You’re having a curry. You break off a bit of popadom. You see this. Hail Mary full of grace.

After fifteen drafts this story still isn’t working. Third person, first person, different narrative perspectives, different distances, different voices. It’s a write off. Give me the insurance cash please. Seriously, I could do with it. Dear sir/madam, I insure all my stories for twenty quid. Give me the dough so I don’t have to eat golden syrup porridge for breakfast and lunch everyday this week. Naw? Ah well, I’ll post it on the website then.

My hit rate for a story used to be 1 in 5. For every story I thought was decent there were four I wrote that weren’t. A decent return, I thought. I’m getting a bit better but this one’s a chancer. Won’t step into line. And I’ve really gone for it. The problem is the story, not the prose. It’s just. It’s not there. Story below.

It Isn’t Flames

Uncle Pauly sat on the kitchen counter and rested his feet on the sink. When he wanted to smoke they’d made him go to the garden and now there was mud on his shoes. Charlie watched the tap drip on his uncle’s shoes. The dirt mixed with the water then ran brown down the plug hole.
“It’s just at you age you know I was…” Pauly checked the door before continuing, “Everything that moves,” he said. “Know what I mean?”
Charlie shrugged. He looked at the family calendar on the wall. His Mum’s handwriting – ‘take Charlie to work’ and ‘My 40th!’ The balloons that burst when Charlie was blowing them up were piled in the corner beside the toaster.
Uncle Pauly held his hand out for Charlie to shake it. His grip was tight. “Fancy getting me another beer?”
The bathroom door unlocked. Pauly let go of Charlie’s hand and Mary walked into the kitchen.
“There’s the birthday girl!” Uncle Pauly shouted. “Come and give us a kiss and a cuddle, birthday girl!”
Mary rolled her eyes and offered her cheek to Uncle Pauly. “Are you looking after my boy?” she said. “Has he told you about his new job?”
Uncle Pauly looked across.
“What’s this?”
“Work experience from the school.”
“Work experience? Earning the big bucks are we?”
Mary stepped back and held Pauly at arm’s length. She shook her head.
“I’m just kidding with him,” Pauly said. Then he leant in close and said something in her ear.
Mary pushed Pauly back upright. She glanced at Charlie.
“I think your Uncle might have had too much to drink tonight,” she said.
Pauly was looking at her and grinning. He tried to put his arms around her but she was holding him off.
“Mum, relax,” Charlie said. “Me and Uncle Pauly are just talking. Man talk.”
Uncle Pauly caught Mary between his legs and held her tight.
“I don’t want you to drink anymore Charlie,” Mary said. She tried to wriggle free. “Pauly stop it.”
“The wee man’s right, birthday girl,” Pauly said. “Relax. Life begins and all that.”
Charlie looked at his Mum. She couldn’t undo Pauly’s legs and gave up. She closed her eyes.
“You want that beer Pauly?” Charlie said.
Uncle Pauly was rubbing Mary’s shoulders. He looked across at Charlie and winked.
Charlie went through to the utility room and opened the fridge. Every shelf had bottles of beer. On the floor there were bottles of vodka and gin and a couple of fancy ones with silver foil and ribbons that people had brought as gifts. A lot of people had gone home but there were voices still coming through the wall from the living room.
Charlie looked into the dark. “Mum, you wanting a drink of anything?”
He waited but there was no reply.
“Mum.”
He reached into the back of the fridge and got two bottles from the corner. He lifted one of the bottles to his mouth and tried to pull the lid off with his teeth. It hurt and he had to stop. He carried them back to the kitchen. His Mum was gone. Uncle Pauly was standing up.
“Your Mum’s in a huff, wee man.”
Charlie nodded. He saw the bottle opener on the worktop and used it to flip the lid off. Some of the beer fizzed out and leaked down his arm. He held it over the sink but a puddle had formed on the floor.
“Fuck sake,” Pauly said.
“I think there’s a towel somewhere”
The puddle was spreading across the lino and Pauly started opening cupboards. “Where is it?”. He bent down and opened the door of the oven. Smoke came out and he jumped back.
“My Mum had it on for the plates.”
The towel was in the cupboard under the sink and Charlie used it to soak up the beer.
“Fuck me,” Pauly said. He was padding his cheeks and his forehead. “Am I scalded?”
“It’s just heat Pauly. It isn’t flames.”
Pauly stood up and brushed himself down. His face was red. Charlie looked up and started to laugh.
“What’s funny?”
“Just the way you jumped up.”
Charlie laughed again then looked to the kitchen door.
“You want to try putting your face in?”
Pauly was pointing at the oven door.
The towel became saturated and Charlie opened the cupboard under the sink. He took a kitchen roll from its packet and knelt down. Pauly was standing over him.
“You’re at a good height for the oven.”
“Nah, you’re alright. Thanks anyway.”
Pauly laughed.
“You sure now? I mean if it’s so funny?”
“Nah I’ll just stick to cleaning this up. I’m hot enough as it is. That’s what the lassies tell me anyway.”
“Fuck sake. Is that right, aye? Is there more beer in that fridge?”
Pauly shifted past and his knee hit against the back of Charlie’s head. “Woops.”
Charlie put the wet towels into the bin. He walked to the kitchen door and put his head out. From the living room he could hear calm, end of the night music from when his Mum was young. He could see the silhouettes of people through the glass. Someone getting up from the couch and shimmying to the song. He looked the other way towards the bathroom. The light was on and the door was closed over.
“Mum, is that you in there?”
There was no answer.
“Mum?”
Something freezing touched the back of Charlie’s neck. He turned quickly. Pauly was holding a bottle of beer out.
“I think my Mum’s in the bathroom.”
Pauly looked past Charlie towards the bathroom. “Come in and have a drink.”
Charlie looked at the bottle and went back in. He pushed himself up on to the worktop. Pauly was looking at Charlie and nodding as he drank. When Pauly finished he gasped and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“So this job?”
“It’s just a school thing. Working in an office. It’s good.”
“And they pay you alright?”
“They can’t. Because I’m at school and just learning.”
“You there every day?”
“Yep. I wear a shirt and tie. Except on Fridays. On Fridays we wear what we want.”
As Charlie spoke Pauly screwed his face up.
“They’re taking you for a ride wee man. See if I was you, I’d tell them where to go. If you’re working then you should be getting paid the same as anyone else. I’m a Socialist wee man. You know what a Socialist is? This is Scotland. This should be an equal country. That’s what I’m saying.”
Charlie looked down at his bottle. Pauly started swinging his arms. He whistled a tune then stopped. Charlie looked up and Pauly smiled at him.
“Is your Mum always this huffy?”
Charlie grinned. “Sometimes.”
