Tag Archives: Scottish

Alcohol is a Bigger Problem Than the Coronavirus

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This country in the iron grip of a pandemic; one that strikes down the young and the old alike with little regard for social strata or circumstance; one that our lawmakers, doctors and social scientists are doing their best to strategise against in pursuit of the greater public good.

I’m not talking about the coronavirus (although the two have become connected): I’m talking about alcoholism – specifically the pervasive cultural alcoholism in which we’ve all been drowning for most of the last century. Possibly even since time immemorial.

It isn’t until you break the spell of alcohol by ceasing or reducing your intake that you realise its ubiquity; how it’s stitched into the very fabric and rhythms of your life and conversation; how you’re likely to be viewed with suspicion or derision if your social life doesn’t revolve around some description of flavoursome, mind-altering douche-soup.

I defy you to scroll through an average thread on social media and not find at least one classic shot of a manicured hand gripped around the stem of a wine glass. Perhaps it’s ‘wine o’clock’. Maybe it’s been a ‘hell of a week’. You might even see a group-shot of some perfectly coiffured, elegantly dressed women huddling on a couch or around a cocktail-laden table, raising a toast to their own self-satisfied sophistication. Men are just as guilty of normalising problem drinking on-line and in person, although generally they don’t tend to put such a soft, Instagrammic sheen on things – cravat-wearing city slickers and snooty whiskey onanists being the clear exceptions.

Then – here in Scotland at least – there’s the cultural component. A Scotsman not taking a drink is like a Texan not standing for the US National Anthem. Or a Parisian not setting fire to things in response to a mild civic restriction.

So what’s this got to do with the coronavirus?

Well, as you’ve doubtless noticed, by government decree all pubs, clubs and restaurants must close their doors at 10pm, a decision that has precipitated a flood of memes and sarcastic comments along the lines of, ‘Aye, Covid only comes out after dark, right enough’. I must admit, there is indeed, on the surface of it, something comical about the thought of the virus donning a cowboy hat, kicking in the saloon doors at 22:01, firing its guns in the air and shouting, ‘Ye’v bin warned, varmits, this here is a Covid bar now! YEEHAW!’ Or the thought of the Purge alarm blaring into the night sky as bands of terrified drunken revellers try to dodge past legions of heavily-armed Covids on every street corner.

But, really, if you think about the curfew, it makes perfect sense.

Imagine what impact a 10pm curfew would have had on pre-corona Britain, never mind our present reality: fewer numbers of booze-ravaged men and women roaming the streets between 10pm and 6am, rubbing shoulders and various other body parts with friends and strangers alike, getting into arguments, getting into fights; sharing saliva and semen and sexual regret as if they were office Christmas cards.

If you’re looking to curb the excesses of human contact, both positive and negative, that prolonged exposure to alcohol brings, and to free up the hospitals from the depressing cavalcade of head-wounds and bleeding knuckles and alcoholic collapse that characterise an average weekend in this country – wholly preventative medical scenarios that  divert attention and resources from more serious medical cases, or make hospital-based transmissions of the virus more likely – then a curfew for licensed premises is a no-brainer.

I get that pubs are more than just places to get drunk. Pubs in small villages and towns can double up as social centres, places for people to meet, play cards, read the paper, sing and dance – the real life-blood of the community. My question would be, great: but why do we have to be pissed to do this?

Cultural Contrasts

Social media can be a cesspit of unsolicited opinions, simmering violence and half-baked half-truths (often helped along by the cyber-agents of other countries), but it’s still occasionally capable of smuggling hard nuggets of sense and reason into a debate. I suppose the cesspittyness of any given corner of the internet at least partly depends upon the people whose virtual call-signs you surround yourself with.

In any case, I stumbled onto a debate on Covid, masks and civil disobedience on a friend’s Facebook page the other week, and found it to be interesting and enlightening. A good chunk of it was about the difference between mask-wearing habits in the west and the east; how community spirit, compliance and cohesion appear to be hard-wired into, for example, south east Asians, perhaps on account of their long history of rice-cultivation for food and export, a field (forgive me) in which the key to success and survival was, and still is, co-operation.

Here in the UK we’ve a long tradition of embracing the malignant, mutant sense of individualism that has sprung, no doubt, from centuries of industrialisation, unfettered free-market capitalism and consumerism. It appears to be challenging for many people in the UK to imagine a world bigger than their own individual drives and desires. It wasn’t always thus, but it’s certainly thus now. We reject unity, nuance and sacrifice in favour of doing, well, whatever the fuck we want.

Ah’m no daein that!

There’s a sub-section of male society that regards the exercise of caution as tantamount to effeminancy. For example, Health and Safety exists and is enshrined in law – and upper management usually pay lip service to it – but in male-dominated industries, especially down at the literal or figurative coal-face, it exists in the same way that Norse legends do. Complaining about a ten-metre-long spike sticking out of a wall at head-height is less likely to lead to a change in company policy, and more likely to result in you being labelled ‘a wee cry-baby poof’.

A similar thing is happening with Covid. There’s a widespread feeling that the prissy egg-heads and boffins – with their glasses and their little dorky white coats – are a bunch of pussy-whipped scaredy cats who don’t have a bloody clue about how the real world works, and have no right to tell real men how to live their lives. Load ay shite aw that science, anyway. Ah saw a video on YouTube and it’s aw bollocks. Mair chance ae bein’ hit by a bus than getting’ that Covid, CAUSE IT DISNAE EXIST!

These are men who are distrustful of and resistant to authority as a baseline, whose reaction to most obstacles or restrictions, or even their own feelings, is a dismissive wave and a ‘FUCK OFF’. Just add more rules and try to subtract alcohol and witness the results.

Back in 2018 the World Health Organisation noted that Scottish alcohol consumption is among the highest in the world, with Scots guzzling more than 13 litres of pure alcohol a year. When considering alcohol unit pricing The Scottish government was even moved to concede that ‘alcohol is an integral part of Scottish life’, a rather depressing, and sobering, thought. Although it qualified this by saying that there is ‘clear evidence that for a large section of the Scottish population their relationship with alcohol is damaging and harmful – to individuals, communities and to Scotland as a nation’.

It is these people – many of whom are locked in a cycle of physiological, psychological or cultural dependency – that are perhaps strongly to blame for the further corona-curbing restrictions we’re facing: the problem drinkers souring the city streets; the students and younger people having raucous, jam-packed house parties; the chattering classes brazenly hosting large dinner parties.

