Tag Archives: Falkirk

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 4, Eps 7 – 10

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Part 17: Let’s do the time warp again

Wherein the whole gang’s back in the past, and things don’t exactly go according to plan

I’m convinced that a harrowing fate awaits the Frasers in the fourth season finale. Perhaps not the immolation fated in the archived newspapers discovered in the 1960s – that would be too obvious, and rather hard for the show to bounce back from – but something equally painful and transformative. Until then, we’ve got a veritable banquet of quests, grudges and reunions to feast upon.

In this clutch of episodes Roger finds Brianna, Brianna finds Claire, and Jamie’s fist finds Roger’s face. Many times. As the Frasers are moved around the chess-board of life by the wicked hand of fate, we discover that it isn’t God, or the devil, or Lady Luck that owns that hand, but Stephen Bonnett.

To describe the amoral, psychopathic Irishman as the Fraser family’s arch nemesis is to undersell his evil and understate his omnipresence in their lives. He’s the demonic force that shapes their feelings, their decisions, their movements, their every waking moments. His ability to wreak destruction upon the Fraser family even when he’s not even trying to or even really thinking about them makes Black Jack Randall in comparison seem about as malevolent as a little kid taking a surreptitious poo in the next door neighbour’s koi carp pond.

Bonnett is much, much worse than Black Jack. There was at least a twisted symmetry to Black Jack, some semblance of a code, a hint that some part of his soul might once have been salvageable. Bonnett very rarely bothers to put a positive spin on his actions. He knows he’s utterly bereft of noble impulses, and throws himself into murderous debauchery all the more enthusiastically for it. Black Jack occasionally fooled himself that he was righteous or justified. I don’t know. Maybe that makes Bonnett ‘better’, relatively speaking. It definitely makes his evil purer, even if it does make his character seem a little less nuanced.

In ‘Down the Rabbit Hole’, Roger and Brianna briefly become the series leads, and we get to imagine what Outlander might look like sans Jamie and Claire. The verdict? Perfectly fine for an episode, but I’m in no rush to see a spin-off series.

During their solo adventures the two young lovers find themselves trapped in a web of fate and misfortune; their respective journeys to Wilmington putting them at the mercies of their parent’s greatest and most dangerous (living) adversaries: Bonnett and Laoghaire.

Roger’s path through the stones leads directly to Bonnett and his ship, the crew of which Roger blusters his way onto to secure passage to the new world. Both men are unaware that the tendrils connecting them to each other will soon reach out and grab Brianna, too.

Poor Roger. We’ve all had bad bosses in our time, but I’d wager that very few of them ever gave us pause to think that they might chuck a baby into the ocean . ‘Don’t worry,’ Bonnett’s fixed smile seemed to say to us, ‘I wouldn’t throw a fecking BABY overboard, and frankly I’m offended at the fecking suggestion.’ He would, however, throw a little girl with smallpox overboard without a moment’s hesitation, an act of brutal pragmatism that revolts us in direct inverse proportion to how very little it surprises us.

When Roger later encounters his direct ancestors, a woman and her tiny little baby, the latter carrying a rash that might very well be mistaken for smallpox by a certain sociopathic sea-captain, Roger knows he has no choice but to play hero and help hide them. By helping them, Roger knows that Bonnett might very well kill him for his insolence and insubordination, but if Bonnett were to find and kill the baby, then Roger would cease to exist. As options go, it’s a lot like the choice between Butlins, and, well, Butlins.

Upon discovering Roger’s treachery Bonnett inexplicably becomes Two-Face from Batman, recalling how he once avoided death by the mercy of a coin-toss, and resolving to decide Roger’s fate in exactly the same way. Roger lives to tell the tale, of course, although one thing becomes instantly and abundantly clear: there’s no human resources department on Bonnett’s ship. Or if there is it’s a particularly bad one.

Things don’t go too well for Brianna, either. Within seconds of arriving in ye olde Scotland, she’s rolled down a hill and sprained her ankle, leaving her half-dead and hobbling before she’s even left Inverness. While Brianna shares her mother’s impulsivity, it isn’t tempered by her mother’s hardiness and resourcefulness. Never mind 18th century Scotland: Brianna wouldn’t even survive a night-out in Glasgow in 2019. Mind you, who would.

