Ask a silly question, get a silly answer.
In fact, ask a perfectly reasonable question, get a silly answer.
That’s my motto. It’s probably also the reason my ‘expert advice’ wasn’t particularly sought after over on AnswerBag.
Monthly Archives: January 2018
Jamie’s Digest (4): Cool bits from books – KILLER EDITION
Welcome to an all-crime-and-murder edition of Jamie’s digest.
Over the years I’ve read rather a lot of books on crooks, killers and their catchers; biographies of serial killers; books on policing, profiling and criminology; texts about psychopathy and abnormal psychology. I know that the presence of these sorts of interests in someone’s life, in the proper context, can be taken as a red flag, but I absolutely promise that I’m not a serial-killer-in-waiting. And I swear that I haven’t got my fingers crossed right now (the whole bunch of them are still loose and bobbing around inside the little pouch tied to my waist that I’ve always kept them in). I’m simply fascinated by the extremes of violent, murderous and ritualistic behaviour, of which the human being (most typically the male) is capable. What makes one man a killer and the other a mild-mannered bank clerk? Is there such a thing as good and evil (is there such a thing as a mild-mannered bank clerk)? Are killers mad or bad, born or made? How do you catch them? Is it dangerous to walk in their shoes, a la Will Graham? The whole sprawling subject is exciting, horrifying, exhilarating, nauseating, absorbing, chilling, repugnant, repulsive and compulsive all at once.
Here are excerpts from some books on killing and killers I’ve read recently.
“The guy you’re looking for will have a limp, and a dog called Daniel.”
Netflix’s Mindhunter was one of the best TV shows of 2017, a fictional adaptation of real-life FBI profiler John Douglas’s first forays into researching and cataloguing the behaviour of rapists and serial killers with a view to helping police focus their investigations on the most likely suspects in live cases, or helping to convict suspects at trial. The events that unfold in the show all more-or-less happened, in some form; certainly all of the killers, rapists and assorted criminals depicted in the series all existed. Where the TV adaptation differs significantly from its source text is through the characters and histories of the main FBI-based antagonists, who are only loosely based upon their real-life counterparts, and even have different names. This affords the TV show more of an element of surprise, and a greater capacity to shock. We know what happens to Ed Kemper, Ted Bundy et al, but we now have no idea how exactly the work they do will affect the FBI profilers, or their families. Smart move.
The book is fascinating and informative. The first third or so focuses on John Douglas himself, and how he came to pursue (and essentially create!) the field of profiling. It’s illuminating, not least because the young, rebellious, academically-underachieving John Douglas doesn’t appear to fit the profile of a future profiler. He certainly did a lot of slacking and engaged in a bit of borderline criminal behaviour before he found his calling.
The rest of the book, as you would hope and expect, offers insights into profiling and behavioural analysis, and discusses many famous cases from throughout John Douglas’ career.
For instance, here’s his take on (a then very much still alive) Charles Manson:
Manson: Complete and Total Cult
“After listening to Manson, I believe that he did not plan or intend the murders of Sharon Tate and her friends; that, in fact, he lost control of the situation and his followers. The choice of the site and victims was apparently arbitrary. One of the Manson girls had been there and thought there was money around. Tex Watson, the good-looking, all-American honor student from Texas, sought to rise in the hierarchy and rival Charlie for influence and authority. Zoned out ike the others on LDS and having bought into the leader’s new tomorrow. Watson was the primary killer and led the mission to the Tate-Polanski house and encouraged the others to the ultimate depravities.
Then, when these inadequate nobodies came back and told Charlie what they had done, that helter-skelter had begun, he couldn’t very well back down and tell them they had taken him too seriously. That would have destroyed his power and authority. So he had to do them one better, as if he had intended the crime and its aftermath, leading them to the LaBianca home to do it again. But significantly, when I asked Manson why he hadn’t gone in and participated in the killings, he explained, as if we were dense, that he was on parole at the time and couldn’t risk his freedom by violating that.
So I believe from the background information and the interviews we did with Manson that while he made his followers into what he needed, they, in turn, made him into what they needed and forced him to fulfill it.
Every couple of years, Manson comes up for parole and has been turned down every time. His crimes were too politicised and too brutal for the parole board to take a chance on him. I don’t want him let out either. But if he were released at some point, knowing what I do about him, I wouldn’t expect him to be a serious violent threat like a lot of these guys [other high-profile killers] are. I think he’d go off into the desert and live out there, or else try to cash in on his celebrity for money. The biggest threat would be from the misguided losers who would gravitate to him and proclaim him their god and leader.”
