Potted guide to particle physics

CERN terrasse

Just as my son and I are headed our separate ways from the Òran Mór, I get a phone call from the University to say the profs I'm meeting are half an hour behind, so we head back inside and order a couple of orange and sodas. 

"You've been to CERN," he says. "Give me the potted guide to particle physics. But none of your jargon. Keep it simple."

"Well let's see," I say. "There are twelve elementary particles. First you got quarks, squarks, protons and squotons. Then there's electrons, neutrons, matrons, cisterns, grains of sand, steel girders, dark matter and belly button fluff. Everything in the universe is made out of those."

"What holds them together?" he says. "What gives them shape and structure?"

"Good question," I say. "The four fundamental forces do that - gravity, electromagnetism, rock music and sex."

"I'm wondering how they know all this," he says. "Experiments I guess. They couldn't just make it up." 

Source of protons for LHC

"Course they couldn't," I say. "At CERN they mostly use protons from a little red bottle on the wall. But they can't just shoot them straight into the Large Hadron Collider, because they'd get trampled to death by the big guys already in there. So they do it in stages.

"First they give them a wee boost in the Booster, then a physicist on a Harley Davidson picks them up and does the wall of death around two circular machines, called the Proton Synchrotron and the Super Proton Synchrotron, before tossing them at high speed into the Large Hadron Collider. 

CERN accelerator complex

"Sometimes this is too much for one of the protons, which gets over-excited and tries to exceed the speed of light. But that means it could travel back in time and stop itself coming out the bottle. Nature won't permit a paradox, so it surrounds the proton with a little bubble universe that floats away over the Jura Mountains. It's how our own universe began, 13.8 squillion years ago."

"What's a squillion?" he says.

"Part of the numbering system used in physics," I say. "You got thousands, millions, billions, squillions, gazillions and infinity."

"How am I supposed to remember that?" he says.

"There's a mnemonic," I say. "Three Mad Badgers Sail the Galaxy Inaspaceship."

"That took a lot of thought," he says. 

"It's what physicists are good at," I say.  

"Carry on," he says. "This is exactly what I wanted."

"Well some scientists think the bubble universe stays attached to ours by a piece of string. Others say there's no evidence for string, and the stuff gardeners tie up straggly plants with is a figment of imaginations clouded by too much contact with fresh air and creepy crawlies."

"I thought a figment was the smallest dried fruit in a packet," he says.

"It is," I say. "Some are so small they're imaginary."

"Right, carry on."

"Well the objections to string are strong," I say. "Calculations show you can make 10⁵²⁰ different universes out of string. That's a lot more than you can create out of quarks, squarks and girders. It's bigger than any known number, including infinity. So they've made a mistake somewhere."

"I bet they multiplied instead of dividing," he says. "I did that all the time at school."

"Me too," I say. "I'll check their sums and get back to you. Will that do for now?"

"That's great, thanks," he says. 

"Next time will you do the potted history of art for me?" I say.

"No worries," he says. "Do you want me to go right back to Mammoths in a Cave? Art historians often start later, with the Smug Bastard in a Mustache school. That's popular. So is the Big Naked Women Eating Fruit period."

"Whatever you think," I say. "You're the expert."

"Depends how much time we have," he says. "We need to leave plenty for Nailing Shopping Trolleys to a Wall. That's the prevailing school nowadays so it's the most important." 

"I look forward to that," I tell him. "See ya."

"See ya," he says and buggers off out of my life for another week.

The eyes have it

My niece Cathy is a fine photographer, with a nice eye for composition, and since you learn that by starting young, I'm going to claim some credit for her proficiency. Because I bought her her first camera when she was eight. 

It wasn't a great camera but that's not the point. No doubt her mum and dad bought her better ones as she got older. But I was the one who got her started. 

But here's the thing. I've noticed a certain expression on the faces of the guys in her photos. Puzzled, perplexed, bewildered. Take a look at Brian holding the little dog in pyjamas. 

Believe me, that's a very smart guy you're looking at. And Brian has brains too. But you wouldn't think it, would you? So what's going on?

Well I've seen that expression in the mirror and on the faces of a hundred strangers on the street, and I have a theory. Modern life is too complicated for the average male brain. 

"I mean look what it evolved to deal with," I tell my son, as we're having a beer in Òran Mór, the former church that's now a licensed arts venue with its own ale. "Grass, trees, shite and zebras.

"And what does it have to contend with now? Mobile phones, tax returns, speed cameras and coalition government. Is it any wonder we look perpetually perplexed?" 

"What worries me is the guys that don't," he says. "You see them striding around in their dark suits and camel-hair coats, looking manly and purposeful. Where do they get that air of certainty from?"

"Two possibilities," I tell him, taking a sip of the hoppy, refreshing ale. "One, it's an act and soon as they're out of sight their expressions revert to bemused, like ours."

"And two?" he says

"They're a different species."

