Tag Archives: Coca Cola

Frustration? I can’t be arsed.

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cheWhen I worked for the Scottish Court Service I joined the union and became a representative for my office, primarily because I liked the thought of officially sanctioned time away from my desk, and indeed the entire building. It helped that most days out on union business consisted of 5 per cent conferencing to 95 per cent drinking.

Whilst installed as the office representative I became adept at asking meaningless yet persistent questions at conferences in a bid to justify my presence in the union flock. I’d say something like, “A few people in the office were asking if they could get some free pens. Well, can they?” and then nod sagely. I once half-heartedly participated in a strike for better pay conditions. I spent an entire day standing at the picket line limply clutching a sign, chain-smoking and nodding silently at everyone as they walked past me. I think I muttered ‘scab’ under my breath a couple of times, just as my hero Che Guevara would’ve done. A manager eventually brought me out a cup of coffee and a sandwich, which I accepted without hesitation. I think you’ll find that the Communist Manifesto has quite a lot to say about the importance of balancing worker solidarity with the delicious necessity of free cheese sandwiches, even if they do come from the hands of your bastard enemies.

Sometime during the steely reign of my short stewardship, our national executive issued a memo urging us to boycott Coca Cola. Coca Cola was accused of turning a blind eye to the plight of workers at its many sub-contracted South American bottling plants. Right-wing paramilitary groups – allegedly in collusion with the plants’ owners – were murdering, or otherwise ‘disappearing’, workers for the crime of organising unions. The workers were only trying to ameliorate their poor working conditions and make a better life for themselves and their families.  Coca Cola’s silence and inaction in the face of this horrific systemic homicide was taken as tacit approval of the paramilitaries’ methods. “COCA COLA? …Death-o… Cola… more like,” I’d mutter quietly to myself, before taking another sip of Coca Cola.

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My personal boycott lasted less than four hours. 9am until lunchtime. Vive le revolution! I loved Coca Cola back then, you see. Drank it every day. Came to depend upon it. It was my fizzy heroin in a can; my daily hangover cure. “Why can’t they be killing workers at Dr Pepper factories instead?” I lamented. “I fucking hate Dr Pepper.” I was ashamed of my weakness. There were men in the world who would give up blood, freedom, family and oxygen for their principles, and I couldn’t even kick Coca Cola for four fucking hours. Thankfully, I’ve long since abandoned the drink. Not for any ideological reasons. I’ve simply arrived at the conclusion that Coca Cola is a black broth of tooth-taking, penny-polishing, pancreas-punishing arse-juice that leaves your heart flopping about like a fish in a bucket. And that’s a Scotsman saying that.

When something I own breaks, I tend not to fix it, but instead force myself to adapt to the new reality of its brokenness. I once had a TV that could only be switched on if the power button at the front of the unit was pressed in as far as it could go and held there at a constant pressure. Naturally, instead of mending or replacing the TV, I pressed the button in as far as it would go, and then used a rook from my chess set and a roll of masking tape to hold it in place. I then left it like that for three years. Check mate, TV. Check mate!

When the locks in my old Fiesta started to fail one by one, rather than have it mended I simply allowed my method of entering the car to evolve naturally. When the lock on the driver’s side seized, I clambered in to the car through the passenger side. When the passenger side failed, I went in through the back seats. When all of the locks had failed, I climbed in through the boot. Every time I entered my car it looked like I was either a) participating in an all-cripple version of It’s a Knockout, or b) in the process of breaking into it. Thankfully, in the part of town in which I lived, car-jacking wasn’t an unusual occurrence, allowing me to fit in as ‘one of the lads’.

I don’t think I suffer from apathy per se, or at least not all of the time. I have an incredibly low tolerance for frustration that co-exists with a fear of failure, an expectation of failure and a rage at the world for not doing what I want it to do. If I sometimes take the easy route, or hit the button for the ejector seat, it’s less about laziness and more about saving myself an exhausting, four-letter-word-fuelled explosive meltdown.

My mum said I cried and wailed at the age of four because I couldn’t write functional computer programs on the ZX Spectrum. When I was twelve, a faulty dot-matrix printer made me so angry that I snapped a fountain pen in half, leaving me with a big blue face that took an hour to scrub clean. If I hadn’t been wearing specs I probably would’ve been blinded, no doubt learning in the process some biblical lesson about the cost of anger: a pen for a printer makes the wee fanny blind, perhaps.

