Dutch courage

Like all basically honest people, Susan is hopeless at keeping stuff to herself. She has what we poker players call tells, little bodily movements that indicate she's uncomfortably aware of not giving you the whole truth. 

So my suspicions are aroused when she sets down two clinking glasses that sparkle in the low rays from the first sun we've seen in three days at Portavadie, and says. "They asked if I wanted Hendricks. But it's expensive. I said their own brand was fine."

Then she blinks twice and looks away.

"Good thinking," I tell her, lifting the cool drink to my lips and savouring the tang of citrus, juniper and quinine that bursts fresh from the most popular drink in the galaxy. "Our holiday kitty is getting low and all gin tastes the same anyway."

"You don't half talk bollocks at times," she says, gazing at the bars of pink cloud above the wind-rippled waters of Loch Fyne.

"Not at all," I tell her. "Malt whisky is by far the most complex distilled spirit. Everybody knows that. A good malt has hundreds of subtle aromas, with their origins in the water, the air, the cask, the peat and the intricate chemistry of ageing. 

"Vodka and gin are just raw alcohol for people with soft brains who want to get pissed by following fashion and knocking back kiddy drinks called cruiser, breezer, bruiser, greaser, soft screw, kiss mix and mudshake."

I take another sip and deliver the clincher. "Vodka is just distilled potato juice."

She refuses to be clinched. "Forget vodka," she says. "There is more to gin than you realise, pal. Your problem is you don't listen. You just go off on one. So you'll never learn any more than you know now."

"But that's loads," I tell her. "If I put more in it'll shove important stuff out, like how to drink beer and put my socks on. When I was young my brain was like a Dyson, sucking up great swathes of science and philosophy."

"But it blew a fuse long ago," she says. "Because it hoovered up too much half-chewed gum and balls of fluff. You need to get those out and more good stuff in."

"Go on then," I sigh. "Tell me about gin." 

She takes a long sip through the black, bendy straw favoured by big girls and poseurs, brushes a bumblebee away with the back of her hand and says, "Gin is a fairly modern drink. 

"But it comes from jenever, a traditional Dutch tipple flavoured with juniper berries and botanicals - a secret mix of herbs and spices. British soldiers are supposed to have drunk jenever for its calming effect before battle, which is where the term Dutch courage comes from."

"That's actually quite interesting," I tell her.

"Shut up and listen, Stephen," she tells me.

"Hendricks is a modern gin made in Scotland in a traditional way," she says. "They use two old stills bought at auction, which produce very different styles of spirit that they blend together. Besides the botanicals and aromatic juniper, they also use essence of cucumber and rose petal. The result is the 'best gin in the world', according to the Wall Street Journal."

"Well if I believed all that, I might have been tempted to get myself one and just say I'd bought the cheap stuff," I tell her.

She blinks twice and looks away. 

"You sneaky rat," I say and she smiles, sips her Hendricks and studies the sunset.

"I like holidays," she tells me.

My boomerang won't come back

"You got your fingers in the wrong place again," Susan tells me, as she's giving me a lesson out in the open air, now that Spring has come.

"I haven't done this before," I say. "It's not easy."

"Do exactly what I say and you'll be fine," she says. "Curl your fingers around and hold it at an angle to the vertical. That's it. Now throw."

The two of us watch the little boomerang soar over the grass then plummet into a cowpat. "This isn't easy," I say, as we set off to retrieve it. "Are you sure they ever come back? Maybe it's one of those urban myths for wee boys."

"The big boys on Bondi Beach had no trouble with their boomerangs," she says. 

"That's just tacky," I tell her. "And tactless. Just because I have skinny legs and don't know how to hold a boomerang. It's not a survival skill in the West of Scotland. I can dance, dribble a ball and solve differential equations. What more do you want?"

She raises her eyebrows in a manner that says way more than words. "It is a beautiful object," I say, studying the images of Australian animals, painted on the polished wood. "But it's very annoying. My hunter's instincts, honed by millennia of male evolution, should make this easy for me."

"Your hunter's instincts?" she says.

"The ones that make me good at throwing a javelin and parking a car," I tell her. "While you can cook, sew and find things in cupboards. That's your gatherer's instincts."

"Shut up and throw the boomerang," she says.

"I'll try one more time," I say. "Then I'm going to the pub. Why couldn't you get me a present from Australia that wouldn't make me look an idiot?"

"I was only there three weeks," she says.

"Very good," I say, grabbing the shit-covered shaft. "Read the instructions again, will you please?"

"Stand at an angle to the wind," she says. "Hold the boomerang with one of its aerodynamic arms pointing away from you. Throw overhand and snap your wrist to make it spin. Once it's in flight do not look away. If you lose sight of it, adopt the 'mystery boomerang position'." 

"I love that bit," I tell her.

"Turn your back, cover your head with your arms and crouch down," she reads. "If the boomerang hits you in the back it was a good throw."

"Last chance for one of those," I say, throwing hard, snapping my wrist and watching with pleasure as the little flying-machine soars through the air and starts banking left. The ground comes up and smacks it some distance away from us, but it's the first sign that I'm getting the hang of this.

"Always stop on a high when learning a new skill," I tell Susan in the pub later. "Makes you keen to try again. What was the best part of your holiday in Australia then?"

"My boy took me out for dinner on the last night, to the Melbourne restaurant where he's chef. I got him all to myself for the first time in years and we chatted for hours. It was a lovely evening."