And now helping to make the distinction between a killer’s MO and signature:
MO vs signature
“Modus operandi – MO – is learned behaviour. It’s what the perpetrator does to commit the crime. It is dynamic – that is, it can change. Signature, a term I coined to distinguish it from MO, is what the perpetrator has to do to fulfill himself. It is static; it does not change.
For example, you wouldn’t expect a juvenile to keep committing crimes the same way as he grows up unless he gets it perfect the first time. But if he gets away with one, he’ll learn from it and get better and better at it. That’s why we say MO is dynamic. On the other hand, if this guy is committing crimes so that, say, he can dominate or inflict pain on or provoke begging and pleading from a victim, that’s his signature. It’s something that expresses the killer’s personality. It’s something he needs to do.”
Most interesting of all is John Douglas’ thoughts on what makes a killer, and the power best deployed proactively to stop it:
All you need is…?
“In all my years of research and dealing with violent offenders, I’ve never yet come across one who came from what I would consider a good background and functional, supportive family unit. I believe that the vast majority of violent offenders are responsible for their conduct, made their choices, and should face the consequences of what they do. It’s ridiculous to say that someone doesn’t appreciate the seriousness of what he’s done because he’s only fourteen or fifteen. At eight, my son, Jed, has already known for years what’s right and what’s wrong.
But twenty-five years of observation has also told me that criminals are more ‘made’ than ‘born,’ which means that somewhere along the line, someone who provided a profound negative influence could have provided a profound positive one instead. So what I truly believe is that along with more money and police and prisons, what we most need more of is love. This is not being simplistic; it’s at the very heart of the issue.”
It’s refreshing that after decades of talking to and hunting people who slit throats, strangle women, kill kids, mutilate corpses, and dump bodies in rivers, John Douglas still believes in love.
Amazon link: Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker
I – The Creation of a Serial Killer, by Jack Olsen
This book splits its time between following the life of angry giant Keith Hunter Jesperson in the third person, and living through his life and crimes in the first person, the latter device powerful but rather disquieting, as it forces you into the mind of a killer as he kills and prepares to kill. While both gruesome and shocking, the book does try to answer the question of how Jesperson was ‘made’, but certainly isn’t interested in exonerating Jesperson or excusing his behaviour. This book’s never an easy read, but it’s very illuminating and, boy, Jack Olsen could write.
The excerpt below comes after the end of Jesperson’s killing-career, as he indulges his narcissism as he awaits his fate in prison. We’re not inside Jesperson’s thoughts here.
“His [Jesperson’s] first attempt to establish contact with a marquee murderer had taken place early in 1996, while he was still juggling legal problems in Oregon, Washington and Wyoming. He’d written a friendly letter to Danny Rolling, facing execution in Florida for the massacre of five college students. Jesperson’s letter to “the Gainesville Slasher” congratulated Rolling on finding a new girlfriend – “she sounds like a neat and great person.” The letter had a whiff of sycophancy. “Hope all will go well with you, my friend in Christ,” wrote the lifelong agnostic. “God bless you. No response is needed.”
None was received. While Keith was awaiting a reply, the fastidious Rolling was telling a third party that he found the Self-start Serial Killer Kit and Keith’s other attempts at Internet gallows humour in atrocious taste. “That kind of humour doesn’t impress me,” said the man who’d slashed four victims to death and decapitated a fifth. “There is NOTHING, absolutely nothing about KILLING that is humourous.” ”
I find it incredible that a man who’s murdered many women and chopped off heads can demonstrate such prudishness in other spheres of his life. Or maybe he hates – to use Dexter-talk – his ‘dark passenger’ and sees his incarcerated self as somehow separate from it.
Jesperson was more successful in striking up dialogue with an imprisoned cannibal, who was keen to talk death and recipes.
A letter from Nicolas Claux, the Vampire of Paris:
“I personally think that any kind of spiced sauce will spoil the naturally sweet taste of human flesh and blood – human meat is a gift from the Gods, and it is a shame to ruin its delightful taste with seasonings and spices… Bon appetit!”
Amazon link: I: The Creation of a Serial Killer by Jack Olsen
The Killing Season
The Killing Season chronicles a year in the life of real-life LA cop duo Razanskas and Winn, a grizzled veteran detective and his rookie partner. He’s a jaded, wise-cracking old white guy; she’s a driven, no-nonsense young black woman. Together they’re going to shovel shit against the tide of blood that’s flowing over the lost, sprawling, poverty-stricken, violent neighbourhoods of south central Los Angeles. I love these guys. They face so much, and work so hard, against almost insurmountable odds, in a hellish environment, and with the worst resources imaginable at their disposal.