“Canny believe that’s your Mum forty. See when I first met your Mum, she was just about oof… What age are you now?”
“Nearly fifteen.”
“I think she was about sixteen when I met her. I must have been a couple of year younger, aye. About your age. And see when your Da brought her in.I mean she was.”
Pauly trailed off and kept shaking his head. He drank from the beer and picked something up from the draining board. A spoon. There was another beside it and he picked that up too. He started hitting them together.
“I’ve got a bird,” Charlie said.
Pauly looked up.
“She’s older than me. Sixteen.”
“Older woman. I like it. What’s her name?”
“Sarah.”
“Sarah? Sweet sixteen Sarah. You call her that?”
“Nah.”
“You should. You should call her that. Sexy Sarah, you ever call her that?”
Charlie shook his head.
“So how’s she not here tonight? How’s Sexy Sarah not at our wee soiree?”
“Working.”
“Could she not have come round after?”
“She said she’d be too tired.”
“That was her giving you a way in wee man. You should have went,” Pauly put on a soft wavy voice. “Aww, are you tired sweetheart? Come sleep at mine. Have you seen how comfy my bed is? You can lie down on my bed all you want sweetheart. You should have said stuff like that.”
“She’s not like that. Here, do you want more beer?”
“Get yourself one too. And listen, don’t mess up your chances wee man cos she won’t hang about. See if it was me, I’d be on that all the time. Sixteen?”
Charlie walked past Pauly. He filled the gaps in the fridge that Pauly had left then took another two beers and filled those gaps too. He looked at the hard stuff. The vodka and the gin. He lifted the vodka and unscrewed the cap. Sniffed it. The fridge was open and in the light from it Charlie looked at the label. Triple distilled Russian. How far was that man? He lifted it to his mouth, filled his cheeks, then swallowed. It burned going down. He took another drink and his eyes watered. He put the lid back on the bottle and got two more beers from the fridge.
“Pauly, you like vodka?” he said.
Pauly shrugged and took a beer from Charlie.
The sound of coughing came from the bathroom.
“Is my Mum still in there?”
Pauly smirked then began to sing. “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.”
Charlie got up and went towards the bathroom.
“Mum?”
He knocked on the door and waited a few seconds. He heard her moving about.
“You coming out? There’s still.” Charlie took his phone from his pocket and checked the time. “Twelve minutes until your actual birthday. Come out.”
“Aye, come out and enjoy the last minutes of your youth!”
Charlie knocked on the door again.
“Just leave her wee man.”
“I’ll go and get someone Mum.”
When she spoke it was quick and loud.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“Charlie, this beer is getting warm pal. Get in here.”
Charlie walked in and lifted the bottle of beer.
“What’s wrong with my Mum?”
“She’s a woman pal. Temperamental.”
Charlie tried to push himself up on to the kitchen counter but his hand slipped and he fell. Pauly helped him up from the floor.
“Getting A wee bit tipsy, pal?”
Charlie tried again and this time he made it. He turned his head towards the door and called out.
“Hurry up Mum!”
“Quiet wee man. Wait and I’ll tell you something about your Mum.”
“My Mum?”
See when your Dad used to bring her round, your Granny would have us all sit and eat dinner. Your granny didn’t like her. Thought she was a snob. And she’d tell your Dad that after your Mum had gone up the road. I’d just sit back laughing at the two of them shouting at each other.” Pauly looked into the distance and smiled. “Then your Dad would batter me.”
Charlie pointed at Pauly and laughed.
“ See when your Mum and dad went upstairs, I’d sit and go through her purse. I think she knew I was stealing but it was never much. Then this one time I found a wee diary. She was writing about how she felt about your dad. I locked myself in the bathroom and had a read. I mean reading a lassie’s diary when you’re a wee guy isny bad, you know? I mean, what would you give to read Sexy Sarah’s diary? Would you no like to know if she was saying anything about you?”
Charlie shrugged.
“I know you would wee man. So I’m reading this diary and there’s all this stuff about your Dad. I try and flush the diary down the toilet. But it won’t flush. So I try a few more times then just fucking leave it floating. Then there’s a knock on the toilet door and it’s your Mum. I’ve got her cash in my pocket, you know.
“What is it?” I say.
“It’s me,” she says.
So I open the door and she’s standing staring at me. Just looks at me for a while then squeezes past me and shuts the door. See after that, all night I was waiting down stairs, waiting on your Dad coming down. And then I started getting paranoid thinking he was deciding the best way to hurt me. But nothing happened. She never told him. And after that I never stole from her again. See since then, me and yer Mum have been like that.” Pauly crossed his fingers. “So believe me wee man, she’s fine.”
Charlie took a swig from his beer. He kept his eyes on the bottle and didn’t look at Pauly.
“I think I’ve had too much to drink,” he said.
The bathroom door unlocked and Mary came out. She walked into the kitchen and stood in front of Charlie, between him and Pauly.
“I don’t feel well, Mum.”
“You alright, hen?” Pauly said.
Mary turned round and put her arms around Charlie. She held him tight.
“Don’t be sad Mum.”
Charlie looked over his Mum’s shoulder. Pauly was looking down at the floor and the three of them were quiet. Music from the living room filtered through. Someone began to laugh and it came through over the music. Charlie dropped his bottle down and held his Mum as close as he could.
“That’s it turned twelve now darlin,” Pauly said.
“I kept drinkin,” Charlie said.
Mary stroked Charlie’s hair and he closed his eyes on her shoulder.
“I told you he wasn’t to drink,” Mary said.
“So?”
“So it’s my birthday. That’s what.”
Charlie opened his eyes and saw Pauly shrug. Pauly was smirking at his Mum. The room was really spinning. He could smell her perfume and held on tight. Pauly’s voice was thick in his ear.
“Where’s my cuddle birthday girl?”

The End

Workers City: The Real Glasgow Stands Up is one of those books that a person finds and knows will have a permanent affect on them as an individual and, for me, as a writer.

I remember the year Glasgow was named European City of Culture. I was six in 1990 and I have strong memories of the city I lived in being touted about as a cultural hub. Paris, Rome, Glasgow! I remember a very positive reaction to Glasgow receiving this title. The news and men in suits saying it was great, events across the city with fancy paintings from guys whose names I couldn’t say, doing paintings in school ‘My city of culture’ We drew sunny skies and happy people and lots of us drew the Clydeport Crane. I was proud of Glasgow. I thought my city must be a fancy city if it is being given this prize. I wasn’t aware of any backlash when I was six.