She studies the bubbles in her beer. "He will come home," I tell her. "In a year or two."

"I'm not so sure," she says. "They've a great life out there. I think it'll be a long time before I see him again." 

"Family's too important to him," I say. "He'll return, same as you. You went all the way there and flew home again. You're a bit of a boomerang, yourself."

"Elegantly curved and aesthetically pleasing?" she says. 

"Comes back covered in sh...," I start to say, when my hunter's instincts sense her intention, I swiftly adopt the mystery boomerang position, and her raised hand passes harmlessly over my head.

Koalas, kangaroos and sheep

So I'm sat in my sister's house late at night, sipping Isle of Jura, and wondering how everyone is getting on. 

She has flown off to Teneriffe with her old college friend, leaving me to look after her aged and possibly ailing cat for a week. My son's in England with his girlfriend. Rachel has gone back to Southampton. I've not seen Al in ages. And Susan is as as far away from Scotland as you can get, without leaving the planet. 

So I take another sip and my mind wanders back to my first contacts with Australians, many years ago. I can remember a pervert, a garrulous and tiresome cook who couldn't stand Scottish weather, and a female rugby player who stole my heart and my socks. 

Then I read about funnel web spiders, which are so ferocious they jump up and bite you in the neck, even if you climb on the table to escape them. I've since learned that might not be true, but it scared me, I can tell you.

So for a while I wasn't keen on Australians or Australia. Then along came Guantanamera and my feelings softened. 

The name means "woman from Guantánamo" and it's the title of a traditional Cuban song, with different lyrics down the years, the most successful of which were recorded by an easy listening group called the Sandpipers, based on an arrangement by Pete Seeger.

Now the thing about easy listening is it's damn hard to listen to. Seeger was a folk singer with his heart in the right place but too much twee in his music, and the Sandpipers' song was stuffed with saccharine. 

"Yo soy un hombre sincero de donde crecen las palmas," they sang soulfully, then spoke the translation to the accompaniment of soft guitars. "I am a truthful man from the land of the palm trees. And before dying, I want to share these poems of my soul. My poems are soft green. My poems are flaming crimson. My poems are like a wounded fawn seeking refuge in the forest."

Yeah I know. Me too. This was the year the Beatles released Revolver, the Stones came out with Aftermath and Dylan made Blonde on Blonde. So I tried to mask the sound of the Sandpipers with real music, but their soppy song was everywhere. 

Fast forward 20 years and Scotland is playing Australia for a place in the World Cup finals. I was there at Hampden with my eldest son David, who was eight at the time and got to see Kenny Dalglish in one of his last Scotland appearances. He was a big fan in those days, and so was I.

It was an emotional night. Right after we'd scored the goal in Wales that got us to this play-off, Scotland manager Jock Stein had died suddenly. Stein was the best club manager Scotland ever possessed. Never before or since could our small country boast the top football team in the world, which Celtic were in the second half of the 60s. 

So the place was packed and the Hampden roar louder than I'd ever heard it. Australia got the ball and the crowd burst into tuneful song. The tune was Guantanamera and the chorus should have gone like this:

"Guantanamera, guajira Guantanamera
Guantanamera, guajira Guantanamera"

But those were not the words issuing from 65,000 lusty throats that night. Oh no. What the young Australians heard every time they touched the ball was: 

"Sheep-shagging bastards, you're only sheep-shagging bastards.
Sheep-shagging baa-stards, you're only sheep-shagging baa-stards."

The words fit the music and the rhythm of the song to perfection. It shook the Aussies up, they lost 2-0 and I've had a soft spot for Australia ever since.

My mobile phone rings suddenly, dragging me back to the present, and Susan's smiling face appears on screen. "Watcha, mate," she says. "Are you missing me?"

"Nah," I tell her. "I'm too busy."

"You would love it here," she says. "I've not seen any of those funnel webs you warned me about. I think you made that up. But we have seen koalas, kangaroos and sheep. There are loads of sheep here."

"But not many wounded fawns in the forest or good football players," I say.

"What?" she says. "You're gibbering again."

"Sorry," I say. "Must be the jet-lag."

"You don't have jet-lag," she says, speaking slowly. "I have jet-lag. I'm the one who flew to Australia. You've been sat in Scotland, working you tell me. But drinking whisky since I left, by the sound of it."

"According to relativity there are no preferred reference frames," I tell her. "So there is a valid viewpoint in which you stayed still, Australia came to you and I got the jet-lag."

"I would give you a slap if I could reach you," she says. "Do you want to hear about our day out along the Great Ocean Road or don't you?"

"I do," I say, pouring myself a large one and slinging my leg over the arm of the chair. "Tell me all about it, cobber."

Down under

"You ever been to Australia then?" Susan asks, as we're sat in the Sports Bar at Glasgow Airport, waiting for the plane that will take her to the other side of the world to visit her long-lost son, the Melbourne chef.

"Closest I got was watching I'm a Celebrity for longer than I like to admit," I tell her. "There's something compulsive about seeing celebs starved and humiliated by two chirpy twats in a jungle. Like Christians in the Coliseum but with less lions and more bras in the shower."

"I'm excited," she says, clenching her fists and shaking, the way little kids do.

"Me too," I say. "Three weeks of ironing my own shirts and sleeping alone. I can hardly wait."

"You do that now," she says.

"Yeah but if you're in the same country there's always a chance you might ... iron one of my shirts."

"No there isn't," she says.

