The Melting Clock by Stuart M. Kaminsky (Mysterious Press 1991)

“Grasshoppers,” Salvador Dali whispered, shrinking back as I opened the door. He didn’t say “grasshoppers” exactly, it was more like “grah-zoppairs,” but I understood the word as he repeated it, his eyes open wide, his long, dark waxed mustaches curled upward at the end like sharp-pointed black surgical needles.

“A giant monk with an ax is coming through that door behind you in about ten seconds,” I said.

The door I was pointing to shuddered.

“Make that five, Sal. What’ll it be, a couple of grasshoppers outside or a split personality?”

Dali, dressed in a white rabbit suit, removed the deerstalker hat perched on his head and pointed at the splintering door with one hand. Then he did a little dance from foot to foot as if he had to find a toilet.

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'

Tom Mann by Joseph White (Manchester University Press 1991)

" . . . Perhaps the first thing to be noted is its resemblance to a main theme in Paul Lafargue's unjustifiably neglected pamphlet 'The Right to Be Lazy', which was written at about the same time. (Lafargue was, among other things, Karl Marx's son-in-law. There is also something to be said for the contention that he knew only too well whereof he wrote.) If anything, 'What is Ca' canny?' is far blunter than anything Lafargue wrote in 'The Right to Be Lazy', which is in the main a discussion of popular culture and the need for more leisure time. Secondly, whether or not Mann knew anything of Lafargue's literary efforts (and there is no evidence that he did), was he perhaps 'theorising' his own lessons and experiences of 1890, when, as we have seen, the dockers of London indeed engaged in a fair amount of 'ca' canny' of their own? I think it is quite plausible. Finally, one can ask whether the leaflet prefigured syndicalism and was possibly influenced by anarchist thought? Again, there is a strong case to be made that it was. The syndicalists, particularly the IWW, indeed advocated 'ca' canny'. In Dynamite, Louis Adamic tells the story of the construction labourers in Bedford, Indiana, who in 1908 took their shovels round to the machine shop to have them shortened. 'Short pay, short shovel', they said.

Backhand by Liza Cody (Doubleday 1991)

At home, north of Holland Park, Anna walked into a domestic row of gigantic proportions. All the lights in the house blazed. The television was on in the Prices' flat but the shouting came from upstairs in Anna's front room. Bea and Selwyn stood nose to nose in the middle of the Turkish carpet.

'You selfish, opinionated, destructive bastard,' Bea was yelling as Anna opened her door. She had a rolled-up copy of the Kensington Chronicle in her hand, and at every adjective she whacked Selwyn on the arm. His arm was protecting his left ear.

' . . . Bourgeois, small -minded . . . sneaking behind my back . . .  and undermining my position . . .' Selwyn thundered at the same time.

' . . . in the bloody papers, the bloody newspaper.' Whack. 'I've never had my name dragged into the press.' Whack. 'This is the last straw.'

In the background was the unlikely sight of a huge man trying to look inconspicuous: Quex sat in the corner of the sofa pretending to read.

'Home sweet home,' Anna said, but nobody noticed.

'You've no right.' Whack. 'To draw on that account.' Whack. 'That's the house account.' Whack. 'And I'll need every penny . . . '

'I'm not moving to a poky bloody hole in Potters Bar. You're trying to castrate me, woman . . . '

'Bleeding shut up!' Anna shouted.

'I'm stopping the cheque!' Bea screamed. 'I'm warning you!' Whack.

'You're on your own!' bellowed Selwyn. 'What you want is a pet poodle with a pay packet.

Cowboys and Indians by Joseph O'Connor (Sinclair-Stevenson 1991)

Underneath him Eddie felt the churn of the sea, far below the car deck. He imagined the cast cold hulk of the mailboat ploughing through the water in the darkness, an explosion of white metal and froth. He could almost see it, rearing into the air, smashing down into the waves, hammering the water like a weapon. And for some reason that brought a hot tingle to Eddie's face.