When my step-sister and I linked our Gameboys together and she beat me at two-player Tetris, I headbutted my Gameboy, smashing the screen to smithereens. I hid the evidence at the bottom of a toy hamper, and waited for the heat to die down. For more on this subject, have a read of this:  http://www.denofgeek.com/games/videogames/31783/frustrating-games-in-videogame-history ).

Don’t ask me to fix finicky things, or build up intricate items of furniture from Ikea. I’ll only end up hurling them out of a window. Or standing around with a big red face promising to murder myself in a series of increasingly ludicrous ways. “If this piece doesn’t fit I swear I’m going to puncture my lung with a toothbrush, and spend my dying minutes cracking my fucking skull open by beating it against my own knee! I MEAN IT, I REALLY MEAN IT, I FUC… oh, it fits. Excellent.” (strides off whistling)

If I’m stuck in traffic, I’ll swing the car around in a cloud of f’s and c’s and take a ten-mile detour in the wrong direction rather than confront the heart-pumping frustration of a very mildly inconvenient traffic jam. The modern world makes a Hulk out of me. I’ve almost ripped worlds apart trying to open tins of corned beef.

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In my early twenties my GP referred me to a Stress Management group, which comprised a gaggle of cripplingly shy and shaky-handed people, including one old hippy guy who was in a state of terror because he thought we were all going to invite ourselves en masse to his house after the meeting. I don’t belong here with these fucking mental cases, I thought to myself, rather uncharitably, and wholly unrealistically.

Still, I thought it would be smart to keep going, in a bid to better understand my stinking thinking, and how to counteract it. Week two arrived, and I was cooking some chicken in the oven before group. I was starving, and running late. The chicken had been packaged in some sort of plastic tub, which in retrospect I don’t think should’ve been placed in the oven. The plastic warped with the heat, and when I tried to retrieve it it wobbled and wilted in my hands, sending globs of burning hot sauce all over my hands, and raining chunks of chicken down upon the kitchen floor. I hurled the floppy, half-empty tub across the room and aimed a hard kick at the oven. “THAT’S… IT!” I shouted, standing there with my arms hanging down at my waste, my fists balled in rage. “I’M TOO STRESSED OUT TO GO TO THIS STUPID FUCKING STRESS MANAGEMENT GROUP!” The delicious irony of this angry ejaculation caused me to laugh like a madman, my anger gone as quickly as it had arrived. I never made it back to the group… although I did try to break into the hippy’s house a few times.

asdasd

The independence referendum in 2014 shook me out of my apathy a little. I genuinely cared about the political process again, and desperately wanted to do my bit to bring about change, even if my bit was just talking twaddle with strangers and signing an ‘X’ on a little piece of paper. I have friends who felt moved to canvass and campaign for their parties of choice in the wake of Scotland’s political re-awakening. I thought about it. And then realised I couldn’t be arsed. Oh, there’s a town meeting tonight. Right, I’d really better get along and… actually Monday’s not a good time for me. It’s Game of Thrones night. There’s one on Wednesday, too? Hmmm. I’ll probably be a bit tired by then… OH WHAT’S THE POINT, WE’LL ALL JUST GET CRUSHED UNDER THE WHEELS OF THE MACHINE, FREE WILL IS AN ILLUSION, THE ILLUMINATI CONTROL EVERYTHING ANYWAY. Plus I’ve got to take my missus to the bingo.

Yes, I’m crazy. But I think to campaign for things – to dedicate your life to an ideal – is its own form of craziness. I’m the wrong kind of crazy to change the world. I wish I could harness my rage and frustration and point it in the direction of a worthwhile cause, but I can’t (unless it directly involves my family’s health, happiness or safety, I’m not really interested). Thankfully, there are passionate people out there with the zeal of psychopathic stamp collectors who can fly the flag on my behalf across a whole range of issues. I salute those fucking lunatics, I really do. Half-heartedly, of course.

When I can be bothered raising my arm.

PS: I started writing this in February.

Santa’s Journal (Entry 8) – May 24 2013

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I spent the morning trying to get through to Coca Cola. Kept getting their switchboard.

‘This is Frank McGarry calling,’ I said in my sternest, boomiest voice. ‘I need to speak with management.’

I always use my real name when I’m angry with them. They know I mean business when I cast off my Santa branding and let my Glasgow show. It didn’t work though. The receptionist told me that the big boss was in meetings all day. I asked for the man under him. Surprise: he’s in meetings too. And the man under him. I think I went through the entire list of staff, top to bottom, trying to find someone to take my call. It turns out that even the guy in the fucking mail room is in meetings today.

