by Alan Bissett
Witnessed: Frannie copping off with a skank in the backseat of Belinda. We stand outside in the night air, freezing and full of wonder. The dazed shouts. The way drivers stopped expertly before the wall. Surely, they all know that someday one of them won’t stop in time.
morning and I’m standing with the hash-heads at the back of the History huts. Not that I partake, mind, just that Barry and Gordo – the Cheech and Chong of Falkirk High – have between them the Floyd’s entire back catalogue on CD. Today it’s my copy of The Wall for Barry’s Delicate Sound of Thunder for Gordo’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn, as hands appear from the wreath of smoke then withdraw covertly.
‘Sure ye dinnay want a draw?’ Gordo offers, squinting through the grey fronds. ‘Just one for Syd Barrett?’
He and Barry laugh explosively (at?) before descending into a whispered exchange and brief paroxysms of giggles. It’s guys like these who were responsible for Hallglen becoming Hash Glen, sniggering, slack-eyed Syd acolytes that have a thousand potholes scattered around Falkirk High. Harmless. Sometimes even good for patter. They definitely know their Floyd. But when I’m with them I feel funky and unfunny, on the edge of things. This is what I do, float from group to group, liked by all, accepted by none. Like Icarus, I soar against the underbelly of the Livingstone set, then descend, wings fluttering, to the level of the grasshoppers. Each thinks I surely belong with the other lot.
‘This is cheap shite,’ Gordo splutters. ‘You been buyin aff Big Mark again?’
There is a famous story of Barry, when he was twelve, buying off Big Mark Baxter. Barry boasting to everyone at Gordo’s house that night that he knew his shit, that he was ‘well in wi the Fear crew likes,’ not knowing that Mark had sold him two Oxo cubes. ‘Ha fuckin ha,’ Barry tuts.
Gordo is the rumour conduit of Falkirk High, an oracle in Nikes. He hears things vibrating across the floor, or spoken to him in a dream. You can see him lounged in some doorway at break, a pale wraith in a shroug of ganja, murmuring, ‘New Chemistry teacher’s a dyke, gen up.’ He knows where every boyracer in Falkirk has been in the last month, who they saw there, what they were listening to, probably knows where they’re going next. We could consult him, cross-legged before a poster of Bob Marley, for Cottsy reports, leave rizlas at his door by way of thanks. Gordo knows all about Brian’s head-to-head with Cottsy at the bowling-alley and he knows where all the races are happening and he knows about a Snobs Party coming up, Jennifer Haslom’s birthday. ‘Should be a classy do,’ he muses, then takes a long toke. ‘Nay skanks like us there.’
‘Fuck that, man,’ says Barry, shaking his head, ‘be fullay knobs. David Easton, James French, Louisa Wanwright, Tyra Mackenzie, Connor Livingstone …’
‘I hate that cunt,’ Gordo tuts sourly. He offers me his roach, which I refuse, then they start a raunchy conversation about Tyra in various states of undress and position, Jimi Hendrix playing in the background, which makes me quite uncomfortable, so I distract them: do they reckon we’ll get an invite?
Loud cackling.
‘Us?
‘Ye jokin?’
‘Sure ye’re no wantin some ay this?’
‘Naw.’
‘Anywey, Alvin,’ says Gordo, ‘you’ll be awright. Tyra’s keen on you.’
‘Is she?’ I say, too quickly, and they collapse again into an ecstasy of giggles. I sigh, turn, see First Years hurrying back before the bell past these Fifth Years with their funny cigarettes. They peek at us and scurry on. Their shoes are gleaming black. Their hair is cut straight. Their eyes are alive with zest for life. They are wondering how it all becomes a sad toke behind the History huts.
‘Naw, seriously,’ Barry remarks, sticking the next spliff behind his ear, ‘you’re brainy. You’ll end up invited.’
‘I will not,’ I tut, secretly thrilled at the prospect. ‘I’m no like them.’
Gordo shrugs, staring into the distance, ‘Might no have their money, mate, but I dinnay see ye fillin yer brain fullay this shite either.’