It’s madness that our right to drink appears to be trumping the rights of vulnerable people to live their lives without fear; libraries and sports centres and community hubs to re-open; schools to remain operational. Granted, there are myriad other issues connected with this issue, from income disparity to institutionalised poverty to trauma to addiction, but still, the reality remains.

The biggest mistake the government could have made, in times like these, was to forgo legislation in favour of trusting the great and thirsty British public to police themselves.  Many of us can’t be trusted to think – and especially to drink – for ourselves. And we drink therefore we are

… selfish and disgraceful.

We need to have a long, hard look at ourselves and our relationship with alcohol, and get our priorities straight. And not just for the sake of halting the spread of the coronavirus.

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

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Part 2: In and Out-lander

Wherein change is a constant, truths are revealed and Claire gets her hands aw covered in pish

My partner Chelsea is something of an Outlander veteran, having watched the first season-and-a-bit without me last year. She wasn’t being mean by leaving me out, you understand. She asked me at the time if I wanted a piece of the tartan action, and I said, well… I believe my exact words were ‘Fuck that.’ I didn’t think it would be for me. I loved porn, I loved Scottish scenery, I loved time travel, but I didn’t necessarily feel that I needed them all together in the one package, especially with the added threat of romance.

Five episodes into my binge she asked me if I was enjoying the show so far. Well, I know better now, don’t I, having dipped my toe in the heeland loch. I told her I was enjoying it greatly. How could I not be? It was well-acted, fast-paced, intriguing, and looked vibrant and beautiful to boot. What pleased me most, though, I told her, was that the heavily-promoted romance element of the show had remained somewhat in the background, or at least wasn’t as strongly emphasised as I’d feared it would be.

She gave me a puzzled little look, like I’d just announced that robots were great because they were almost exactly the same as bananas.

“No, really,” I continued, doubling down on my rave review, “I thought Outlander was going to be this quirky, 17th-century rom-com, where the main characters would get married really quickly, and there would be endless soft porn scenes, but, you know, mercifully, it doesn’t appear to be that kind of show at all.”

She looked at me with eyes full of sorrow and pity, as if a doctor had just told her I had weeks to live, and she didn’t yet know how to break the news to me.

At that exact moment, she must have been thinking about episode 7, The Wedding. I was soon to discover that said episode was essentially a quirky, 17th-century rom-com, where Claire and Jamie got married really quickly, and which featured endless soft porn scenes. What’s the Gaelic for bow-chick-a-wow-wow? Honestly, ten solid minutes of that episode were just the newly-weds checking out each other’s arses, followed by another ten minutes of them rutting like dogs.

I’m not entirely sure that what I just made there was a complaint.

Anyway, while it was a nice touch to see the typical male/female dynamics of the era (and of the genre) subverted, by having Jamie play the wet-behind-the-ears virgin to Claire’s experienced and in-control woman, it seemed ever-so-slightly gratuitous to focus on Jamie’s first ever blow-job, and even dwell on his delighted gasp and cheeky wee grin. ‘What’s this bloody show turning into now?’ I cursed at the TV. ‘Scotch Pie? Are McStiffler and McFinch about to burst in wearing lederhosen and trailing a shaved goat behind them?’

I thought about the hygiene aspect again, not to mention the lack of contraception (not even a stab at the rhythm method!). If this was real 18th-century sex, and not a fantasy-rich, heaving-bosomed, skin-bathed-in-candle-light sort of a romp, then Claire would almost certainly have emerged from her marital bed riddled with everything from ringworm to the bubonic plague. And very probably pregnant. A man and a woman only had to shake hands, sneeze or play catch with a turnip in order to fall pregnant in the 18th century. An enlightened 19th-century nurse surely would have known better than to doff her daisy at a wrangler’s dangler like that.

Sex is a funny little devil, though, isn’t it? It’s not just love, lust and longing that joins our sweating bodies together like sexual Tetris pieces. Death, despair, anguish, fear, and anger – and alcohol, too, on its own or in conjunction with one or more of the aforementioned – can make us rub our bits in places and at times and with people we might not otherwise have considered to be sensible choices.

Even though poor haunted, hunted, homesick Claire had at that point been six weeks without a ride (Hi Americans – I’m using the crude Scottish vernacular to describe a bodily act again) I’m still not fully convinced by how quickly she abandoned her scruples and plunged into a carnival of carnal abandon with Jamie.

I was expecting, and hoping for, a bit more in the way of moral posturing and feminist fury, given how headstrong Claire had been up until then. I was, however, pleased that their wedded union was brought about in an interesting and unexpected way, in a bid to frustrate, through legal means, Black Jack Randall’s move to imprison and interrogate Claire. The flashback-framed farce that told the story of the hoops the Mackenzie men had to jump through in order to facilitate the couple’s wedding at record speed was undeniably fun and funny in equal measure.

Still, can’t really grumble about the romance element kicking into gear. It’s pretty much stitched into the show’s DNA. It’d be like watching Sherlock and moaning because he kept solving crimes. At least Outlander embraces blood and brutality to balance out the Mills and Boone-esque schmaltz. The world around Claire and Jamie, with its corruption, thieving, lying and killing, does a fine job of disabusing any notions of Scotland’s romantic past that even the most swooning of viewers may have brought to the show with them. In almost every episode someone is left with a big bleeding, spurting gash cut into their body, absent an ear or an arm, or almost raped. It’s a lot like present-day Airdrie.

Ned’s great, isn’t he? It was nice to see Claire interacting with someone who was her intellectual equal, someone a bit more ‘1945’ than the rest of the rabble; a man who had loftier ambitions than to spend his days farting and fucking. And I bloody love Bill Paterson, the actor who plays him. The last time I saw Bill Paterson in something about time travel (excluding Doctor Who) he ended up bludgeoned to death by cavemen, so maybe things don’t augur too well for old Ned.

Change was the over-riding constant across these four episodes. Most of the major players went through significant changes, both in the way they saw each other, and in the way they saw themselves. The Mackenzie men moved from regarding Claire as a potential traitor or a bothersome sassenach to someone they’d happily fight, lie and die for. Claire, in turn, finally seemed to be finding a place for herself among the Mackenzies, and didn’t seem to view her time with them merely as a prelude to her next daring escape attempt. She also demonstrated that she could mulch piss with the best of them.