Next I called the management at Dwerg Neuken. They’d speak to me, alright, but I’d’ve been better talking to a brick wall. Christ, I’d’ve been better talking to Margaret. I got through to their CEO, some whiny-voiced arsehole by the name of Jorg Griswald, and told him in no uncertain terms that what he was doing to the elves was immoral and deplorable. That the elves were a loyal, decent and hardworking lot who didn’t deserve to have their meagre pay slashed even more. And, besides, if anybody is going to make their lives an unending misery, it should be me!

‘I am full of large apologies today, Mr madam,’ he said, his reedy Norwegian accent going up and down like an asthmatic mouse on a pogo-stick, ‘but what does our business with the little people of the snow have to do to you?’

‘What does it have to do with me?? I’m Santa Claus, motherfucker!!!’

From what I was able to piece together from his terrible command of English, Jorg will answer only to his masters at Coca Cola. I was a mere puppet, a mascot, a breathing piece of branding, scarcely a human being. His exact words were: ‘Sooner I would be taking orders from Mickey Mouse, yes?’

Which is why I’m posting him a big bag of reindeer shite. First class.

 

Santa’s Journal (Entry 7) – May 22 2013

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Gundal came to see me at the house today. Margaret let him in, and made him some scones. She keeps calling him Stephen. ‘But he reminds me of Stephen,’ she keeps telling me. But I’ve no idea who Stephen is, and the disturbing thing is: neither does she. We don’t know anyone called Stephen. Plus, Stephen is a human name. Gundal is an elf name. Gundal has an elf name, largely due to the fact that Gundal is an elf. If we did know somebody called Stephen who reminded us of Gundal, then this Stephen would be three-feet tall, with ears that looked like they’d been caught in a thresher. I worry about the old bird sometimes. Her memory’s not what it once was. It’s playing tricks on her. World-class magician tricks. With added conjuring. Because she’s even started to forget things that she hasn’t even done, and then remembering them again.

Margaret’s memory’s a relay baton being passed between illusion and reality, making a lot of our conversations feel like code-breaking sessions at Bletchley Park. She’s lucid most of the time, so I guess it’s simply yet another wonderful side-effect of ageing, like my eight-day hangovers and fierce urges to urinate that come upon me on-the-hour-every-hour, like Piss FM traffic updates. But I would seem to be her rock, in the sense that her memory and focus never seem to fail her when it comes to my transgressions. Oh, they shine like beacons in the mist of her mind, keeping her anchored to reality. That’s my justification for continuing to leave the toilet seat up and nibbling my knuckle warts, in any case. I’m being noble, and trying to keep her memory ticking over. In many ways I’m a hero, I suppose…

Anyway, I gave Gundal a leg up to one of the armchairs in our living room. Typically, elves are predisposed to jolliness – they’re not grumpy wee bastards like dwarfs. But little Gundal looked like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. His smile was a hyphen, and his eyebrows were like two thin daggers each ready to strike diagonally at their opposing nostrils.

He shared what was troubling him, and as I listened I could feel the anger bubbling in me from boots to beard. The elves have received a memo from Coca Cola telling them that they will no longer be employed directly by Coca Cola. The elves’ work has been subcontracted to a third party, some company called Dwerg Neuken, and its management has sent a communication informing the elves that there will be changes to their working hours, conditions and rates of pay; a new, harsher contract, in essence. He wants me to fight their corner, which of course I’ll do – as I always do. I just don’t know if I’ll have a leg to stand on with Coca Cola given recent events. But what the Hell. Who needs legs when you’ve got fists?

Santa’s Journal – (Entry 6) May 19 2013

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It looks like I’m getting a visit from those suit-wearing, soul-sucking sons of bitches at Coca Cola. They claim to have photographic evidence of corporate vandalism, and want to ‘have a little chat’ about my ‘plans for the future’, and discuss the ‘ins and outs of my contract.’ I know euphemisms when I hear them. That’s like when a mafia boss kisses you on both cheeks and tells you he’s always loved you. The piano wire and cement shoes can’t be too far away. So I could be getting the retirement of my dreams after all. And all it took was an unwholesome quantity of alcohol, and a heap of reckless abandon.

