I dont want to buy the Guardian because it’s a load of rightwing shite and there’s nothing else.
Yes there is, there’s a whole rack of radical stuff you can go and dig out if ye really want to look except you canni do your looking in here because we dont sell any of it.
I wouldnt want to anyway.
Why not?
Because I find I cannot read such stuff on a regular basis, that I become too quickly scunnered, feelings of nausea in the belly and so forth.
Aw.
Aye eh they dont fucking seem to fit into my everyday existence. I dont know how to explain it. I blame my parents and society, how they bare their arse to The Powers That Be.
The woman nodded. The crest of the newsagent chain on her left breast, her own name in a wee brooch down by her throat.
I blame my parents and society.
The woman nodded.
I’ll take a bag of sweeties. I’ll take these ones there with the marzipancoatedchocolatus-a-um. And do ye have any Andrews Liver Salts?
No. You’ll have to go to the chemist shop along the road.
O well, I’ll just have to drive it to save time.
That’s entirely up to yourself but see if it was me, what I’d do I’d just hoof it and kid on it wasnt mine, that it didni fucking belong to me, that no-longer-good vehicle, that I didnt know it from Adam, these fucking doors rusting to fuck with the grating bastarn hinges, to be honest about it, I dont understand how
You’re right, thanks.
Yet it has to be said there exists something about it, about this motor car, a certain indefatigability, the way the bonnet slopes so chirpily upwards from the rusted wings, the manner in which the lack of adequate mudguarding
No, just leave it. Dump it! Grab the tax disc and run for your life — except it’s fucking out-of-date anyway and if ye dont buy a new yin that big polis’ll come back and get ye done for breaking the law.
Funny how come so many officers-of-the-law crop up these days. Patrick appears to be surrounded by them. Everywhere he looks. Even if they are all jovial big chaps, it doesnt matter. And how come they’re all seven-foot-high I mean I dont want to get paranoiac about it christ though there again the big yin that gave the warning on the tax disc was okay, he was cheery and seemed good-natured for christ sake you could see it in his eyes, the way he was giving Master Doyle the telling-off. It was never a true telling-off, more of a jocular comment, the sort that occurs between good neighbourishly acquaintances. Ergo: not all polismen are bad chaps; not all poliswomen are bad chappesses. Only those who work for the government in such and such a way and do not perform in this that and the other fashion, know what I mean, tap the nose and say nothing, there’s too many clicks on my telephone these days.
Patrick has nothing to worry about. Honest. He’s a fucking okay bloke. The Magisterial forces are not out to nab him. Patrick Doyle your honour. MA (HONS). I got my ‘honours’. My (Honours)! My!!!honours!!! I became a registered civilian on behalf of forces that corrupt. I am the messenger. I have to convey the tidings. I am the means to their end. I perform in public. I am the fellow with the likeable personality who is to influence the weans of the lower orders so that they willni do anything that might upset the people with wealth, power and privilege.
So dont fuck off.
Okay?
Yes.
Aye.
Back you come.
Fine, hullo. I am pleased to meet ye. I truly am. I am a likeable personality. If you are not an unlikeable personality why then, we may converse. Hullo back. I am your alter ego. Alter alteris masculine. When your personality splits I am the back end. I am the ugly bit, the counterforce. In order to release me as a pleasantly docile manifestation you have to resort to instruments of wind — pipes can suffice. What they do they release me, and I am another likeable personality. Thus we have us two and the ugly one. Then as well as you get this other yin, me; I creep in, I creep in while yous all sit about gabbing in that friendly getting-to-know-ye type of way; I creep in and edge closer and closer till I’m so much a part of the company you didnt notice my absence earlier, that a gap had existed, that it has now been filled.
But that motor car! God! Imagine being abandoned at the side of the road! Imagine it, early to mid March, a time of year when wintry chills can flood the eternal watervapourish canopy. I mean to say and all that your man here, P for Patrick Doyle, a good protestant atheist, a good glaswegian protestant of the nonbelieving class, not only a virtual atheist but a literal one, a total and literal one since a wee boy of some twelve summers. Imagine it but, getting abandoned at a pavement towards the latter part of a dismal winter, enlivened only by the absence of Xmatic Pantomimes. I am the Piper Doyle. I pipe. Up piped Doyle to enliven the proceedings. That story of Kafka’s about the nice wee woman who is a vain mouse and who pipes a song of astonishing, of astonishing
Astonishing what for fuck sake I’ve fucking forgotten.
I hate all these arsish fucking banalities I mean they’re so fucking stupit, daft; I prefer to march ever onwards getting bumped by folk rushing to the SALE!! BIG REDUCTIONS!!
That wee lassie Audrey. She’s a wee beauty. She is such a beautiful wee lassie it makes ye want to greet for the rest of your life.
So P. Doyle enters a pub.
P. Doyle enters a pub. Well well well. He strolls to the bar. The smell of wines and spirits and diverse beers, also carbolic soap and incense. The bartender. Your new found resolution Mister Doyle. Could I have a tomato juice please?
A tomato juice?
Yeh, and a half-pint of heavy
(ya fucking coward ye)
As the bartender got the order Patrick yawned and leaned his right elbow on the counter. He yawned once more. He carried his drinks to a side table. The place was almost empty. A middle-aged couple at a table farther along. Two guys about Pat’s age standing at the bar, with the bartender a part of their company. The television set was on, but its volume had been turned completely down.
He unrolled his Evening Times at the football page.
For fuck sake, the two guys and the bartender were looking at him. They were looking at him. Imagine that, for christ sake, what to do, he turned a page; he turned the page and flattened it down on the table. Because he had bought the tomato juice and the half-pint of heavy. They would have thought it an unlikely combination therefore worthy of comment, of pointing it out to one another. Glasgow drinker buys tomato juice, you could picture the headlines. What the fuck else could it be was his fucking fly open or something! Maybe he should just bloody go and ask. Excuse me ya trio of fucking halfwits why the fuck are yous staring at me?
Ignore them. Ignore them.
The sickness!! Aaarrgghh!! The slabbery fucking sawdust!! Errcchh errcchh!! Aaarrgghh!! The fucking bottom sections of the boy’s trousers, they’re fucking minging with this green and tan and yellow ochre substance!
It’s no his fault though. He tried to clean them as best he could in the time he had, which wasnt much, he had a class of weans awaiting, and these weans are all perceiving little bastards, persons who are never to doubt, nor to be doubted.
Hang on a minute. It is certainly true the guy’s wearing sick-stained trousers but this should hardly produce such inferences as: the fellow himself is responsible for it, the manner of it, these bottom sections, their current condition. He could easily have been strolling along the fucking road when up pops a sick dog, a drunken vagabond on all-fours. Anything. Anything’s a possibility in this man’s Glasgow. And he’s leaving. He’s left. He’s gone, this very man, he’s away, never to return. He has left school forever. Now that he is a fully developed male adult he has left the halls of education forever.