Well, I loved these guys. I did some googling on them after finishing the book and found that on one of the first cases they worked on they’d essentially fitted up an innocent guy. Took the sheen off it all, somewhat. Still, a great book. A real eye-opener. A tragedy from start to finish. There but for the Grace of… whatever you happen to believe in, go you and I.
He was shot… where?
“Razanskas gives Winn and another detective a few details about Masuayama and Reyes’ body dump case and mentions that the victim was shot in the ear. The detective tells him he once had a case where his victim was found lying in a carport, naked. The coroner investigator could not find an entry wound, an exit wound, blood, or any sign of trauma. At the autopsy, the fluoroscope, a type of X-ray machine, solved the mystery and revealed a .22 slug. The man, who had crossed a Jamaican drug dealer, had been shot in the anus.”
Death, loss and unspeakable tragedy feature almost constantly throughout the book, but this next excerpt stung me quite hard.
On murder and its consequences:
“Erick’s friends were stunned when they heard he was killed in a drive-by. He was not the type who would hang out on the street corners with the gangbangers. He lived with his girlfriend and two young children in Ontario, a suburb 40 miles east of Los Angeles. They did not want to raise their children in the city. He had been laid off from his job as a security guard and was spending a few days a week during the summer at his mother’s South-Central house. She has diabetes and failing eyesight and Erick had been caring for her.
When he returned to his old neighbourhood, he liked to play dominoes with his friends and water the roses in his mother’s yard. He landscaped the yeard years ago and won a gardening award from the city. His mother still has the trophy on her mantel. He took pride in the lush lawn he put in, the red, yellow, pink and violet rosebushes he tended, the thick stands of philodendron he planted to shade the yard.
He was so well liked, more than 300 people came to his funeral, including a few teachers from elementary and high school. At his wake, his 3-year-old son, Erick, Jr, who now wears his father’s gold earring, tried to climb into the coffin. He could not comprehend that his father was gone. Later that night, he picked up the telephone and tried to call his father so he could tell him to come home.
Erick’s 5-year-old daughter, Danielle, who is missing her front teeth and has pigtails, lingered by her father’s open casket. She kissed him and held his hand. Finally, she told her mother, “I want to die, so I can be with my daddy in heaven.”
Now Danielle’s mother often finds her crying in her bed, the blankets pulled over her head. When her mother pulls the covers back, Danielle tells her that she tries to muffle her cries. She does not want to upset her.
Every day, Erick, Jr., talks about his father. And every day he tells his mother, “I want to find the man who shot my daddy. I want to kill him.” “
Amazon Link: The Killing Season by Miles Corwin
Until next time: keep reading, mother-bookers.
Recommendations for some excellent books related to this edition’s theme
Lost Girls: an Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker
People Who Eat Darkness: Love, Grief and a Journey into Japan’s Shadows by Richard Lloyd Parry
Blind Faith by Joe McGinniss
Son: A Psychopath and his Victims by Jack Olsen
Blind Eye: The Terrifying Story of a Doctor Who Got Away with Murder by James B. Stewart
Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us by Robert D. Hare
The 5 Worst TV Shows of 2017
I watched a lot of TV shows in 2017, a fair dollop of them crap, but none so utterly, irredeemably crap as the five failures below.
PRISON BREAK
The first season of Prison Break was truly great TV: fun, funny, shocking, silly, suspenseful, tense, exciting and beautifully, insanely ridiculous. But it never should’ve lasted beyond those first 22 episodes, much less another 4 seasons, a mini-movie and a revival season.
Was there anyone in the entire world who was actually looking forward to this revival, or who expected it to be anything other than a giant bowl of sick-whisked dog shit? I can understand wanting to watch this new ‘mini-event series’ out of morbid curiosity, or because you relish the prospect of picking it to pieces as you sort of half-watch-it, half-browse-for-stuff-on-Ebay, but surely only a die-hard fanatic of the first order, or a victim of failed brain surgery, would anticipate new Prison Break with any sense of relish.
My expectations started low – we’re talking sub-basement-level flat in Hell’s deepest underground multi-storey – and still they were unmet. Prison Break is a show where anything can, and does, happen, so ultimately nothing matters.This is a show where being electrocuted to death and having your head chopped off is no barrier to a return. It just requires waiting for the right preposterous, credibility-stretching conspiracy to come along.