I wondered, though, exactly what evidence they might have, so I assembled the elves for a meeting. Gundal, my head elf, told me that on the night of his birthday I ordered thirty of the elves to trample ‘FUCK COCA COLA’ into one of the snow dunes, a message that has now frozen in fifty-foot-high letters. Not only that, but I made them pour thousands of vats of Coke into the trenches, which also froze, leaving a big brown message which apparently is visible from space.

Also, one of the elves got the pictures he took that night developed, and from the evidence it looks like I traveled way further than Glasgow on my drunken tour. This picture was taken in Bulgaria, and they say I was responsible for most of the painting. I believe them. Pretty good, if I do say so myself.

Santa’s Journal (Entry 4) – May 14 2013

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Last night’s party for Gundal was so good I woke up in Greenland. The flight home was a bit shaky, because the reindeers were still a bit pissed, too. Six of them vomited into the Arctic Ocean, and I caught a bit of splash-back. I’m sure we’ve left a few elves behind. I might send one of the more responsible elves back with Rudolph later in the day to do a reconnoitre/search-and-rescue thingy.

Margaret was pretty furious with me. Worried sick, she was. She left the community centre quite early in the evening complaining of a headache, and I said I wouldn’t be too far behind her. By this point, however, I was dressed as a polar bear and roaring at elves, so maybe she shouldn’t have put so much stock in my promise. I guess I’m just trying to rationalise in light of my shenanigans. Margaret said to me this afternoon that I should start acting my age and have a bit more respect for myself. Especially since all of the elves look up to me. By the time she uttered that line I was too hungover even to do the obvious and cruel elf-related height joke. So I vomited into a bucket instead.

‘You should be top of your own naughty list, Frank McGarry!’ she told me.

That’s my real name: Frank. I’m not supposed to reveal that information for fear of contractual reprisals. ‘Brand continuity’ and ‘image integrity’ are the relevant buzz-words here, I believe. But I come from a long line of Santa Claus’s. We’re not immortal; just ordinary Joes living in extra-ordinary circumstances, working for a bunch of extra-ordinary arseholes. There are rites of succession, sort of like what they do with Popes. We die, and another Santa takes our place, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum.

No more journal today, though. My skull feels like it’s filled with explosive eels. And I’ve got a dear wife to crawl to, and sick to scrub.

Santa’s Journal (Entry 3) – May 12 2013

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Spent most of the morning revising my ‘Naughty List’. Coca Cola told me I couldn’t use one anymore, that no child could be excluded from Santa’s services no matter how bad their behaviour. I’ve got the memo here somewhere. Ah, yes.

‘It is not your responsibility as one of our major brand representatives, nor the responsibility of Coca Cola itself, its subsidiaries or shareholders, to comment on or offer judgement upon the behaviour of individual customers or to create criteria under which customers could be excluded from our services based on arbitrary and often subjective codes of conduct. Coca Cola is a profit-driven company, and those profits, and indeed our brand, would suffer if we were to behave in this manner. Moral positions are best adopted and enforced by the church, and penalties best enforced through the legal system. It is not in our interests to attempt to fulfill the roles of either institution.’

So, roughly translated: ‘It doesn’t matter if some wee cunt’s put a brick through an old disabled woman’s window, doused her beloved pet-cat in paraffin, set it alight and then taken potshots at its screaming body with a pellet gun; so long as his parents are prepared to spend more money than they have in their bank accounts on Christmas presents, and continue to encourage their Hell-spawn to glug Coca Cola in quantities that would obliterate an elephant’s pancreas, then who gives a flying Yeti’s bawbag?’ I’m no legal eagle, but I do have a first-class honours degree in Reading Between the Lines, and a doctorate in Advanced Bullshit Detection.

Margaret took my blood-pressure again today. It’s high. My heart’s smacking around in my old chest like a jet-propelled pin-ball.

A photo of Snelling, reproduced in the interests of public safety. WARNING: he doesn’t normally look like Barry Cryer. He’s a master of disguise. BEWARE.

Anyway, Innis Snelling. He’s definitely top of the naughty list this year. I won’t go into too much detail and defile my memoirs with a record of his disgusting misdeeds, but suffice to say he got up to some sickening, sexual, banana-related ethnic tomfoolery. And what’s with the lad’s name? He sounds like a rejected Harry Potter villain. No toys for you, motherfucker.

Wee Gundal the elf’s birthday bash tonight. That should relax me.