Ever since Claire was rescued from Randall’s rapey clutches at the end of episode one she’d viewed Dougal very much as a scary, starey, glarey bruiser of a man (good job she hasn’t seen him in AMC’s Preacher); an image he’d done little to soften by his habit of continually scowling, drinking, and talking about tits and dicks all the time. Her road-trip around the Highlands with the men as they collected rent from their tenants – coins here, a goat there – really seemed to open Claire’s eyes, both to the wider world and to Dougal’s true nature.

At first, though, she believed Dougal was even worse than she’d first imagined. She thought that he was supplementing his private income through skullduggery; using Jamie’s tale of harsh treatment and disfigurement at the hands of the English as a way to extort extra gold from the village-folks – to line his own pockets. Claire being Claire, she wasn’t content simply to think of Dougal as the 18th-century Highland equivalent of Negan from The Walking Dead, she pretty much accuses him of being a knave, an usurper and a rustler, right to his big hairy face, a move that struck me as either evidence of Claire’s skewed sense of privilege and entitlement, or an incidence of iffy writing. Given how much almost every single one of the men barring Jamie hated and mistrusted her at that point, it was nothing short of lunacy for her to take an angry, spiteful stand against Dougal.

Still, if she’d kept schtum she would never have worked out that Dougal was actually a secret freedom-fighter, raising funds to mobilise a Jacobite army to send the English homewards to think again, and to put the ‘rightful King’ back on the throne.

The following episode, ‘The Garrison Commander’, was a great episode of Outlander, but an absoutely peerless episode of ‘Come Dine With Me’. Jesus, that was tense. I think the dinner party at the end of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre was possibly a little less fraught.

I wonder if the English gentry and middle-classes ever get tired of being portrayed on screen as the world’s biggest fops and arseholes. Claire flies the flag well for England, but every other English character we meet – or have met thus far – is a blustering, vain, arrogant, unscrupulous little toad. It makes me glad to be on Team Itchy-Skirt. The world loves us, man, even if they can’t always understand us (and even if we don’t always deserve it). I liked how Dougal got a little taste of what it was to be an outlander, a stranger in a strange land, as he stood at the foot of that English dinner-table being cursed and condescended to. He took it well, for his pride’s sake, and for Claire’s.

I’d like to talk directly to Claire now. Claire? I’ve got some good news and some bad news, sweetheart. The good news is, Dougal’s now your protector and chaperone; your very own little Greyfriars Bobby. The bad news? He wants to give you his little grey bobby. (Hi Americans, I’ll pause this sentence to give you time to get back from the Urban Dictionary). This surely won’t end well.

Black Jack Randall, of course, was a surprise – and deeply unwelcome – addition to the dinner party. He too showed that he was capable of change: capable of changing into something even more monstrous than our first impressions had allowed for.

Tension and terror flood from Tobias Menzies whenever he appears on-screen as the reprehensible redcoat. He plays it just the right side of cartoonishly evil, yet still somehow manages to make Black Jack feel feel blood-curdingly authentic. It’s a pitch-perfect study in cruelty and madness. The scene where Claire sits tear-stricken at the dinner table as she listens with mounting horror to Jack’s tale of how much he enjoyed brutalising Jamie is deliciously uncomfortable to watch. I, like Claire, allowed myself to believe, just for a fleeting second, that Jack was reaching out to her in his turmoil, that he was redeemable. Like all psychopaths, though, Jack mined hope as a means to further and better torture his victims, reveling in the quiet savagery of his deception. All the more agonising and impactful when he rips the mask from his face a second time. What a fucking bastard he is.

I’m glad he’s in the show.

And poor, poor Frank (Black Jack’s great-great-great-great-erm-great-don’t-know-how-many-greats-I-should-have-here-grandson), marooned and alone back in the 1945 version of Inverness. The mid-season finale taught Frank that time, anger and desperation can send even the most civilised of men running head-long into superstition and violence. Grief, and the shadows of his ancestral self, threatened to turn him into a monster, a theme I’m sure the writers will pick up again should he ever return to the story – which of course he must. He must, right?

I’m convinced that some sort of evil twin/sci-fi swapsie scenario is going to unfold, with Black Jack escaping to 1946 Inverness and becoming a serial-killer, or Frank accidentally landing in the past and having to convince any would-be murderers that he isn’t the infamous Captain Randall.

Anyway, because it’s the mid-season finale, something suitably seismic had to happen. And thus, Claire finally reaches the stones in 1743, at the same time as Frank does in 1945. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending upon your viewpoint) instead of running into her (first) husband’s arms, she runs straight into Black Jack’s clutches.

One minor quibble. Did the closing moments of the mid-season finale really have to lean into the cliché of the damsel in distress being saved from death and indignity at the last possible moment by her muckle, gun-toting man? Ach, that’s such a 2018 thing to say. It was exciting, ye ken?

I’m all in now.

Here’s to the next four episodes. Bring on the nakedness, Outlander. Just as long as you bathe it in blood from time to time.

MISSED ANY INSTALLMENTS? CLICK BELOW

Why I wanted to binge-watch Outlander

Part 1: Season 1, Eps 1 -4

Part 3: Season 1, Eps 9 – 12

Bingeing Outlander: Back to the Bygones

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I’ve resisted the call to watch Outlander for a very long time, mainly, I guess, because I assumed it would be the kind of lovey-dovey, over-enunciated, hammily-acted, costumed codswallop that’s had me almost breaking my thumb off against the buttons on TV remotes since I was a child. Upstairs Downstairs? Neither, thanks. Pride and Prejudice? Well, I take great pride in my prejudice against Jane Austen adaptations, if that’s what you mean. Downton Abbey? I’ll tell you what would make me ‘abbey’: chucking the TV out of the window before this horse-shit starts.

Still, I swithered. And kept swithering. I was intrigued. Yes, I strongly suspected that the greater part of Outlander would be a sickening, will-they-won’t-they, come-on-of-course-they-bloody-will, swash-buckling romance with a heavy emphasis on deep sighs of longing and forlorn staring that would have me rolling my eyes like a faulty fruit-machine, but there was also the promise of time travel, and if there’s any type of movie or TV show for which I’m a sucker it’s a fish-out-of-water time-travel story. That’s the element that wore me down and won me over.