"In that case you can bugger off and I won't miss you," I tell her.

"Yes you will," she says.

"Yes I will," I say, stirring my cappuccino with the little wooden sticks you get in airport bars these days, in case you steal their spoons. Only reason I get cappuccino is I like spooning the spicy froth into my mouth. You can't do that with little wooden sticks, I think, feeling sorry for myself and resting my head on my hand.

"I'm going to miss little Sally," Susan says, her eyes misty for the first time. "I've never gone three weeks without seeing her. Tell her not to start walking till I get back. I want to be there.

"Hey, cheer up," she adds, leaning over and knocking my elbow away, so my head drops suddenly, the way she did on our first date. (I'm not kidding. She only got a second by being irresistible.) "Three weeks will fly past. Tell me what you know about Australians."

"Well, let's see," I say. "They invented the boomerang, the didgeridoo and the Great Barrier Reef, which is a form of contraception made of coral. Famous Australians include Ned Kelly, who wore a dustbin on his head because he looked like Mick Jagger, and Germaine Greer who invented the female orgasm."

"Why can't you scientists invent something useful like that?" she says.

"Greer is also to blame for the modern female," I say. "Before they read her poisonous propaganda, women looked lovely, wore lipstick and aprons and said 'Have the men had their tea yet? Afterwards they dressed like plumbers and said 'God made men because vibrators can't cut the grass.'"

"I like that," Susan says.

"It's sexist and offensive," I tell her.

"That's what I like about it," she says, standing up. "It's time to go."

"It can't be," I say. "We only just got here."

"That's because you got lost, then drove round the airport three times looking for the short stay car park."

"It's hard to find."

"I know," she says, patting me on the arm. "They put it under huge signs saying 'Short Stay Car Park' just to confuse you."

I lift my coffee, take a sip and study her over the rim of the mug. The prospect of flying across deep oceans to a strange land, all on her own and carrying needles and necessary medicines that need to be kept at the right temperature, and could easily be confiscated by a hundred jobsworths she'll meet in the next 11,000 miles, seems to be fazing her not in the slightest.

It's one of the things I admire about Susan. If something seems scary she's more likely to do it, not less. She's not an adrenalin junky though. Just brave.

"Will you be all right?" I say.

"Yeah," she says. "Will you?"

"Yeah," I tell her.

"You fancy a nice present from Australia?" she says.

"I do."

"Name it."

"Come back safe," I say and hold her close. "Don't get eaten by crocodiles."

"They wouldn't dare," she says, marching briskly off across the marbled floor.

This is a man's country

I've seen better breakfasts than the one staring up at me in a Highland hotel in which Susan and I are spending a couple of nights, as a wee break before she jets off to Australia, to visit her son and get attacked by crocodiles and ravished by rugby players, though she denies of course that any of that will happen.

Scanning across the plate I got half a tomato, one burnt vegetarian sausage and a greasy egg laid by a discontented bantam, fed on french fries. That's all and the message couldn't be clearer.

"Look around you, pal. See these antlers and stags' heads? This is a man's country. Come up here with your poncy city ways and order vegetarian breakfast and that's what you get.

"Don't just sit there like a wimp," Susan tells me. "Get up and complain."

"Nah, nah, I've worked in hotel kitchens," I say. "I know what they do with complaints. They got a special kitchen porter to handle them."

"They don't," she tells me. "It's the manager." 

"Outside it's the manager," I say. "Inside it's a sweaty Neanderthal called Shug, who lurks in a dark corner of the kitchen, humming death metal songs and pulling dead flies out his navel. Anybody says their food's too small and greasy, they fry you two more eggs then wipe them dry on Shug's armpits."

"That's disgusting," she says.

"I'm only telling you what I've seen," I say. "I don't make this stuff up."

"Go and complain now," she says, with that look in her eye, and I get up and take the long walk across the carpet, pondering the changing attitudes to vegetarians over the years. 

When I stopped eating meat in the '70s there were only five vegetarians in the world. So there was nothing for us to eat. My first Christmas dinner I sat at a huge table, groaning with dead animals and surrounded by carnivore cousins who thought I was mad, and wondered what to do with the three tepid tomatoes stuffed with brown rice my mum had arranged aesthetically on the plate, to compensate for the total absence of gustatory appeal.

"I'm sorry," she said, genuinely concerned. "I couldn't find any nice recipes for you."

"It's all right, mum," I said, tucking in. "They're lovely."

About that time I made the mistake of going into another Highland hotel and asking for a meat-free meal. "What kind of vegetarian are you?" the manager said.

"The normal kind," I said.

"You don't get many of those," he roared, slapping his thigh and raising loud guffaws from the six sheep-shagging buffoons at the bar. 

Then in the eighties, the right-on comedians appeared, and pointed out that this was all very offensive to gays, vegetarians and black people. They were determined not to offend anybody and had a brilliant idea. They would never say anything funny again.

It caught on fast and soon all comedians were ruthlessly cutting everything that might remotely amuse anyone. But audiences were laughing louder than ever because they wanted to prove how inoffensive they were as well. 

One benefit of all this was that for a brief time people were nice to vegetarians and you could eat out with pleasure. Stout yeoman fare, like vegetarian pie, chips and beans appeared on menus. It was a halcyon age. But it didn't last. 

Nowadays it's almost as bad as it used to be. Basically you can have one of two hot meals, when you go out. There's vegetarian lasagne, made from alternating layers of barely edible plastic and a brown fungus scraped from the soles of postmen's feet. 