Don’t get me wrong: the show’s bat-shit crazy, devil-may-care, fast-moving, twisty-turny-ness was one of its greatest and most entertaining assets in the beginning, but now it just feels tired and forced and lazy and formulaic. Plus, it’s more painfully obvious than ever before that the two brothers can’t really act for shit. Lincoln spends this season lumbering around the Middle East with all the grace and charisma of a zombie oak tree, while Ed Kemper is probably more effective at emoting than Michael (and I mean Ed Kemper as he is now). The prison break is boring and short-lived; the secondary characters hollow and unconvincing; the villains one step below panto; the Yemeni setting poorly realised and possibly border-line racist; and the various twists even more maddeningly preposterous than usual.
From the moment Lincoln survived being smashed through a windshield at top speed, to T-Bag’s unemotional ’emotional’ moment with his dying son, I sat completely and utterly spellbound – by my own fingernails. I kept wondering how long it would take to scratch my own eyes out with them.
Oh, and on a closing note, writing and production team: good work on the big showdown and shoot-out at a Yemeni train station: you know, Yemen?… The country that DOESN’T HAVE ANY FUCKING TRAINS.
Read my article about Prison Break seasons 1-4 HERE that was published by Den of Geek in 2013.
POWERLESS
Powerless boasted strong production values, a talented cast (most notably Danny Pudi of Community-fame) and an absolutely on-point, almost perfect title sequence – all of which was ultimately completely useless, because whatever else Powerless had or was, it simply wasn’t funny. And ‘funny’ is a pretty essential component when you’re making a comedy series. It was cancelled after only 9 episodes of the first season had aired.
I guess there have been a lot worse shows than Powerless, but it’s a tragedy that what could’ve been a zany, fresh and inventive comedy looking at life through the lens of a bunch of regular Joes in a WayneTech subsidiary working to protect the little guy from the constant battles between superheroes and supervillains became instead a lacklustre, generic workplace comedy that struggled to conjure up more than a handful laughs (tiny, breathy ones at that) and a smattering of smiles (flat, joyless ones, too).
Still, while the 9 episodes I watched were undoubtedly shite, maybe the show could’ve grown into something special given more of a chance. Shame on you, Powerless. But shame on you, too, American network television.
RED DWARF
The twelve-year-old me who spent his days regurgitating Red Dwarf’s catch-phrases and impersonating its characters would be very angry with fat, hairy thirty-seven-year-old me for placing Red Dwarf on this list, but never mind: I’m reasonably sure I could take twelve-year-old-me in a fight.
It’s fair to say that Red Dwarf has had a wildly uneven hit-rate in recent years; from the mild disappointment of its sheeny-shiny, oh-so-cinematic seventh season, to the post-lobotomy lock-down of its lads-and-lager eighth season; from the abominable Back to Earth, to the show’s present incarnation as a darling of Dave, the show has never quite made the case for its own cancellation, but neither has it given much cause for unbridled celebration.
That’s not to say that latter-day Dwarf has lacked classic episodes – there have been some triumphantly funny episodes, even in the midst of the most middling of seasons – but that still only adds up to 6 truly great episodes out of 31. You wouldn’t be happy to get a score of 6 out of 31 in a test, unless it was a test to see how attractive Kevin Spacey found you on a scale of one to 31. Still, despite the show’s somewhat scatter-gun run since the late 90s I felt weirdly, unfathomably optimistic about season XII. I should’ve known better, or at least lowered my expectations.
While the first episode and the last two episodes of the season were pretty good (or at least ‘good enough’), the third episode – Timewave – was so embarrassingly, blood-curdlingly awful that it made me want to remove all traces of Red Dwarf from my memories with a rusty axe.
Rob Grant’s pointless and puerile attempt to reflect the current political climate by placing the crew on a ship where all criticism was outlawed was the unfunniest thing since… well, since nothing. It’s literally the unfunniest thing that’s ever been produced, and that includes genocide and Mrs Brown’s Boys. It’s the single worst episode of any show I’ve watched this year, and quite possibly the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life, and that includes granny porn.
Timewave effortlessly earns Red Dwarf its slot in the top five. It’s so bad it’ll keep Red Dwarf on this list every year for the next ten years, even if it never returns to air.
Read my honest and optimistic look-ahead to Red Dwarf series XII HERE that was published by Den of Geek in 2017.