I don’t know exactly when Margaret Thatcher sold my Mum our house for £1 but it was around this time. For a single mum bringing up a wee boy this meant security for a little while. Glasgow was the city of culture, best city in the world etc. etc. and we had a house and jesus man, these tories are lovely people.

But the truth will always come out. The city of culture scheme was a farce and making a whole swathe of council homes into private residencies was not about helping individuals like my Mum but was another step towards the privitisation of nearly everything. The rich got richer and the divide between the richest and poorest grew. Social mobility pretty much stopped around this time as well. There were 200,000 unemployed in the Strathclyde region, 8,000 classified as homeless. But  come on, Glasgow is the city of Culture! Glasgow is thriving! Whoop Whoop! Right?

I knew nothing of the revolt against all this, though there was a substantial one.I first found out about this through reading James Kelman who speaks of it in an essay included in And The Judges Said. He was vocal in his anger at Glasgow receiving this title. Lots of anger from many was pointed towards the naming of The Merchant City. Why Merchant City? Why not Workers City? Are you claiming that Glasgow exists because of these 18th century entrepreneurs? Didn’t they cause misery and starvation and death for many? What about the workers? Why not The Workers City? So now, any time I’m near that area, I cannot think of it in any other terms.

Workers City: The Real Glasgow Stands Up doesn’t involve James Kelman. He bacame associated with the group just afterwards from what I can gather. However, it does have many writers in it who many still consider important today such as R.D. Laing, Jeff Torrington and Farquhar McLay. One I hadn’t heard of is John McGarrigle. His biographical note at the end says:

is yet another exile from the Gorbals. He now lives and writes in Castlemilk and helped form the Castlemilk Writers’ Workshop.

So I Google him, Google Castlemilk Writers but can’t find anything. Yet the poem stays with me. Everyday I think of this poem. And then eventually I find that John McGarrigle released a book alongside other writers. The book was called Dark Afore Nine. 300 copies were printed. I don’t have one.

JOHN McGARRIGLE

Write nice things

last night
as I sat by my typewriter
a junkie
climbed in my window,
I was writing a poem
a very interesting little poem
about the birds, the bees,
and a flower that I’d seen
that day,
the junkie
battered my wife
stole all of our money
and when he left
took with him
my television set
and my hi fi unit,
this unfortunate little incident
rather disturbed me,
it really put me off writing
my little poem
about the birds, the bees,
and the flower that I’d seen
So, I wrote about
the wind whistling through the trees
instead.

And that poem is one of the reasons I continue to write. It makes me want to find out the truth I had no idea of at six years old. And I will never understand why writers like John McGarrigle are marginalised in the way that they are. if I’d heard these voices at school I might have actually been interested in English. For a while now I’ve had a feeling that I got into writing in spite of education rather than because of it. This shouldn’t be the case.

For more information about The Workers City, this website has more or less the whole publication online: http://citystrolls.com/workers-city/index.htm

The same website also has James Kelman’s Booker acceptance speech from 1994 which is another game changer.

Printed below is the full introduction, written by Farquhar McLay to The Workers City book:

Workers City

Introduction by Farquhar McLay

GLASGOW: European City of Culture 1990. The announcement came from the Tory Arts minister, Edward Luce, in October 1986. It had a sickeningly hollow ring to it. Looking at the social, cultural and economic deprivation in working-class areas of Glasgow, and thinking about the rigours of the new Social Fund and Poll Tax to come, it sounded like blatant and cynical mockery. And indeed a wry smile was the most usual reaction when people bothered to take the slightest notice. And not many did. Even with the massive hype given to it in the capitalist press, most people took it as just another EEC/Tory con trick. It was hard to see it as anything else. One thought immediately of The Babbity Bowster and town-centre homes for yuppies. Of the new Sheriff Court, the largest in Europe, with cell space in its bowels for 2,000 prisoners in emergencies. Of the Scottish judiciary which imprisons a higher proportion of the population than any European country except Turkey. (There were 13 deaths in Scottish prisons in 1987 alone.) Of Strathclyde’s 200,000 unemployed (whatever the Government’s current distortion of the true figure might be) and the close to 8,000 classified homeless (with council waiting lists up by 34% in the last five years).

In the light of the hard facts of life as it is lived by people at the bottom of the heap in Glasgow, it is difficult to see the ‘culture’ tag as being anything other than a sham accolade to help grease the wheels of capitalist enterprise and smooth the path for the politicians. It is little wonder working-class Glasgow remains unimpressed. There is widespread acceptance that it has nothing whatever to do with the working- or the workless-class poor of Glasgow but everything to do with big business and money: to pull in investment for inner-city developments which, in the obsessive drive to make the centre of the city attractive to tourists, can only work to the further disadvantage of the people in the poverty ghettoes on the outskirts. The so-called Merchant City might be reborn but only for those and such as those: the well-heeled who serve and perpetuate the system and profit by the miseries and inequalities inherent in the system: the kind of people who now find themselves installed in central areas where the have-nots “who have not yet benefited from the Thatcher revolution” were long ago uprooted. The rest is just camouflage. Like the million pound spend annually maintaining security at the Burrell whilst housing-scheme squalor gets a pittance. Like the Regional Council laying out £62,000 to stone-clean the Talbot Centre’s exterior whilst the residents within still kip on the floor. That is your Culture City in a nutshell.

Of course it is no new thing for the city authorities to be in the camouflage business. They were in the same business in the 1920s, shouting about ‘libels on Glasgow’, when it would have taxed an ingenious mind to invent a libel more outrageous than the reality prevailing at the time. Yet contemprorary accounts of life in working-class Glasgow in the 20-year period 1915-1935 were by no means widespread. Two of the frankest, and indeed the best known, are William Bolitho’s essay Cancer of Empire which is a vivid factual presentation (revealingly enough, by an Englishman) of the truth as he found it, and later on McArthur and Long’s No Mean City which would work roughly the same appalling social conditions into fiction. They were certainly an improvement on the mushy idylls of the kailyairders. Both books can be read as harrowing indictments of the power elite in Scotland who administered the country more or less as a colony of England, presiding with brutal insensitivity over mass poverty and disease and the highest infant mortality rate in Western Europe. Sadly, however, no Scottish poet, novelist or playwright (or even historian until fairly recent date) was able to resist the political and cultural dominance of London in sufficient degree to be able to depict, in its savage and unsentimental totality, the only real challenge to this rampant capitalist oppression: the class war in Glasgow.