Smoke hangs around their heads like gaseous lead. Their eyes are downcast, dismal with hash. The bell rings and they look up slowly, as if god has just spoken to them. So I leave them there, standing dumb as drugged rabbits, revelation floating between their fingers. Copy of Delicate Sound of Thunder in hand, I head for class … a party invite? one foot in the camp of Cleopatra? I picture myself surrounded by Jennifer Haslom, Louisa Wainwright and Tyra Mackenzie in silken garments, all dancing seductively to Delicate Sound of Thunder (Dave Gilmour’s guitar solo at the end of Comfortably Numb) and I am not coping. Today, someone stopped me in the hall and said, ‘heard Cottsy kicked your mate’s heid in,’ and I stood there, listening, restraining a need to run away, far away from him. But I did nothing. Except stared. Nodded. Snarled convincingly, ‘the cunt whit said that better watch oot,’ and later, in the toilets, I wrote feverishly on the back of the door THIS WORLD IS KILLING ME.
so we’re in Brian’s living room, right, and Batman is on the telly (a good one, before Jim Carrey and Arnold Schwarzenegger came along and ruined it for everyone) and we’re swapping a single can of Irn-Bru since none of the Lads has been paid from work yet. Brian makes a pile of toast a la margarine while we watch Batman at work, munch, snigger at the décor of Brian’s house while he goes and makes more toast. ‘Who lives in a house like this?’ goes Frannie, sweeping a finger along a shelf.
‘Shaft!’ goes Dolby.
‘Can you dig it?’
soon we’re slouched like collapsed deck-chairs, Homer-bellies on show, only vaguely registering the film. Frannie and Brian moan about the length of their shifts, and when they ask about Tyra I say that, like Juliet, she is the sun. No, I definitely don’t. They lapse into a brief self-pity, until Frannie, quite unexpectedly, leaps from his seat and shouts, ‘It’s him!’
‘Who?’
Frannie stabs at the rewind button. The screen whizzes back to a scene with a reporter walking into his office. All of his colleagues are mocking his interest in the story of a caped vigilante stalking Gotham City. One of them says
Hey, I got something for ya.
and hands him a cartoon of a guy dressed as a bat. Frannie continually replays
Hey, I got something for ya.
Hey, I got somethi
Hey, I got
this scene, mesmerised, freezing on the frame of the sarcastic colleague. ‘It is him,’ he gestures. ‘Look.’
‘Who!’ goes Brian.
‘Ye ken Rodney fay Only Fools and Horses?’
‘That’s no him.’
‘Obviously. Ye ken his girlfriend Cassandra?’
‘That’s no her either.’
‘Ye ken Cassandra’s Dad? That’s the guy that plays him.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘It is, look.’
‘Frannie, aye,’ goes Brian, ‘Tim Burton’s puttin the gither the cast ay Batman and he’s like, “Hey, any of you guys seen Only Fools and Horses? Y’know the guy who plays Cassandra’s Dad?”’
‘Ya bastards, I’ll prove it.’
Frannie skips to the end credits, his face scrunched with determination. He traces his finger down the cast list until, right at the bottom, he finds
Bob the Cartoonist Denis Lill
‘How much?’ he demands, palm open.
‘Frannie, come ontay–’
‘How much?’
Brian responds firmly. His eyes narrow on an irresistible bet. ‘I’ll bet ye the bottle ay Macallan in that cabinet, there is nay way Cassadra’s Dad ootay Only Fools and Horses is in Batman.’
‘Bottle ay Macallan?’ Frannie’s eyebrows raise as he is challenged to a duel. ‘Nice whisky that.’ Straight away he’s cracking open an Only Fools and Horses video, forwarding Rodney and Del Boy and Uncle Albert and Cassandra and Cassandra’s Dad, who jerk about like androids, until the credits roll up and he stands poised at the telly
Cassandra’s Dad Denis Lill
then he’s whooping and leaping about the room, p
unching his fist in the air. I have never seen him so happy, which is some feat, since he’s not exactly known for his sullen approach to life, and me, Brian and Dolby just look at each other, shaking our heads. ‘That has made ma year,’ Frannie goes, plucking the Macallan from Brian’s fist. ‘Denis Lill. That has made ma year.’
