by Alan Bissett
We park, disembark. Our hands thrust into our pockets, we walk towards a gathering at the far end, where neds are standing with clipboards, the whole thing. One of them sees us coming and alerts Shiny.
‘Ladies,’ he says. ‘Didnay expect tay see any birds here the night.’
‘Why’s that?’ Brian asks.
Shiny points to a weapon in a stookie, hauling himself on crutches towards a thumping VW. ‘No eftir yer GBH on Chas there. Broke a boy’s leg, if I mind right.’
‘Aye man,’ says his pal, staring. ‘Ye mind right.’
‘That wis an accident,’ Dolby stresses. ‘He didnay get oot the way in time. Took his chances.’
‘Aye?’ Shiny shrugs, drawing himself nose-to-nose with Dolby. ‘Maybe yer pal who works in the pub’ll no get oot the way when we smash it tay fuckin bits. Wantay take yer chances there?’
Brian places a hand on Shiny’s chest and replaces Dolby with himself. ‘That’s whit we’re here tay talk tay yese aboot.’ He eyeballs them. ‘Wan race. Eftir that, nay mair squads uptay Smith’s. Ye’ll leave ma fuckin windays alane. Agreed?’
They consider this, huddled and swearing, inciting then calming each other while Fran sits protectively on Belinda’s bonnet, eyeing up neds. Brian’s arms are muscled and tense. I try to hang near the front, my tendons expecting any second to spring.
my tendons expecting any second to
‘Awright,’ Shiny nods. ‘We’ll race ye fay there–’ he points to the far end of the car park ‘– tay there.’ The finishing line is a high brick factory wall
‘Okay,’ says Dolby, reaching for his keys.
‘Naw,’ Shiny grins, pointing to me. ‘We want him tay drive it.’
‘Me?’ I say.
‘He’s no got a licence.’
‘He canny drive.’
‘Me?’
‘No take him long tay learn,’ Shiny shrugs theatrically. ‘Only goat tay accelerate and brake.’
‘Naw,’ Brian says, ‘he’s no–’
‘I’ll dae it,’ I say.
‘– he’s never had a lesson–’
‘I said I’ll dae it.’
‘– no fair, come oantay–’
‘Brian,’ I say, something new and determined rising inside me. ‘Let me dae it.’
Shiny nods. Car horns make ugly noises behind him. ‘If he disnay, we kick yer fuckin heids in. Fair enough?’
stay away from me, you fucking
so Dolby slopes Belinda to a clear corner to instruct me, like Mr Miagi in the Karate Kid, in the ways of the pedals, while Brian and Frannie kick gravel across the ground. My blood is rich with adrenaline. It sucks and breathes through my veins. I feel – actually – amazing.
‘Feel that wee nudge? That’s yer bitin point. Hold that an then–’
‘Now lift the clutch, and ye’ll need tay slam yer foot ontay the–’
‘An as soon as ye get anywhere near that wall, hit the clutch, then the fuckin brake or–’
for twenty minutes I’m lifting and dropping pedals, testing biting points, practising emergency stops until I’m ready. Or ready enough to trail smoke for a few hundred yards then stop. Ready enough to prove something, as Bono, in U2’s Rattle and Hum era, moans
come on
come on
into the arms of america
the headlights blast along on the track, and we’re revving, and though I don’t glance at Shiny, I can feel his stare, and someone has turned a tape of UK garage way up, the tarmac pounding with off-time beats, and I am an anarchist, I am the antichrist, James Dean, John Travolta in Grease, ha ha, my trainers growling on the gas and Dolby is leaning in the window, reminding me of the pedal motions (‘ye dinnay have tay dae this’) but I’m not really listening. Can’t. I’m on fire
isn’t mentally fit for work but can apply for disability
and everything I’ve done, seen, fucked up at or obsessed upon, every time I wanted to talk to Tyra after English and that shimmering image of her kneeling before Connor, every time my Dark Side of the Moon CD sticks (on Money), everything I ever wanted to say to my parents, everyone I ever wanted to kill or fuck is now channelled through my rigid hands.
Shiny, in the next car to me, draws his finger along his neck and mouths dead.