"Not that old conspiracy theory," he says. "Aliens running the world. Tony Blair is a lizard from Alpha Draconis."

"He might be but that's not what I mean. I'm talking human but different. Convergent evolution. Happens all the time in nature. The beaked sea-snake, the white marlin and the roundscale spearfish, David Cameron and Oswald Cobblepot."

Always willing to give ideas an airing, my son starts nodding. "You could be right," he says, looking around the high-ceilinged room. "It would explain all those young couples who check out fine but can't have kids together."

"That's right," I say. "Different species can look similar but they can't breed." 

"There might be ten different species of human in this room right now," he says.

"There might," I say. "You and I could be different species."

"How does that work when you're my dad?" he says.

"Good point," I say. "Well spotted. We must be the same species. But we might be the only ones in this room."

"So is there some test, other than trying to have kids with people?" he says. "Which isn't always convenient."

"Family are the same," I say. "Me, you, your brother, my mum, my sister."

"Cathy and Brian?" he says.

"Same species, definitely," I say.

"What about strangers?" he says. "How can you tell?"

"Switch your brain off," I tell him. "Trust your instinct. Try it around the room," I say nodding in the direction of the next table. "Guy in jeans."

"Same," he says.

"Woman next to him."

"Different. You do get a feel for it, don't you? Have a go yourself," he says, pointing. "Her."

"Same," I say.

"Him," he says. 

"That's a dog," I say. "That's a different species, obviously."

"Well is it, though," he says. "Is it obvious? If things that look the same can be different species, why can't things that look different be the same species?"

I stroke my beard and ponder. "You're right, of course," I tell him. "This puts a whole new slant on things. Makes the world even more confusing than I thought. How can we be sure of anything now?" 

"It's got to be expression, hasn't it?" he says. "Never mind all that DNA bollocks. Anything that looks puzzled and perplexed is the same species, I'm thinking."  

"That's good thinking, son," I say, as he and I rise to leave, headed respectively for an art school lecture and a meeting on molecular biology at the University.

"So was this science or were you making shit up again?" he says.

"What do you think?" I say.

"Sounded like science to me."

"There you go, then. Trust your instinct."

Guys on bikes

"Most cyclists aren't cyclists," my son tells me, as I'm driving him to his Tai Chi session, near Byres Road. "They're just guys on bikes."

Focused on a couple of kids on the pavement, who look like they could dive into the road, my brain is fuzzy about what he's just told me, while feeling it's the kind of remark he has always enjoyed - a blend of paradox and his own sideways slant on the world.

"Have you any idea what you're talking about?" I ask, but instead of answering he starts pointing people out and classifying them as cyclists or guys on bikes. 

"It's just whether they're wearing a helmet?" I venture, after studying a few. 

"Nah, there's more to it than that," he says. "It's a culture thing. It's how seriously they're into it all."

"Have you noticed how selfish cyclists are?" I say. "The worst are those clowns that pelt along pavements to avoid traffic and don't give a toss about the pedestrians they mow down."

"I've never seen that," he says. "And I walk everywhere."

"I get it all the time."

"How many?"

"Three - once just yesterday."

"In sixty years?" he says. "They are at it all the time, then."

"They are. And every Sunday they're out on the winding, country roads down our way, driving six abreast at ten miles an hour with a queue of forty cars behind them. Selfish bastards. I'd melt down their bikes and make them buy cars." 

"You're starting to sound like a Daily Mail reader," he says. "How do you feel about immigrants, homosexual marriage and hoodie scum?"

"I love them," I say. "It's just cyclists I can't stand. Good thing is Nature has a way of punishing those who flout her Laws."

"Turn here into Creswell Street," he tells me. "Nature's Laws? Now you sound like a hippy."

"This is science," I tell him. "The human body isn't designed to be load-bearing at the crotch. There are sensitive parts down there that you press on at your peril. Male cyclists get all kinds of problems with their equipment."

"Like punctures and slipped gears?"

"Like low sperm counts and erectile dysfunction."

"Bugger," he says. 

"Not to mention nodules, furuncles and other 'extratesticular disorders'."

"I wish you hadn't," he says, squirming in his seat. "What causes these extraterrestrial disorders then?"

"Pressure and shock, according to a paper in the Lancet, which found 96% of mountain bikers had scrotal abnormalities." 

"You don't want those," he says.

"Normality of the scrotum is what we aim for," I say. "See this is why your average cyclist hates motorists. He can turn women on with his tight, lycra-encased arse, but that's all he can do. His wife is perennially unsatisfied so she's having passionate affairs with guys who keep their scrotums healthy by sitting on soft, comfy seats in cars. All that makes him a borderline psycho." 

"And this is all in that Lancet paper, is it?" he says

"I'm reading between the lines now."

"I thought you scientists chappies were supposed to stick to evidence and not make shit up," he says.