He pours the whisky. I decline a glass, content to watch rolling hills and heather and ancient claymores strike victory round their mouths. Frannie closes his eyes, blissful.
he’s got a new phone for Christmas which seems to keep wanting to play us Never Had a Dream Come True by S Club 7 and the first time he gets a text on it we’re in the middle of the Howgate centre on Boxing Day, just outside Argos (which has two frankly gorgeous lawnmowers in the window) and Dolby’s jacket beeps. We pause our argument over which one is the sexiest – ‘surely the Flymo’ – Dolby taking the phone from his pocket, eyes wide, as though about to discover the location of secret spy plans. Heavenly white tiles surround us, reflecting light which shafts like knives from the glass ceiling, and Boxing Day shoppers are roaming, dazed as lab rats, the four of us crowded round this miniscule machine to read the words
hows ur new phone son. hope u get this!
‘Wow.’
‘Looks cool.’
We watch this message glow, each impish pixel another small step for technology, one giant leap in the lives of four piss-poor Playstation players, and grannies, who probably marvelled at the invention of the tin-opener, stare incomprehendingly and
later, with Frannie, on the way to watch the Rangers game in Smith’s
U stink
later, with Brian, selecting a late Christmas present for his gran
U r a jobby
later, with Dolby, browsing for comics in Forbidden Planet in Glasgow
Spiderman is a POOF
until it gets to the stage that, as we’re taking Belinda back out to greet the new year, they’re actually sending texts from the front seat to the back. I see Brian smirk like a kid with a whoopee cushion, punching secretively at his phone
Frannie more like fanny
to which Frannie replies, chuckling, and before long Belinda is a roving arena of techno warriors, sponsored by Siemens, O2, Nokia, and Brian is moaning, ‘put a fuckin smile on yer face, Alvin.’ He fingers the new tattoo on his bicep, the Stars and Stripes, which beams his Californian dream. If any of us should’ve been born yank it’s Brian, Cruiser-loving barman bastard that he is. He’ll fit right in over there. ‘Just havin a wee laugh eh.’
‘Hilarious,’ I brood. Frannie, beside himself with glee, shows me the text he’s typing, which rhymes Brian Mann with frying pan.
‘Get yersel a mobile and join in then, ya miserable–’
‘Take that fuckin baseball cap aff!’ Dolby interrupts him, furious. ‘Ye’ll gie us some bad name, you.’
‘Aye, whatever.’
‘I’ll whatever ye. I’m in the hairdressers hearin them gon on about these “boyracers wi their baseball caps” that are menacin Falkirk. I dinnay want lumped in wi losers like that, aw cosay your fuckin heid-gear.’
‘Nothin tay dae wi the speed ye’re daein?’
‘Shut it, runt.’
Frannie presses send, giggling mischievously. Brian feels the message invade his phone, grins, and I don’t want to spoil their fun or nothing but, ‘c’mon, is this no just a case ay wee boys and their wee toys?’
The question goes unanswered. Grim heads shake, despairing of this sole refuser of their redwhiteandblue utopia.
Dodging down into Princes Street, the cinema showing Another Massive Film (the poster has an explosion on it), Rosie’s devouring an endless line of teens, Pinocchios waiting to be made real, the Lads quietly resenting the fact that, cos of me, they’re not in the queue, wishing they could scoot me to the pier in Big, that Tom Hanks film, to make me older and be back in time for last entry.
in the window of a bridal shop for a brief second think I see
‘Mum,’ Frannie yabbers into his phone, ‘tape Big Train for me. Whit? Naw, it’s a sketch show, Mum, it’s no about trains.’
The sky is the colour of lemonade and middle-aged women, the kind we like best, are about. ‘A flash ay bra strap on aulder woman is the sexiest thing in the world,’ Brian muses wistfully, as though he’s a Yorkshireman petting his whippet and praising fond mornings on the moors. The soundtrack to Bram Stoker’s Dracula is on the stereo, a track called Vampire Hunters Prelude, which builds with a slow menace totally ruined by Frannie yelping Big Train quotes at his mum. I wish Brian will one day invite us to his ranch in California, cold beers in the fridge and cowboy boots hardening in the noonday sun. I wish it wasn’t so long until the next Clive Barker novel comes out. Dolby ejects Dracula and replaces it with Radiohead, starts plaintively crooning to Exit Music (For a Film). Thom Yorke’s sorrow crackles and fizzes with technology as we slide from the town centre down, down, up, across, like video game characters, towards Carronshore suburbia, while Frannie’s phone chatter twists and rises into the desolate space above Falkirk.
there’s too much. there’s too much
‘Mobile phones are essential purchases, Alvin.’ Brian turns to me, still simmering at my ‘boys with toys’ comment, the bare-faced cheek of it.