It’s a long list, but my all-time time-travelling favourites are Bill and Ted, the story of two men – I forget their names – who travel through history kidnapping the great, the good and the ghastly to help them pass a high-school history exam; The Time Bandits, the story of a gang of dwarves on the run from God who kidnap a little boy and take him on time-trotting adventures through fissures in the fabric of reality; Doctor Who, the story of a time-travelling alien who, em… kidnaps… a series of men and women from throughout history and takes them on insanely dangerous adventures across time-and-space; and Army of Darkness, the story of Ash Williams, a former S-Mart employee, who is kind-of… well, em… kidnapped, I suppose… (Wait a minute… is it time travelling I love…or kidnapping?? Probably best not to look too deeply into that one) by Deadites, and hurtled through a portal in time that drops him into the magic-and-evil-infested Middle Ages. Hell, if we’re talking time-travelling adventures, I even loved Goodnight Sweetheart, even though in retrospect it was about as funny as having your teeth kicked out by a donkey.

And, of course, the Back to the Future trilogy goes without saying.

But it wasn’t just the time travel that tempted me. There was also the promise of the familiar; the local gone global. I live quite close to most of the locations in which they’ve filmed – and continue to film – significant chunks of the show, and it’s nice to see your part of the country being the centre of attention for a change. The vast majority of the movies and TV shows I’ve watched throughout my life have been filmed in either the US or Canada, two places I’ve never visited, a fact that has denied me the opportunity to turn excitedly to my family half-way through a 90s action movie and say: ‘Ooooh, see that shop they’re fighting outside in that scene? I bought a fanny-pack in there when I was on holiday with your Aunty Jean’. Thanks to the bulk of Outlander being filmed within a fifty-mile-radius of my home, I recognised my chance finally to join in.

I’m not just familiar with many of Outlander’s filming locations; I’m intimately familiar with them. They’re a part of my life and history: Culross Palace and its gardens; Muiravonside Country Park; Callendar Park; Linlithgow Palace – they’ve even filmed scenes in the park in Polmont, just a few minutes’ drive up the road from me, where we still take our sons to run, explore and play.

So screw you, New York, New York, I thought to myself. It was Scotland’s turn: my turn. I looked forward to pointing at the screen and saying things like: ‘Oooh, I stood on some dog-shit there last week, right there, where that man’s having his head chopped off by an axe,’ and ‘Oooooh, I had my first date there, right next to that tree where that man’s being raped.’

I guess – being Scottish myself – that the production’s Scottishness was also a powerful draw. When you learn that an American authoress and an American production company have teamed up to create something they claim is a plausible swords-and-shagging epic set in the murky, murderous past of your own ancestral culture, you want to check up on its quality and authenticity. You want to know if it’s going to be stirring and emotionally affecting, like Braveheart, or full of screamingly ridiculous historical impossibilities and utter bullshit, also like Braveheart.

And you want to make sure that you and your people aren’t being unceremoniously ‘Groundskeeper Willied’. Scottish people have a long history of being portrayed on screen as any number of condescending or insulting stereotypes, from noble savages, to quirky old mystics brimming over with folk-tales and old-wifey-wisdom, to drunks, druggies, madmen and wash-women. It’s heart-breaking that some of the most authentically Scottish characters ever committed to the big screen are in Trainspotting. Was Outlander going to do us Scots proud, or was it going to offer up yet another round of tartan-box kitsch, craven historical inaccuracies or poverty-porn pish?

Well, folks, it’s time to find out for myself.

Over the next few weeks – up until the soon-to-be-aired fourth season’s mid-season finale on December the 9th – I’m going to be bingeing my way through the series to date, and giving my thoughts on the drama as it unfolds, in little easy-to-digest 3-5 episode chunks. Who knows? Some of these thoughts might even be insightful and provocative, but I wouldn’t hold out too much hope for that.

In any case, I hope you’ll join me on my binge. Whether I end up loving or loathing Outlander, you can be sure of one thing: we’re going to have fun together.

I hope we will anyway…

Maybe.

Binge Diary 1 coming on Wednesday the 24th.

BEGIN THE BINGE HERE

Bore Drummond Safari Park – Part 2: Lion Bastards

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After savaging David Dickinson, this lioness used his balls as toys.

And so to the lion enclosure. Lions are great, aren’t they? Surely they must be the bee’s knees, the cat’s bollocks, the mane men, the pride of the park? Well… not really; the first few minutes I spent in their enclosure, slowly looping around the track, was about as exciting as watching my own domestic cats rolling around and licking their balls, albeit on a slightly larger scale. OK, I did see a couple of lions having sex, but that didn’t last long. Certainly not long enough for me to take advantage of my nascent hard-on (To wank along to the scene outside, of course. Not to run out there and join in a giant lion gang-bang. I’m not a pervert, for Christ’s sake!).

He’s going for the sexy shoulder bite, but she still couldn’t give a fuck.

I could relate to the lion, though. Mid-way through the sex the female got bored, ejected his catty cock from her liony labia, and staggered off. She slumped down on a patch of grass fifteen feet away from him, and started to have a kip. I don’t know if lions are capable of feeling dejected, but this guy looked pretty fucked off and miserable. No wonder the males go out on the savanna and kill things. It’s not to eat: lions are actually vegetarians. They just disembowel springboks to make themselves feel manly again after their wives have booed off their shagging skills.

In fact, hang on. That’s not even true, is it? The males do a tiny bit of the hunting, but it’s the lionesses that do the bulk of the running, ripping and killing. So the lions are crap in bed, don’t provide food for the dinner table, and just sit around all day growling at other guys and preening their big hair and doing their nails. I think the pandas might have some competition in the 2013 ‘Who’s Up For A Bit of An Extinction?’ contest.

‘I said Hakuna Matata. HAKUNA MATATA WAKE UP YOU BASTARD!!!’

I drew my car up alongside a group of lions that were sleeping on the grass and tried to coax them into action by burring the window down and blasting up the volume on the radio. It sort of worked. One of them waggled its ears a wee bit. Hardly the stuff of Attenborough. I don’t know what I was expecting, to be honest. A full-on lion rave?

Luckily, there was excitement – and danger – on the horizon. Two lions, who had been relaxing next to a cluster of tree stumps further up the enclosure, started stalking towards my car. Their stares were cold and unblinking, and I’m sure I detected a twitch of primal hunger on their lips. Then, just as my heart started thumping in my chest, they meandered lazily past me and flopped down next to the other lions who were sleeping at the other side of my car, and joined them in a kip. You lied to me, Disney. You said these cunts were fun, and could talk, and form religions and shit. But they’re crap.