For alongside the poverty and disease and wasted lives there was the glory and heroism of those who resolutely engaged reaction and put Glasgow in the vanguard of revolution, not just here in these islands but throughout the world. The men and women who rejected parliamentary opportunism and sought to advance the people’s struggle in the work-place and in the streets. The trials for treason and sedition which mark Glasgow’s history tell their own story. It is a story which continues into our own day. It is not a libel on Glasgow but her vindication. The lies and hypocrisy of mealy-mouthed councillors and turncoat Reds can change nothing of that. Nor can the cheap trickery of PR frauds blind us to the evils of the present. For although modes of repression and control in State bureaucracies may have changed, relying today as much on advertising conmanship as on police coercion, and although the new capitalist-controlled computer technologies exploit and impoverish and degrade us in ways which were hardly imaginable even fifty years ago, yet it is still repression for all that, it is still exploitation, it is still impoverishment, and it is still degradation. The stark evidence of the peripheral housing schemes makes that abundantly clear. Working-class Glasgow is for the most part de-industrialised Glasgow. De-industrialised Glasgow is living in a distant scheme, without amenity and without community, and waiting for the Giro.

In the long term, waiting for the Giro must lead to social sterility, with all the outlets for creative social involvement blocked off, and tine not for making in and growing in but filled only with unrelieved waiting, like the prisoner without a release date.

The damaging impact on people’s health, physically and psychologically, is well known. Indeed it says a great deal for the resilience of spirit and character in the unemployed population that social and psychological distortions are not even more prevalent than we see today.

But one thing is certain. The situation as it exists today is admirably suited for the effective control and administration of the population. The demoralised working class is without muscle, without mobility in any direction except down, and has even been robbed of its own authentic voice. Communications technology, particularly television, owned and controlled by the multi-nationals and the State, makes this a simpler task than in the past. The renowned working-class social-cultural cohesion and shopfloor solidarity have been largely smashed by the break-up of the tenement communities and the terror of mass unemployment. Progressive strains in working-class culture are everywhere being vitiated. In our de-socialised neo-technical age the political bureaucracy, through the mass media, is able to assimilate and render benign most forms of popular disaffection. In post-TV politics even protest which has honest intent can easily become something very like complicity.

And whilst working-class Glasgow is in a kind of death, middle-class Glasgow is in the throes of regeneration. The Labour Council knows where it stands. There is no capitalist enterprise that will not be looked upon favourably if it comes under scrutiny for a grant. Come on, they tell us, play the game. The wine-bar economy is all we’ve got and it’s blossoming, so don’t start knocking it for Christ’s sake. No more libels on Glasgow, please! Scottish Tourist Board Chairman, Mr Devereux: “The city’s spectacular renaissance has put it in the premier league of tourist destinations worldwide.” This is the acme of bourgeois progress: after two centuries of brutal industrialism, with all its miserable corruption and destructiveness in terms of human life and the living environment, they can make welders in waiters!

And not that anybody is forgetting art. To be embraced as the Cultural Capital of Europe, succeeding Florence, Athens and Paris, you have to have art: that is to say, lots of imported music, opera and ballet, sepulchral museums, high-priced paintings and a civic theatre devoted solely to classics – pale ghosts of revolt in other places, at other times – in a word, the kind of art that is no real threat to the social reality of the present, the kind of art that can work no change in the here-and-now because its time has passed and its place is not the here-and-now.

It can teach us one thing though. Art to be valid in its own day must be in revolt against the official mirage of its own day: against the impossibility of freedom in its own day.

Its true and essential dynamic is always and everywhere revolt. The art of the past has no more splendid message to disclose. It is this and only this which gives it life and value in another age. But it is not a transferrable dynamic. Each age must find its own and battle the received absurdity anew. The art of the past, now a safe commodity, lends itself easily to resurrection and celebration. Here and there it may indeed still bring genuine inspiration and delight. But mostly it manifests itself as just another facet of oppression, simply adding to the meaninglessness of life and work in the social-political-economic irrationality of the present, and serving only to stabilise officially sanctioned values.

This is not to deny the power and value of tradition but to catch at its very essence. If you make it an altar at which its passive devotees kneel and do homage, as with the Burns cult for example, you’d be as well in the cemetery with a heap of old bones. What is vital for us in tradition is not merely, as we are so often told, that it is our past, but that we make certain the same spark that once gave it life can be struck anew by us to give us life in our own time. Otherwise it is just a cloying encumbrance, a nostalgic wank, an academic pastime. It should speak to us of resistance to the official fakery of the State in all its manifold forms (even if it is only to invent a fakery of our own but one that opens up the world for all the people everywhere and gives our best and most creative energies the possibility of fulfilment); it should speak to us of revolt against the oxbow authority has yoked us in, in body as well as in spirit, where we stand duped by fear and distrust of our own selves, fit only for eager subservience and our only song a hosanna to hierarchy; and it should speak to us of the one struggle worthy of every man and woman today, as it has been throughout all ages past – the struggle for the ultimate social, cultural and economic integrity of all humankind.

This anthology is testimony to that response, past and present, in and around Glasgow and its people. Naturally it is far from being the complete story – no one book could be that. It must necessarily be a hint merely – but a hint which ought to be both illuminating and inspirational – of the liberating power of working-class experience and consciousness in a long-standing tradition of struggle.

It is a tradition which the establishment and the media like to romanticise into caricature historically, but at the same time root out, castigate and belittle in the contemporary scene. For it is a tradition which re-emerges defiantly with every new generation. It is the tradition of working-class people refusing to be passive and cowed and mute, compliant victims of the political bureaucracy and all agog for the Westminster charade. It is the tradition of grassroots solidarity and total distrust of power and officialdom: of uncompromising resistance to the State’s authority in every sphere of life and no matter who is weilding it. It is in this tradition all social, economic and political advancement of working-class people originally took seed. It is here with us now. It is a seed the people in power would like to see trampled underfoot forever, for they, better than anybody, know its potency as a weapon against them. And needing our co-operation and trust as much as they do, they would persuade us to look elsewhere for our betterment. Too often we have and always with the same shameful and disastrous results. That is the one incontestable fact in the history of the working classes. Surely it is time we stopped looking elsewhere. The answer is here now.

From:
Workers City The Real Glasgow Stands Up
Edited By Farquar McLayClydeside Press

There are different problems that come up when writing a novel. Technical issues that you have to find a way to work through or around. As a writer my way has always been to sit down and write. No plans, no diagrams, no knowledge of the characters. You write a first sentence and another then another. This establishes a voice, a situation. Soon a problem will arise and as you write the imagination takes hold. It’s easy, you just sit back and follow the writing. You remove yourself and your opinions and just see what the characters do. This is what I love about short story writing. There is usually one or two situations, the time frame is usually short, one or two things happen that affect the characters in significant ways and you hopefully still get the emotion that a novel can give. The tricky part is editing. A first draft takes a few hours. Moving commas, getting each sentence how you want it,  can take twenty drafts.

