The Shoe by Gordon Legge (Polygon 1989)

 

One

‘Buy a couple of fags, mister?’

The enquiring youth wore Wrangler jeans and a Wrangler jacket. The jacket sadly failed to reach his wrists. His T-shirt read AC/DC. You could smell the shampoo and talc, see the shiny hair and smart trainers but he was still a Heavy Metal fan; he’d rather have been scruffy. He had acne. Bad acne.

‘Don’t bother. It’s okay,' said Archie, declining the offer of 16p as he handed the youth two Benson and Hedges.

‘Save your money and buy some cream,’ scorned The Mental Kid.

‘Thanks,’ said the Heavy Metal fan, embarrassed by The Kid’s remark. He lit the cigarettes using a disposable green lighter and returned to his two friends in the next carriage, handing one of the cigarettes to the smaller of the two, who in turn nodded and smiled appreciatively at Archie.

‘Heavy Metal,’ mused The Kid, ‘it’s okay if you don’t have a brain, I suppose.’

Archie smiled at The Kid’s smug disdain while wondering if it was worth getting upset at being called ‘mister'. The previous Friday, a door-to-door salesman had asked if his wife was in. Archie had blushed and said ‘No’. They never asked that. It was always 'Is your mother in, son?’ And now a fat, ugly (Archie had decided to get upset) Heavy Metal fan called him ‘mister. Twenyy-four next month. Older than Johnny Marr and Pat Nevin.

‘Who was playing in Edinburgh tonight, anyway?' asked Mental, three months Archie’s junior.

Archie shrugged a don’t know don’t care whilst wondering how old The Kid looked. Pretty rather than handsome, punky rather than cool; the triumph of content over style. The Kid wore a black Royal Navy raincoat, Levi’s slit at the right knee, black Doc Marten shoes and a Celtic scarf, which until a couple of years ago he had worn with the regularity of a birthmark; now he only wore it for the Hun games and when it was cold. After every Celtic defeat he would begin the post-mortem with the words, ‘What a nightmare, I was going mental!' The Kid’s concession to ageing was an increased dependency on cliché. But he was still too lean and gorgeous to be addressed as an adult. The Kid leaned forward, resting his elbow's on his knees while tapping his fingers in accompaniment to the noise of the train. Bored out of his skull, like.

‘What time is it?’ he asked.

‘11.18.'

‘Okay. So we get food and drink, go to the Apollo, watch the fights, more food and drink then home.' Mental related the forthcoming events as if he were a hesitant bank robber. Mental didn’t like Glasgow and he didn’t like staying up all night. Were he a bird, he would have chosen to be a budgie. ‘If the Hun had brought his van we wouldn't have had all this hassle.’ The Kid referred to the sleeping hulk across the hallway.

Big Davie looked married (within the year it was expected he would be) and he looked twenty-four (which he was); a ‘mister’. Big Davie wore an old man’s bunnet (10p from a jumble sale), a quilted blue jerkin, brand new Levi’s and brand new Sambas. Solid rather than fat, a team man rather than an individual. The Daihatsu van remained at home so that Davie could have a drink on his night out. He couldn’t be arsed driving to Glasgow, anyway.

‘Work does that to you,' said Mental pointing a derisory finger at the sleeper. ‘Fat bastard!' shouted The Kid, hoping, but failing, to wake Davie.

Work was laying insulation for the council. Ten weeks into a six-month job, Davie hated it, but needed the money. He shared a private flat with his fiancee, Terasa.

Mental had never worked in his life. After school he attended college for three years, switching courses continually until one day he had the flu and never went back. The Protestant work ethic was anathema to him.

Archie left school at eighteen with three Highers: English, Modern Studies and a crash course History. His father was disappointed with Archie staying on at school. ‘Get a trade, an apprenticeship. You'll always have it to fall back on.’ Archie asked what the difference between a twenty-year-old tradesman and a fifty-year-old tradesman was. An argument ensued. Arguments never seemed to resolve anything, never a means to an end. Just an outburst of frustration. The father thought in terms of the home rather than holidays, relatives rather than friends, and work rather than play. Archie didn’t know what he wanted, but when Morrissey sang about never having had a job because he was too shy, Archie understood, while his father would never know or admit to knowing.