If only I’d had the presence of mind to smuggle in a couple of sheep from the field outside I could really have livened things up – given a few children one or two interesting things to say to their psychiatrists in later life.

‘Now, Jeannie, can you trace all of the recent bad events in your life back to one discernible root cause, perhaps in your childhood?’

Jeannie rocks in her seat, grasping her knees with white knuckles, saliva foaming at the edges of her mouth. ‘Yesssss,’ she stammered. ‘The day …the…lovely… sheep died.’

This… never happened at the safari park.

So, disappointingly, the lions did fuck all. You can hardly blame them, I suppose. If a bus-load of lions had visited my flat on a typical Sunday afternoon I doubt they would have witnessed anything more exciting than the odd bit of dish-washing, ball-scratching or half-hearted masturbation. Actually, that’s not true. I probably wouldn’t have been doing the dishes.

Still, why would a bus-load of lions come to my flat? And what maniac would transport them there? Somebody needs to answer these questions.

Have you ever heard a lion’s roar? I mean, not on TV: in a safari park, or in the wild? When your bowels can pick up the sound first-hand? Later on that day, when I was pottering about elsewhere in the park, I heard it. Rumbling, growling, roaring. Like it was coming from everywhere in the park at once in one rectum-rocking symphony of primal terror. I was glad to be hearing that sound in the safety of an open-prison for beasts, rather than out on the savanna with a packed lunch and a spear.

The next enclosure contained many bison. But who, apart from other bison, gives much of a fuck about bison? Moving on…

‘Get busy swimming… or get busy dying.’

Ah, the sea lion show. Now you’re talking. I never fully realised the unbridled happiness and joy an animal could bring to my heart until I saw those slippery guys cynically exploited by the promise of food into performing hilarious tricks. The trainer claimed that the sea lions always enjoy themselves while putting on the show, and I guess the club-shy bastards’d better show it if they ever want to eat again this millennium. To be honest, though, the faux-cynicism I’m affecting here could find no purchase-hold in my head or heart during the ten or so minutes I was privileged to watch those two adorable creatures at work.

That tasche will be coming off for Movember.

While they were sitting still and awaiting instruction, their heads bobbed and rocked about in a figure of eight motion, which brought to mind a sub-aquatic Stevie Wonder. When active, they darted and dived into and out of the water, balanced balls on their snouts, imitated seals, called on command, climbed stairs and jumped off of high boards. I loved them!

But possibly the greatest thing one of the creatures did, something that made me laugh uncontrollably each time it happened – that I think is one of the simplest yet best things I have ever seen an animal be trained to do – was clap! It clapped! It sat on its podium, threw back its head and slapped its flippers together like a mad-thing. And my face lit-up like a Syrian government building each time. Usually the sea lions did it in tandem with the audience, which somehow made it even funnier. Perhaps I’ve found my happy place – what’s the sound of one sea-lion clapping? I don’t care. It’s brilliant! Still, there’s room for improvement: if they can somehow teach them to smoke it’ll be fucking awesome.

‘Here I am, MIMED-SEAL DELIVERED, I’M YOURS!’

I’ve heard it said that it’s good for the mental faculties to absorb at least one new fact a day, so yours is coming up a few sentences from now. If you discover that you already know the fact I’m about to share with you, then go and open the dictionary and find a word you’ve never heard of and learn it, so you don’t feel left out.

Ahem, here goes: the way to tell the difference between a seal and a sea lion is by looking at the ears. Apparently the seal has internal ears, and the sea lion has protruding ears. This is fantastic, for a number of reasons, but most crucially: we now know that a sea lion can do an even better Stevie Wonder impression than we first imagined.

OUR JOURNEY AROUND THE SAFARI PARK CONCLUDES THIS WEEKEND.

Cunt of the Week (03 Sep 2012) by Ross Leslie

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Matt Bendoris – high quality journalism guaranteed.

I seriously considered making my ‘Cunt of the Week’ the pathological liar and teen romance high school preppy, Paul Ryan, after that performance at the Republican National Convention. I could also have added the embarrassing ‘turns’ by Romney-bot and former American hero, Clint Eastwood, however I remembered Jamie’s normal readership includes such intellectuals as Richard Hunter and Gregor Wappler, so I just left it as I didn’t want their brains to hurt. 

Therefore, step forward future sexual assaulter Matthew “Matt” Bendoris, for your journalistic car-crash of an interview with a fit lady, the super-talented Scottish violinist, Nicola Benedetti. Link to said article is here – http://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/news/mattmeets/4502198/Matt-meets-Scots-violin-queen-Nicola-Benedetti.html – enjoy for yourselves.

Now, of course, you get what you deserve if you happen to read The Sun, hopefully a form of genital warts; that being said, and I believe this to be a true fact, 97 per cent of male Sun readers already have genital warts. Seriously, check it out on the Internet. And I wasn’t reading The Sun in online or print format, so don’t start by saying, ‘Haha Ross, your cock is all warty, too.’ It’s not, and I have photos to prove it, right? Anyway, yes, let’s get back to the cunt. (not with those warts you won’t, dirty – Jamie)

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a red blooded male who likes to have the sex with ladies, and have done so on hunners of occasions, absolute hunners man. I have the humans I have procreated at home to prove it. Because of this I am well aware that Benedetti is a good looking woman; however, I wouldn’t try to mentally prepare her for a sexual assault whilst interviewing her for a national newspaper and then clearly take the huff halfway through because she clearly finds me physically disgusting.

Nicola Benedetti

He then says that she doesn’t take the bonniest of photos sometimes, and she is a bit beaky. Google image this weedy, specky cunt: he looks like Harry Potter in the first movie. He then gives us a blow-by-blow account of what she is wearing, and describes her physical attributes, sweat clearly pouring onto his keyboard as he types the words.

But what does any of this have to do with fucking music!? I am not a classical music fan – I’m more of a Carly Rae Jepsen man – but she is very talented in her field and it might be an idea to ask her some questions about that, eh? I suppose she has to take her share of the blame for agreeing to speak to the cunt in the first place, or at least her agent should be fired, but maybe her agent is still pissed off she didn’t want to get her vagina out for FHM-Zoo-Nuts, or whatever it’s called these days.