Many great novels are more or less short stories about the same characters: Gentlemen of the West by Agnes Owens, Trainspotting, I’d even say something like Kelman’s A Chancer is more like a lot of wee stories as opposed to the traditional novel structure.

So when approaching a novel, if approached the same way as a short story, problems arise. Pace for example, you can’t go for the kill too early or it becomes a short story. The main problem I have faced though is structure. How are novels structured?

There are a different answers to this. You research it and read parts of Aristotle and see that story telling has always been about and there are ways that all stories operate naturally. So, for example, most novels follow the pattern of:

1. Crisis
2. Deepening of crisis.
3. Lull
4. Return to crisis leading to climax.
5. Resolution (or lack of)

Watch films, tv programmes, read books and you see that most follow this simple pattern and it is the natural way of story telling.

But there’s also the 3 act structure – beginning, middle and end. The beginning sets the scene, sets up the characters etc and introduces the problem. The middle sees this problem get worse and worse then come to a head. The end is the come down after this.

Again, this is natural storytelling.

But it’s one thing knowing it and another applying it to your writing. If you go in thinking, right, I need a deepening of crisis here, you’ll kill it. The more I write the more I find the value of sitting back and following the characters. They’ll fall into the patterns naturally because the patterns occur naturally. And if you go in with a message or theme or something, again this will kill the work. The second the author imposes him or herself on the characters it’s boom! Dead. The hard part os removing yourself.

I’ve attempted four novels in the past, failed at them all. But learned from each one. You read books and authors you love and learn how they do it. You observe life and see how it works. Something i’m doing just now is actually studying a novel and breaking it down piece by piece. I do this every time I read really but this time for some reason i’ve made a table on Microsoft Word. The book is Blackden by Duncan Mclean. Duncan Mclean is an author who wrote a short story collection called Bucket of Tongues which was published in 1992 and is probably the most honest collection of short stories I’ve ever read. Add to this the skill of the writing and the commitment to his own voice. it’s a phenomenal book. He was twenty-eight when that book came out. The novel Blackden was published two years later. I’m halfway through and already I’m learning a lot about structure. Mclean’s novel is a traditional novel. It follows something which is quite common in much of the writing from ‘Scottish’ writers I admire and that is that the action occurs over three days. Off the top of my head I think of How Late it Was How Late by James Kelman, A Disaffecttion by James Kelman, The Shoe by Gordon Legge. There are many other examples, I but I didn’t sleep well last night and can’t be bothered to get up and check the bookshelf.

Anyway, I’m attaching my table about Blackden. I find it a really useful exercise to engage in. With short stories you don’t have to worry about links forward or links back. Not in the same way. Like I said about short stories, I never know what will happen next. Sometimes you write a page or two and know instinctively that later on a certain person will enter the story or a certain place will be visited. I don’t know what the relevance of these until I come to them but I know they will be there. An example is in my story called A Celebration. I knew a dog would feature. I knew that dog would have been left on the doorstep. I didn’t know how this linked to the story I was writing at that moment but two or three pages in I knew that the guy who was currently talking to his mate about meeting a surgeon would have some involvement with a dog. I’m writing something just now and I’ve stopped halfway. This is rare but for whatever reason it has happened. And the story is on my mind a lot and I’m sitting or walking or eating dinner and I think, yeah, it’s really strange how the cat ran into their flat like that. How it just snuck in the door. But then I remember the story and I realise, that hasn’t actually happened. Not yet anyway. But instinctively I know it has to. (note: I dunno why I always know when there are animals involved. Just noticed that’s weird)

Novels I feel are a bit more artificial – there are usually some links. Duncan Mclean does this a lot. He links forward and back. This helps the reader remember things, it foreshadows the future. I wonder if novels have to be like this. I’m enjoying the book but I’m also finding weaknesses. I’m only a third through but maybe the table makes my feelings clear.

BLACKDEN – learning it

Being a Human Being

I quit twitter. Because of what it does to you. For about a year I’ve been a promoter, a marketing man, a liar. Down to me a lot of the time. But you hear all this stuff:

‘there’s no money in writing these days, you have to promote’

‘it’s all about your profile…build your profile.’

‘every writer needs a website these days’

‘perfect the art of the verbal pitch’

‘perfect the art of the great synopsis’

‘perfect the art of the great author bio’

‘your book needs you…Utilise Twitter, utilise Facebook, tattoo your granny’s fucking face!’

Naw!

Why can’t I just be a good writer? Writing in my voice, finding it, honing it, working on a sentence by sentence level? Making people feel something?

But you start believing the nonsense. It’s not like there are goodies and baddies. Everybody is coming from what they consider a good, honest place. Helping each other etc. But the second a writer becomes interested in market forces they compromise. Not necessarily in the work but in promotion. I did a year of a business degree before I quit it. Then I gave writing a real go and loved it because it was freedom. Then my book comes out and it feels like I’m a businessman again. Not that anyone has pressurised me into promotion. It’s more a sense that there’s something in the air, a bug we’ve all caught. Market forces win again. We are your subjects. I’m as much to blame as anyone.

And I say We but who is We? All writers? All Scottish writers? What’s a Scottish writer? I don’t know who We is. My book has been out six months now, I’ve done readings across Scotland, done one in Denmark, been to lots of literary events, book festivals and there is definitely a We. We are at all of these things. We are what made me think I’d never get published in the firstplace. We are gatekeepers. I am now We. But it’s everything I’m against. Personally We are all lovely, friendly people.But this isn’t personal.

So what I’m saying is that it stops now. I’ll probably regret quitting Twitter – it gives you an outlet. If I posted on Twitter that I wrote this rant it’d probably get read by fifty people. And all writers, whether they admit it or not, write to be heard. A good writer will always want to be. By not being on Twitter the only readers of this will be me and a few people who’ll think I’ve flipped. I’ll regret quitting Twitter for the outlet it allows, it’s a good news resource, it’s funny (remember #Scottishfilms – Tam Dean Burn After Reading etc) and I can find out what Aidan Moffat is up to at any time of the day. But it’ll make me stop playing the game. I’ll never be a writer who’ll sell you something. Fuck being known or being ‘the hot new property of the Scottish publishing world’ if it means being someone without integrity or dignity.

I’m writing within a tradition where I’d get the shit kicked out of me (and rightly so) for doing some of the things I feel I’ve done.