Then there's risotto, a tasteless sludge made from rice, eaten by poor people in Italy and used by the better-off to fill their cracks. If you'll pardon the expression.

"What is it?" the manager asks, when I reach the end of the room.

"I'm not happy," I say. 

"Me neither," he says. "What do you want me to do about it?"

"Give me a bigger breakfast that's not so greasy," I say.

He turns his head and shouts through to the kitchen. "Hey Shug, get your shirt off."

"Forget it," I tell him and turn and walk away.

Who's the woman in this relationship?

Insults in Scotland are a form of bonding, a cultural device that doesn't travel well I discovered when I first went to England to work, and tossed a bit of friendly banter at a guy called Granville, who took mortal offence and never spoke to me again.

"Big girl's blouse," I thought, until I grew some cultural antennae and noticed the attention to courtesy, even among good friends, that prevails among our southern neighbours. 

Then on a writing trip to Helsinki a couple of years ago, I found Finns using gentle insults in the Scots fashion, and came up with the theory that it's about resisting pressure to conform from a powerful senior partner - both Sweden and Russia having laid claim to Finland throughout much of its history.

I still believe there's some truth in this. What I know for sure is that creative insults, done with humour in the right company, can generate shared pleasure at being on the same wavelength. 

But there is a line. And Susan just crossed it. 

"No I wouldn't," I tell her in Mary's house, where we've gathered on January 1st, to get the New Year off to the traditional sociable start, with whisky, chat and Belgian chocolate.

"You wouldn't what?" Carol says, coming through from the kitchen. "And why are you sitting so far from Big John on the couch?" 

"They were closer a moment ago," Susan says. "Much closer," she adds archly. "They separated when I asked if they were exploring their gay side."

"And I said I didn't have a gay side," John says. "But if I did, I'd be the man." 

"I agreed," Susan says, nodding at me. "And he'd be the woman."

Carol takes a cursory glance at the two of us and sits down in the middle of the sofa. "He would," she announces. "Anybody can see that."

"No they can't," I say, feeling beleaguered. "I don't want to be the woman. I got nothing against women. I like women. I just don't want to be one."

"All we mean is that you have a soft side," Carol says, patting me on the thigh. "You're sensitive," she says, stroking my arm. "It's a good thing."

"That's right," Susan says, keeping her face straight with a struggle. "Lots of guys would envy you."

"Do you envy me?" I ask John and his laugh is loud, raucous and, to my sensitive ear, bloody tactless. 

"He doesn't envy me," I say. "Listen, I got in touch with my feminine side once. She didn't like me."

"Build a bridge," John says, in his gruff, manly way. "Get over it. It's all hypothetical anyway. We're not gay. You and I are not going to have a relationship."

"That's true," I say and start to chill. "This is excellent whisky, Mary," I tell her and she flashes her lovely smile across the room.

"Because if we were gay you wouldn't be my type," John adds.

"What?" I say, the tension back in an instant.

"You heard," he says. 

"This gets worse," I say. "I'm not just a woman. I'm a woman no one could fancy." 

"I fancy you," Susan whispers. "I'll show you when we get home."

I give her a smile and relax - too soon again.

"After you've washed the dishes and made the beds," she tells me.

Deep and crisp and even

Photo by Dug Blane

Three o' clock on a chilly Christmas morning. A woman laden with parcels strides along empty avenues, their wet pavements silver and gold in the streetlights. Occasionally she darts an apprehensive glance behind, before strolling swiftly on. 

Fifty yards back, two dark figures freeze in mid-step, like cartoon characters, every time she does so, before resuming their pursuit. "Slow down, man," the taller one says, wheezing loudly. "You'll give me a heart attack."

"You should lay off the cigarettes," the other replies. "At least you're warm in that big coat. I can't feel my legs. Whose daft notion was this anyway?"

Minutes before it had seemed a great idea, after Anne had set off into the night, refusing to let any of us big, strong men accompany her. She had a point. Chuck was lounging on the sofa at an angle of forty-five degrees, drinking beer and looking fuzzy. I was in an armchair opposite, trying to remember my middle name.

"I'll be fine," she said. "You'll only hold me back and we'll likely all get mugged. I'll be home before the two of you can stand up straight."

The sound of the front door closing behind her seemed to galvanise Chuck. "I'm going after her," he says, leaping to his feet like a young gazelle, then toppling slowly sideways, like a young gazelle that's had ten pints of Guinness, and saving himself by grabbing the standard lamp.

"I don't like women wombling around at night on their own," he says, screwing up his face and trying harder. "Wandering," he says. "It's not wight."

"I'm with you, Elmer," I say, hauling myself vertical and heading for the door.

"Oh my God," Susan says. "Batman and Robin. At least take your jacket," she says, handing it to me. "Don't frighten her and get back here before the New Year."

"Which one am I?" Chuck says, as we head into the deserted streets. 

"You're Robin," I say.

"Why do I have to be Robin?" he says.

"Because you're a follower," I say. "I'm a natural leader - fearless and decisive with a powerful personality."

"And a Batmobile," he says, nodding to my Vauxhall Corsa parked on the road.

"Sarcasm doesn't suit Robin," I say. "There's no sign of her. We're going to have to run." 

Around two corners we catch sight of Anne not far ahead and go into our freezing and wheezing routine, since she's going to be really annoyed if she sees us.