"Yeah but I'm a writer too. We have to make shit up."

"That's us here," he says. "Pull up outside the church. Hey, look at that one - cyclist or guy on a bike?"

"He's got a pointy helmet," I say. "So I'm guessing cyclist." 

"But he's wearing fancy shoes and carrying a newspaper and he just smiled at those kids," he says. All that makes him a borderline cyclist."

"Very good," I say. "You do know puns are the lowest form of wit?"

"Sorry I spoke," he says. "Don't get cranky. Gimme a bell next time you're in town.

"On yer bike," I tell him.

Third year they go nuts

"I don't want you writing about my girlfriend," my son tells me, as we're sat in the bay window of his old friend Matt's spacious, south-facing flat, overlooking the bowling club.

"I haven't," I tell him. "I mentioned she lives in Carlisle, she's called Linda and she's a musician. That's it. I know nothing about your girlfriend. I imagine she's smart, decent, creative and good-looking, because you're all of those. But I have no idea. I've never seen her."

"Well I've had complaints," he tells me. "Personally I wouldn't know what you write because I don't read it."

"Well I do," Matt says "I'm his biggest fan and what he's saying is true."

"You want to know why I never read it?" my son says.

"No," I tell him.

"You quote me out of context."

"People always say that about journalists," I tell him. "But the context is invariably a long, rambling, tedious pile of horseshit that no one would read. We select the most interesting parts and make people sound intelligent. You should be thanking us. But you're missing a more important point. You want to know what that is?"

"No," he tells me.

"What I do these days is not journalism. It's imaginative writing. It's art. I make stuff up, same as you. My medium is words where yours is paint, clay and planks of fungus-infested wood. I expected other people to confuse art and reality, but I figured you for smarter than that. 

"The son in the blog is not you. The son's girlfriend is not your girlfriend. Susan is not my girlfriend. The narrator is not me. He's an idiot for heaven's sake. How could that be me?"

The two of them study their tea with surprising interest, so I push the point. "He's the kind of guy that would stick a list of instructions to himself on the bathroom mirror, starting "Get up. Brush teeth. Go downstairs."

"My mother says you did that when we lived in Derby," he says.

"Bad example," I say. "He's the kind of guy that uses a satnav to get to the village shop and back."

"I've seen you do that," he says.

"Bad example again," I say. "He's the kind of guy ... Look just take it from me the narrator is an idiot. I write him that way so no one could confuse him with me, or anyone in the blog with real people. Reality is reality. Art is art."

"Speaking of art," Matt says, passing me his mobile phone, showing an image of a blonde female. "What do you think of her?"

"Pretty," I say.

"Then there's her and her," he says, touching the screen to display an attractive brunette then another blonde.

"You know these women?" I ask. 

"Met them online," he says. "It's this mobile site called Tinder that hooks you up with women in the neighborhood. Been out with five in the past week."

"Listen, I don't want to sound like an old fogey," I say. 

"Stop talking then," my son says.

"But at your age shouldn't you have a more mature attitude to women? You've been doing casual and uninvolved all your life."

"You got me wrong, chief," Matt says. "I want a serious relationship. But the longest I've managed is three years. There's a pattern. First year great. Second year the arguments start. Third year they go nuts and start fighting about everything and I tell them to beat it. I've a theory about women."

"We've all got one of those," I say. "Mine is that they're robots planted on Earth by aliens running experiments on pain and suffering." 

"Mine is that they're all mental," Matt says. "They can hide it for a while, some even a year or two. But sooner or later out it comes."

"Reminds me of a PG Wodehouse line," I say. "'It's no use telling me there are bad aunts and good aunts. At the core, they are all alike. Sooner or later, out pops the cloven hoof.'"

"Yeah, that's it exactly," Matt says. "Sooner or later, out pops the meat cleaver and the throbbing veins in the head."

"You been quiet a while," I say to my son, who's cradling his mug in his hands and staring out the window at white-shirted bowlers on the sunlit lawn below. "What's your theory about women? Aliens, parallel evolution, incurably insane?"

"Well," he says, lowering his mug to the table. "Obviously I don't have as much experience as you two masterminds. But it seems to me that ...."

"What?" Matt says. "Spit it out."

"Women are people," my son says, and Matt and I stare at each other blankly for a moment.  

"Yeah, good one!" Matt laughs and slaps him on the back. "You going to write all this up for your blog, chief?" he says, standing up and starting to clear the table.

"Course not," I tell him. "Wouldn't be fiction if I did."

That's not funny

My son's first academic essay met with mixed success, he tells me as we're headed to Glasgow University Library to find the books he needs to help him write his second.

"I passed," he says. "But the tutor didn't like my 'regrettable attempts at humour'. That's worrying. I didn't know there were any. Must have sneaked in when I wasn't looking."

"Humour does that," I say. "I used to get 'You are childish and unfunny' from my English teacher at school. And my former wife, come to think of it. Usually followed by 'Put your clothes on.'"