Brianna eventually – and literally – falls into the clutches of Laoghaire, who actually seems like quite a nice person when she isn’t repeatedly trying to kill Claire. It isn’t long before the spurned banshee learns the identity of the wandering invalid in her care, which triggers a reassuringly chilling primal response. Thought you’d gone all human on us there, lassie. Welcome back, Laoghaire, you narcissistic nut-case.

It’s clear that the intervening years haven’t expanded her repertoire of vengeful acts: decrying someone as a witch is still very much her cold dish of choice. Luckily for Brianna, Laoghaire’s daughter, Joan, isn’t an absolute fucking maniac, and helps Bri escape to Lallybroch, where her Old Uncle Ian secures her passage to the new world. Before she leaves, Bri redeems her earlier near-death prat-falling by doing something so utterly Claire-like that she almost out-Claires Claire. She rescues a young lassie called Lizzie from sexual servitude, and takes her with her to America as her paid assistant. Way to go, sister.

Far across the ocean, Claire is enjoying a rather warmer relationship with Laoghaire’s eldest daughter. Mind you, it’s not that hard to go warmer than ‘I’m going to have you burned alive as a witch’. Claire and Marsali’s mama talk is sweet, but demonstrates great delusion on Claire’s part, especially when she says: ‘Ah, your kids. You’d do anything for them. Anything.’

Em, except, you know, resist the urge to jump through a time-portal and abandon them for the rest of their adult lives.

Now that Jamie and Claire are landowners, they get to do things like swank around at big social functions and meet all of the big celebrities of the day, like George Washington, and a young Keith Richards. It isn’t all hob-nobbing and networking, though. While attending a play in Wilmington, Claire’s called upon to use her surgical skills, and Jamie has to play fifth columnist.

The two plot points weave into and around each like vines up a tree. Governor Tryon’s guest, and fellow robber of the people, Mr Edward Fanning, experiences insufferable pain from a particularly vicious hernia (HER-nia? Should be a HIM-nia, am I right, ladies???). When Claire mentions that he might require surgery, Fanning bats away the suggestion like it was a poo-footed blue-bottle, certain that Claire’s vagina disqualifies her from saying anything to him with any deeper resonance than, ‘Oooh, would you like some biscuits?’

When Jamie learns, half-way through watching the play, that his old pal Murtagh and his band of Regulators are about to be rumbled as they rob a carriage filled with tax money, on account of a government spy in their midst, he knows he needs a distraction to get the word out. This he finds in Fanning’s hernia, which he wallops with all of his might. ‘Accidentally’, of course. In steps Claire the surgeon, ready to rifle through Fanning’s guts for as long as necessary to make sure Murtagh doesn’t end up leaving this world swinging on a rope, his skin as blue as a sunbathing Scotsman.

It’s hard not to sympathise with Murtagh’s aims, and Jamie’s sympathy with them, when Governor Tryon is such a cartoonishly wicked elitist bastard, and the kind of man who says things like: ‘Those wretches don’t want their taxes to go towards my palace,’ stopping just short of adding ‘Muhahahahaha!’ after it. Murtagh’s moltenly socialists schemes, however violent in execution, can’t fail to seem noble when weighed against the extravagant and thoroughly corrupt spending plans of a cossetted, wig-wearing, arrogant buffoon like Tryon.

Eric Joyce

I’m reminded of a real-world, close-to-home example of a political figure abusing the public purse, if you’ll indulge the brief diversion. Our town once elected an MP called Eric Joyce. Eric was one of the most prolific expense fiddlers and spender-of-money-that-wasn-t-his that Westminster has ever seen. Seriously, he almost topped the expense scandal league table. He eventually appeared on BBC’s Newsnight to defend his place at the top of the list, hilariously claiming that he spent tens of thousands of pounds on framed paintings for his constituency office, because his constituents ‘wanted to see nice paintings’ when they attended his surgery. Not if they’re at your surgery to complain about their MP spending tens of thousands of pounds on paintings with tax-payers money, Eric, you glutton.