THE WALKING DEAD
Never before has all-out warfare been so mercilessly, miserably, unforgivably dull. The Walking Dead has been shedding healthy flesh at an alarming rate since the beginning of its sixth season, and now shambles twice-yearly into our schedules a rotted husk of its former reassuringly-gory glory. While even in its younger, better days it was never in the same league as shows like The Sopranos, Mad Men, or The Wire, The Walking Dead was at least exciting and emotionally resonant, and capable of turning out some truly powerful, haunting or barn-storming episodes. Season 8, thus far, has been full of action, but devoid of feeling and substance.
Rick is an infuriatingly inconsistent protagonist at the helm of an infuriatingly inconsistent show. Well, perhaps it’s not infuriatingly inconsistent anymore, because use of the word ‘infuriating’ would signify that I still cared about the content or direction of the show. And I don’t. I really, really don’t. Negan is a crushing bore of a bad guy (mishandled and miscast); the Saviours/war narrative continues to unfold without any concessions to logic, sense, physics or geography; the (Poor Man’s Mad Max) People of the Trash Pile are too dull to be kitsch, and too fucking ridiculous to be a credible threat; and there are too many characters on the show, especially when they’re all so thinly-sketched and bent so easily to the will of the plot. Game of Thrones gets away with having eight billion characters, because it’s a very well-written show and as a consequence its characters are deep, well-rounded and interesting.
I used to care about the show, I really did, but now I wouldn’t care if Carol and Daryl formed a Romeo-and-Juliet-style death pact and shot each other through the head, at the same time as Negan sewed Rick’s severed zombie head onto the neck of Ezekiel’s dead tiger. I didn’t even care about Ezekiel’s tiger, and I’m usually a sucker for animals in on-screen peril. And I certainly didn’t care when it was revealed that Karl had been bitten. Actually, that’s not strictly true. I did care, but only because I’m pretty sure he isn’t going to die, and I really, really wanted him to. In summary, then, let the tiger die. Let them all die. Let the zombies come back to life so they can all die again, too. The Walking Dead’s a dead show walking, and I wish they’d pull the plug so I wouldn’t have to keep watching the bloody thing, masochist that I am.
Read my own blog posts about a) Negan himself HERE, and b) season 7 of The Walking Dead HERE.
And my article about the decline of the show HERE published by Den of Geek in 2017.
THE MIST
Hey, it’s the beautiful, elven-looking woman from Vikings, and Clay Davis from The Wire; you know, the one who says ‘shhheeeeeeiiiiiiiittttttttt’ all the time. And Frances Conroy, of Six Feet Under and American Horror Story fame! Oh, and it’s a Stephen King adaptation; an adaptation of an adaptation, I may add, of a film of which I’m rather fond. Mist, monsters, madness, religious mania, a good old-fashioned struggle for survival: what could possibly go wrong?
Well… everything, in fact. Everything. Not even the massive foghorning beasts that lumber from the mist in the cinematic The Mist could rival the horror of this now-mercifully-cancelled misfire (and I mean ‘horror’ in its most pejorative sense here; I’ve just realised that ‘horror’ can serve as a compliment when discussing actual works of horror. There’s no compliment here, believe me). Most of what emerges from the mist in this adaptation comes in the form of hallucinatory supernatural visions , which – a few notably bat-shit moments aside – get incredibly boring almost instantly. Whilst a great deal of the action unfolds in the local mall (the short story and the movie were set almost entirely in a mid-sized supermarket) the series loses vital focus and tension by spreading its characters out across the town. I understand that having a bunch of characters rushing to a focal point for a big, meaty finale, especially when some of those separated characters hold different pieces of an explosive secret, can be thrilling to watch, but not if the writing and the acting has never moved you to care about any of the characters.
The ‘plot’, such as it is, is redolent of those post-watershed, too-hot-for-TV episodes that British soap operas occasionally indulge in, complete with sketchy characters you can’t seem to bring yourself to give a fuck about, heaped servings of am-dram histrionics, and narrative contrivances powerful enough to make your eyes roll back in your head like jackpotted Vegas slot machines. In the end, The Mist is just a bunch of people chasing each other down smoky corridors with spades, or being pursued by duff CGI, as you check the clock every 90 seconds, wondering why you aren’t doing something more worthwhile with your free time, like cheese-grating all the skin off of your face and feeding it to your cat.