"This is daft," Chuck says, when we've let her put some distance between us. "I can't breathe. If someone jumped her, I could only shout 'Stop that or I'll come and get you in five minutes!'"

"It's more than I could do," I say. "We've lost her again."

"Oh bugger," he says and sets off, before I can stop him, in a long slow lope like that used by his ancient ancestors on the African savannah, to eat up the miles and hunt down their prey.

Unfortunately Chuck's prey has heard him coming and is waiting behind a privet hedge, with a parcel of mince pies in a Tesco plastic bag. 

"Is he dead?" I say, when I round the corner and find Anne leaning over his supine body, spreadeagled on the pavement.

"Don't be stupid," she says. "Mild concussion at worst. What did you idiots think you were playing at? You scared the life out of me."

"We were providing you with manly protection from nameless dangers of the night," I say.

"The only dangers around here tonight are you and him," she says.

"Just a small piece of chocolate cake, madam," Chuck says, sitting up and looking around. "Your lights are a little bright this evening."

"That's more sense than he usually makes," I say. "He'll be fine. We'll see you inside your house, then be on our way. Unless you'd like to repay us by inviting us in for a nightcap."

A gust of wind blows her reply away, catching her front door at the same time and slamming it firmly in our faces. We turn and head for Susan's house. 

"I think that went well," Chuck says. "We don't need to give them all the details. Anne home, job done about covers it."

"I think so," I say. "While the world sleeps we walk the streets, keeping the town safe for the civilised."

"Gratitude is a gift," Chuck says. "Thanks are a bonus. The work itself is its own reward." 

"Have you any idea where we are?" I say, coming to a halt and recognising nothing.

"I'm afraid not, Batman," he says. "I was following you."

Fearless and decisive, I pull my phone from my pocket and call us a cab.

Want more?
Elmer Fudd sings Bruce Springsteen.

Which foot does he kick with?

Religion is a touchy topic in the West of Scotland and some people take great pleasure in using it to wind me up. One of these days I'll have the sense to realise what's happening and not rise to the bait.

"I think she's kicking more with her right foot," I say innocently, as we watch little Sally gurgling and laughing on the sofa at a small gathering in Susan's living room.

"She is not," says an unfamiliar woman in a woolly hat. "Is he a ... ?" she adds, nodding to the right to fill in the blank and looking with displeasure in my direction.

"I'm afraid so," Susan says. 

"Bad luck," the woman says and wanders through to the kitchen.

"What was that about?" I say.

"She was asking if you were a Protestant," Susan says. "I told her you were."

"I'm not," I say.

"Are you a Catholic?" she says.

"No."

"Then you're a Protestant."

"That's ridiculous," I say. "There are more than two types of people in the world."

"He's right," Chuck says. "There's three. Are you a Muslim?"

"No," I say.

"Then you're a Protestant," he says.

"I don't believe you people," I say and a hush falls on the company.

"Pardon me?" Susan says in that tone that makes male hormones run for the hills. "You people?"

"I meant all you people in this room that are talking bollocks about religion," I say. "I'm a scientist. Doesn't mean I can't be religious. Some scientists are. I'm not. If anything I'm a Buddhist. Which is not a religion. It's a way of life. I'm not a Catholic. I am not a Protestant."

"Don't get out your pram," Chuck says. "A Buddhist is just a kind of Muslim, isn't it?"

I shake my head, try not to react to the nonsense, and fail. "Buddha lived a thousand years before Muhammad," I say. "How can a Buddhist be a kind of Muslim? That's like saying an early Christian was a kind of Catholic."

"Well they were," Susan says. "What you're failing to grasp, because you have a Protestant brain, is that we're not talking facts here. We're talking faith."

"Look, I've had Catholic friends all my life," I say. "When I was young I loved going to watch Celtic. There's a spirituality in people like Mary that really appeals to me. I like Catholic culture. 

"But I am not a Catholic. I am not a Protestant. And I'm sick of this divisive nonsense. I don't want to hear another word about Catholics and Protestants. All right?"

"Calm down, dear," Susan pats my arm, just as the woman, who seems to be an old friend of the family, wanders in again and says, "What's he shouting about now?"

"He's getting excited about religion," Susan says. "He's telling us he's a Buddhist."

"Really?" the woman says. "What kind of Buddhist?"

"At last a sensible question," I say. "Well let's see. There are three broad groups. There is Theravada, the oldest and most conservative, Mahayana, the most popular nowadays, and Tibetan Buddhism, which might be familiar to you through the Dalai Lama. If you wanted to pigeon-hole my thinking I'd be inclined to call myself ..."

"Never mind all that," the woman says. "Are you a Protestant Buddhist or a Catholic Buddhist?"

Party time

Some people are so quiet and unassuming you'd hardly know they're around. Others are negative and downbeat, so it feels like someone's just left the room when they come in.

Then there's Susan.

"Have we been formally introduced?" she says, when I enquire, at lunchtime by the fire in the Ubiquitous Chip, if she plans to celebrate the gigantic funding award she has just secured for the charity she manages. 

"Don't you remember my 50th birthday celebrations?" she adds.

"Just about," I say. "There are gaps. It's like the 1960s. If you can remember them clearly you weren't there. I do recall they lasted a year, there were several fatalities and there's a couple of acres of Scotland where crops will never grow again."

"You're exaggerating," she says. "As always. Nobody died. A few cuts and bruises was the worst anybody got. Couple of sprained ankles. Nothing serious."