 

 

Santa’s Journal (Entry 2) – May 11 2013

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Scrunch, scrunch, scrunch. I was walking back from the shop when it really struck me. Scrunch, scrunch. That noise, that sickening noise of boot on snow, like a rat gnawing through my skull. Snow. How much I hate it. White, endless white, it’s all the eye can see. I’d punch it if I thought it would make a blind bit of difference.

I’ve been thinking about it since yesterday. Escape. Screw the threat of legal action and the loss of pension. That’s what I should do, just escape. Get a hold of some false identities, shave off my beard, scoop up Margaret and then the pair of us bugger off to Barbados or somewhere equally sun-kist, to be collected by the Grim Reaper replete with burgeoning melanomas and livers gone wonky through one too many beach-front cocktails. Sounds like bliss to me. Fuck Christmas, fuck children and an extra-special fuck reserved for those sharp-suit wearing sons of dogs at Coca Cola.

I used to really enjoy my job, the status of being Santa – it used to really mean something. And the snow didn’t rankle so much when I felt like I was making a difference. Not now though. It was around the conclusion of the six-thousandth snowball fight that the malaise really kicked in, and shortly after the construction of the nine-thousand-and-fiftieth snowman. How I despise snowmen now. Now, at Christmas time, when I go on my deliveries, I take great delight in decapitating those I find in children’s gardens. Sometimes, with a hearty laugh, I sculpt sets of biologically intricate genitalia onto their icy bodies. The snowmen, that is. Not the children. To pass the long, bitter and freezing days here in the North Pole I’ve taken to erecting rows of snowmen, blindfolding them and mowing them down with an industrial strength hairdryer. Sometimes I douse them in petrol and set them alight. I swear that sometimes I can even hear them scream. Maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

Santa’s Journal (Entry 1) – May 10 2013

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I really want to retire, that’s the truth. But I won’t let those bastards at Coca Cola force me out. When I go, I’m going with my pension. So if they’re unhappy with my performance and general attitude to the work, and I’m unhappy being locked into this uninspiring life of snow and misery, then so be it. We’ll just have to be mutually unhappy; but happy that the lawyers too will be unhappy.

They are a shower of bastards, though, Coca Cola. I asked if I could relocate my North Pole base to the Southern hemisphere throughout the winter and spring months, but they said ‘no’. Gave me some shit about ‘brand coherence and continuity.’ So I’ve got to freeze my balls off like Nicholson in a hedge maze just in-case some kid breaks down in a heap cause they’ve seen Santa sauntering through Spain with a fucking Hawaiian shirt on. As if they’d recognise me. I even said I’d shave my beard, but, no, they said. ‘Your beard is the property of Coca Cola, Mr Claus.’

That’s why I’ve switched to drinking Pepsi. It’s not much, but it feels to me like the first strike of a guerrilla war. I can’t even change this coat, or deviate from the Coca Cola corporate colour scheme for fear of a law-suit. That’s definitely something I don’t want to be wearing. Every time I look down at the blood-red of my sleeve I feel more and more like I’m wearing a strait-jacket.

I remember when I used to be happy here. Where did it all go wrong?

 


Skinflats and the Magic Torch

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The bonnie village of Skinflats.

Skinflats is actually quite a nice wee village, and I’m not just saying that incase some of its residents read this article. Well, OK, there’s a little of that. Have you seen some of the people who live there? Big leg-o’-lamb arms, match-strike chins and shotgun licences. (hack punchline alert) And that’s just the women! Do you know what Salmand Rushdie’s agent said to him when he was writing ‘The Satanic Verses’?

‘Say what you like about Mohammed, mate, but for fuck’s sake don’t slag off Skinflats.’

‘You aint from around here, are ya, boy?’

The village is surrounded by acres of fields (or, to give them their local name: the burial grounds). Those fields are to the people of Skinflats what the empty desert is to the mobsters of Las Vegas. Many a fingerless hand and a brutally disembodied boaby sleeps with the bushes up them thar fields. So, if it’s all the same with you, I’ll just say nice things. I want to be Robert de Niro in this movie; let some other daft cunt be Joe Pesci.

What I will say is this: I had the pleasure of working in Skinflat’s local shop many, many years ago, and found the village to be a lot like Brookside Close. But with slightly more laughs. And a lot more hidden corpses.

Skinflats, though, eh? What a name. It sounds like the sort of place lost hillwalkers stumble across in the dead of night, tragically unaware that its inhabitants are all horrifically disfigured mutant cannibal serial killers who live in tents made from human flesh. The sort of place whose name you’d never expect to utter without the accompaniment of terrifying, Castle-Dracula-style thunder claps. The sort of place that would make an estate agent say: ‘Well, congratulations on your land purchase. I hope Skinflats proves to be a lucrative location for your new motel, Mr Bates.’