If anybody is reading this who hopes to be published one day then just know that It has to be about the writing. Always. Everything else is bollocks. The odd thing will give you short term gain but when you write you’re in it for the long game. Short term gain equals long term loss. People who really care about writing and voice and truth and honesty and sentences and fighting oppression will think you’re a pseud. Or a prick. Both probably.

Your family will be happy but. The people that love you will see your name in the paper or in a magazine, there will be the odd photo of you, and the people who love you will be proud. And you’ll like that feeling. Making them happy. You’ll want more of it. You’ll think I must be doing something right cos look, there’s me in the magazine there and my Mum has bought five copies so she can give one to her pals, leave one out in her work for people to read. She keeps crying and saying she’s proud. How can anyone not like that feeling? But does it make playing the game worth it? Maybe the people who love us will be proud regardless.

This isn’t aimed at anyone or any group in particular. It’s not meant to offend. My book was published with Cargo and hopefully they will publish the next one. I want my books published, I don’t feel that’s a bad thing for a writer to say. We write into the void and hope someone hears it. If you’re published there’s a better chance. That’s the main thing.

But as a new writer I’m disillusioned with the whole world I’ve entered. So much politics, so much backstabbing. I genuinely think the majority of people are coming from a good place but they’re doing it within a belief system that is at its core quite corrupt. We deserve something better than that.

Aspiring writers, be nice to people. Tell them what they want to hear. These people are smarter than you. You just write your wee stories and keep your trap shut. And if you write in your own voice well, very good! Have a wee pat on the head son, well done! Make sure your name is in print, get a Facebook, get a Twitter, make sweet sweet love to everyone you can. This will make you a literary star my boy! The world is yours. Don’t you remember when Beckett perfected the 5 minute pitch and got his first book snapped up on the spot? Don’t you remember Kafka taking his granny to big Jurgen’s tattoo joint? This could be you!

Ah fuck it.

Love,

Allan xx

I’m not going to say too much about the strikes. It’s suffice to say I support them. The argument put forward by some irked private sector workers is a sad one: that their pensions are shite/ non-existent, so public sector pensions should be shite/ non-existent too. It shouldn’t be a race to the bottom. We all deserve a better deal.

I was reading about Portugal recently. How the austerity measures being put in place have led to much of the workforce striking. In general, the Portuguese rarely strike. The main reasons for doing so on this occasion are the government cuts in public spending but the people are being affected in various ways. One proposal touted by the government is that private sector companies should extend the working day by an extra thirty minutes while the employees receive no overtime pay for working longer. So it’s basically saying, ‘We require your time and we refuse to pay you for it. We want a proportion of your life you could be spending with family, friends, being happy. Gee us it, it’s ours.’

In Factotum, Charles Bukowski writes a section (Chapter 55) where he says:

“How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”

That’s all there is to it.

The Portuguese government are also abolishing Christmas bonuses for public sector workers. To us in the UK, Christmas bonuses in the public sector might seem like an unaffordable luxury. But it all comes back to the idea of a race to the bottom. The workers in Portugal have relied on these bonuses. For many it is a reason for taking a public sector jobs, just like for many in the UK the reason for working in the public sector is the pension.

The scary thing is that when the changes are put in place by the government it doesn’t take long for them to become the norm. A good way of looking at this is by thinking about The Scottish Insurrection of 1820, otherwise known as The Radical War. This was a week of strikes which took place during a major economic downturn (like now) when wages were being slashed, people were being asked to work longer hours and their free time was being taken from them at the behest of bosses or the government (like now). Meanwhile the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Put simply, people wanted fairness. But they didn’t get it. The powerful won. Those who fearlessly fought for freedoms were hanged for treason. James Wilson, Andrew Hardie, John Baird. After this, the rebellion was pretty much scared into submission. The changes in working conditions that the governments proposed were put in place and things never went back to how they were. Even when the economy picked up. If the changes in Portugal happen then they will be permanent. If the changes in the UK happen they will be permanent. For me personally, I don’t want to work until I’m seventy then die a few years later.

I said I wasn’t going to write much but there you go. One thing leads to another. What I meant to do was post the story below. I wrote this when the changes were first mooted. It’s in Wasted in Love and I wrote it in what was probably fear and sadness about what was happening. Today seems the right day to share it. Enjoy.

Life Expectancy

Every second Tuesday we met. On the Monday or Sunday I’d put together the diary of my achievements from the previous fortnight. It got so I just made it up, but everyone does that. I used different pens so it didn’t look like I’d filled it all in at once. I started getting creative. Saying I’d been looking into working in the UAE. That I’d heard in Aruba a teacher was considered a messiah. Further up the status chain than a priest or a poet. I said my top five destinations to work were Aruba, Jamaica, Bermuda, Glasgow and the UAE. That was my order. What could Martin do to help me fulfil my dreams? I said all that during meeting 4. Now we were up to meeting 6.

“Martin, would I be correct in assuming you want me to die?” I said. “Would that make your life easier? Would that make you a more pleasant person to deal with? Are you bad to your Mother?”

Martin asked me what I’d done to secure employment since our last meeting.

“What if I was to tell you that this week all I did was sit around the house dreaming up ways of driving you out of that chair so I could apply for your job? What if I was to say the only job I want to apply for is Performing Annoyogram? Someone could pay me to handcuff myself to you and I’d swallow the fucking key. You’d have to stay strapped to me – a howling, key-infested me – until I’d done the deed to relieve myself. Can you sort me out with a position like that Martin?”

Martin pointed to the sign that was tacked to the pin board behind his desk – “We will not tolerate physical or verbal abuse of our staff.”

The sign was positioned at an angle. Like it had been barged by a shoulder.

“What is that underneath the writing?” I said.

Martin didn’t even turn. He kept his eyes on mine.

“It’s Braille,” he says. “You don’t recognise Braille Mr McKellar?”

Martin explained to me that my requirements for procuring employment were unrealistic. That if I didn’t accept a suitable position soon then we had a serious fiscal problem.

“I’m not even wanting benefits,” I said. “I only take the benefits so I can get meetings with you.”

“I’ll recommend they stop then,” Martin said.

I shrugged. I smiled.

Martin sighed and typed something up.

“You really want me dead,” I said. “My God, I see it now. You actually fantasise about me being in the ground. Christ Martin, you really are a piece of work. There’s evil in you, man.”

“Look!”

He slapped his hands down on the desk. A few people turned. He loosened his collar and continued more calmly. “If you were dead then I’d be out of a job. If you were dead then I’d be you. Trust me, for that reason alone I don’t want you dead.”