"I heard two of your relatives needed liver transplants," I say.

"They're fine now," she says.

"What about the guy whose knee went septic from the crocodile bite?" I say.

"He recovered and they saved his leg," she says.

"Didn't your sister need surgery to get a radioactive lobster out of her nose?"

"Yeah, but you know what Marion's like. I told her not to swim in the sea beside the nuclear power station."

"So what are you planning to do with all that money," I say.

"It'll be fantastic," she says. "We're going to buy a van and hire a driver. We'll open another charity shop in the next town and employ a web expert to beef up our social media presence. 

"We'll give out household goods to vulnerable families and more clothes to babies and toddlers. It means we can help loads more mums, dads and kids. That's what we're all about."

"It sounds great," I say. "I'm really pleased for you. Honest. Just a bit scared is all. But I've bought a flak jacket on eBay and a small bomb-shelter kit from Ikea. I'm trying to figure out the instructions now."

"So you'll be fine?" she says. 

"I'll be fine," I say. "When do the celebrations start?"

"Any day now," she says. "The funders have put an embargo on us, because they want to announce it themselves."

"Will we get a four-minute warning?" I say.

"Listen pal, you got me all wrong," she says. "There's absolutely no need for anybody to be scared about this. I am the shy, retiring type."

"I know," I say. "And I'm a duck-billed platypus."

Sam Shepard at the Citizens

True West, an extended snapshot of what can happen to estranged brothers who spend too much time together, is an unsettling play that has clear themes, dramatic tension and flashes of broad humour, even slapstick, but little narrative arc or plot resolution.

So the characters live on in your head, long after the actors have left the stage, like the unresolved itch of something you intended to do.

But tonight it could be different. Tonight we might get the full story from the man himself - playwright, musician and Hollywood actor, Sam Shepard.

Most of the audience at the Citizen's Theatre stay on for his question and answer session after the play, but a few head home, leaving vacant seats in the stalls. So with the usher's permission we abseil down from the upper circle, in time to see the rangy 70-year-old amble onstage in blue jeans and dark coat, and take a seat beside the play's director Phillip Breen. 

Shepard has the wary look of someone facing a Glasgow audience for the first time, and his initial answers are monosyllabic. A question about writing clearly relaxes him and he starts to open up.

"You don't necessarily have a lot of motivation or predestination about where you're going," he says. "You just start. Characters, situations and places appear, but there is never a lot of thinking about it. That takes place as you're writing."

Vivid images of the origins of the play we've just watched remain in his mind, three decades later, he says. "The sound of crickets and coyotes, the presence of the desert. Los Angeles is the weirdest place in the world. 

"Why do we plant a city in the middle of the desert like that? It's like gobbled up by demons."

A powerful presence in True West, the desert is where one brother lives and the other yearns to go, hoping its demons will restore a grip on reality weakened by years of writing for a living. 

It's a play born out of Shepard's own struggles with the script of what turned out to be a cinematic masterpiece, Breen explains on the Citizens website. "One can just hear the conversations with potential producers of Paris, Texas and Shepard's own self doubt in some of True West's most blistering dialogue: "'In this business we make movies. American Movies. Leave the films to the French.'"

Shepard is less analytic about the products of his creative efforts, but chats fluently about the process. Asked which brother in the play is based on himself, he says "Everything you write is based on yourself, no matter how much writers want to deny it. I've read over and over that Shakespeare is the one playwright who stays out of his material.

"Bullshit. Every character that Shakespeare wrote is himself. Yes?"

An appealing feature of his interactions with the audience is this element of dialogue. He poses questions as well as answering them. "Does that make sense?" "Do you know the man?" "Have you been to Minnesotta?"

Shepard ranges over writing and acting, his early days in Hollywood and his thoughts on Meryl Streep, with whom he recently acted. "She comes in and it's like a leopard let loose in the room. You have no idea what's going to happen next."

He even chats about Patti Smith, his former lover and still a friend, he says, whom he recently accompanied on the banjo, when she recorded Smells Like Teen Spirit.

With the thoughtful, engaging air of a guest at your dinner table, Shepard makes the effort to answer every question put to him. But there are aspects of any work of the imagination that can't be pinned down, even by the one person you might expect to know. 

As the session draws to a close, a woman in the audience asks what happens to the two brothers we have just spent an evening with, after the curtain has fallen on True West.

Sam Shepard shakes his head. "I have no idea," he says.

The Right Stuff

It's not every day you get to see a Hollywood legend in Glasgow, chatting about life, literature and the unsettling disconnect between myth and reality. 

So the evening ended well. But it began badly, when a helpful young lad at the Citizens ticket desk studied me sympathetically and beckoned me over to a quiet corner, where Susan couldn't overhear. 

"I'm sorry sir, your tickets were for the matinée," he says. "You've missed it."

"Surely not?" I say.

"See for yourself," he says, pointing to '2.30 pm' on the print-out. "It's now 7.30 pm."

"Is there a problem?" Susan says, starting to walk towards us, looking smart, successful and all set for a civilised night at the theatre.

"Do you have seats anywhere for this performance?" I whisper to the lad.

"We're packed out tonight," he says. "Sam Shepard, who wrote the play, is in the audience and will be answering questions after the performance. There are seats in the upper circle though, which you're welcome to, since it was a genuine mistake."

"That's kind of you," I say, taking the tickets and steering Susan to the small opening at the back of the vestibule. "I didn't know the Citz had an upper circle," she says. "What an adventure!"

