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."

Decline and fall

The nice thing about writing a blog rather than the history of the Roman Empire, is the social media feedback you get. Edward Gibbon would have been a lot more readable if he'd had a poke once in a while.

So at first I was delighted with Marion's comment on yesterday's post, when she reminded me that some women are more tolerant than others of drums in the house. Two of her sons are drummers and their kit, she said, would often oust her "artfully arranged cushions". 

"It's a small price to pay for fostering your kids' musical ability," I tell her over a cappuccino in the iCafe on Woodlands Road. "Cushions serve no useful purpose, either inside a house or out."

"Just like men then," she says, getting our chat off on the wrong foot right away. "Cushions are art, which is just as fundamental to human culture as music and maybe more so."

"Cushions are not art," I say, spooning the sweet cinnamon froth from my drink. "They are soft, girly, fluffy, pointless, intrusive, often excessive and always annoying. They take up space that would be far better occupied by almost anything else you can imagine."

"Such as what?" she says.

"Books, people, spanners, a small cocktail bar, a Lithuanian lifejacket, a plastic model of Cliff Richard playing strip poker in his socks." 

"Don't be ridiculous," she says, daintily sipping her toffee caramel latte. "What's so difficult about drumming anyway that you guys have to practise endlessly? You're just whacking a skin with a stick. It's not hard and it's barely music."

I look at her in horror. This is the mother of two dedicated drummers, for god's sake. "You have to get the sticking into your muscle memory," I tell her. "It takes time. With the drums in my living-room I've been practising 10 minutes an hour for three months. Do the sums that's a total of ..." 

I start multiplying in my head and realise my arithmetic's too slow. "Forty gazillion billion drumbeats," I say, reckoning there's no way an artist will question a physicist about figures.

"There is no such number," she tells me scornfully. 

"What do you know about numbers?" I say.

"Plenty," she says. "I have a doctorate in education."

"Really?" I say.

"I did an empirical study of learning and teaching in Scotland's colleges using phenomenology," she says.

"Is that supposed to impress me?" I say. 

"It should," she says. "You couldn't spell phenomenology. I'd be surprised if you could even say it."

"Of course I can say it," I tell her. 

"Go on then," she says.

Phenomenonol ...," I say then stop and try again. "Phenomenomenology."

"Ha!" she says. "I rest my case. What you need pal is more practice with the muscle memory of your brain."

Dancing cheek to cheek

One of the advantages of living 60 miles from a woman is that you can do things in your own house they wouldn't dream of letting you, if they were closer. 

I don't mean 60 miles from any woman of course. That would be impossible. Scientists have shown that there are woman all over the surface of the Earth and you are never more than six feet away from one. No hang on a minute, I think that's brown rats. 

Sorry guys, I read so much science these days I get confused. Where was I? That's right, doing things she wouldn't let me. Now I'm not talking about deviant stuff with bras and pants and high heels and fishnet tights and ... Ahem. 

I don't do that stuff. I'm talking about drumming. Show me any woman who would let you set your drum kit up in the living room and I'll give you a fiver. I don't believe there is one, anywhere in the world. But as my son says, there's always somebody somewhere complaining about something. 

"Did I hear you playing the bongos in there," the postman says, as he hands me the usual bundle of bills and tempting offers to join the mega-rich by working two days a month selling yellow snow to eskimos.

"Certainly not," I say. "I was working."  

"No you weren't," he says, shaking his head and wagging his finger at me. "I heard you."

Now this postman looks like Pat but his real name's Jim. He does share many of that affable character's qualities though. He's a friendly guy with a cat, a ready smile and a well developed community spirit. He cuts old people's lawns. So he's a nice man. But - and here's the problem - Postman Jim will talk bollocks on your doorstep all day long, if you let him. 

"It wasn't the bongos," I say. "Only guys with snake hips and small lecherous moustaches play the bongos. I was playing a drum kit. 

"In your living-room?"

"In my living-room."

"Don't the neighbours complain?"

"No they don't. Years of practising my grumpy bastard at No 3 persona has trained them to ignore me. Besides I've got double glazing and I use light sticks, so they can't hear me."

"I could hear you."

"You have bats' ears and were on my doorstep."

"No need to get personal," he says. "Listen, I love drums. Can I come in and listen?"

"No you can't," I say. "Don't you have letters to deliver and a cat to feed?"

"What kind of music are you into?" he says "Rock, jazz, blues?" 

"Rock now but I want to play everything," I say. "Even Beethoven's 9th Symphony."

"I like rock best," he says. "Used to listen to bands like Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Lynyrd Skynyrd."