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Kids, and the poor timing of their poo-poos
Our eldest son Jack, who’s three-and-a-bit, gets a small cup of fruit juice first thing in the morning with his breakfast, and pretty much drinks water the rest of the time, give or take the odd swig of diluting juice as a treat. In Scotland, where teeth and hearts have a significantly lower life-span than their host bodies, it makes sense to encourage as many healthy habits as possible, as early as possible. While our pro-H20 stance is certainly commendable it has had the unfortunate side-effect of making juice something of a taboo, and we all know how children swarm to taboos like wasps to open cans of Cola. If we’re ever lax enough to leave our own flagons of diluting juice within his reach – and we are that lax, painfully often – he’ll stand there with his fingers twitching at his side like a gunslinger’s, before grabbing for that juice as if his life depended upon it. He might manage to glug a small cup’s worth, he might manage to glug a litre. One thing’s for sure: we’re rarely quick enough to stop him.
One morning between Christmas and New Year I took him and his little brother Christopher (who’s not long turned 1) to the historic village of Culross – a favourite family haunt of ours. In the rush to get all of us ready to go I neglected to notice a big bottle of pre-mixed Ribena sitting unattended on a table-top. Jack managed to down an indeterminate volume of juice before I clocked on and managed to snatch the bottle away from him.
Even though I bade him piss before we left the house we still had to pull over on a dual carriageway minutes into the journey so he could relieve himself. We stopped again just over the bridge in the village of Kincardine, where he had to piss against one of our car’s front wheels. I caught a bit of friendly fire splash-back on my hand, so took baby-wipes out of little Chrissy’s travel-bag, spilling some of the bag’s contents on to the floor of the car in the process. We eventually reached Culross, and I hoped that Jack’s tank was now empty. It had to be, I told myself, else his bladder’s a bloody TARDIS. The three of us larked in the play-park as the winter wind threw handfuls of invisible ice at us. I ran between two swings at opposite ends of the small park – little safety-swing for Chris, big half-moon wrecking-ball swing for Jack – pushing the kids for a few seconds each time, to warm myself up as much as to amuse the boys. I soon realised that it was too cold to linger long at the unsheltered shore, so we started walking, Jack jumping along by my side, little Christopher warmly ensconced in his wind-proof buggy as I pushed and puffed him along the street.
We normally head up the hill – up the narrow, cobbled streets with their tiny hobbit doors, to the old, cold church that overlooks the town – but today I decided, in no uncertain terms, ‘fuck that’. Let’s go sideways. Let’s buck the trend and spend the entirety of our trip today going ‘along’ instead of ‘up’. Fuck ‘up’. My bones creaked with gratitude; my heart even gave a little double-thump salute. Unbeknownst to us all, horror lay along that long, flat road. I’d been so focused on dealing with the pee-pee situation that I hadn’t even considered the possibility of emergent poo-poo. I was going to pay for my poo-bris. We were about to move to Defcon BUM.
I was glad we’d gone ‘along’, as before long we discovered a community garden we hadn’t known existed. There was a large, decorated Christmas Tree just inside the entrance gate, something that wouldn’t have lasted intact for a single evening had it been erected in my urban shithole of a town; there was a pagoda, various little potting sheds, and as the garden sloped up it sent steps up past clumps of wild flowers, herbs and mini-thickets of trees, and back down again, with benches dotted at strategic points around the loop. It’s beautiful: obviously well-used and well-maintained; a real labour of love by the locals.
And we shat in it.
I’d taken Christopher out of his buggy, and left it at the main gate (again, that buggy would’ve been on bricks and on E-Bay along with the Christmas tree if this had been Grangemouth!). Jack wanted to walk up and around, and back down the garden, again and again, again and again, and we accompanied him, Jack light and spry on his feet, me beginning to feel the strain of the inert boulder of my second-born against my biceps. We’d done about four or five loops, and I just wanted it to end, and for the journey into the unknown ‘along’ to continue. But be careful what you wish for, right?
‘Daddy, I need a poo-poo! I need a poo-poo!’ cried Jack, beginning to waddle like a cowboy penguin, a hand reaching down to cup his bum.
I scanned the area. There was nowhere for him to defecate that wouldn’t be plainly visible to the whole of creation. The public toilets were a ten-minute walk away. I had to help him, but I had Christopher in my arms, and we were far away from the buggy, too far away for me to have run back to it, strapped Christopher in and wheeled him back to Jack before the klaxxon sounded for Code Brown. Shit, shit, shit, I thought – rather appositely, I suppose.
‘Daddy!’ Jack wailed.
‘OK,’ I said, beginning to pull myself together, ‘OK, down over there, behind that shed, there are a couple of trees, can you make it?’
He added a little quick-step dance to his waddle.
‘JACK, CAN YOU MAKE IT?’