For Archie, work had been a petrol pump attendant, a double-glazing salesman and a brickie’s labourer. He had been unemployed for three years. The work provided fond memories and a few anecdotes but at the time it all seemed embarrassment and confrontation. He didn’t know' if he would ever work again; he supposed he would.

For the Love of Willie by Agnes Owens (Polygon 1998)

 

Foreword

Two patients sit on the veranda of a cottage hospital run by a local authority for females with mental problems, some of them long-term and incurable. Peggy, stoutly built, middle-aged, and with a hard set to her jaw, rises and stares down through the high railings at a bus shelter below.

‘A man in that shelter resembles someone I once knew,’ she tells her companion.

‘Really?’ says the companion, elderly and frail but known as the duchess because of her imperious manner. ‘It beats me how you can remember anything.

'I remember lots of things. That’s why I’m writing a book.’

‘A book? You never told me. What’s it about?’

‘About my life before they put me inside,’ says Peggy. She adds wistfully, ‘I had one, you know.’

‘I can hardly imagine it,’ says the older woman, whether referring to Peggy’s earlier life or the book not being clear. ‘Anyway,’ she says snappishly, ‘if you do manage to write a book who will read it? They’re all simpletons here, including the staff.’

‘I was hoping you might read it,’ says Peggy, ‘you being a highly educated woman with a superior knowledge of the frailties of the human heart.’

Her irony is lost on the duchess who says with a condescending smile, ‘I might, if I’ve nothing else to read. But wouldn’t it be better to get it published? Otherwise the whole thing could be a waste of time.’

‘What does it matter?’ asks Peggy. ‘I’ve plenty of time to waste.'

No Wonder I Take a Drink by Laura Marney (Saraband 2004)

 

My lasting memory of Mum is of her standing leaning against her bed, wearing her good pearls, nicely turned out in a peach blouse and lemon cardi, bare naked from the waist down. She was threatening to sign herself out of the hospice for the third time that week. Anticipating this I had sneaked her in a half bottle of vodka. We both knew it would probably finish her off but that's the way she wanted it. She died three nights later. Before she died and after I'd helped her put her drawers on and poured her a watered-down vodka and coke, she nearly told me something.

I could see she was struggling and I suppose I should have been more patient or just told her to bloody well spit it out, but at the time I was too busy noticing that my mother had no pubic hair. I couldn't believe that, at age sixty-eight, she would take the trouble to give herself a shaven haven. Where would she have got hold of a razor? And besides, her hands shook most of the time.

At first I thought it was just another of her rants about the Health Service, actually a thinly disguised rant about her own health, but her tone was different, not angry, she seemed frightened. She closed her eyes and shook her head vigorously, the way she did when we argued. And then she went strange. She started rocking back and forth, moaning and shuddering.

'Your dad says I should ...'

She was scaring me with her amateur dramatics so I decided to nip it in the bud.

'Dad's dead, Mum, he died four years ago.’

Slowly she opened her eyes and showed me a thin aggressive smile.

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

The red-headed winger just laughed and placed the ball in the quarter-circle. He wiped his hands on the arse of his shorts before setting up to take the kick. He wasn't happy, though, and removed three blades of grass from in front of the ball and two from behind it.

'YOU WATCHING HIM. YA USELESS BASTARD EVER HEARD OF TIME-WASTING?'

The linesman, though, wasn't listening to Andy, he was too busy concentrating on the jostling in the box. Should anyone fall down clutching their face, the linesman would be able to describe the incident and point out the guilty party. That was what got you mentioned. 'The linesman spotted an elbow ... After consultation with his linesman ...' Cause if you get mentioned folk got to hear of you, and if they heard of you they might just remember you when it came round to deciding who would be going over to officiate at the World Cup, the World Cup in the good old US of A. Yeah, spotting one of those was worth a million times more than whether or not you seen all those stupid wee deflections the crowd seemed to get so worked up about.

The red-headed winger was wiping his hands again. This time, though, he finished by pulling his shorts right up two reveal two fleshy, freckled buttocks.