Google Eric Joyce’s name and you’ll find reports of reckless spending, lewd and lascivious behaviour, drunkenness and brawling, a cocktail of behaviours that his opponents claimed made him no longer fit to represent the people of Falkirk. Of course, if you’ve ever been to Falkirk you’ll know that he’s probably the most representative politician the town has ever had. Eric being a Falkirk MP was like making Charlie Sheen the mayor of Sodom and Gomarrah. Namely, absolutely perfect. Anyway, I digress. Eric’s boorish behaviour does, however, lead us quite neatly into talking about throwbacks to another time and place…

Let’s talk about Claire, and the attitudes poured on her by the pompous pricks of the day, whether that day is in the 20th or the 18th century. Claire continually has to prove her skills, intelligence and worth in the deeply patriarchal societies she’s cursed to flit between, with the added worry that if she ever fails she’ll probably be thrown in jail or burned as a witch or something. When an old male surgeon arrives at Wilmington and sees Claire operating on Edward Fanning, he splutters: ‘What hath hell wrought? You’ve butchered him. All he needed was tobacco smoke up the rear.’

All he needed was… em, all he needed was what? Was tobacco smoke up the rear a real thing? Is that where the phrase ‘blowing smoke up your arse’ comes from? Being a doctor in the 18th century sounds like it was quite easy, doesn’t it? Seems all you had to do was sit back in your chair nonchalantly chain-smoking cigarettes, remembering occasionally to puff one up a patient’s arse. And if anyone came in with a mental health problem or a neurological disorder, you’d simply burn them as a witch. Then off to the course for a few rounds of golf, whether it had been invented yet or not!

Imagine going to the doctors with a stiff knee and the doctor smoking a pipe through your bum-hole. What remedies did they offer for people who attended surgery with sore arses? The mind boggles. Along with various other body parts. Did a tender butt-hole call for a different treatment, or just a bigger fire? ‘Nurse, this man is about to prolapse. Fetch the wicker man and a hundred gallons of kerosene. And be quick about it, by God, his star’s already starting to collapse!’

Anyway, this episode handled the tension, sense of mounting dread, rising stakes and intersecting plot lines very well. Mercifully, Fanning’s operation was a success, and Murtagh was able to escape the trap that had been set for him by Tryon, all of which allowed Claire and Jamie to retain their place unscathed at the top of the high-society power-couple league table.

Some time not long after after maw and paw’s close shaves at the theatre, Brianna reaches ye olde America. So does her dutiful, but also rather dastardly, beau, Roger, who surprises her with a make-shift marriage ceremony and the altogether less welcome revelation that he’d known about the prophecy of her parents’ deaths all along and deliberately chosen not to tell her. No sooner are they (sort-of) married with a bit of hand-fasting than the whole thing looks set to collapse quicker than a Mackenzie clansman at an all-you-can-drink whisky festival.

I’m sure I’m not alone in seeing the seeds of serial abuse in Roger. He’s an emotional rapist, a passive-aggressive man-child who uses guilt to get what he wants, reacting to any slight – perceived or real – with the whiny, self-regard of a spoiled toddler. I don’t know if this is because he’s a typical man of the 1960s, or if he’s just an asshole for the ages. In any case, you can’t argue with his love and affection for Brianna. It’s not every man who’ll literally jump through time, risking life and limb, to track down his lover. Mind you, it’s also not every man who’ll conceal the truth of said lover’s parents’ fiery death so he can get his leg over. Swings and roundabouts, I suppose.

Roger and Brianna’s subsequent fight feels rather stagey and hollow, hitting a note of theatrical melodrama where a more naturalistic tone would’ve better served the mood and the material. It’s perhaps not the fight we wanted, but it’s the fight that we needed, setting the narrative on a collision course with a most unpalatable, status quo-shattering event that will leave ripples in the timeline for seasons to come.

(sigh) Yep. Another rape.

This time it’s poor Brianna’s turn to bear the horror, running fresh from her fight with Roger straight into the lair of that dastardly fiend Steven Bonnett.

At this stage I think the only member of Jamie’s immediate and extended family who hasn’t been seriously sexually assaulted is his brother-in-law, Ian, and with that limp of his he’d best start taking some precautions.

Brianna’s rape is particularly ugly and vicious, and that’s saying a lot in a series that specialises in vicious and ugly rapes. Bonnett’s brutality and callousness is magnified by the insouciance of his equally callous henchmen, who sit around laughing and playing cards as Brianna screams and cries for help in the room next door.