Ten minutes later we're still climbing and she's struggling to see the funny side. A flurry of snowflakes stings my face as we come across a young woman in a fleecy parka, hunched down outside a tent, boiling water on a primus stove.

"Cup of tea?" she says and I'm about to say "Yes please" and take a break, when I notice Susan is showing no sign of stopping.

"We'll push on to the top, thanks," she says. "Is it much further?"

"Half an hour at most," the woman tells us, and we resume tramping steadily upward. 

Breathe, step, breathe, step. It's a hypnotic rhythm that numbs the brain, so when the storm clears suddenly to reveal three rows of seats with faded plush pile, it takes me a moment to respond to the friendly young usher who says we can sit anywhere. 

"Follow me," Susan says, taking me firmly by the hand.

"Bloody hell, it's a long way down," I say, when we're seated and comfortable. "Can you see the stage?"

"I think that's it," she says, pointing. "It looks about the size of a postage stamp."

"No, that is a postage stamp," I say, reaching to pick it off the balustrade. "The stage is much further away."

"Got it now," she says. "I can just make out small furry animals moving around on it."

"That's the hair on the actors' heads," I say, taking a pull on the oxygen mask provided for patrons and settling down to enjoy the performance.

True West is a tense tale of mismatched brothers, by writer and actor Sam Shepard, whom I'll always remember as Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff, a fantastic film about the first American astronauts. Yeager was one of the greatest pilots ever, but the astronaut programme rejected him because he didn't have a degree. 

"I am so looking forward to seeing Shepard after the show," I tell Susan. "His Chuck Yeager was out of this world. Shepard played him as laconic and insanely brave, as he pushed the envelope and rode his supersonic steed to the sky." 

"Let's hope he brought his supersonic steed with him tonight then," Susan says. "Because all we'll be seeing from up here, if he didn't, is the laconic and insanely brave bald patch on the back of his head."

Bronzed hunks in the sun

"Tell me again," Susan says, as we're sat in the University Café, which seems unchanged since I first parked my bum on its hard bench seats and ate its plain but tasty food, on moving to the city as a fresh-faced youth from Ayrshire, many years ago.

"Sure," I say. "They have crocodiles that rip your legs off, snakes that can poison you with a glance and spiders that pursue you implacably, before sinking their fangs into your soft, pale neck, even if you climb on the table to escape.

"Not that bit," she says with unaccustomed patience. "The next part."

I sip my black coffee pensively and shake my head. "There wasn't a next part."

"There was," she says. "You mentioned rugby players." 

"Oh yeah," I say. "There'll be loads of those, of course, strutting around in skimpy shorts, exposing their bulging muscles and hard bronzed bodies in the sunshine. You'll need to avoid them too.

"Are you all right," I add. "Your eyes don't normally point in different directions."

She fans herself with the menu, which surprises me on such a cold November morning. "Just feeling the heat," she says. "You're right. That sounds awful. But my son has asked me over for a holiday and I miss him. I promise I'll stay away from snakes and crocodiles."

"And rugby players," I say. "Don't forget the rugby players. Australians can be rough and hard and pushy, I've heard, especially with women."

She gives a little moan and stands up. "Back in a minute," she says. "I need some air."

So I study the menu, featuring chips, eggs and beans in various combinations, which sends me back to being 20 again, and sitting on these same seats, counting the coins in our pockets, to see if they'd stretch to a coffee. Then I look through the window at the bottom end of Byres Road.

Scents stir memories, Proust says, but for me it's a quality of the light, especially in Glasgow's West End in autumn, that carries me irresistibly backward. The hazy glow on leaves struggling to stay attached can transport me instantly to times past that now seem golden, but held their share of anguish.

The door opens and a flurry of russet leaves rises from the pavement, as Susan sits back down again. "That's better," she says. "It's chilly out there." 

"So you're going to Australia?" I say. 

"You want to come?" she says.

"No and I'll tell you why. I was in second year at university here and starting to struggle. I'd met a girl and was spending all my time with her and missing lectures. We got on great for a while then I started to see a darker side. She had a selfish streak and a terrible temper. 

"I made the mistake of introducing her to a pal called Jack Arbroath, over here on a scholarship from Sydney. Great guy. Used to entertain us with stories of wrestling reptiles and hunting snakes, spiders and women. He was irresistible to women."

"Don't tell me," she says. "He stole yours."

"I should have seen it coming. They ran away to Australia and I never saw either of them again."

"Broke your heart?" she says.

"I really missed him." 

"So going out there would stir painful memories," she says, patting my hand. "I understand."

"It's not that," I say. "I'm scared I bump into her again."

"You won't," she says. "Australia's enormous. Much bigger than Ayrshire."

"Is it though?" I say. "A couple of towns on the coast and a million miles of desert. You're bound to bump into people you know in the Spar shop." 

"I'll protect you," she says.

"You won't," I say. "You'll fall under Alligator Arbroath's spell too and I'll be left with Sandra."

"Does he play rugby?" she says.

"He does. He also wears baggy shorts and has bouncy corks all round the rim of his hat."

"You're right," she says, fanning herself with the menu again. "It's too dangerous for you. I'd better go alone."

Saints and sinners

You can't communicate the experience gained from hard years on Earth to the fresh-faced youths who come behind you. 

It's one of those frustrating facts of life you wish someone had mentioned, when you were young. Except you wouldn't have listened.