A lassie raises the flag. The Lads are watching, as I flex the ball of my foot across the biting-point and we’re
mum? mum, are you–
alive. Belinda roars outrage in my hands as the world slips past frighteningly fast, like fluid, and the wall is growing, a side-glance – Shiny’s face, focused – then the wall approaching faster than I can
(–the brake?)
stab randomly at the pedals, panicked. A shout escapes then I’m
screeching
wailing
bricks rushing towards me and
Stop.
The world is still.
The world is very still.
Just ahead of me, a car (which car? what? where am I?) has met a wall and someone is hobbling from the front seat with blood on their face, and the slow, still world – so beautiful and within my reach – suddenly whirrs back to speed, noise, screams, the face near me, hammering a bloody fist on the windscreen and leaving marks. I stay locked in my seatbelt, watching him. Nearly fascinated. After what seems like a year of his hammering and shouting, people swarm the car. I am in a bubble. Their cries are dull. I start to shiver. Sirens are wailing and there are yells and in the rear-view mirror cars are exiting, blue light splashing, as Belinda’s door is wrenched open and Dolby is pulling me out – ‘move it, Alvin!’ – into the back seat with Fran and Brian, taking off, hissing, hauling at the wheel, the world sliding to the side as noddies scatter like marbles and the police grab at
Stirling University is gorgeous. Green on every side. There’s a loch shimmering in the middle and students coming and going across the bridge with folders and important-looking books with mind-boggling titles and they wear baseball caps and yak into mobile phones without – I stress this – without looking like boyracers.
Fuck Derek and his ‘carer’ plans for me. I want to see what this place looks like.
The four of us are led by a bubbly young guide in a Stirling Uni tracksuit who keeps yelping ‘Great!’ and ‘Good question!’ but she’s nice. She looks like she’d be fun in Smith’s after a couple of Aftershocks, Frank Sinatra playing in the background.
‘Fuckin students,’ Frannie mutters, ‘why don’t they get a real fuckin job?’
Ducks splash oddly in the water and sprays of violet flowers leap like effete muggers from the lochside, while canoes slink and young couples walk hand in hand, stop, read books, walk on again, and our guide tells us that classes are suspended on Wednesdays for sports and bees buzz and the Lads are just about impressed. Dolby nods at everything she says, asks a question, nods again. Brian checks out the girls gliding past like swans. Frannie wants to go to the sports union to see the swimming pool, lithe bodies cutting its blue skin, and then Dolby takes us to the MacRobert Arts Centre (tonight showing a reissue of Hellraiser) where a stall nearby sells posters of Kurt Cobain, Moulin Rouge, Eminem, Christian Bale in American Psycho, the Beatles recording Sgt Pepper and students amass and muse and laugh and talk about maybe going to the pub and the posters advertise a Traffic Light Disco in the Fubar and the Star Wars trilogy at the Sci-Fi Club. They have a Sci-Fi Club? We visit the library: three floors of books! I go to a terminal, type in Stephen King and see
Different Seasons IN STOCK
Carrie IN STOCK
The Shining Due 30th June
Skeleton Crew IN STOCK
and that one student who has taken The Shining out fascinates me. I fantasise about meeting her on the first day of term over a peach schnapps, talking about Kubrick’s film adaptation, its strengths and its flaws, in the Student Union where our tour party is soon taken and where beardy intellectuals sup ale and trendy young things touch their lips against crystal-clear drinks and rugger boys slam tequ
ilas and people are brought toasties and hot-pots on steaming plates and a birthday party for a girl called Claire kicks off in the corner and
We sit by the lochside, overwhelmed.
A group of tanned students roll a football across the grass, their shadows long on the ground.
‘Christ,’ Brian remarks between mouthfuls of sandwich, ‘this place is a fuckin holiday camp.’