"Your teacher?" 

"My wife. Now I get told my writing is 'useless drivel'. I once got a rejection letter from some snot-nosed punk straight out of journalism school, who told me he aimed to discourage 'tired jokes and hoary old clichés'.

"The column of a colleague, which I always enjoyed, was dismissed by one reader as 'worthless and uninteresting small talk'."

"Pompous people are scared of humour," he tells me, stepping unhindered through the turnstile and continuing talking as he fades in the distance, while the metal bar catches me in the fleshy parts, setting off a siren and causing armed guards to erupt from the door behind the desk.

"On the ground!" the first one barks out the side of his mouth, flexing a bicep like the dome of St Paul's. "Show your ID!"

"Oh bugger," I think to myself. I was supposed to get a new staff card ages ago, so the electronics in mine must still be using valves instead of transistors. Also the photo of my face has faded so it's just a dim, grey, shapeless blob.

"Good likeness," the guard says, studying the card. "You may enter."

"What was that about?" my son says, when I catch up with him in the short loan section.

"Dodgy admin again," I say. "I need a secretary."

"Me too," he says. "What books are you looking for?"

"Got an article to write on the science of pain," I tell him. "Actually not just the science. They've had me talking to scientists, engineers and philosophers around the Uni, all researching aspects of pain."

"I like philosophers," he says. "The Art School is big on Michel Foucault. One of his critics called him 'an intellectually dishonest, empirically unreliable, crypto-normativist seducer of Postmodernism.' So I guess you and I got off lightly."

"I studied philosophy for a while," I tell him. "We had this lecturer who'd go 'What do we mean by pain?' Then he'd stop and scratch his big, bushy beard. Then he'd go 'What do we mean by mean.'"

"See that's the trouble with philosophy," my son says. "You can easily disappear up your own Aristotle."

"Regrettable attempt. What's the brief for your essay?"

"'Discuss with examples how maps reflect power over space, materials and people," he says, glancing at his notes and grimacing. "What is that about?"

"I wonder if we could combine our research and find maps of pain," I say.

"Like those sensory homunculi you get in science centres," he says. "You ever notice their hands and lips are huge, but other parts that seem sensitive aren't shown that way. Is that censorship or is it true?"

"These are deep waters, Watson," I tell him. "You'd need to ask Rachel. She's set up science centres around the world. So how are you going to keep humour out of this essay, when you come to write it, especially if you don't know you're doing it?" 

"I've been reading this article on how to stop yourself laughing at inappropriate times," he says. "It's packed with great suggestions. So when I start writing I plan to bite my lip and sit with my feet in a basin of icy water. That'll keep me serious." 

"I doubt it," I say. "What do you get from sitting on the ice too long, taking photographs?"

 "Polaroids," he says. "What's an ig?"

"A snow-house without a loo," I tell him, shaking my head. "Regrettable. Deeply regrettable."

They'll be back

"You have to vote," I tell my son over coffee in the kitchen of his flat.

"No I don't," he says. "It just encourages them." 

"That's a cheap joke and the opposite of the truth," I say. "If good people don't vote the extremists get in and we're all screwed." 

"There's no evidence for that," he says. 

"There is," I tell him. "It's how the Nazis came to power. After the First World War, the Germans were totally fed up with politicians, so the numbers voting plummeted every year. By 1933 only one person was voting in the whole country. Guess who."

"No idea."

"Hitler's mum."

He pours me a thick black espresso that could have boiled up from the Athabasca tar sands, and shakes his head.  

"It is pointless though," he says. "No matter who you vote for you get Tories. Cameron - Tory toff. Blair - Tory slimeball. Major - Tory twit. Thatcher - Tory twat." 

"You forgot Brown," I say.

"Who doesn't?" he says.

"Alex Salmond isn't a Tory," I tell him. "So you have to vote in the independence referendum. It's our one chance to get a country that isn't run for City of London mega-criminals."

"So what do you think will happen if we vote Yes?" he says.

"We get to live in a social democracy where the poor and sick are supported," I say. "Instead of abused by rich politicians and their media poodles."

"Good speech but no chance," he says. "The Tories will take over and we'll be back to square one."

"They can't," I say. "Tories in Scotland are like the dodo."

"Bald and stupid with a fat arse?"

"Extinct."

"Don't you believe it," he says. "Tories don't go extinct. They're just hiding."

"Where?" I say.

"All over the place," he says. "Caves, marshes, woodlands." 

"You're thinking of the Picts," I tell him.

"They were Tories," he says.

"You're obsessed," I say. "You're seeing Tories everywhere."

"They are everywhere," he says. "Soon as we declare independence they'll slither out their holes and take over the country. Did you know that 99.9% of Scotland's land is owned by 0.1% of the population?"

"You're making that up," I say. 

"I'm not," he says. "And guess what all those big landowners are."