Makes you wonder what experience is for. I mean if you can't pass it on and you can't take it with you, it's pretty pointless isn't it?

God didn't think this through, if you ask me. Omniscient and omnipotent perhaps, but a pretty poor planner.

There's so much I want to share with the next generation and the one after that. My son. Rachel. Carol. Chuck and Marie. Little Sally. Even Susan sometimes, when she seems especially young and trusting.

Stuff like this. If you get dumped he wasn't the one. Alone doesn't mean lonely. Be kind to kids and animals. Don't eat yellow snow. 

And never hold post-mortems on the pub quiz you just made a complete arse of.

Especially that one. I've seen marriages and fast friendships ruined by too much analysis of who said what, and why they didn't write it down like they were told to. Let it go, guys.

"Why did you score out 'fisherman' and write 'carpenter', in answer to 'What was St Andrew's trade?' Susan asks young Chuck. "Nobody gave you the authority to do that. I told you he was a fisherman."

"He said 'carpenter'," the lad says, jerking his thumb in my direction. "And he'd answered the last five questions. I figured he was on a roll."

"You should be on a roll," she says. "You're about as smart as a slice of cheese."

"He sounded so confident," Chuck says.

"He always sounds confident. The more confident he sounds the less you should listen to him."

"Can I say a word for the defence?" I say.

"If you must," Susan says, in that tone that makes strong men quiver, before remembering they're not supposed to be scared of women.

"Fisherman is not a trade," I say. "When did anyone spend five years as a fisherman's apprentice?"

"That's true," Chuck says, taking his lead from me, the fool. "I reckon carpentering was Andrew's trade. Fishing was just his hobby."

"Sounds right," I say. "He and Jesus used to go down the canal with a can of maggots and their fishing-rods, and sit on the bank chatting about the Celtic game."

"And Andrew made boats out of balsa wood, for the disciples to play with on the Sea of Galilee," Chuck says. "That's why historians got confused and thought he was a fisherman."

"We lost the competition by one point because of you two dummies," Susan says. "And you think it's funny?"

"I don't think it's funny," I say, nudging him with my elbow.

"I don't think it's funny," he says, trying to look serious.

"Say you're sorry," I tell him.

"I'm sorry," he says. But he doesn't have the sense to leave it at that, and like I say you can't communicate experience to young people. They have to take their own lumps.
 
"There is no need to get cross," he tells her, looking pleased with himself. "Did you see what I did there?"

"Just as well I'm a saint," she tells him, kicking his shins under the table. "Did you feel what I did there?"

Relatives and relativity

  

"See that makes me feel stupid," I say, as I sip an iced gin and tonic, with two slices of lime, out on the patio in Susan's garden, and lose the thread of yet another story about someone's sister's husband's brother-in-law, who's been caught cheating on his wife with his young secretary, the bastard.

"It would take me three hours with a pencil and paper to work out how all those relatives are connected," I tell her. "My brain hurts just listening to it."

"It's not complicated," Susan says. "You know Gillian, the psychiatric nurse who's married to David and has a house in Livingston?"

"Yes," I say.

"Well her sister Paula has a husband Tony, who has a half-sister called Bernadette, who is married to Phil, who is shagging his secretary in the local Travelodge every Friday evening after work."

"I don't know any of those people," I say, feeling the familiar panic rise in my throat, as I desperately try to follow the long chain of convoluted connections and wonder why I have to.

"Everyone I know can figure out who's related to whom in that kind of story better than I can," I say. "My brain can't do relatives. It's defective."

"No more than most guys'," Susan says, patting me patronisingly. "Male brains get confused by relatives. Doesn't make you inferior. You, for instance, are great at changing tyres, opening jam-jars and tightening things with your forty-piece socket set."

"I am," I say, slightly reassured and trying to sip slowly. But my tall glass is almost empty already. "This is a lovely G and T," I say.

"Hendrick's gin and Fever-Tree tonic," she says. 

"Slips down easier than a greased weasel in a rabbit-hole. What makes you feel stupid then?"

She hesitates, squirming slightly. "I'd have to say science. I know it's you're specialist subject and you love it. But it doesn't interest me and I don't understand it. So it makes me feel kinda stupid."

"I could teach you to like it," I say.

"I doubt it," she says. "Could I teach you to know who your mother's sister's nephew is? Or watch a film with more than four characters, without pausing it every five minutes and going, "Who the hell is she?"

"Probably not," I say.

"Well then," she says.

"But I would like to talk to you about science," I say.

"Go on then," she says. "But make it interesting. Tell me about the people."

I take a tiny sip and wonder where to start. There's Richard Feynman, of course, who chased women, played the bongos and invented quantum electrodynamics.

Then there's Rosalind Franklin, who died young and was cheated out of the greatest scientific discovery of modern times by two young punks called Crick and Watson.

  

But it's no contest really. "Listen to this," I say. "All powers of mind, all force of will may lie in dust when we are dead, but love is ours, and shall be still, when earth and seas are fled."

"That's lovely," she says. "What's it got to do with science?"

"The man who wrote the poem to his wife that ends with that verse was James Clerk Maxwell," I tell her. "Scotland's greatest scientist. He also died young. But not before creating the science that Einstein used to figure out the Theory of Relativity."

"Relativity?" she says. "How long did it take them?"

"From Maxwell to Einstein, forty years," I tell her.

"They should have asked their wives," she says. "They'd have figured it out in four seconds."