In the Falkirk Herald this week there was a story which went
INJURY AT UNDERGROUND CAR RACE
Police disrupted an illegal car race in Camelon last week, just seconds after a youth had been injured. Arrests were made. There have been several similar races in the Falkirk area recently and police are growing concerned. Mark Baxter (17) was taken to hospital with a fractured skull after his car collided with a factory wall. Although several of the participants eluded the police, Constable Eric Richards has promised that there will be a crackdown on this sort of dangerous activity. ‘These youngsters think they’ll be able to carry on like this forever but we’re
taking shots at an imaginary goal. Hip hop stutters from their ghetto blaster. Girls lounge in the afternoon next to half-open books and silver phones and a light veil settles over everything: the bridge, dotted with French accents, the loch speckled with white birds, the Wallace Monument standing like a dazed sentry, the lulling spell of an American woman reading a fairytale to her child. There is a vague, Spring work ethic. From an open window I can hear a chiming waterfall of guitar notes and someone sing
looks like we might have made it
yes it
looks like we’ve made it to the end
and I feel like I might belong somewhere.
Everything is beautiful and vibrant. The campus rings with tantalising laughter. Nobody looks like they might want to kick my head in. Myriad windows, where students lean, chatting, smoking, so many people to meet. I keep the desire to explore close to my chest – while the Lads yak about the Rangers game and a new clutch for Belinda – until eventually it churns in me, burns, aching for them to be gone.
Frannie’s patter. Brian’s disaffected grunt-language. Dolby’s pop-philosophy. My wide-eyed naivety. The rightness of our being together.
But for the first time ever, they seem a burden to me, not the reverse, and though the shame of this goes deep, the louder they talk – the more fucks and fenians – the greater is my need to be rid of them, although I don’t know what they have done to deserve this. On the way home I will remember the translucent laughter that drapes the campus, will close my eyes as Belinda chugs and splutters into the concrete jungle of Hallglen and a shoplifter tears from the corner shop with a bottle of Buckie screaming, ‘Paki bastaaaard!’
‘Student poofs,’ says Frannie, untouched by it all. ‘Look at them. These arenay real people. Aw the guys are nancy boys and the girls are up themsels.’
‘Just as well,’ Brian says, ‘cos you’ll no be up them.’
Dolby shrugs. ‘Dunno, man. The Runt could dae worse.’
‘Ye’d come up an visit me, though?’ I ask, a chill thought passing through.
‘Wid we no just,’ Brian says. ‘Fuckin Butlins here, man.’
Dusk floats in. The sun settles orange petals on the water. But the Lads seem sad, darkening like shadow, ageing right before my eyes.
‘Hey, whit’s the coolest thing ye’ve ever seen?’ I ask, quickly, fearful they’ll grey and collapse if I don’t divert them.
‘Brian’s nipples,’ Frannie clucks with revenge.
‘Dinnay be a dick. Whit’s the coolest thing ye’ve ever seen?’
‘That girl’s arse.’
‘Gonnay take this seriously.’
‘Gonnay take this seriously? “Whit’s the coolest thing ye’ve ever seen?”’
‘Coolest thing I’ve ever seen,’ Brian begins, surprising us all, ‘was when I was walking through Dollar Park wan night as a bairn. The sun wis gon doon, the sky wis lit-up aw different colours, just like this. And I mind there was this guy, this auld guy, an he was jist sittin under a tree, an he was–’ he blinks, as if the guy is flitting before him just now ‘– playin the saxophone.’
He swallows his Irn-Bru, burps, hurls the can. I see it spin, the droplets falling like parachutists.
‘An that’s it. That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.’
There’s silence for a while.
Imaginary saxophone notes curl between the student halls, the old guy treading carefully, lest he tread on our dreams. My hands have grown cold, the fingertips numb, and my favourite episode of the Simpsons is still the one where Homer tries to join the Stonecutters. The fizz of the beer on the rim of Frannie’s bottle, and the two of us leaning against his bed, laughing so hard that his Mum banged upstairs.
Dolby turns to me suddenly. ‘Sam Raimi’s directin the Spider-Man movie.’
‘Sam Raimi?’ I gasp, shocked.
‘He did the Evil Dead.’
‘Whaaaat?’ I whine. ‘Whatever happened tay James Cameron?’
Dolby shrugs. ‘Jumped ship.’
‘Ha-fuckin-ha.’
The old guy shedding languid notes in the dark and I know this:
I can’t connect with the people I love.