This was turning into an episode of 24. DAMN IT!
‘Yes, Daddy.’
‘You can do this, son, come on, hold it in, you’re almost there.’
I bent down to help him pull down his trousers, as Christopher dangled limply over the precipice of my shoulder. There was nothing for Jack to steady himself against, so he was forced to squat. In the haste and panic I’d spared no thought for the position of his pecker relative to his trousers; in any case, he’d surely pissed every centilitre of liquid from his body over the past forty-five minutes, so additional pee-pee was severely unlikely, right? Wrong. His bum may have been poised over a wet mound of leaves, but his wee willy was aimed straight at the back of his jogging bottoms, and there was definitely still juice in the tank.
‘SON OF A BITCH!’ I snarled in frustration, as the piss skooshed out.
‘Son of a bitch!’ came the parroted reply from the little shitting – and pissing – figure below me.
‘NOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooo!’ I yelled, my trademark grace-under-fire, calm-under-pressure portion of personality really kicking in. I opened Christopher’s travel-bag to take out some nappy sacks and baby wipes, but… oh no. They were all on the floor of the car. And there, at my feet, was my piss-covered, dirty bum-med child, squatting over a big, brown, highly visible poop. There were two paper hankies in my pocket, which I had to use to wipe the worst of the poo from Jack’s bum. With nowhere to put them, they fluttered to the ground like feathers. Horrible, shit-stained feathers. I tried to kick some leaves over them.
‘What have we done?’ I asked my boys, and perhaps even the Gods themselves. There was no answer.
We headed back to the car, taking the coastal path. I watched the dark circle on the back of Jack’s slacks as he happily bobbed along just in-front of us, a stark reminder of my woeful lack of parental preparedness. I put Jack in his car seat sans trousers and tucked a blanket over him.
In the long hours that followed I couldn’t stop thinking about how I’d caused my son to have to make a ten-minute journey covered in his own piss. The fact that he didn’t seem to give a shit (if you’ll excuse the word choice) did nothing to salve my guilt. Neither could I stop thinking about how we’d desecrated and defiled a beautiful garden. Inside my thoughts and conscience I’d cast myself as some horrible X-rated panto villain. ‘OH, YOU’VE DONE SUCH A LOVELY JOB, BUT DO YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD BE A NICE ADDITION TO YOUR PRECIOUS SANCTUARY, CHILDREN AND OLD PEOPLE OF CULROSS? A BIG HUMAN SHIT! HA HA HA HA HA! AND SOME SHITTY HANKIES MUHAHAHAHAHA!!’
The next day I was haunted. Should I drive back to the scene of the crime to dispose of the evidence? What if some sweet old lady slips in it, or bashes it with her hoe and gets some hunks of it in her mouth? What if a kid finds one of the brown-tinged hankies and tries to blow their nose with it? I couldn’t bear it. It was like The Tell-Tale Heart, but with a jobby. Edgar Allan Poo! I wanted to confess. I needed to confess. Email the community association and say: ‘I admit the deed! Look behind the shed! Here, here! It is the steaming of my son’s hideous shit!’
But I didn’t.
People of Culross, if you’re reading this, rest assured that karma got me in the end. Literally. I’ve just recovered from a sickness and diarrhoea bug.
Head hung in shame, it’ll be a long time before I return to your Garden of Peed-in (I know my son shat in it, but there’s no such thing as the Garden of Shat-in, so I hope you’ll allow me some creative license).
A Very Scottish New Year’s Day 2018 – The Loony Dook
South Queensferry – New Year’s Day 2018
The Loony Dook – or the Baptism of the Bams, if you prefer – is a charity event that’s been held in South Queensferry every New Year’s Day since 1986. From a starting point of three local nutcases, the event has grown in size, scope and stature to the point where it is now considered an official part of Edinburgh’s Hogmanay/New Year’s celebrations, and attracts many thousands of participants and spectators, from the local to the international. Up to a thousand brave souls don fancy dress – or shed as many layers of clothing as sanity and decency permit – and dive, paddle, shriek and waddle into the freezing winter waters of the Firth of Forth. The Scottish participants are the bravest: a nation of people with bad hearts plunging into sub-zero temperatures after a night of heavy drinking. It takes balls – something the male participants will no longer possess after 15 seconds in the water.