"Tories?" I say.

"Correct," he says. "So we declare independence, first thing they do is put high fences around their land and herd us all into Glasgow."

"We'll climb out again and reclaim our country," I say.

"You won't be able to," he says. "They're taking the pound off us. You'll be so weighed down with two-pence pieces you can hardly move, never mind climb fences. We'll all be stuck in here."

He sips his coffee and shakes his head again. "Five million people trying to get a drink in Sauchiehall Street on a Saturday night," he says. "Bedlam. Is that what you want?"

"I guess not," I say.

 "Well don't vote then," he tells me.

A big boy did it and ran away

Stout denial is one of the first survival tactics you learn as a kid growing up in Scotland. "It wisnae me" is an ancient cry that can still be heard in our streets, homes and schools.

It rarely worked when I was a boy, since parents and teachers then had no qualms about punishing the innocent and often used a deterrence method from the football field, known as "get your retaliation in first."

But it can be effective in soft modern times, as my son demonstrates over a late breakfast in Charlie Rocks, when Rachel starts talking about the time he spent, on first moving to the city, as a tenant in her Glasgow flat. 

"Do you remember leaving that half-eaten meal in your bedroom drawer for weeks?" she says. "We got complaints from all the neighbours and a bunch of cats camped outside your window and partied all night long." 

"It wisnae me," he tells her firmly. 

"Of course it was and what's more ... " she says, then shakes her head and takes a diplomatic tack. "Did you know they've found a connection now between creativity and poor memory?"

"I didn't," he says. "But it makes sense. They tested me at art school and said my short-term memory was crap. Can't remember what they said about my long-term memory."

"They also said you were highly intelligent," I say. "So what do they know?"

"Yeah, yeah," he says. "Can I borrow your vacuum cleaner? Mine's broke."

"It's not Spring. Why do you need a vacuum cleaner? You having guests?"

"Might be," he says, looking away. 

"Who?" I say.

"None of your business," he says.

"Is it a woman?"

"No it's a Thai lady-boy. Of course it's a woman. You think I'm going to hoover my flat for Michael Gibb and Jamal Khan?"

"I was only asking. Tetchy little bugger, aren't you?"

"No I'm not," he says. "I just don't like being interrogated about hoovers, women and old breakfasts. How's your porridge, by the way? It looks kinda camp to me."

"I was thinking that," I say, lifting a sprig of green leaves from the centre of the summer fruits the Charlie Rocks chef has sprinkled over the surface of the good old Scottish staple. "When I was young, porridge was a much more manly meal."

"You and your ten brothers share a tin bath full every morning, before going out to fight the Vikings?" he says.

"We did. And if it turned out too thick to eat, because my mum never looked at recipes, we'd fasten it to the end of a hazel branch and use it as a club. The vikings never stood a chance. Versatile stuff, porridge."

"That is true," Rachel says, bringing us back to a reality neither of us has much time for. "Oats are a kind of superfood according to the research. They help prevent cancer, regulate your immune system and lower your blood pressure and cholesterol levels."

"That's interesting," he says. "I know I feel a lot better if I eat oats instead of wheat." 

"They're also great if you're trying to lose weight," she says. "They release energy slowly in the body, which makes you feel full for longer. A lot of the benefits come from a soluble fibre called beta-glucan."

"Fascinating," I say. "When my Dad was a lad, Scots mums in the country, he used to tell us, would fill their dresser drawers with porridge and cut big slices off, for the men to stuff in their pockets and take to work in the morning."

"Aha!" Rachel says, turning sharply to my son and making him jump. "That must have been what you were doing with your breakfast in my flat."

He meets her gaze with studied calm. "It wisnae me," he tells her.

Swimming in a fish bowl

Things went downhill frighteningly fast last week, after I wrote a piece confessing to being slightly estranged from reality.  

Me and reality came to the end of the road. We parted and it wasn't amicable. There is no chance of reconciliation. We're through.

You don't want the details. You'll need to wait for the film, if you do. Suffice it to say that a paperwork cock-up left me, on the way to an important meeting, standing at the roadside among the former contents of my car, namely two computers, a travel bag, three shirts, a paperback copy of Middlemarch and my shattered dreams of ever being a grown-up.

Standing beside me, looking as shell-shocked as I feel, Rachel shakes her head, opens her mouth a couple of times, like a goldfish at feeding time, and utters a few broken words.  

"Only an idiot ... ," she says. "Why on earth didn't you...." She punches my arm gently. "Words fail me," she says. 

"That's good," I tell her. "I'd hate to see your usual chatty, cheery self at a time like this. It would be insensitive."

"Can I hit you harder?" she says.

"You should," I say. But she doesn't. Never hit anyone in her life, the soft southern nancy.

Later that day, having been rescued and sent on our way by a sympathetic Susan, I get chatting to my son inside his flat, among the creative ferment of a sculptor at work. 