I can’t see Bonnet making it out of this season’s finale alive once Jamie finds out about his attack on his daughter. I imagine Jamie will hang, draw and quarter Bonnett, sending each of his chopped, stretched and lacerated body parts through the stones to a different time zone. One to the age of the dinosaurs, one to the Mongol hordes, one to the battle of Ypres, and one, finally, and most devastatingly of all, to present-day Greenock.

Roger eventually makes it to Fraser’s Ridge – or near it, in any case – but unfortunately for him the first person to spot him is Lizzie, who saw him quarreling with Brianna before the attack, and in the intervening weeks arrived at the conclusion that Roger was the assailant. She reports the sighting and its significance to Jamie, who intercepts Roger on the fringes of his land, denying him the chance to communicate by repeatedly smashing him in the face until Roger’s eye-lids are like two boiled eggs sprouting from his brow, and his face is slick with blood. I genuinely thought Jamie had killed him.

Now THAT’S an awkward first-meeting with your father-in-law. Greg Focker might’ve regretted his evening of smashed urns and milking cats over at Robert de Niro’s house, but it’s certainly better than being beaten to death before you can so much as say ‘I’ve got nipples too, Greg. Could you milk me?’

Jamie and Bri’s first encounter is a little sweeter and more sanguine than the attempted murder that befalls Roger. In-keeping with Outlander’s signature style of marrying the sacred with the profane, Bri meets her father for the first time as he’s standing in an alleyway taking a piss. The scene quickly segues from slap-stick into real, intense emotion, the musical score and the performances combining to make this Jamie – the one who’s writing this rundown – leak almost as much as screen-Jamie did in that alley-way. But, you know, from my eyes. I realise I’ve made it sound like I’m saying the scene made me wet myself.

I didn’t wet myself! [OK, Jamie, don’t protest too much, son]

Outlander is good at the special moments; the big pay-offs: Jamie reuniting with Murtagh, Brianna meeting her father for the first time. It’s not always so good at following through. The longer Brianna spent in her father’s company, the more they seemed to settle into a ping-pong of hoary and expository dialogue. You could feel nothing of the weight of their shared but separate history.

For the reasons of rape and Roger already outlined, the happy family reunion doesn’t stay happy for long, and a very contrite Jamie has to help retrieve the hapless, half-dead Roger from the native Americans who bought him as a slave. Except Roger doesn’t need their help. He found his own way to escape their clutches. He may also have found another, less-traceable route of escape: another set of stones.

Should he stay or should he go now?

You probably already know what decision he makes. I’ve yet to find out.

Three episodes to go and then I’m in-step with transmission. Soon there’ll be no more bingeing for this late convert to the show.

A few final, disjointed thoughts

  • Wee Ian looked a little crestfallen when Brianna was introduced as his cousin, the wee perv. Don’t worry, Ian, just head south and take her with you.
  • Claire’s go-to face seems to involve her eyes shifting back and forth in her head like a haunted painting, or a ventriloquist’s bear.

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READ THE REST – Click below

Why I want to binge-watch Outlander

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 1, Eps 1 – 4

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 1, Eps 5 – 8

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 1, Eps 9 – 12

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 1, Eps 13 – 16

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 2, Eps 1 – 4

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 2, Eps 5 – 7

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 2, Eps 8 – 10

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 2, Eps 11 – 12

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 2, Ep 13

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 3, Eps 1 – 3

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 3, Eps 4 – 5

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 3, Eps 6 – 7

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 3, Eps 8 – 10

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 3, Eps 11 – 13

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 4, Eps 1 – 3

Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 4, Eps 4 – 6

30 Things You Didn’t Know About Scotland

A Rave for Kids?

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© Photography by Khristopher Morgan for Here & Now (fb.com/weareherenandow)

Falkirk nightclub ‘Temple’ recently applied for a variation to its license to allow it to operate as a venue for children’s ‘rave’ events during the day. Councillor Robert Bisset, sitting on the Licensing Board, said he wanted to delay a ruling until more and better lighting had been installed in the club.

I understand the health-and-safety implications of a horde of hyperactive kids jumping around in a dark room, but it’s obvious that not one single member of that board has ever been to a rave, else they would have known that darkness is something of a prerequisite, not to mention a necessity.

