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Showing posts from July, 2018

Legend Tripping

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  1. Most of the children of Carlin High School were engaged in the usual playground activities, girl gossiped rapidly sounding like a thousand busy typewriters; youthful first years laughed and chas ed each other around the yard, burning off energy; older kids from the rough end of town hid behi nd the toilets, smoking weed. Steven was sitting alone, perched on the fence like a hawk, watching all the normal mayhem when he spotted Simon Anderson take a nosedive onto the concrete. The boy just went white and dropped, and even though the other kids were making a godawful din, Steven definitely heard Simon’s skull crack like a heavy egg as it smashed onto the ground. The noise was a sickening, hollow sound that made his heart jump in his chest. He immediately jumped off the fence and rushed to see if the older boy was alright. In the seconds it took him to move to where Simon was, there was a large crowd around Simon, some girls were screaming, an older boy was shouting, “Get a tea
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Gross Domestic Product: 3

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Chapter Three. At that moment, across the river, in a small pawn shop in a filthy corner of Govanhill, Giddy Allerdyce watched from behind the security grating that protected him and his goods from his customers. That ugly chancer known as Big Skinny had just slid into the shop. Skinny, whose actual name was Gordon Skinner grinned at him. Allerdyce hated the look of the creepy bastard. “Big Skinny” had a fishy appearance, big wet lips, swollen eyes and a skinhead. He was wearing a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a red t-shirt with a Celtic cross on it, which is all Allerdyce had ever seen him wear. Both of Skinny’s ears were pierced dozens of times until each pinna clinked with golden hoops. Despite his nickname, he wasn’t thin, but was tall, over six foot and looked as if he was in his early twenties, even though Allerdyce had heard he was a decade older. “Good morning Allerdyce,” Skinny said. “ Alright?” Allerdyce replied. He couldn’t place the accent, definitely not Gl
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Gross Domestic Product: 2.

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Buer. The Fall was always the same as the first time. A sudden ejection from endless nothingness into the direct experience of the numinous all, that familiar blazing, agonising sensation of being as the limitless light. A plunge, down into division, the separation of it from everything, subject, and object. Both fractured further. Light shattered into various spectra of colours, sounds, flavours and scents, and experience partitioned into sensations of sight, hearing, taste and smell. The tortuous tragedy of absence and loss, of no longer being all, but one perceiving all. The anxiety of weight came next, engulfed into substance, of time and space, of matter. It crashed into the lowest most debased level of existence. It raw identity, was thought without form, called forth from the void. It knew no name other than the utterances of the creatures who had summoned it; Buer. Primitive and ranting, demented by plants and devotion, they prayed in darkened caves and called on t
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Gross Domestic Product.

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Chapter one. “ Check it oot,” Brian said enthusiastically, nodding in the direction of the grey pebble-dashed, semi-detached house that lay beyond the cemetery wall. They’d cut into the place so Brian could do a piss but now an opportunity had arisen. Brian was excited. Daft Pete sighed and looked up from the joint he was trying to make. He wasn’t happy. The council had cut the grass in the graveyard that morning and it was playing havoc with his hay fever. The city was in the midst of being tarted up for The City of Culture celebrations. Pete thought that was like putting make-up on a diseased pig. They’d barely bothered touching the graveyard since he was a kid but now they got a whiff that tourists might want to visit Glasgow, suddenly were trying to disguise that the town was and always had been, a fucking midden. Mind you, he thought, tourists were always good for mugging. Perhaps all the pretentious bollocks would have a benefit to his own economic status after
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Popular posts from this blog

Ring Bang Skoosh

So what you do is get a 60a bus over to Duke Street from the City Centre. Keep going right along Duke Street until you get past the remaining houses and the industrial park. The bus will eventually take a second right at a large roundabout. You'll not be able to miss it. It's beside another industrial park. You'll want to get off the bus at the next stop and then wait for the 257A. They're not common, one every half an hour (if you're lucky) and only between 8 A.M. and 5.30 P.M. If you've missed it and have to wait you could do worse than Babs Café across the road. Go get something delicious to eat. Don't get me wrong her cuisine is part of the cultural dietary pandemic that's reduced life expectancy in the areas of the east end to that of cavemen, but her deep fried pizza slice on a roll with chips is well worth the fucking risk. Anyway, once you're on the 257A you'll head south east along an empty area for about three quarters of a mil
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Gross Domestic Product: 8

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Chapter Eight. It took the taxi almost half an hour to get through the West-End and up through the north of the city out into Milngavie. Some roadworks at the switchback had left the entire end of the town in one long traffic jam, according to the driver anyway. Pete was not impressed, not one bit. By the time he stepped out he’d stumped up twelve quid and his skin felt like it needed massaged by a crazed acupuncturist. The cold hurt was becoming too real for him to bear but he knew he’d just have to tough it out. He’d con Baird, or failing that, rob the place, get that stupid lamp and then he could relax, shoot up and have a nice long gouch. After that he’d go to Allerdyce and before long have another five grand in his pocket. That would give him nearly ten grand, enough to solve his problems. Enough to propel him out of Glasgow’s moribund gravitational pull once and for all. He just needed to keep it together for another hour or two. The house he stood outside looked
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The Scheme

Nineteen eighty nine, a number, another summer; sound of the funky drummer ubiquitous on the radio. Gordon Harper drummed his fingers against the wheel in time to the tune. It was a nervous staccato, no doubt about that. As he sat parked on Casgairt Road he wondered if he should just bolt. He'd a couple of grand left in his savings, and could be on the next flight to Chilé or Singapore, could be anywhere but here. He threw his cigarette butt out the window and immediately lit another. This was going to be a bad job, that became apparent as soon as Skinny's name was mentioned. When Dunkie mentioned that nutter he should have said “I'm out.” He didn't. No, he didn't want to look like a shitebag in front of the big boys. If he had any real stones he would have told Dunkie to take a fuck to himself. Instead he was sitting with a fucking shotgun under his seat waiting for that nutjob Willie Barr. Total... Fucking... Nightmare! Once more he sucked on th
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