It is somehow soothing. Chaos inside and out. The last thing I need, with my brain in turmoil, is neat and tidy surroundings. 

"Don't worry about it," he tells me. "It's genetic. Your dad was smart but dopey. I'm the same. Get over it."

"I'm worse than either of you," I say.

"You're not," he says. "What's the dopiest thing you ever did?"

"Where do I start?" I say, trawling the memory banks. "I went to Paris once. Took a woman but not the address of the hotel we were booked into. Or its name. Beat that."

"Easy," he says. "My mind wandered in chemistry class once and my body set itself on fire."

"Jeez," I say, in sudden alarm. It's 15 years since he was at school and he's clearly fine, but a dad's instincts don't die. "What happened?"

"We were using these wee meths burners," he says. "I spilled some on my hands and it caught fire. Funny stuff, meths. It flows easily and burns kinda cool at first. 

"So I wave my hands around, not too bothered. But that doesn't help. So then I try to smother the flames."

"Does that help?" I say.

"Sets my armpits on fire." 

"Bloody hell."

"It's getting toasty by this time. And I'm not sure what to do next. So I scratch my head and guess what?"

"You set your head on fire?"

"Correct," he says. "My lab partner Cathy Small is running around now, screaming like a banshee. So the chemistry teacher, a big bugger we called Moby - can't remember his real name now - he strolls over with a basin of water, hurls it at me, which puts the flames out, then sends me to the nurse. 

"She rubs cool stuff on my hands and head and says I'm fine. I go back to class and the guys give me a big cheer. Moby, the bastard, gives me detention."

He scratches his chin and grins. "The day I set my head on fire. I think I win," he says.

"I think you do," I tell him.

It's all about ambience

"I never thought I'd hear you say that," I tell my son as we're catching up in his white room, before heading off to lunch. "Run it past me again."

"It's an idea that comes from a French, Marxist, neo-Dada art group," he says, listening to his own words then grinning. "Yeah, I see what you mean. That stuff's starting to trip off my tongue, isn't it?"

"Didn't mean to make you self-conscious," I say. "You got to learn the jargon. Just took me by surprise. Seems only yesterday you were babbling baby talk and pulling Weetabix out your hair. All of a sudden you're Brian Sewell."

"I like him," he says. "Sounds posh but he's a good laugh."

"So what's it about?" I say.

"Psychogeography," he says.

"I had a psycho geography teacher," my sister says. 

"Mad bastard, was he?" says my son, always happy to stroll down conversational side roads. "What did he do?"

"Nothing useful," she says. "Spent all his time talking to the domestic science teachers. So I learned by heart everything he taught us but failed the exam."

"You look like it's still annoying you," he says. 

"It is," she says and seethes quietly for a while.

"So what's it all about?" I ask. "This psychogeography."

"The sudden change of ambience in a street," my son says. "The path of least resistance you take in aimless strolls." 

He scratches his nose. "Kinda how the different parts of a city impose a flow on you, as you wander aimlessly around it." 

"Sounds a bit vague," I say. 

"It's totally vague," he says. "Guy Debord was one of the French Marxists that started it and he got pissed a lot. So maybe it's just drunken rambling. But it's been picked up by more interesting guys, like Will Self and Alan Moore - who wrote Watchmen and V for Vendetta."

"I'm still not getting what you have to do," I say.

"Site, place and content around the Queen's Cross area of Glasgow," he says. "Psychogeography. It's our first art project of the new term. So we've been wandering around, absorbing the ambience like nobody's business."

"We did that sometimes with the kids," my sis says. "We'd take them out and look at the lights and statues and buildings. We called them street furniture."

"Funnily enough we found a couple of old sofas, when we started psycho wandering," he says. "Carried them back to the studio. I fell asleep on one and they painted a moustache on me." 

"Is it sofa, couch or settee?" sis says. "I got laughed at the other day for calling it a settee. That was old-fashioned, they said, and I should call it a couch."

"See that just gets on my tits," my son says. "You can call things anything you want. I'm going to call this project "Ambience: sofa so good." 

"Is there a point to it all?" I say.

"You know better than that," he says. "Is there a point to particle physics? Is there a point to people? Alan Moore says magic is art and art is magic, and both come down to "the science of manipulating symbols, words or images to achieve changes in consciousness."

"Do you think we should magic ourselves off to lunch?" my sister says.  

"I do," he says. "I'm going to absorb all the ambience I can get from two fried eggs and a tattie scone."

Who needs normal anyway?

Photo by Dug Blane

My son has always sung from a different hymn sheet. He was special in the modern sense of the word that in less enlightened times would have been labelled backward or delinquent. 

He was none of those. He was dyslexic and he was thrawn, which is one of those old Scots words that has no exact translation into English. Stubborn, obstinate, determined to do things his own way. All that and more. A battle of wills between a mum and a one-year-old should end in mum's will prevailing, the child-rearing manuals tell us. Aye right. 