I sat back in my chair. I was nodding and stroking my stubble. I thought about what Martin said for a while. I pointed at him when I understood.

“They want you dead too Martin. They want me dead first. But after I’m gone they want you dead. It’s simple economics. Cut the funding of the NHS, cut the funding to schools. Over time, life expectancy will drop. They want you to live until the ripe old age of sixty-five and a day. That’s the stuff these guys dream of. They dream of your deterioration at an alarming rate. Tell you Martin, the average life expectancy of a retired teacher is eighteen months. That’d have been me. Jesus, if that’s the case I’ll be dead by thirty. What is it for a person in your position? Do you know? What is your position? Would it be disrespectful of me to call you a lackey?”

“Senior Employment Advisor,” he said.

“Well Christ! Senior? You should have said. That’s a title they’ll try and take away from you. Soon you’ll be just an employment advisor. Then they’ll decide a man of your skill should be advising on all manner of matters – teenage pregnancy, bereavement, which supermarket best suits a person’s needs, and then you’ll be known only as advisor. Martin the advisor. What do you think about that?”

“I’m going to advise you no longer qualify for Job Seekers Allowance,” Martin told me.

“You’re a cold man, Martin.”

“Unless there’s anything else?” he said.

“What about a kiss?”

“Well we’ll be seeing you then Mr McKellar. It’s been a pleasure.”

I stood up.

“Don’t you worry about me Martin. Soon I’ll be in Aruba, Jamaica, oooh I wanna take ya…you know that song, Martin?”

Martin was typing and didn’t look up. The security guard walked beside me as I walked backwards through the automatic doors.

“The Beach Boys, Martin,” I called.

The automatic doors shut and the security guard stood in front of them, between me and the inside of the building. The doors opened and closed a few times. Him standing there with his arms folded.

“How did you get that job, big man?” I said.

The security guard didn’t answer.

I zipped up my jacket and pulled the hood over my head. The lights from Gennaro’s chippy were up ahead. I blew into my hands. My breath turned smoky in the air. I began to walk. Then I started to run. As fast as I could. A car swerved beside me. When I looked back, the woman from Gennaro’s had her head out the door and was staring. The driver of the car was pointing after me. I made it on to Great Western Road and ran towards the west. I ran down the centre of the road, following the white lines. I slapped the sides of cars and buses when I passed them. I laughed out loud. A taxi driver put his hand out his window and called me a wanker. The air was cloudy with exhaust fumes. The horizon didn’t look too far. If I could keep going I’d reach Loch Lomond. If I could keep going I’d reach the sea.

Hello!

I’m testing the website by posting a story.

John Cheever wrote a brilliant story called ‘Reunion’ about a boy meeting his Dad in Grand Central Station. Things go a bit wrong. The Dad gets drunk, clicks his fingers at waiters, gets thrown out of pubs. Makes his boy a wee bit sad.

I must have read the story a hundred times. And last week when I sat down to write this is what came out… Wee nod to John Cheever for the subconscious inspiration. There are a few layout problems because I’ve uploaded to wordpress. But here’s a Word doc Reunion

Here goes…

Reunion

When my Dad left for Spain he told me some stuff. I didn’t want to listen but he kept talking. I was just a kid and maybe he’d been drinking. He told me a lot. It made me hate him but I stayed there. I wanted him to tell me everything would be alright. He said these were things that happened when you grew up. Men and women were different. It was the way things had always been, he said. He told me I could visit anytime I wanted. He asked if I wanted him to send a ticket but I couldn’t answer. He kissed my Mum goodbye and he left.

She didn’t speak about him much after that. With him in a different country things didn’t seem to matter the same. She had a few boyfriends through the years and she asked me to call them Uncle. Uncle Peter, Uncle Stuart, Uncle Davy, Uncle Michael, Uncle Alex, Uncle Lewis, Uncle Joe. I still see Joe sometimes and we say hello. He asks how she is. He says I was a good kid.

It wasn’t until My Dad was already back in the country that I found out he was home. My Mum sat me down.

“He says he needs to see you.”

I shook my head.

“Don’t cut your nose off,” she said.

He was staying with his sister in Irvine, out by the West coast. She wanted me to phone him but I said no.

“He can phone me, if he wants to talk.”

“You know what he’s like.”

“But what about me? What I’m like?” I said.

She told me not to get angry.

“He wants to give you some money,” she said.

“So?”

“It’s a lot of money. Something happened with his work out there and they had to give him a lot of money.”

I pretended I wasn’t listening.

“If he wants to give you his money then let him,” she said.

“I’m not phoning him.”

She put her hand on my arm and waited.

“What else was he saying?” I asked.

“Not much. He made jokes. It’s your Dad. You know what he’s like.”

We never spoke on the phone. My Mum arranged it and I was to meet him at Central Station. He was getting a train up the coast and I was meeting him before I went to my class. I’d started painting at nights and the teacher said I was her favourite student. She said I was a natural. It was sunny, I remember that. It was summer and it stayed light until late at night. The station was bright and the arrivals board said his train had already come in. I waited ten minutes but he didn’t show. It’d been eleven years. I was about to leave when I saw him coming up the stairs from the toilets. I recognised him. He looked the same as I remembered. He was tanned and stocky and he had one hand in his pocket when he walked. I saw myself in him too. When he got close he took the hand out his pocket and pointed at me. We shook hands. We were like brothers. He didn’t feel like my dad but there was still something there I understood.

“I’m looking for my son,” he said. “He looks a wee bit like you but he’s a hell of a lot smaller.”

“Alright Dad,” I said.

“Well you’re handsome,” he said.

I shrugged.

He looked around the station then looked back at me.

“What is it you’re wanting Dad?”

“I suppose that’s fair enough,” he said.

“Cos I don’t have much time.”

“Let me buy you a quick drink,” he said.

“Not here.”

“Wherever you fancy. Where do the young team go these days?”

I looked around the station. People were walking past quickly in every direction. A train had just come in and a load of people were piling off. The screens with the destinations and arrivals changed and turned. Sun came through from the skylights. My dad put his hand on my shoulder.

“It’s strange for me as well you know.”

I pointed to a few windows high up on one of the station’s walls.

“That’s a pub up there,” I told him.

“That door?”

“It’ll be quiet,” I said.

We stood together at the bar.

“You go get us a seat and I’ll get these. What are you having?”

“A pint, whatever.”

“Fancy a whisky?”

“I don’t really drink spirits,” I said.

He nodded to the tables by the windows and I got us a seat.

When he came over he carried the drinks on a tray.

“They had malts,” he said. “It’s been a long time since I had a really good malt.”

I nodded.