"Good stuff," I say, starting to shut the door. "See ya."

"Lemme tell you a story about the time I saw the Sensational Alex Harvey Band play live at Cameron Park," he says, shoving his foot in the door and giving me no option.

"Make it quick," I say. "I got work to do."

"So they're playing Dancing Cheek to Cheek and they've got these three gorgeous backing singers, and Alex keeps going behind them and bending down, putting his head close, as he's singing. Geddit?"

"Hilarious," I say.

"That wasn't the best bit," he says. "He gets to the end of the song and these women turn round and there's no back to their skirts. It blew me away. I've never really got over it. 

"I was headed for university till I went to that concert. Now I can hardly navigate around the village. Sometimes I put people's letters in their dogs' mouths instead of their letter-box. It's a tragedy. I should have been a nuclear physicist." 

"There's still time," I say reaching to my bookshelf beside the door and handing him Feynman's Lectures Volume III. "Go read that and we'll talk again in a month." 

"Thanks," he says. "Hey, I'm a drummer too. I'm going to beat it now. Ha ha."   

"Ha ha," I say and close the door.

To be or not to be - who cares?

My sister is a big Shakespeare fan. Me, not so much.

"Hamlet is a long evening of nothing happening, at the end of which everybody dies," I tell her, as we're sat in the living room of her house, during a long evening of nothing happening, at the end of which nobody dies.

"I'd rather be stuck in a lift for the weekend with Noel Edmonds than sit through four hours of Hamlet's self-obsessed chuntering," I say.

"No you wouldn't," she says.

"No, I wouldn't," I say. "But it's close." 

"Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet - these are wonderful plays," she says. "A Midsummer Night's Dream is packed with poetry."

"I'll give you that," I say. "'I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows, where oxlips and the nodding violet grows...' Lovely stuff." 

"'Quite over-canopied with lush woodbine, With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine...,'" she says. "The first time the teacher read that to us, it sent shivers up my spine."

"But you need more than evocative words and clever rhymes," I say.

"Like what?" she says. 

"Like plot," I say. "Humour. How about a happy ending once in a while? I'm with John Cleese. You can be serious without being solemn."

"I think when you're young you're drawn to that dark side," she says. "I know I was. I read a lot of other serious writers like Graham Greene. All that tragedy to other people is comforting when you're struggling with adolescence. 

"And there is humour in Shakespeare," she says. "For a long time after his death he wasn't taken seriously by critics, because he mixed humour with tragedy. But humour doesn't last. You think people will laugh at Peter Kay's jokes in five hundred years?"

"Dunno why they laugh at them now," I say. "But it's not just the depressing endings and black-hearted behaviour. It's how Shakespeare says the same thing in forty different ways. There's a preening quality to that. He reminds me of Paul Jones."

"Who?" she says.  

"Blues singer. You thought he was lovely when you were 14."

"So I did," she says. "He was."

"Well he's still performing and my pal Iain tells me he's one of the best harmonica players in the world. But he's got a narcissistic personality that comes through somehow in his music. Don't ask me how.

"I get the same feeling with Buddy Rich on drums and Shakespeare with words. It's like 'Look at me; I'm wonderful.' It damages the art by drawing attention to the artist."

"But Shakespeare is so inventive," she says. "I love that about him. Half the clichés in the English language weren't clichés then. He made them up. Language and literature would be hugely impoverished if Shakespeare had never written a thing."

"I'm not so sure," I say. "Dickens is just as fluent, inventive and articulate. But what he's got is humour in his phrasing and rhythms. And he says something once and moves on. He's absorbed in the story, same as you are. He's like Steve Gadd on drums or Dylan on the harmonica."

"I can't take all the dirt and squalor in Dickens," she says. "It's repulsive."

"I see," I say. "Murder, suicide, rape and incest are fine in Shakespeare. But you can't take dirty fingernails in Dickens?"
  
"No I can't," she says. "The one thing I agree with you about is Hamlet. It's not a great plot and the hero does go on a bit, I'll give you that. The best criticism of Hamlet I ever read was in a school essay by your son David."

"Now he is clever," I say.

"Funny too," she says. "His essay had just one sentence in it. His teacher wasn't impressed, but I thought it was great."

"Yeah, what did he say?" 

"'Hamlet is a big girl's blouse."

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.

Tales of love and chocolate

"She's taking you the wrong way again," my niece says, as we're headed to the garden centre for a coffee, a chat and a chocolate cake, and my satnav starts telling me to turn right.

"My grandma used to say the longest way round is the shortest way home," she adds.