From an early age he was always breaking things. If he didn't break them he bent them out of shape. We gave him a Rubik's cube once and within an hour it was a bunch of brightly coloured bits, aesthetically arranged on the kitchen floor. A trike became a dismantled wheel and pedal mobile, suspended from the ceiling.  

His mum said he was a vandal but I figured him for a young engineer, taking things apart to see how they worked. The same idea occurred to him, so he studied car mechanics at college for a while. He was good at it but it wasn't really him. 

"I see being an artist hasn't made you less annoying," I tell him in the St Louis café bar at the far end of Dumbarton Road, as he shoogles our table and keeps on shoogling it, long after anyone else would have folded a menu and shoved it under the short leg.

"Just the opposite, as it goes," he says. "Thing is I've been hearing that from people all my life: "'What's that you're doing?' 'Stop it now!' 'Don't be so bloody annoying.'"

"Did you ever consider not being so bloody annoying?" I say. 

"I did, but it's like that writer's mum who said, 'Why be happy when you could be normal?'"

"That's a coincidence," I say. "I was talking about that with Carol the other day. Are you telling me you tried to be normal?"

"I wouldn't go that far," he says. "But if everyone tells you to stop doing stuff for years and years and years it has an effect. You do that stuff less. Which was all wrong for me."

He angles his head back so he can see under the table, then tries shoogling it from side to side, instead of back and forth. "Is it going to take years and years for you to stop doing that?" I say, as my coffee sloshes over and spreads across the surface.

"Sorry," he says. "The thing is, this is part of my artistic process."

Photo by Dug Blane

"That's becoming your answer to everything," I say. "'I'm sorry I burned down Westminster, your honour, with all the MPs inside it. It was part of my artistic process.'"

"Cracking idea," he says. "But listen. I'm only just getting this myselif. I've discovered there's different stages to fiddling with things - which I've done all my life without knowing why.

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then you annoy them, then they try to make you stop."

"Then you win?" I say. 

"Then you get art," he says. "Not always but often enough to make it worth sticking at it. That's what I've discovered. It validates all that fiddling I used to do, without knowing why I was doing it."

"Now that is really annoying, " I say. 

"What is?" he says. 

"As a dad who wants his son to succeed, I can't tell you to stop shoogling the table now, can I?"

"You can't," he says, giving it an extra shove that tips my cappuccino into my lap. 

"Performance art?" he says, looking pleased with himself.

"Behavioural science?" I say, smacking him gently round the head.

Postscript

"They're your nail-varnished hands in the photo, aren't they?"

"They are."

"I don't want to sound stupid but what were you holding the camera with?"

"My other hand. I took two shots then photoshopped them together. If you look carefully you can see the join. A bit like the back of your ..... "

"Don't push your luck, son."

Speeding through the dark night

"You know what annoys me?" I say to my son, as I'm driving him home after the holidays.

"Bankers," he says. "Windmills. Me." 

"All of the above," I say. "Also people who complain about my singing. I like music. I got a great sense of rhythm. But they tell me I sound like a spaniel with its paw stuck in a fence, when I sing." 

"What annoys me is people complaining," he says. "They do it all the time now, about everything. I get a lot of complaints about my spelling, grammar and pronounciation."

"It's pronounced pronunciation," I complain.

"See that's what I'm talking about," he says. "If you recognise it's wrong you've got the meaning. So picking me up on it is pedantic. Language changes all the time. I'm just ahead of the curve." 

"Well ahead," I say, as the steady beat of the windscreen wipers brings an old Motown number to mind, and I burst into song. 

"Red light, green light, speeding through the dark night, driving through the pounding rain. I gotta see Jane." 

Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, R. Dean Taylor, Don Gooch

"What on earth is that?" he says.

"Great track from the sixties by a guy called R. Dean Taylor," I tell him. "I always thought his name was Ardene."

"There you are then," he says. "Who gives a toss?"

"He does, I'm guessing," I say. "You wouldn't like it if people spelt your name wrong."

"I wouldn't care. I spell it wrong myself. Shakespeare never spelled his name the same way twice."

"He got away with it because he was Shakespeare," I say. "You're not. You don't want people thinking you're illiterate. They won't give you a job."

"I don't want them to give me a job," he says. "They can shove their job."

"What will you live on?" I say.

"Art," he says. "Fresh air and vegetables. The universe will provide."

"No it won't."

"It has so far," he says.

"That wisnae the universe," I say. "That was me." 

"Cheers, man," he says. "Appreciate it."

"Aye, no problem. Windscreen wipers, splishing splashing, calling out her name, I gotta see Jane."

"What I do with people that complain about my spelling or grammar is to thank them," he says. "Then I make the same mistake again as often as possible. It drives them nuts." 

"Why do you want to drive people nuts? I try very hard not to drive people nuts."