He does then ask a little about her music, but this is buried amongst references to her boyfriend being a lucky man, as he somehow snared this one – perhaps by being a man, and not coming in his pants when he first saw her; and then, worryingly in this boozed-up country of ours, he mocks her for only having FOUR drinks on her birthday night out. ‘I bet she didn’t even start a single fight in a taxi queue,’ he thought to himself.

I actually emailed him when I read it to congratulate him on his fine journalistic work, and asked if he had managed to get out the semen stains from his underwear. His response?: ‘Cheers’. Why argue with a fucking moron, Leslie, why do it? In summary: Bendoris – fuck you, cunt.

Ross Leslie

THIS WEEK’S GUEST WRITER: Ross Leslie hasn’t been doing comedy for very long, but in his short-time on the Scottish stand-up circuit he’s already won Scotland in Session’s ‘Fuck You I’m Funny’ competition, been a finalist in The Shack’s Massive Comedy Gong Show, and been violently and lubelessly hate-fucked by the circuit’s premier sexual terrorist, Vladimir McTavish.

Leslie’s first ever gig was a gong show; a gong show being the harshest, most brutal comedy environment known to man. It’s the stand-up equivalent of D-Day. Less a baptism of fire, and more a baptism of the raging and eternal flames of Hell. It certainly doesn’t do wonders for your nerves or will to live, so for Leslie to have spent the majority of his first thirteen gigs gonging it means that the man has balls like space-hoppers. Or he’s completely insane.

Jonathan King. NOT from Fife.

Ross Leslie wasn’t just born in Fife. He IS Fife. If Fife is a Kingdom, then Leslie is its king – much like a blue-bottle is king when it’s perched atop a particularly gooey mountain of dog shite. We continue the royal theme with a little known fact about Ross: he was the disgraced pop guru Jonathan King’s first victim, and the only one of King’s victims not to press charges. ‘I knew he was lying when he said he’d make me a star,’ swooned Leslie. ‘I just wanted that wonky wee mouth gorging on my stauner.’ Leslie still visits King in prison six times a year for conjugal visits, and he always takes with him a Thomas the Tank Engine rucksack containing a jizz-stained school tie, an 80s shell-suit and a giant tub of mashed bananas.

PS: I apologise for the hurtful and disgusting lie I made up about Ross in this biography. Let me set the record straight. Ross Leslie is NOT from Fife.

FOLLOW ROSS ON TWITTER: @misterross  

CHECK OUT ROSS’S BLOG:  http://mum-blings.tumblr.com/

Blakey the Jakey: A Modern Scottish Fairytale – The Conclusion

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The story so far: as we prepare for the concluding chapter of the Blakey saga, we find our hero in his grandma’s house. He’s lost his money, his family, his self-respect (what little he possessed) and now grandma is the only one who can help him turn things around. In a nutshell: he’s fucked. Or is he? (yes, yes he is)

Catch up with Part 1 – http://www.jamieandrew-withhands.com/2012/06/10/btjp1/

Catch up with Part 2 – http://www.jamieandrew-withhands.com/2012/06/14/btjp2/

Catch up with Part 3 – http://www.jamieandrew-withhands.com/2012/06/22/btjp3/

Catch up with Part 4 –  http://www.jamieandrew-withhands.com/2012/06/28/btjp4/

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As Grandma listened, with a mounting sense of boredom, to Blake’s tale of business acumen gone wrong, she occupied herself by burning a chunk off of the armchair and crumbling it into a large cigarette paper.

This was because all of Grandma’s furniture, from the armchair to the sideboard to the footrest to the mantle-piece, was made out of massive, sculpted blocks of cannabis resin. Her footrest alone had a street value of thousands.

‘So, ye sold yer maw’s car tae some jakey at the market, eh? Ye daft wee bastard,’ laughed Grandma, rolling the rest of her fancy cigarette into a perfect cone shape.

‘Aye,’ sighed Blake. ‘and ah cannae go hame till I’ve goat the cash back. She’ll kill me, gran.’

‘Take yin ae ma shelves,’ she said, pointing behind her, ‘Ye’ll make gid profit.’

‘Thanks, gran, that’s magic,’ smiled Blake, clapping his hands with delight.

Grandma indulged herself in a moment of thoughtful inhalation. ‘Aye, son,’ she began, exhaling a jet of sweet-scented smoke in his face, ‘But if ye dinnae pay me back in a week yell get yer knees broken.’

Blake nodded.

‘Ah mean it. Business, family or no. Ye’ll be on crutches.’

Blake actually rose and kissed his grandma. On the forehead, though. And quickly.

The blaring wail of police sirens assaulted his ears before the sound slowed and died, like the batteries had failed. A high-pitched squeal then made way for an echoed-clicking as a policeman’s voice bellowed through a loudspeaker.

‘We know you’re in there, Grandma, the game’s up.’

‘Fuck,’ she lamented.

‘Ho, you, ah didnae lament,’ said an irritated grandma to Jamie Andrew as he wrote her words on this screen, ‘and ah’m no irritated, ah’m fuckin’ furious. Efter ah escape from the police ah’m gonnae come efter you and knock fuck out of you.’

Jamie was certain that Grandma wouldn’t survive her encounter with the police.

‘Third wall?’ laughed Grandma, ‘Jamie Andrew, ah’ll pit you through the fourth, fifth, sixth and fuckin’ seventh wall, ya cunt!’

Anyway, Grandma leapt from her seat and wrenched a shelf from the sideboard, handing it to Blake. Blake accepted it and tucked it firmly into his jacket. The boy looked like he was half a turtle’s head away from destroying his boxer shorts.

‘Get oot the back door and run, Blakey,’ she implored, ‘and take this tae.’

She handed him the cone from her mouth, slapped him on the back and swiftly ushered him towards the kitchen.

As Blake threw open the back door and began his rush into Grandma’s garden, and the hedgerow and park beyond, he could hear her loading her pump-action shotgun and striking up a dialogue with the officers out front.

‘Right, little pigs, come get it!’

‘Grandma, if you don’t let us in we’ll be rough, we’ll be tough and we’ll blow your door down.’

‘No by the hairs oan ma sticky big baws!’