My partner and I took our two kids along to see the Loony Dook this year. It’s always a good policy to expose your offspring to as many unconventional events, places and rituals as possible, to get their burgeoning, ever-stitching brains accustomed to variety, possibility and diversity. For instance, we’d love to take them to the Stonehaven Fireball Festival; to Shetland’s Up Helly Aa; to the Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake in Gloucester; to East Renfrewshire, to point out all the vile fucking reprobates who voted Tory. But the Dook is on our doorstep, and I thought a bracing trip to the sort-of-sea-side would be better than just sitting in our jammies watching movies on the couch, even if my partner didn’t necessarily agree (actually, there’s no necessarily about it – she just didn’t agree).
Loony Dook 2018
We stood along the stone pier and watched the dookers dooking. There were life-boats in the water, camera crews all around, drones and seagulls in the sky, and a succession of people dressed as hot-air-balloonists, bears and bath-tubs sploshing into the water, but still my eldest son, Jack (who is 3 and a wee bit), said: ‘This is boring. Let’s go somewhere else.’ My partner gave me a look as if to say, ‘If you wanted to see balloonists, we could’ve just stayed on the couch and watched ‘Up’, you arsehole. No matter. Jack and I had great fun skating on the film of sludgey moss and sea-weed that covered the ground at our feet. I guess it was strange and out-of-the-ordinary watching people get dried, undressed and dressed again in broad daylight on a busy high-street (“Daddy… why are all of these people naked?”) and it must’ve given him a kick to see these two chirpy alcoholics:
Not to mention people dressed as bananas. Check out the picture below this short paragrarph. It looks like two banana lovers re-uniting on the first armistice day after the Great Banana War (but don’t ever ask Daddy Banana to talk about what he did at the Battle of Fyffes).
If not for the Loony Dook South Queensferry would be a ghost town on New Year’s Day, but what shop, café or restaurant owner would be foolish enough to keep the shutters down when an unseasonable swarm of thousands of people is moving up and down the high street, especially when a high percentage of the swarm’s members are cold and wet, and in dire need of piping hot sustenance. That’s just basic supply and demand, but where The Loony Dook provides capitalism with the confidence to bolt out of the New Year starting gate with its head – and boot – held high is through the wonder of greed.
The eatery owners are more than happy to charge prices so disgustingly exorbitant that they’d make a Mafioso blush with shame. I know they’re open and working on a public holiday, and quite possibly having to pay their staff holiday rates, but they’re taking advantage of a lucrative business opportunity that wouldn’t otherwise have been afforded to them, not being forced at gunpoint to throw open their doors. Why punish the pockets of the people who’ve assembled to celebrate the twin pillars of charity and insanity? Maybe I’m just being a miserable bastard; maybe this is a sign that I’ll never be ruthless enough to run a successful business. I’ll let you decide. Guess how much one café was charging for a cup of coffee and a bacon roll?
(Drum roll) Have you guessed how much that bacon roll and coffee cost yet?
SIX POUNDS!
If I’m paying six pounds for a coffee and a bacon roll I want documented proof that I’m eating the dough-swaddled flesh of Babe, Peppa and Miss Piggy, and drinking coffee that’s been filtered through Pablo Escobar’s string-vest. If the event organisers ever decide to change tack, but still retain the shock value of the dook, they’d do well simply to lead thousands of Scots into that café to show them the menu. They’d probably need a lot more ambulance crews on stand-by.
Most terrifying of all, that’s probably just the price of a bacon roll and a coffee in South Queensferry all year round. It’s a small town with cobbled streets, bistros and a book shop. Of course a drink and a snack is six quid. I’m used to living in the Grangemouth and Falkirk area where three quid will buy you a full breakfast and an evening with a prostitute.
Anyway, how delightfully Scottish of me. I’m describing attendance at a popular fringe event where a thousand people dress in outlandish costumes and hurl themselves into the sea, and I’ve spent a significant portion of the word-count moaning about how expensive everything is.
As we were exiting the high street on our way back to the car, a half-naked husky-voiced man stood on the top tier of the walkway above us, raised his towel aloft and shouted a gravelly-voiced HAPPY NEW YEAR! If this were America, he’d have just kicked off a firework display and a ‘wooooooooooooooooooooooooo’ that lasted twelve days. Because this is Central Scotland he merely elicited the sort of half-hearted response you usually get from kids forced to say ‘Amen’ at the end of school assembly. He zoomed off down some steps, behind the church, and into a bookstore, which I presume he owned, else he was just really into reading, and wanted to get the most out of Moby Dick.
We went to the local chippie and sat on a bench overlooking the water as we ate fried-food smothered in brown sauce. We’d probably have been safer jumping head-first into the Firth.
Happy New Year.
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