"And you still drive them nuts. Wasted effort, I'd say."

"Fair point. I used to make your mother criminally insane by being in the same room with her."

"Same house is how she tells it," he says. "Same town."

"Same country," I say.

"Speaking of which, I'm going to Newcastle for Hogmanay," he says. "Have you noticed how guys in Glasgow are into this Geordie thing now of wandering around with no shirt on, to show how hard they are?"

"I don't get out much," I say.

"You'd see it all the time, if you did," he says. "I'm like all that proves, pal, is you're going home to a nice meal in a warm house with the central heating turned up high. Put a shirt on, ya tosser."

"Although I tried I could not survive," I belt it out and he picks it up and sings along with me. "The frantic pace, the constant chase to win the race, it's not a part of me. I've gotta find what I left behind. Oh, I gotta see Jane.

"Oh I gotta see Jane."

"So you do know the song?" I say when our last notes have sped together through the dark night.

"I do," he says. "Just not the way you sang it. You are a terrible singer, man."

"Are you complaining?" I say. 

"No way," he says.

I Gotta See Jane by R. Dean Taylor. 
Science of singing by Nandhu Radhakrishnan at the University of Missouri.

There's nothing wrong with surly

Stu Kidd at the Rio. (Photo by Dug Blane)

"I'm not going in there again," I tell my son as we're driving along Radnor Street looking for a good place to grab a bite on his birthday. 

"Guy behind the counter's a surly git and he sticks five percent on the bill if you pay by card."

"Nothing wrong with surly," he tells me and goes off on one. 

"It's a Scottish tradition. It's how you know you're not in New York. You don't get everybody telling you to have a nice day. I don't want total strangers telling me to have a nice day. I'm not their friend. I don't know them. They don't know me. I've got my shopping. I've paid for it. I just want to get out of there. Have a nice day yourself, you artificially cheery little twat."

He stops to draw breath. "You all right now?" I ask. 

"I'm fine," he says. "How about the Rio? They've live bands at the weekend, so we go there often. It's friendly. Stu Kidd plays there a lot."

So I turn right and head up Argyle Street, past the Kelvingrove and find a parking space outside St Peter's Primary. The Rio is jumping when we get inside, but the waitress, who looks about twelve, finds us a table not too close to the door, since it's a chilly morning, and right next to a heater, which is cosy, and we settle down to study the menu. 

My sister's looking good and seems perkier than usual, without the strain lines round her eyes that she's had for a while. "I had the carpet taken up and vinyl put down," she says. "I'm allergic to house mites, I've discovered."

"Seriously?" my son says. "What do they do?"

"Make me tense," she says. "I'd started swearing at other drivers and tailgating them."

"Because you were pissed off with the house mites?" my son says.

"Some chemical they produce was making me stressed," she says. "But I'm fine now. Dead relaxed even in the car."

"Your yin and yang look well balanced to me," he says. "Speaking of which my pal Jawad is into this whole middle class lifestyle thing - wife, sales job, beamer, house in the country. Now he's bought himself a giant dog called Paul. 

"No hang on. It's John I think. George. Adam. Rex. Rover." He chunters to a halt, looking puzzled.

"Bruce!" he shouts and the woman at the next table jumps a foot and chokes on her coffee. "I'm sorry," he says to the waitress walking past, who gives him a raised eyebrow and a tentative smile.

"I have trouble with names," he tells us. "They tested me at College recently and said I was smart but my short-term memory's useless."

"Why were they testing you?" I say.

"I don't remember," he says.

I take a sip of coffee and look about. Busy café with lots of women and little toddlers wandering around. Clatter of plates and heels. Hiss of the coffee machine. Nice feel to the place. 

"You got any mushrooms?" my son says, shoving his food around on the plate. 

"They're under your egg," I tell him. "Maybe chemistry's your problem, same as Helen. Could be food additives. They cause headaches, hair loss, acne, impotence and brain damage."

"Is there evidence for any of that? he says. "Or are you just Daily Mailing it?"

"Less of that," my sis says. "I get the Daily Mail."

"I don't get any news," he says. "Don't have a TV. Don't read the papers. No idea what's going on in the world. Which means I'm much happier than you guys. Death and disaster don't get beamed into my brain every day."

He spears a pensive mushroom. "Only trouble is I'll be the last to hear about the end of the world. Like an asteroid's headed for Earth or robots have replaced the humans and I'll be wandering the deserted streets alone. Hapless, gormless, clueless and doomed."

"It's happened already," I say. "All those people telling you to have a nice day are the first wave of the robots."

"You reckon?" he says.  

"Sure. In fact how do you know I'm not a robot? Or your aunty here. You could be the only human in this whole café."

I jerk my head and go "Bzzzt. Have a nice day," in a robot voice. "Exterminate! Exterminate!"

"Pillock," he says and stabs a surly sausage with his fork.