“Have you tried this?”

He lifted the glass of whisky in front of my eyes.

“There’s nothing like a really good malt,” he said.

He took the beers off the tray and left them on the table. He carried the tray back to the bar, said something to the woman who was working, and they both began to laugh.

When he got back I’d finished the whisky.

“Jesus,” he said.

“I didn’t like it.”

“What I think,” he said, “is that you need to acquire a taste for these things. You’re not accustomed to such fine dining.”

He sipped from his glass and let out a gasp.

“Now that is a drink,” he said. He turned and called out to the barmaid. “You chose well darlin!”

He was grinning at me. He wiped his lips. He kept looking at me and eventually the smile went away.

“So is there some special reason why you’re home?” I said.

“Me? Nah, not really. Things to do, people to see, that type of thing. Loose ends that need tied up.”

“Is this where you tell me you’re dying or something?”

He took another sip of whisky.

“What if I was?”

I shrugged.

“We all die,” I said.

“Christ, nice to see you’re a sensitive soul,” he said.

“Like Father like son.” I said.

He shook his head then he raised the glass to his lips and finished what was left. When he spoke he spoke quickly.

“I’m here about your future. You’re my son and I want to make sure I see you alright.”

“That’s it?”

“And your Mother. She’ll get her share too. Your auntys.”

“And what about you?” I said.

“Aye, I’ll probably give a wee backhander to myself as well.”

I took a drink and looked down at my hands. The tips of my fingers were red. My dad was taking his jacket off and he stood to hang it over the back of his chair. His smell came to me then. He was wearing aftershave and the whisky was already on his breath.

“I used to get her to send me all you report cards from the school,” he said. “Did she tell you she sent them?”

I nodded.

“And did you get all the cards I sent for your birthday and your Christmas. Did you get the money?”

“She gave me them.”

When he was drinking his beer he tapped his ring a few times on the table.

“You want to talk about when you were wee?” he said.

“Not really.”

“No questions?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Right enough. Just let me say one thing, okay. And it’s from when you were a baby.”

I shrugged.

“I have your permission then?”

“It’s a free country.”

“Okay, okay.” He twisted his head from side to side and his neck cracked. “Here goes. When you were a baby,” he said, “nobody thought you looked like me. Everybody said, god he looks so like Jessie. His eyes are like Jessie’s, his smile is like Jessie’s That your bloody big toe was like Jessie’s. Your Mum used to wind me up about it. Show you off. Even when you were a toddler, people would say you were your Mother’s son. I used to lift you up and just stare at you. And you know what I realised, I realised they were right. You were nothing like me. And it got so that strangers said it. A guy in the bookies asked if you were my grandson. He was lucky I’m a man of restraint.”

“I’m gonna need to head soon,” I said.

“Will you just listen,” he said. “Can you do that one thing for me? Can you just listen. Just this once?”

His eyes were beady. I sipped my pint and looked back out the window.

“It got on my nerves. I never thought it did but it did. You were my son. When your Mother was pregnant I knew you were going to be a wee boy. She said you’d be a girl, the way she put the weight on around her sides, but I had a feeling and I was right. But the time I’m thinking of… I mean the guy was an idiot. He was a drunk. And looking back now .” My Dad rubbed his hand across his face. “He’d been drinking, I had. And he said he knew your Mother. He didn’t know her. He was just. Och, it was daft. He was a wind up merchant. I knew it wasn’t true but people were laughing along with the guy. I could see what he was trying to say. Things like that affect you in ways you never think. I was a young man, a different type of person then, you know?”

“Fuck sake, “ I said.

“Aye.”

“Are you saying you left because I didn’t look like you when I was a baby? You’re actually trying to say this was my fault?”

“You’re not listening,” he said.

“I am Dad. That’s the thing.”

“I’m saying me and your Mum had lots of problems. It was complicated. It wasn’t just me.”

I downed what was left of my pint and stood up. He reached across and he held my arm.

“I’m needing a pish,” I said.

I made my way to the toilet. I stood in front of the sink and washed my face with cold water. I looked in the mirror. I was red and the water was dripping down onto my t-shirt. I took my phone out and checked the time.

The barmaid was over clearing our table. She was about his age, blonde and had a fat arse. When I sat down she looked at me and smiled.

“Your Dad’s been telling me you’re a painter,” she said.

“Not exactly.”

“Not exactly?” my Dad said. “You’re painting tonight. I thought you were painting tonight?”

“I’ve got a class. It’s for fun. I don’t get paid for it or anything.”

“But he will,” my Dad said. “One day you will.”

I shook my head.

“Fancy another malt?” he said.

“I’m gonna be late.”

“A quick one then, we’ll have a quick one.”

“I won’t be able to paint anything if I’m half-cut.”

“Well miss it tonight then, eh? What about you give it a break tonight? Fancy?”

The barmaid was standing watching us.

“Sorry, but should I just leave the whiskies just now?” she said.

My Dad looked at me and I shook my head.

“Just make it the one hen.”

She went away and I lifted my jacket from the chair. My Dad put his hand in his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He counted out some notes and held them towards me.

“This is only for now,” he said.

“I don’t want it.”

“There’s plenty more for you. Real money. But I can talk to your Mother about that.”

I put my jacket on and he stood up. He pressed the notes into my hand.

“Get yourself a new set of paint brushes or something.”

I looked at him and he grinned. I put the money in my pocket.

“That’s us the same height now,” he said.

“I think I’m bigger.”

He looked me up and down.

“Aye, you probably are,” he said.

The barmaid came over with his drink. He looked up at her and winked.

“Do you think you can be tempted to join an old man for a malt before he has to get his train?” he said.

“Your Dad’s a charmer,” she told me.

She left the bill with his drink then went away.

“Can’t beat a really good malt,” my Dad said.

We shook hands and I walked away. He shouted something to the barmaid and I heard her laugh. When I was down in the station forecourt I looked up at the windows. He lifted the whisky and pointed it towards me. I nodded back. It was the last time I ever saw him.

The John Cheever story ‘Reunion’ which inspired this can be listened to on The New Yorker podcast – a brilliant podcast if you like short stories. Richard Ford reads it and it’s funny and sad and so fucking beautiful.

Weird thing is, Richard Ford talks about how he also wrote a story called Reunion about a son and his Dad meeting. Anyone else got one?

Here’s a link to Cheever’s story – http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/12/25/061225on_onlineonly04

So eh, aye. If you liked or didn’t like the story or wondered why the boy had so many Uncles then get in touch.

Allan.

Hello

Allan has been praised by novelist Alan Bissett on The Guardian’s book podcast. Listen here.