*** 

And so Blake merrily zig-zagged his way through the streets, selling chunks of his shelf along the way until a long line of pink-eyed, crisp-munching pot-heads were shadowing him like a dragon’s tail. The only sounds that could be heard were a hundred or more people crunching Monster Munches, snapping off segments of Dairy Milk bars and frantically trying to re-arrange their JSA appointments on their mobile phones.

‘Follow that wee laddie,’ they shouted.

Blake happily puffed and sucked on his cone: the more it burned, the slower he and his vast procession of stoners became. With stacks of tens, twenties and fifties poking out of his jacket pockets, the happiness overwhelmed him and he began humming, shouting and singing pro-IRA songs, all the while mimicking the playing of a flute.

Children saw the procession and hollered with glee: ‘It’s the pie-eyed Piper of Hampden!’ And they followed.

‘Wait a minute,’ said a confused bystander. ‘Isn’t it more the other side that’s traditionally associated with flute-playing? This muddled sectarian reference doesn’t make any sense!’

‘It’s called creative license, you picky prick,’ said another bystander.

‘It’s called thon Jamie Andrew bein’ a daft cunt,’ giggled grandma as she thundered down the road with her shotgun. ‘And ah’m no gigglin’, ya fuckin’ smart arse!’

***

Blake arrived back at his family home with more than enough money for a new car and a nice holiday. He was eager to make his mother proud and happy. And having a roof over his head and not getting his throat slit was a bonus, too.

‘Hello,’ he shouted, fingers prising open the letterbox. ‘Maw?’ he shouted through it again. ‘Aw, YUK!’ Blake wiped away his piss from earlier with disgust.

Eventually, just as Blake had started kicking the door with all of his might, it opened to reveal his mother, half-naked and with a large half-naked bear of a man by her side.

‘Aw, it’s you,’ she snarled. ‘Thought I told ye no tae come back.’

‘But maw,’ beamed Blake, holding up the money, ‘I goat aw the cash back. Double. Triple even! In fact, ah widnae be surprised if it wiz qua… kawrd… kwardroo… fuckin’ four times as much!’

His mother snatched the money from his hands and stuffed it in her blouse. ‘Gid,’ she smiled, ‘But ye can still piss oaf, because ah met a new man, we’re gettin’ mayried and we’re movin’ tae a different toon.’

‘Bit…’ Blake was aghast. He stared up at the big fellow bear-hugging his mother. ‘You’re the…you’re that bouncer fae the nightclub,’ said Blake.

‘Aye,’ the big man replied, ‘Yer maw was oot dancin’ last week an she loast yin aye er orthy-pedic shoes, fir er corns and that. I kinna thought it wiz hers so ah brought it roond the day, she tried it oan, it fitted and then…well…’

He winked.

‘Then he telt me he had a few boab and pumped us on your bed, ye wee dick,’ beamed his mother, before slamming the door in Blake’s face.

***

Blake found himself sitting back on the grass where all of this had started. He passed the time throwing stones at the neighbours’ cars and listening to his mother’s shrieks of delight from the house.

Before long he felt a large hand on his shoulder.

‘BAD DAY, LITTLE MAN?’ asked the genie.

‘Aye, somethin’ like that.’

‘TELL ME ABOUT IT. I HAD TO QUIT MY JOB TODAY. STRESS. I’M OFF ON ILL HEALTH, CONSIDERING EARLY RETIREMENT.’

‘Aye?’ replied Blake, not really interested; too busy staring at some teenage temptress teetering across the road, all tits and legs. ‘How wiz London, ye ken, wi they seven wee guys in the car?’

‘IT STARTED OFF QUITE BADLY, A BIT MUCH TO TAKE. I FELT BETTER ABOUT IT ALL ONCE I’D DISEMBOWELED THEM AND FED THEIR INNARDS TO THE DOGS, THOUGH. GUESS I’M NOT CUT OUT FOR THIS SORT OF WORK ANYMORE.’

‘Dunno whit ah’m gonnae do either, like. Nae hoose, nae family, nae money.’

‘TELL YOU WHAT,’ smiled the genie, ‘HOW ABOUT I GRANT YOU ONE MORE WISH, ON THE HOUSE. ANYTHING. ANYTHING YOU WANT. I’LL GRANT YOU MY LAST WISH. GO ON, KNOCK YOURSELF OUT.’

Blake stared on as the girl’s tight buttocks swayed out of view. He looked up at the genie with a relieved smile and then back down at the ground. He was thinking hard.

‘COME ON, ANYTHING. MONEY, FAME, WOMEN, POWER, AN ISLAND, A COUNTRY, A HIT RECORD, THE PLAYBOY MANSION, AN ARMY, A PLANET, THE UNIVERSE? ANYTHING! USE YOUR IMAGINATION! HONESTLY, ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING! I WANT TO HELP YOU.’

Blake stood up, full of hope and excitement, finding it hard to restrain the impulse to grab and kiss the genie.

‘It’s goat to be money,’ laughed Blake, jumping with delight, ‘I wish I wiz the richest person in the whole world.’

Blake stopped and stood deathly still, screwed his eyes up expectantly and tensed his shoulders. He expected to open his eyes to see a fortress of gold surrounding him, a throne at his rear and all the women of the world lying like a naked, writhing carpet at his feet. He opened them and all he saw was a giant middle finger pressed into his face.

‘SWIVVEL, YOU LITTLE BITCH. WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS IS, A FUCKING FAIRY TALE?’

Pouf. And he was gone.

Blake went off in search of some more Buckfast. Not to rub this time. Just to drink.        

THE END

Blakey the Jakey: A Modern Scottish Fairytale – Pt 4

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The story so far: Blakey is having a bad day. He’s been kicked out of his mum’s house, lost all of his money, and missed out on a chance to exploit a genie. Things are looking bleak for Blake for him. Still, at least he’s not part of the Seven Little Wasters’ crew. What a bunch of bawbags they are. Blakey’s last resort is to fall upon the mercy of his grandmother, and that’s where he’s heading now… with a mounting sense of trepidation. You’ll understand why in a minute or so. She’s a ‘character’, and we know what it means when we describe someone in those terms: that they’re fucking mental.

Catch up with Part 1: http://www.jamieandrew-withhands.com/2012/06/10/btjp1/

Catch up with Part 2: http://www.jamieandrew-withhands.com/2012/06/14/btjp2/

Catch up with Part 3: http://www.jamieandrew-withhands.com/2012/06/22/btjp3/

————————————————————————————————————————-

Grandma’s council house was the only property in the street that was still decked out with Christmas fairy-lights – in March. They stayed flashing and pulsing three hundred and sixty five days a year. It was always Christmas time at grandma’s.