If adults were to have a rave in a brightly-lit room, the cumulative effect of all those illuminous togs, jutting limbs and sweating, gurning faces bouncing up and down to a thumping, whizz-bang beat would be too disgusting and absurd for its participants to bear, and they’d all have to go home and sit in a corner for three days, rocking back and forth while trying to peel the skin from their faces.

Light burns; darkness salves.

Do we really need to inculcate our kids into raves, anyway? I understand that the ravers of yesterday want their kids to follow in their footsteps, but so soon? I did a lot of things in the late 1990s, most of them entirely unsavoury. I wasn’t once inspired to think, ‘You know what, I hope my kids get the chance to go hunting for drugs one day, too. But, you know: when they’re six!’

Surely the adult world can wait. What are we going to do to them next? Put them in little suits and see if they can blag mortgages for their Wendy houses? Make them sit through an awkward-as-fuck dinner party? Send them to the vet and force them to witness a series of increasingly harrowing hamster euthanasias?

What would a rave for the under 6’s look like anyway?

Let’s just imagine that for a moment or two…

Come regress with me.

At the kids’ rave

The beat drops for Baby Shark. There’s a scream and everyone starts juddering like crazy across the dance-floor, except for one boy sitting cross-legged at the side of the hall, who rolls his eyes and mutters something about Baby Shark being ‘soooo 2018’ and a ‘passing fad’.

‘It’s too commercialised now,’ says Felicia, a little girl wearing an ‘In the Night Garden’ T-shirt. She squats down next to him in solidarity.

He rips open his buttoned cardigan to show her his ‘Teletubbies’ T-shirt, and then gives her a disgusted look.

‘Don’t try to rave with me, newbie. I’m old school. I busted moves to Pingu, shufflin’ it penguin-style, when you were still swimming in your dad’s nut-sack. I watched Postman Pat before the pube-headed, speccy twat went airborne. OLD school. You feel it?’

‘I’ve seen Rugrats,’ she says haughtily.

‘Bitch, I’m wearing Rugrats mother***ing Y-fronts.’

He gets up and starts strutting away, shouting back over his shoulder:

‘I can’t be seen with you. You’re a fraud. I’m going home to listen to DJ Peppa Pig’s Sick Licks. ON FUCKING VINYL!’

He struts away, his finger held aloft behind him. ‘BYE Felicia.’

It’s the wrong finger, but she gets the idea.

A new tune bangs out across the room. The crowd are going wild, joining hands and jumping up and down, side to side, like one massive conjoined entity: a ska-beast, its veins pulsing pink-and-green on the dimly-lit dance-floor. “PAW PATROL, PAW PATROL, BE THERE ON THE DOUBLE! PAW PATROL, PAW PATROL…YEAH, LEMME HEAR Y’ALL MOTHERFUCKERS SING IT! YEAH, THAT’S RIGHT, SAVE THAT MOTHERFUCKING CHICKEN, Y’ALL, DOGGY-STYLE!”

Wayne, a stocky five-year-old, is out on the dance-floor in the middle of the throng, dancing like a boy possessed. Mainly because he’s absolutely off his tits on E-numbers. He’s had a line of Sherbet, a pure rock of Twix, and a half-bar of Milky Way that’s been cut with Smarties. Not to mention shit-loads of Coke. He’s throwing some shapes. Literally. He’s throwing squares, triangles, circles, rectangles, right at the other kids’ heads. Big thick Fisher Price plastic shapes.

A few feet away from him is Kade, a nursery kid with rhythm in his bones. The crowd’s created some distance between itself and Kade, not because Kade’s such a good dancer that he deserves space to ply his art, but because Kade’s shat himself. Violently. He’s flicking grotty smears of butt-gravy each time he shakes his hips. It’s splatting out of the sides of his nappy like Beethoven’s drool. A little girl a few feet away from him gets a splat of it on her dress, but because her parents are hippies, it goes with the pattern and she doesn’t notice. And still Kade dances, his arms thundering like pistons, his head bobbing like a Churchill dog in the back windscreen of a race-car.

‘CROWD SURF!’ he shouts, and everyone edges further away from him.

Back over at the side of the hall is Isaac, who’s been trying to blend into the wall. He’s wearing designer sandals, khaki cut-offs and a long face. He sees Felicia looking sad, and shuffles over to her. He’s no gentleboy, though; no knight in shining armour. He just knows a captive audience when he sees one.

