielsen Co., Spam sales were up 10.6 percent in the 12-week period ending May 3, compared with last year. In the last 24 weeks, sales were up nearly 9 percent."

Where did I first hear about 'Spam Valley' again? That's right; I read about it in Gordon Legge's 1989 novel, 'The Shoe'?

"They lived in what Kelly called 'Spam Valley'; where people were so tied to their mortgages they never went out, had holidays or ate decent meals."

It took a while but Grangemouth's finally went global.

"Who Played Left Back For The Clash?"

The 5P music blog gives the lowdown on the best album of 1980, and I get to make amends for forgetting to hat-tip them yesterday for the Costello/Party Party information.

PS - Why didn't I think of calling this blog, Marx and Irn Bru?

Yeah, Yeah . . . What The Hell?

Gordon Legge, you feckin' swine.

All these years I've been re-reading The Shoe the same way Sherri Shepherd reads the Bible: Lovingly, reverentially and accepting the words on the page as the literal truth, and it turns out that he's been lying to me all this time.

Ever since I first read Legges's debut novel - 13 years ago? - I've been labouring under the false belief, that the Yeah Yeah Noh performed a session on Peel, where they performed the tracks 'Cottage Industry' and 'Bias Binding', and now I find out that no bastard Peel session featuring those two tracks ever took place.

Even the timing of the alleged session doesn't pan out. The novel opens with Archie, Mental and Dave travelling through to Glasgow on the train to catch the Hearns/Hagler fight, 'The War', via live transmission at the Glasgow Apollo. That fight took place on April 15th 1985, but the only session that the Yeah Yeah Nohs recorded for Peel that year was broadcast on the 9th April.

What's with the missing chapter, Gordy? You know, the one where the lads find a time machine on the way back to Grangemouth, that not only allows them to teleport themselves six days back in time, but also allows them access to the parallel universe where the YYN do indeed record those two tracks for a Peel Session. For the record - in case you decide to insert the missing chapter for a future reprint of the novel - I bastard hate sci-fi novels. Only things worse in this known universe are sci-fi films and sci-fi tv series.

What am I going to find out next? That when Archie wakes up on page 86 in the book, he doesn't in fact listen to Al Green's singing 'Unchained Melody', but instead opts for the Jimmy Young version? Don't bastard tell me if you ever happen to google search your name and find this post. I don't think I could take the further disillusionment.

I'm away for a lie down.

Kailyard Kommentary

Pay no heed to the title of this post. I'm just trying to be clever, and failing miserably. Some links with a Scottish angle for your delectation:

In the aftermath of Scotland performing a smash and grab raid in Paris last Wednesday - cheers lads for buggering up my intended 'Domenech Bliss' post - came the debate at the Guardian's football blog about whether or not this was Scotland's greatest ever result.
Granted, there isn't much competition but the obvious counter-candidate is Scotland beating England 3-2 at Wembley in '67. Kev at the The Scottish Patient is nicely on cue by posting the nine and half minute YouTube clip of the game.

Sadly, being YouTube, the footage is grainier than a cheap snow globe and there's no sign of Jim Baxter playing keepie-uppie or sitting on the ball, but you have to check out six minutes into the clip. Denis Law tries the most audacious of chips and Gordon Banks has to pull off a brilliant save to deny him. Trust me, if Law had scored that goal nobody but Danny Baker and Chris Evans would have given a flying fuck about Gazza's lucky punt against Scotland in '96.

F.I.S sticks a well-deserved boot into the Andrew Carnegie myth over at the Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Republic blog.

Found via google alert is a not so recent - but don't let that stop you from reading it - interview with Denise Mina over at Powells.Com.
Kara will especially like this quote from the interview:

Really what I'm doing is writing feminist stories in a really accessible medium. That is what I'm really interested in, just getting those sort of feminist stories out there, because I don't see representations of women in a lot of literature that I recognize as the real experience of women.

On matters relating to Denise Mina and Kara; did I ever mention that Kara and I attended an excellent event back in April, where Denise Mina, Ian Rankin and Allan Guthrie spoke on the subject of 'Tartan Noir'? It was part of the Tartan Week events that takes place in New York every Spring. The only real crime in evidence that night was when Kara grabbed my copy of the 'Dead Hour', and got Denise Mina to inscribe 'To Kara - from Denise Mina' in the inside front cover.

And, finally, back to Kev at the Scottish Patient. I've never been one for the Welsh; I'm more of a Legge man, but I did like Kev's latest post, where he reviews Irvine Welsh's latest novel - and Welsh's entire back catalogue - via a trip down Easter Road.
But what's with the front cover of Welsh's latest book? If I'm not mistaken that wee subbeto guy's wearing Motherwell colours. And what's with the cigarette in hand, empty beer cans, handcuffs and novelty boxer shorts? Did they get Andy Goram's permission before they were allowed to use his image as a subbuteo figure for their front cover? That's the only guy I can think of off-hand who played for both Hibs and Motherwell. It can't be Chic Charnley; he never played for Motherwell, and they'd have needed a bigger base to support the weight of his subbeteo figure.

Favourite Authors

I may as well indulge in the new gizmo for the blog, and post a few images before the novelty wears off.

The image is self-explanatory - the front cover of Gordon Legge's novel, 'I Love Me (Who Do You Love)'. I had wanted to feature the front cover of his novel, 'The Shoe', which is my personal favourite novel of his but there wasn't the original Polygon Press cover online on the net and I didn't fancy going for the explosion in a paint shop cover that adorns the reprint. Handy thing is, I couldn't find an image of the front cover 'I Love Me (Who Do You Love)' on the net so it looks like I've performed a public service by scanning it in.

Though I was not too impressed with Legge's last collection of short stories, 'Near Neighbours', I would happily recommend both of his novels 'The Shoe' and 'I Love Me (Who Do You Love)', and his first collection of short stories, 'In Between Talking About Football'. Legge's characters, their environment and non-happenings, I imagine, aren't that far removed from the lifestyle of himself and his own immediate circle. To read Legge's fiction is to get an impression of what the characters in Gregory's Girl would have been doing after they left school, where work wasn't the centre of ones existence, but friendship, football, good music and herbal medication played a far more central role in life.

Maybe that means that Legge is a one trick pony when it comes to fiction writing - hence the fact that his last collection wasn't as good as his previous work - but if that is the case, then it was and is a good one trick and people will be rediscovering Legge's writings in future years. Let there be no mistake about that.