Wooden animals, painted bright and bold, were planted like trees in the over-grown grass. A pink flamingo, leg cocked, sat in the centre of the lawn, surrounded by cheeky monkeys, laughing lions and timid tigers. Little bonzai trees, at the foot of the hedge, lined the inside perimeter of the grass. Red balloons, at least fifteen of them, bounced and floated everywhere. On the front door, a varnished, oval plaque proclaimed, ‘Number 89. Gingerbread House. Catch Me If You Can – You Scum.’

Blake shook his head at the tacky display and gave a furtive glance around as he approached the door. Blake never liked admitting the blood connection between him and Grandma. She could be a tough old bitch but…

‘This yin’s aboot ready fur the nuthoose,’ he scowled, kicking a balloon out of his way.

Blake rapped loudly and quickly on the door, jamming the buzzer with his free hand at the same time. A jet of pressure cascaded down from his shoulders to his toes. He had to get in and out of public view, or he felt like he’d explode.

‘Come oan, come oan!’

Beep! Beep!

Blake heard the sounds of hip-hop hammering the air. He turned around to see a gleaming red hatchback sports car parked on the road outside of his grandma’s gate. The seven little wasters were piled in the front and back, bottles of Buckfast clasped in each of their hands. A large man with a blue turban sat in the driver’s seat – with a very unhappy look on his face.

‘Ho, Blakey boy! Is zat yer girlfriend’s hoose?’

Laughter.

‘Ho, ho! Wait till we tell orra boys in oor street! They’ll pish themsel’s!’

‘Ah didnae ken there wiz a Disney World in this toon!’

Shrill whoops of laughter.

‘Whose yer girlfriend: Minnie Moose?’

Whoop, whoop!

‘Well, cannae hang aroond. We’re aff tae London, go tae Stringfellas an that.’

‘Aye, an Soho! Get wee Harry’s end away!’

‘Ma end’s away, ye cheeky bastard.’

‘Settle, Harry, wankin’ disnae coont, pal!’

‘KILL ME, PLEASE. MAKE IT QUICK.’

Ho, ho. Whoop! Whoop! It was becoming like an episode of Rikki Lake written by Irvine Welsh.

‘Aye, we’ve goat a million poonds, ya dancer!’

A bottle of Buckfast came spinning from the back seat of the car towards Blake.

‘Catch.’

Blake did, firmly between his two hands.

‘Least we can dae.’

‘Noo ye can get pished up and sook yer granny’s baws!’

The car screeched away. Blakey fired off a few salvos of expletives, but the seven little fuckers were too far away to be hit by them.

The door to Grandma’s house opened and Blake shoved his way in before daylight had a chance to cast its revelatory spotlight upon Grandma. The door slammed shut behind him. Before him, fat arms extended and proportionately fat lips pouted.

‘Come gee yer Grannie a big kiss, Blakey.’

‘Eh…nut. Ah dinnae think so.’

She snatched the Buckfast from his hands and kissed it instead.

‘Hey, whit are ye…,’ Blake began to protest.

‘Dinnae start shit, Blakey, or ye’ll be through that wa’.’

Blake let out a sigh of defeat, shrugged his shoulders, and then laid his rucksack by the door. Blake’s grandma placed the Buckfast on the kitchen counter and then returned to the hall.

‘Dinnae mention it, gran.’

Blake’s gran wore a criminally short skirt, orange nylon tights, stilt-like high heel shoes, a floral patterned boob tube, and her face contained enough make-up to allow a clown to feel natural. This might have been acceptable attire if, for one, they had both lived in an alternative universe (or San Francisco); for second, if grandma had been younger; for third, if she didn’t have tattoos encrusting half of her body, a large scar cascading down her cheek, and biceps to make a post-spinach Popeye sweat; and, most importantly, fourthly: if grandma had been a woman. A fat cigar was jammed into the left side of grandma’s mouth, dripping hot ash onto the carpet and sending plumes of acrid smoke up Blake’s nostrils.

‘Get ben that kitchen and get the tea on or I’ll gee ye a fisting ye’ll never forget.’

Grandma burst through into her living room leaving Blake, ashen white, to deal with the tea.

The kitchen door was slightly ajar and Blake could hear voices drifting through as he filled the kettle with water.

‘My, grandma, what big hands you have.’

‘Aye, a’ the better tae grab ye with!’

‘My, grandma, what a big mouth you have.’

‘Aye, a’ the better tae plluggg mummble gobbo shlurp en floosre…’

‘Ho, grandma, mind thay big teeth on ma jed, will ye?’

‘Mmmmm mmmm mmmm mmmmm.’

‘My, grandma, what’s this huge thing? What an absolutely massive big, fat, hard co…’

The screeching whistle of the boiling kettle never did announce itself at a more appropriate moment. Blake kicked the kitchen door firmly shut and tried to stymie his third panic attack of the week.

Grandma eventually entered the kitchen, adjusting her bra and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Blake could hear the front door as it slammed shut. A set of lipstick-stained teeth grinned at Blake.

‘Just seeing yer grandpa off,’ stated Grandma in her deep, husky voice. Grandma whipped a tenner out of her bra and shoved it into Blake’s hand. ‘Take that, son, yer grandpa owed me that fir a job ah did fir him last week.’

Blake gagged back a faint dribble of vomit.

Blake’s grandpa was also a man. His grandpa visited his grandma six to seven times a day, six days a week and managed to be a completely different man each time.

‘So whit can ah dae fir ye, Blakey, son? Ye only ever visit yer poor grandma when yer hiding fae ma sister or efter something. So which yin is it?’

‘Baith, grandma. Baith.’

‘Ah’ll bet it’s money.’

‘Aye, grandma. Jist a loan, ken?’

‘It’s no for drugs is it, Blakey?’ she asked, issuing a cold stare.

‘Naw, gran, naw.’

‘Right,’ she nodded, satisfied, ’cause there’s nae need fir that. You shid huv the gid sense to deal so ye can get them for free, ken?’

‘Aye, gran.’

‘Gid boy. Noo, get they teas, ye wee cunt, an let’s go ben the living room.’

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CONCLUDES NEXT WEEK.