Isaac sits down next to Felicia and tries to introduce himself over the din. ‘I’m Isaac, yeah? I’m 4 and a quarter. I love these things. You can’t just feel the music, sometimes it feels like you ARE the music, yeah?’

Felicia picks at one of her nostrils and stares at him through one heavy-lidded eye, sighing audibly. Undeterred, Isaac continues: ‘Yeah, you probably haven’t seen me around. I’m actually taking a gap year from nursery this year. It was sapping my shakra, man, I needed some room to grow, you know?’

She jams her finger up the other nostril, and plucks out a runny dollop of squidgy bogey. She grinds it into Iggle Piggle’s eye, all the while staring dead ahead at Isaac, who hasn’t noticed a thing. In fact, he isn’t even looking at her anymore.

‘Yeah, I’m working on a novel, actually, it’s a conceptual piece, my Dad says it’s the best thing he’s ever read, it’s all about how school doesn’t actually exist, yeah, and there’s this dog, but it can talk, yeah, and you find out it represents the main character’s grief at his gran dying, man, but really it’s a love story for our age, yeah?’

‘PSSSSSSST,’ hisses a boy standing over them. He opens his jacket to reveal a row of lollies above a row of packets of sherbet.

‘How much for the jacket?’ asks Felicia.

In a perfect turn of events, the 2017 club remix of ‘Johnny Johnny Yes Papa’ thumps into life around them.

The dealer looks down at Isaac’s shorts and sandals with a sneer. ‘Who buys your clothes? Your mum?’

‘Em, yeah,’ he says. ‘I’m four. Our mums… all our mums buy our clothes. Who… who buys your clothes?’

The dealer smiles. ‘Good point, son. Want to get fucked up before our mums come to pick us up?’

Isaac shoots to his feet. ‘Let’s party like it’s … well, right now.’

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Circus Vegas: Europe Meets the USA

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circusvegas

My home-town of Falkirk often feels like an urban version of The League of Gentlemen, only without the laughs. And thrice the horror.

But Falkirk tries, dammit. After all, it brings us Circus Vegas every year, treating us to the kind of dazzling display of Yankee razzmatazz that only a group of touring Albanians can provide. Actually, I don’t know if the Circus Vegas team are Albanians, but I went last year and heard the ringmaster talk, and it’s fair to say that his accent was ever so slightly to the east of Las Vegas. By about 6000 miles.

Location, location, location is the old maxim and, boy, what a location Circus Vegas had in store for us in 2013. I know what you’re thinking. Did they hold the circus in the grounds of Callendar Park estate? Inside the football stadium? Em… close.

It was in the bingo hall car park.

Didn’t you see the glitzy flyers? Well, cash in my chips, and whisk me off to the Grand Canyon in a red, white and blue jet, Uncle Sam. Yee haw! Call me old fashioned, but the only thing that should be taking place in a bingo hall car park in Falkirk is a fight. Between two old guys called Tam.

circus2Circus Vegas’s ringmaster had the vigorous demeanour of a heavily depressed geography teacher who’d just been through a rough divorce. You could hear the suicidal ideation in every quiver of his dulcet Albanian tones: “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, now that my wife has taken everything, I will… NEVER be able to stop doing this shit! OK, for your amazement, the wonderful human cannonball. Will he survive, ladies and gentlemen? I genuinely…. DON’T care anymore!”

The first act was a guy who stacked a bunch of chairs into a tower, pulled his top off and attempted to climb it. A half-naked man desperately trying to balance on a chair? Show us something we don’t already see in Falkirk on a Saturday night, Circus Vegas. What’s the second act? A guy trying to act sober enough to flag down a taxi?

Not long into proceedings there was an X-Factor-style skit involving Mickey and Minnie Mouse, and Donald Duck, wherein the charismatic ringmaster bade the unlicensed characters dance, and then pronounced upon their shittiness. The kids laughed; I doubt Circus Vegas’s Armenian lawyers did. I’m tempted to send a letter to Simon Cowell and Disney’s legal team just for a laugh, so Circus Vegas has to change the name of its skit to something like ‘The Sing Quotient, with Muckey Rat and Ronald Goose’.