‘I hate that,’ Brian mutters. ‘I hate when yer lookin forward tay somethin and it turns oot tay be crap.’
We all grunt agreement.
‘Anybody want tay know the coolest thing I’ve ever seen?’ I ask, but Frannie snorts, shoving a crisp packet down my back.
‘Alvin. Two ay your heroes are called Brett.’ (Anderson and Easton Ellis) ‘Nothin you’ve seen is cool.’
Everything must go.
Events are slowing down, speeding up, slowing down. Hour after hour spent cruising Polmont, Bo’ness, Dennyloanhead, stopping for petrol and Loaded magazine, schmoozing half-heartedly with girls behind the counter, playing the soundtrack to Fight Club. Patter is flat. Belinda has the feel of a once-beautiful film star long past her prime. The streets hold all the fascination of an empty paper bag rotating in a slight breeze. Frannie tells a joke; only one of us laughs. Dolby mentions that Whirlpools Direct might be shutting down. Brian reassures him that he’ll get him work in Smith’s, but this is forgotten in a debate about Al Pacino (does he over-act?) which also expires, uncertain of itself, unresolved. We whistle at girls – shining white in GAP – and for a second the sky has all the brilliance of a summer’s day, until grey clouds make everything concrete, dead, and nobody expresses disappointment at this, its predictability.
Brian says, ‘California’s takin longer than I thought. Havenay heard yet about ma visa.’
Dolby says, ‘I’m thinkin of takin an evenin degree in Philosophy.’
Frannie sings, ‘If you steal my sunshine.’
I say, ‘Is anybody listening to me?’
while anti-capitalist demonstrators in London break the windows of McDonalds, defacing a statue of Winston Churchill, spray graffiti across banks and building societies, and William McIlvanney is on the radio saying that ‘the event has reminded us of the rights of the young to be subversive. But there is a question of how immature protestors can be and still claim to be expressing more than their own petulance. These caperings carried as much threat to capitalism as a kindergarten sit-in. If you–’
steal my sunshine
‘– don’t pay attention to us then we’ll break our toys. Meanwhile, the protestors were distressed by the violence of the anarchists, the anarchists were distressed by the passivity of the protest, the right-wing papers where distressed by anyone who wasn’t a statue, Tony Blair was distressed that Britannia had lost her cool. If you–’
steal my sunshine!
‘– want to think of this event as a sort of cultural compass, then we are headed into a perpetual and vacuous present.’
Brian starts drumming his fingers on his knee and talks about franchising his own chain of pubs. I compose silent poems about graves. Frannie tells us that Elaine Section Manager was looking ‘
miiigthy fiiiine’ today. Dolby changes the music, constantly.
How would we do it, if we were ever famous? Would we be media-hugging icons like Robbie Williams, describing on chat shows our years cutting the Falkirk tarmac, before confessing our alcohol addictions? Or would we be interview-shunning enigmas like the Floyd, emerging from our ivory towers once every decade to a world that has mourned our absence?
I’m never sure how we are expected to reach this level of stardom, since we won’t become famous for quoting Raiders of the Lost Ark, but hey it’s Saturday and
Snakes.
Why’d it have to be snakes?
we’re at this guitar exhibition at the SECC in Glasgow, with Dolby’s Dad (who really does resemble Lee Van Cleef). Guitars mounted all over like hunting trophies and I touch the strings of one. Gruff trolls in denim spring immediately from behind amps to challenge my un-Def Leppardness.
‘Wow,’ Frannie remarks. ‘Nice armpits.’
Dolby’s Dad has paused at a stall where some poodle-haired rocker is lost in playing the guitar solo from the Cream song White Room, his fingers performing frottage on the fret. Dolby’s Dad turns to us, nods seriously, and says, ‘That’s fuckin good music.’
Funny how overweight the world can seem sometimes, how if you pause and concentrate for long enough you can hear it groaning.
it is the sound of Derek coming into my bedroom, as he is now, sitting, his face tight and troubled. He passes me a tray of bourbon creams. Bad start. They’re the biscuits we devoured by the barrel-load when we were kids. Why does he think I need comfort food?