"Grans always have daft sayings that sound profound," I say. "Mine used to tell me not to sit with my back to the fire because it would melt the marrow in my bones." 

She chuckles. Cathy has an infectious laugh and lovely eyes that sometimes look sad when she thinks you're not looking. I've enjoyed making her laugh since I first met her, a fortnight old.

We saw less of each other than I'd have liked, as she was growing up, because my own kids were young and she lived a long way away. She still does, so we catch up when we can.

"I miss my grandma," she says, and I give her hand a squeeze and we drive in silence for a while.

"When I worked at Rolls-Royce there was this guy called Colin who'd come out with total gibberish," I say. "Then he'd blame it on his gran. So he'd go 'A nod's as good as a wink to a ripe banana - as my old granny used to say'."

"My grandma used to say, 'Don't put dogs in windows,' Cathy says and goes quiet. "I have no idea what that means."  

"The chocolate cake is nice here then?" I say, as we turn into the car park at Woodlands Nursery. 

"You'll love it," she says. "They make it with chocolate. Then they mix in chocolate and put chocolate on top."

Sure enough a powerful chocolate theme is evident in the cakes and cookies displayed in the nether regions of the sprawling garden centre, where their little cafe is located. 

Inside the glass display case, walnut fudge, black forest gateaux and chocolate layer cake occupy pride of place, like battleships defending the Dardanelles, while the lower shelves are densely packed with éclairs, brownies, macchiato muffins, millionaire shortbread and thick chunks of rocky road. 

I order a slab of cake the size of a door wedge, while Cathy goes for ice-cream and one of the lighter sponges, decorated with hazelnuts and summer berries.

"I'm not going to get out of here alive," I tell her. "If we sit too long I suspect they'll coat us with chocolate and sell us to somebody."

"What kind of chocolate would you be?" she asks.

"Hazelnut cluster," I say. "Sweet and wholesome-looking, but hard inside. What about you?"

"Cherry liqueur," she says, chuckling again. "Rich, satisfying and slightly piquant."

"It's nice to see you, kid," I say and this time she gives my hand a squeeze. 

"You should visit more often," she says.

"If I knew there was this much chocolate here I would," I say. "I've got a problem though. The cake on my plate is scrumptious. But all those still on the shelves are catching my eye and making me wish I'd picked one of them."

"You'll never be content if you keep looking over the fence and coveting your neighbour's house, or his wife or his ox or his ass," she says.

"That's very true," I say, giving the waiter a little nod. 

"My grandma used to say the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence," she says. 

"Mine used to say there's no sense risking a cholesterol deficiency," I say, and order a large portion of walnut fudge, two hunks of rocky road and a chocolate-topped cappuccino to go.

Concepts of cool

"You can't make me!" I cry several hours later, when Molly has gone to bed and Iain and I have been relaxing for half an hour to blues and rock from his eclectic collection.

"Just a couple of tunes," he'd told me at the start. "I got to be up at six to get to work. No more all-night sessions for us, I'm afraid."

So first he'd played the Abbey Road cover by Booker T. "Not a band I ever listened to," I say, as they're swinging it on Come Together. "But they're good."

"Steve Cropper on guitar," he says. 

"Remind me," I say. 

"Booker T and the M.G.'s, Derek and the Dominos, Blues Brothers," he says. "Voted greatest living guitar player in 1996 by Mojo magazine."

Next we get Black Cat Bone by the Nimmo Brothers from Glasgow, followed by Seasick Steve and John Paul Jones, first with Dan Magnusson on drums and then Dave Grohl. 

Then he springs it on me. "You got to hear this," he says innocently. 

"What?" I say.

"While My Guitar Gently Weeps on the ukulele."

"No!" I cry. "I don't want George Formby in the same part of my brain as one of my favourite Beatles numbers."

It's not George Formby," he says. "It's Jake Shimabukuro."

"I don't care if it's Jake and Elwood Blues," I say. "I don't want to hear a ukulele. I'd rather listen to a sex-crazed cat playing the kazoo."

"You can be very opinionated," he says. "Shut up and listen."

Sure enough as soon as I hear the sound this Jake's getting from his uke, I'm sold. "That's cool," I say. "Wouldn't it be nice to be that good? You played something when we were young. What was it?"

"Truant," he says.

"Something else," I say as a distant memory niggles. "I got it. You played the cello."

"I did not," he says.

"You did. I saw you at a school service once, sawing away like a pre-pubescent Pablo Casals."

"Bugger me, you're right," he says, as his own delinquent neurons connect. "My mum sent me to cello lessons for a year. I gave it up because it wasn't cool."