And then:

i) Andy went spare.

ii) The red-headed winger swung over a head-high bullet which was met on the six yard line by his centre-half.

iii) In this, his 792nd appearance for the club, a club record, the centre-half scored his first ever competitive goal.

iv) The linesman, displaying a turn of pace somewhat at odds with his previous ability to keep up with the game, pelted back to the half-line.

v) The red-headed winger turned and made an ugly face and a rude gesture at the support.

vi) Andy, bawling and shouting, raced after the linesman but was prevented from entering the enclosure by the skinheaded steward, the one who had 'I kill' tattooed on his forehead.

People Like That by Agnes Owens (Bloomsbury 1996)

 

Davey came up over the steep, stony track that would lead him to the golf course once he had climbed a fence and crossed a burn. Sometimes he stopped to catch his breath. He was coming up for sixty and a hard life had taken its toll. When he reached the fence he became uneasy. Tam Duggan sat on a tree stump, arms folded as if patiently waiting on him.

‘Saw ye comin’ in the distance,’ said Tam with a jovial smile. ‘I thought I might as well go along wi’ ye.”

'Aye,’ said Davey with a nod. He could hardly refuse the offer for Tam was a big strong-looking fellow in his early twenties with a police record as long as his arm, mainly for assault.

He climbed stiffly over the fence then jumped the narrow burn with Tam following more easily.

‘Up collectin’ your golf ba’s?’ said Tam. ‘I hear you dae quite well.’

‘No’ bad,’ mumbled Davey, his voice lost in the wind that had sprung up carrying a drizzle of rain with it.

He gave his companion a sidelong glance, wondering if he was as bad as folk said – it was easy to be in trouble nowadays, especially if you were young and had nothing to take up your time.

Tam faced him and said humbly, ‘I hope you don’t mind me comin’ along wi’ ye. I thought I might try some collectin’ masel’.’

His coarse, handsome face was marred by a scar running the length of the left cheek.

‘Why no’?’ said Davey. ‘It’s a free country,’ though his heart sank. He didn’t want anyone else poaching, at least not alongside him. Others who collected golf balls were usually solitary figures in the distance, acting as if they were out for a stroll and keeping well clear of each other.

From 'The Collectors'

Divided City by Theresa Breslin (Random House 2005)

 

Footsteps.

Running.

Graham didn’t hear them at first.

He was walking fast, eating from his bag of hot chips as he went. Taking a detour via Reglan Street. The kind of street his parents had warned him never to be in. The kind of street where your footsteps echoed loud, too loud – because there was no one else about.

From either side the dark openings of the tenement building mawed at him. It was the beginning of May and fairly light at this time in the evening. But even so . . . Graham glanced around. The sky was densely overcast and shadows were gathering. He shouldn’t have lingered so long after football training.

Graham dug deep into the bag to find the last chips, the little crispy ones soaked in vinegar that always nestled in the folds of paper at the bottom. He wiped his mouth and, scrunching up the chip paper, he threw it into the air. When it came down he sent it rocketing upwards, powered by his own quality header. The paper ball spun high above him. Graham made a half turn.

Wait for it . . . wait for it . . .

Now.

‘Yes!’ Graham shouted out loud as his chip bag bounced off a lamppost ten metres away. An ace back-heeler! With a shot like that he could zap a ball past any keeper right into the back of the net. He grinned and thrust his hands in the air to acknowledge the applause of the fans.

At that moment noise and shouting erupted behind him, and Graham knew right away that he was in trouble.

Footsteps.

Running.

Coming down Reglan Street. Hard. Desperate.

Pounding on the ground. Beyond them, further away, whooping yells and shouts.

‘Get the scum! Asylum scum!

Walking Wounded by William McIlvanney (Canongate Books 1989)

The ridiculous image of himself hiding in the Wendy House began to seem more than an accidental moment in his life. There were perhaps times, it appeared to him, when a fleeting gesture or a spontaneous stance could freeze into definition, like a head stamped on a coin, and become your essential currency. For a great footballer it might be one game or one goal. For another man, the moment of his marriage. John dreaded that for him it might be his sojourn in the Wendy House. That might become the prison of his own sense of himself. Perhaps that’s who he was – a ridiculous naked man with one sock on hiding in a cardboard house, waiting for his own true love.

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.