David Beckham was so distressed when Seb Cole told him he had to go to Skinflats, that he started to morph into Bruce Forsyth.

So what was I doing there? Taking a walk down memory lane? Admiring the scenery? Scoring drugs? No, it was Olympic Torch day. The flame had been to Stirling and Falkirk that morning, and was about to be carried through Skinflats on its way to Fife and Edinburgh. The people of Skinflats were overjoyed to be having their ten minutes of fame.

‘This’ll put Skinflats on the map,’ I heard someone say. No. No it won’t. An air strike would put Skinflats on the map. Tomorrow, they won’t even be talking about this in Bo’ness, much less London. Even in fifty years time when some plucky lad who got the day off school to see the flame pass through the village tries to remember the splendour of the day, he won’t be able to differentiate this real memory from the sixteen-thousand acid flashbacks also housed in his brain. ‘I’m sure it was a zombie Colonel Gaddafi running down the street with that flame. Just as the air strike hit.’

Anyway, maybe he can just re-read this blog and it’ll all come flooding back to him. The day was nice and bright and sunny, and the whole village was bustling with people waving flags, cracking jokes, and smiling and laughing, and generally having an awesome time. I dunno; maybe they were just drunk.

Normally if you saw a guy carrying a flaming torch through Skinflats, you’d expect the rest of the villagers to be right behind him with pitchforks shouting, ‘Burn the monster!’ Or, at the very least: ‘The Sun says there’s a paedo living somewhere within a fifty-mile radius. Let’s burn the fucker who moved into number 27 last week, just incase! Anyway, he said ‘hello’ to my daughter this morning, and that’s how it starts!’

But this day was different. Even the convoy of police bikes was greeted with warm, uproarious cheers. This struck me as odd. Like George Bush being carried through Baghdad by way of a jovial mass crowd-surf. Usually the arrival of police vehicles in Skinflats causes a mass exodus, or at the very least turns the village into a fortress: with every snib on every door clicking shut, and those behind the doors jamming them up with tables and wardrobes, and blacking out the windows, like they’re preparing to survive to the end of a zombie film.

The bike cops clearly thought they were the star attraction, as they gunned it down the street giving a series of wacky waves and salutes. One cop even gave a rolling five slap down a line of children’s hands. You might be cheering now, kids, but that’s the cunt who’ll be arresting you for cocaine possession in eight to ten years – which, coincidentally, will also be your sentence.

The best thing about the torch coming through Skinflats was the traffic chaos that preceded its arrival. A long jam of angry, self-conscious people all trapped in their cars, whilst a whole village peered at them. They must have felt like they’d gone for a day out at the safari park, and broken down in the lion enclosure. I tried to stare at as many of them as possible.

The Cunta-Cola truck.

It wasn’t long before a procession of yellow Olympic vehicles came trundling through the village. Lots of cars that looked like New York taxis. And the Coca Cola truck, of course, with a gang of reps walking beside it handing out free bottles of cola. Principles be damned: it was a hot day and I was thirsty. That freebie was gubbed. I know McDonalds sponsor the Olympics, too, and was a little annoyed that they hadn’t sent a truck laden with free beefburgers. Bank of Scotland had a truck in the procession, too, with some English cunt on its open top-deck dancing like a dick to shitty pop music. No free money getting handed out, I noticed.

Nice choice of sponsors for an international sporting event: Coca Cola, McDonalds, and Bank of Scotland. ‘Hey, kids. You’re all going to be fat bastards with diabetes and no pensions. LET’S FUCKING CELEBRATE!’

Eventually the guy with the flaming torch got off of his little yellow bus, jogged for about 100 metres, everybody cheered, and then he got back on his bus again, the lazy bastard. And I’m glad I was there to see it. One day I’ll be telling my grandkids about this. Telling them how shit it was. The free Cola was good, though.

This is the best picture I could manage!

* sincere apologies to the people of Skinflats. I love you all, you know I was only having a laugh (ie, please don’t kill me – I’m trying to put you on the map!).

** Note to foreign readers of the site, especially Americans. Skinflats genuinely is a lovely village, and also the birthplace of William Wallace, so do come visit if you’re flying in to Edinburgh. Thanks, Jamie.