It was a good-looking face, there was no doubt about that. Eddie's face looked like something out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting, or so Jennifer had once told him, the fucking pseud. First-year History of Art in UCD and Jennifer thought she was Melvyn sodding Bragg or something. Still, no matter what she said, Eddie knew he was a looker. He said looks weren't important. He said it every morning when he preened himself in the mirror and every night too, when he brushed his gleaming teeth. He said it at every available opportunity, to anybody who'd listen. But extremely good-looking people always says that, and they usually look particularly good when they're saying it. Eddie was a head turner. He always had been, he was now, and with just a fraction of the good fortune that always goes with good looks, he reckoned he would probably would be till he dropped. And even then, like his hero Sid Vicious, Eddie'd be a good-looking corpse.

True Believers by Joseph O'Connor (Sinclair Stevenson 1991)

I did meet one of his friends later on in the night. He saw her standing across the dance floor and beckoned her over. She mustn't have seen him. So he said he'd be back in a second and weaved through the gyrating bodies to where she was. They chatted for a few minutes, and then she came over and sat down. Shirley was a model. From Dublin too. Well, trying to make it as a model. She knew Bono really well. He was a great bloke, she said, really dead on. She'd known him and Ali for absolute yonks, and success hadn't changed them at all. 'Course, she hadn't seen them since Wembley last year. Backstage. They were working on the new album apparently. She'd heard the rough mixes and it was a total scorcher. This friend of hers played them to her. A really good friend of hers, actually, who went out with your man from The Hot House Flowers. The one with the hair. She kept forgetting his name. She said she was no good at all for Irish names. She really regretted it, actually, specially since she moved over here, but she couldn't speak a word of Irish. She let us buy her a drink each. I paid for Eddie's. Then she had to run. Early start tomorrow, had to be in the studio by eight-thirty.
'Ciao,' she said, when she went. 'Ciao, Eddie.'

from 'Last of the Mohicans'

One Man, One murder by Jakob Arjouni (Melville International Crime 1991)

They had fled. They had travelled halfway around the world with two suitcases. They had filled out applications, they had been rejected, they had applied again and had been rejected again, they had sought shelter in barns or shared a room with nine others. They had gone into hiding and lived without papers, and now they wanted to get at least these forged ones. Out of the void they had conjured up three thousand marks - they had tried everything just to be able to say, one day: tomorrow I'll sleep late, or I'll save up for a video recorder, I should be able to get one next year, or this weekend I'll get so smashed I'll crawl home, and if a cop shows up, I'll just stand up and pull out my wallet. But they never had a chance. Those who were rejected would remain so: the refugee "in whose native culture torture is a common and transitional method of interrogation:" the refugee "who, if he had not become politically active, need not have feared reprisals - and who was fully conscious of the risks of his activity;" and the "economic asylum seeker" who is labelled a parasite in the world of German supermarkets, as if hunger and poverty were a kind of "human right" for three quarters of the planet's population. He or she was merely the ghost of the "at our expense" notion, never mind the fact that we lived for centuries at his expense, and that he is trying to go where "our" pedestrian malls, "our" air force and "our" opera houses have been built - at his expense. He is a "parasite", never mind that coffee, rubber heels, and metal ores do not grow in the forests of Bavaria.

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'.

Strange Loyalties by William McIlvanney (Harcourt Brace 1991)

'Four experts had an appointment with an ordinary man. They needed him to ratify their findings or anything they achieved would be meaningless. As they drove to meet him, they knocked down a man on the road. He was dying. If they tried to save him, they might miss their appointment. They decided that their appointment, which concerned all of us, was more important than the life of one man. They drove on to keep their appointment. They did not know that the man they were to meet was the man they had left to die.'
I wish I had more whisky.

The Van by Roddy Doyle (Penguin Books 1991)

"Jimmy Sr looked carefully to make sure that he'd seen it right. The net was shaking, and O'Leary was covered in Irishmen. He wanted to see it again though. Maybe they were all beating the shite out of O'Leary for missing. No, though; he'd scored. Ireland were through to the quarter-finals and Jimmy Sr started crying."