Still, they’re smart, those circusoids. The kids in the audience would probably have cheered and laughed if every act was a man maniacally waving a jobby on a stick, but the real trick is to keep the dads, brothers, grandpas and uncles engaged. That’s where the scantily-clad 20-something dancing girls came in. At every point at which I was ready to gouge out my own eyes and plug the gaps in my blood-soaked sockets with popcorn in the hope of an agonising yet comparatively interesting death, out they came: juddering, jiggering and gyrating, kicking their long bare legs in the air, and  a-jiggling and a-wiggling their snake-hipped asses off. Across the auditorium, you could actually hear the sound of 300 awkward dad hard-ons tightening into life.

Circus-Vegas-Shoot-0084 I must say that something peculiar happened to my girlfriend each time the dancers appeared. She did this thing where she flailed her arms about and hit me in the ribs with her elbow. I think it must’ve been an Albanian folk dance or something.

During the interval, parents could pay a few pounds to allow their children to go on a supervised donkey trek around the ring. What a magical sight that would’ve been had the guys in charge not looked like henchmen from the Bulgarian Mafia. Fat, old, scowling: all of the qualities you’d expect to see in top-class children’s entertainers, really. It was a donkey trek with all the frivolity of a funeral procession on a merry-go-round.

Some good snaps for the album, though, eh? “Ah, little Johnny, remember that time at the circus when we entrusted you into the care of a deeply uninterested Bulgarian murderer?”

A large positive though: their clown was awesome. Yes, they had a clown. OK, there’s a chance he might have just been a schizophrenic guy in a wig, but that’s pretty much what a clown is anyway, right? I especially loved the bit where he killed time between acts by throwing popcorn into the air and catching it in his mouth. For ten minutes. I shit you not. Never mind your WWE wrestling, kids, THIS is live entertainment of the highest caliber: an ill man chucking food about as a couple of fat men drag a trampoline into the periphery. Sounds like a Falkirk kid’s birthday party, right?

I miss the days when they used to whip the elephants and kick the lions in the cock to make them angry.

Young Jamie: Kindergarten Cock (Part 6)

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Coasters was a roller-skating rink. It was essentially a giant, health and safety nightmare: you could hire rickety, worn-away boots with wobbly wheels; feel safe under the protective gaze of psychopathically disinterested marshals; navigate a wooden rink that still had nails sticking through it; and embrace a million opportunities to trip over the stalls of the grandstand or tumble down concrete stairs to your doom. Coasters operated at a time when nobody cared if their kid came home with a broken hip, or dead. Anyway, skating wasn't the point. Coasters wasn't really for skating. It was a place where teenage girls went to get fingered. But on wheels! (Richard Desmond, if you're reading this page, now is the best time to commission 'Strictly Come Fingered on Skates' for Channel 5) I remember shitting myself at Coasters - literally shitting myself. Sexy, eh? Right into a pair of Teenage Mutant Hero Turtle orange Y-fronts. Probably mushed the turtle's head right into Splinter's face. I'm pretty sure, given when the Hero Turtles were on TV, that when this shitting occurred I would have been a) way too old to have been wearing Hero Turtle Y-fronts and b) too old to be accidentally shitting myself in public. I whipped them off in the cubicles, smuggled them outside and stashed them under a big pile of litter. Sorry council workers. I know a child's poo pants aren't exactly considered the jewel in the crown of a working day. Anyway, my sister will love this drawing. I've given her the waist, hips and torso of the big black woman from the Tom and Jerry cartoons, plus the haircut of a 53-year-old woman. Not to mention a London police uniform from 1952. And I've made her boyfriend look like Freddy Krueger with bad acne. I wonder where Angelo is now? Probably running a chip shop somewhere. Or a skating rink.