‘Naw, Mum,’ Frannie’s yabbering, ‘just cos Black Books is about a bookshop still doesnay mean Big Train’s about a train.’
‘For emergencies and that,’ says Brian.
I take a deep breath and uncage Mrs Costa’s Modern Studies lesson from that morning, which takes even me by surprise and goes something like
Mobile phones are the product of a consumerist culture which propagates the myth that luxury items are ‘essential’ purchases in order to keep the economy buoyant, thus ensuring the survival of the capitalist organism and
‘Fuckin Radiohead,’ Brian tuts, ejecting OK Computer. ‘Just about fuckin greetin here.’ He replaces it with the Best Eighties Album in the World … Ever, starts humming/droning along with Kim Wilde. Songs from before I was born and phones chirping like bio-mechanical birds and texts sprinting towards screens everywhere and Dolby veering us onto a long cool album-cover stretch of Scotland as
We’re the kids in America
(whoa-oh)
We’re the kids in America
the past, present and future slide, merge, exist simultaneously in the furry dice ambience of this car. The sound of the year commencing, measured in the increments of phone technology, while in the time between U2 releases we grow older
just too much
A mother with two kids walks past. ‘Fwoar,’ goes Brian, ‘the experience on that yin.’
‘Ken,’ Dolby says, the only one who was paying attention to my (I personally thought) brave anti-texting stance, ‘Alvin’s got a point.’
‘On tappay his heid.’
‘By next summer,’ he muses holding up his phone with an opera-critic frown, ‘when we’re drivin about, this thing’s gonnay be totally auld-fashioned.’
‘Fucksakes,’ Brian moans, ‘ye’re takin the runt’s side? Ye’ll be listenin tay fuckin Suede next.’
accelerating so fast it’s like erasing Scotland from the
smoothing Belinda in, out, streams of traffic, never dropping below seventy, the winter sun a web of light on the windscreen. We overtake a fellow shitty-in-the-city Belinda, which flashes its lights and we flash ours back and the driver, a young guy like us, grins. A connection.
‘Just,’ Dolby explains, ‘I wis readin an article in the Guardia– I mean, the Sun, and it was sayin that in a few years we’ll have phones, like, embedded in oor skulls–’
‘Coooool.’
‘– and microchips in oor eyes that can make us see in the dark–’
‘That no whit light bulbs are for?’
‘– and tellys that ken the things ye watch and record them for ye.’
‘Ma Mum does that.’
‘Your Mum does everythin,’ Brian quips filthily.
‘Shut it, skank.’
‘I mean,’ Dolby continues, ‘the world’s goin by so fast we can hardly see it.’ He keeps checking the speedometer, Keanu-refusing to drop below seventy. ‘It’s only a few years ago that fax machines and the CGI special-effects in Jurassic Park were a big deal. Think about this: oor grandchildren will look at us like we’re a fuckin joke.’
The laughter stops.
It’s as though the Vatican have released to him the date the world will end, and he cannot tell anyone, and he has to encode it for us like this. The road becomes a conveyor belt, rolling a million souls towards the void, and Dolby is dumb with the fear of being obselete by next summer. His hands on the wheel: curved, tight, hard. A sort of look in his eyes that reminds me of the sky as night and day merge and things are cold and sluggish.
The four of us here, now, present, correct, as real and vital as the first flash of a phone screen as it’s switched on. But one day we’ll be De Niro at the end of Raging Bull: fat, fucked, perched on the end of the bar in Smith’s, mumbling Brando’s ‘I coulda been a contender’ speech, and as the implications of this start to roll like a boulder through our minds, none of us catch each other’s eyes, in case we see ourselves old and cough-ridden.
We avert our gazes to the window, where magic is thinned into a straight line by the endless course of tyres on tarmac, rushing monotonously. Another U2 album is already an illusion on the horizon. Billowing air falls behind us then becomes still again.