Coasters was a roller-skating rink. It was essentially a giant, health and safety nightmare: you could hire rickety, worn-away boots with wobbly wheels; feel safe under the protective gaze of psychopathically disinterested marshals; navigate a wooden rink that still had nails sticking through it; and embrace a million opportunities to trip over the stalls of the grandstand or tumble down concrete stairs to your doom. Coasters operated at a time when nobody cared if their kid came home with a broken hip, or dead. Anyway, skating wasn’t the point. Coasters wasn’t really for skating. It was a place where teenage girls went to get fingered. But on wheels! (Richard Desmond, if you’re reading this page, now is the best time to commission ‘Strictly Come Fingered on Skates’ for Channel 5) I remember shitting myself at Coasters – literally shitting myself. Sexy, eh? Right into a pair of Teenage Mutant Hero Turtle orange Y-fronts. Probably mushed the turtle’s head right into Splinter’s face. I’m pretty sure, given when the Hero Turtles were on TV, that when this shitting occurred I would have been a) way too old to have been wearing Hero Turtle Y-fronts and b) too old to be accidentally shitting myself in public. I whipped them off in the cubicles, smuggled them outside and stashed them under a big pile of litter. Sorry council workers. I know a child’s poo pants aren’t exactly considered the jewel in the crown of a working day. Anyway, my sister will love this drawing. I’ve given her the waist, hips and torso of the big black woman from the Tom and Jerry cartoons, plus the haircut of a 53-year-old woman. Not to mention a London police uniform from 1952. And I’ve made her boyfriend look like Freddy Krueger with bad acne. I wonder where Angelo is now? Probably running a chip shop somewhere. Or a skating rink.

Beauty Pageant: Scotland Style

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The Miss Falkirk beauty pageant was held at the Inchyra Grange hotel last night. Usually when we hear the words Miss Falkirk they’re included in the sentence: ‘Geez, there’s an asteroid heading for Scotland. I hope it doesn’t miss Falkirk.’

Beauty pageants like Miss Falkirk can trace their ancestry back to America, beginning with a modelling event hosted by huckster and showman P.T Barnum in 1854 (the man who coined the phrase, ‘There’s a sucker born every minute.’) and culminating in the all-singing-all-dancing Miss America contests.

But we Scots embrace American culture somewhat awkwardly; whenever we attempt to emulate the glitz and glamour of their big show-stopping events it inevitably feels like the act of trying to squeeze an angry, shit-covered rhino into a tiny Gucci prom dress.

Anyway, I was at the inaugural Miss Falkirk last year, during which there was a wonderful culture-collision moment. When America met Falkirk.

It happened at the end of the night. The evening’s host, Steve Courtney, from local radio station Central FM, was about to announce the winners. There were many people to thank, and much excitement and anticipation to be wrung from the moment, which Steve was clearly relishing. Or maybe he was stalling for time until everything was ready. Whatever: he got his talk on.

‘Ladies and gents, it’s been a wonderful evening, I’m sure you’ll agree. But there can be only one winner, and I can tell you’re all eagerly awaiting the announcement. And so, without any further ado, it falls to me to tell you that the winner… the Queen who will be crowned…. of this…. the first Miss Falkirk… and what a contest it’s been, folks, they’ve all been great. Haven’t they all been great?’

Miss Falkirk 2012 finalists

The audience – which comprised the contestants’ immaculately dressed and coiffured mums, grannies and little sisters, and a large helping of cognitively-challenged, heavily drunk, knuckle-scraping car-park brawlers – was growing restless. Seats could be heard shuffling over the hard-wood floors; the odd nervous cough. Children were fiddling and fidgeting with their hands. The girls on stage were frozen like the last ten seconds of a Police Squad episode.

‘It truly has been a great one, ladies and gents, a competition and a night right up there with the best this town, and country, has to offer. So without any ado, no further ado at all… I’m just about to announce…. the winner…. the winner of Miss Falkirk 2011…. held here… in this lovely venue… and so the winner is… wait for it folks… here it comes… of this year’s competition…’

And then, in the silence of one of Steve Courtney’s lingering pauses, amidst a quiet crowd of hundreds, it came: the Falkirk-ification of this most American of nights.

‘…yes, it’s time. The winner… of Miss Falkirk… in the year of our Lord two thousand and ele…’

‘GET ON WITH IT, YOU CUNT!’

Followed by shocked silence. Which in turn was followed by one solitary burst of laughter: from my mouth. Not one single other person was laughing, or even smiling. Welcome to Falkirk, folks. It’s beautiful and terrible.

Good old Steve just stammered a little and moved on, completely ignoring the ‘cunt’, which was very professional of him. Especially considering that he probably wanted to pluck the little bastard out of the crowd and hurl him through the nearest wall.

Falkirk: sometimes I love you.

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.