"And joined the chess club, I remember. You had no clear concept of cool then, did you?"

"See nobody taught you stuff like that," he says. "It should have been obvious that playing guitar got you girls. Hell, even the drummer pulls, once in a while."

"Mostly weird women though, with blue hair and snake tattoos, who only want you for meaningless sex."

"I can see that would be tough for a man of your moral rectitude," he says. "Point is they shouldn't have been teaching us maths and Latin in secondary school. They should have been teaching us how women work."

"First-year could have been chat, dating and foreplay instead of algebra, geometry and trig," I say. "Art would have been life drawing. In geography we'd have learned where to find the G-spot."

"Women didn't have one then," he tells me. "Well they did but nobody called it that. They gave it that name a few years later, after a German doctor called Gräfenberg." 

"Cunning linguists," I say. 

"That would have been second-year," he says.

Euphemistically speaking

"You met a guy in a pub and he put his cheese-grater in your hand and asked you to play with it?" my son says, as I'm telling him about my recent trip to Yorkshire for a science lecture. 

"That's some kind of gay euphemism, right?"

"Wrong," I tell him. "I've never been gay. You're the living proof, as is your brother. I was married to your mum for years. Centuries in subjective time."

"There you are then," he says. "Sounds like an experience that could turn a guy gay."

"You can't get turned gay," I say. "Though I did hear your mum hung out with butch babes after we split. Maybe I turned her."

"So what does 'play the cheese-grater' mean then?" he says. "I like colourful euphemisms, by the way. Chastise the lizard. Ice the Mexican melon. Punish the pelican."

"Me too," I say. "What do those mean?"

"No idea," he says. "I just made them up."

"So after this lecture, we're headed back to Ian's house," I say, returning to my story. "And we stop at a little pub, perched alone among windblown trees, high up in the Yorkshire dales. The sky is black except for a few faint stars in the south."

"I don't like the sound of this," my son says. "It's one of those haunted house stories where everyone dies at the end, isn't it? That's what 'play the cheese-grater' means? I hate those stories."

"No, it's not," I say. "Don't worry."

He eyes me suspiciously. "You used to tell me stories like that when I was young."

"Not me - I sang you jolly, happy songs, like Frosty the Snowman and Busy Doing Nothing," I say, breaking into the first verse of the latter: "I have to watch the river to see that it doesn't stop. Then stick around the rosebuds, so they'll know when to pop."

"Keep it down," he says. "Go on with your story then. But if it ends with 'When the lights come on again we see that everyone in the pub has played the cheese-grater', I'm walking."

"Trust me," I say. "So we push open the heavy door and the pub is almost gloomier inside than out. A smoky smell from somewhere wrinkles my nostrils. We pick our way towards the bar, past murmuring shapes at old wooden tables, order two pints of Black Sheep beer then find a seat not far from the stage."

"Everyone is alive still?" he says.

"Course they are," I say.

"Just checking. Then what?"

"The band appears - two grizzled guys on guitars, a tall chick on keyboard and a funky-looking fella carrying a tambourine and wearing a fedora. They kick off with House of the Rising Sun and they're good, so I'm drumming the table-top along with them. After a couple of Stones numbers the guy in the hat comes over and gives me his tambourine. 

"I've never held one before but it's not hard to hit the beat with. Then he hands me this cheese-grater thing as well."

"What's it look like?" he says.

"Rough steel cylinder you scrape with the bendy tines of a big fork," I say.

"You're talking about a metal guiro," he tells me. "It's a percussion instrument used in merengue music. The fork's called a scraper."

"Is that right?" I say. "Well I get the hang of it pretty quick. First I hit it on the beat and scrape the eighths, then I reverse that and throw in some syncopation. At the end of the song the guy takes his hat off, sticks it on my head, gives me a big smile and says something that sounds like, 'Ee lad tha's a grumly fettock fergler.'

"I tell him it's a braw, bricht moonlicht nicht, then shake his hand. Suddenly it goes dark and loud screams rend the night. When the lights come on again we see that everyone in the pub has played the cheese-grater."

My son shakes his head in disgust and stands up to leave. "I'm sorry," I say to his departing back. "I couldn't help myself. Sit down again please and we'll talk about art." 

"Why don't you just go chuff your scroggy wassocks?" he says, but he sits back down.

"Nice Yorkshire euphemism," I say. "Now what's your thoughts on the Reith Lectures being delivered this year by a hairy potter in a dress?"

Chaos attractor

Amano Tatsuya

There was a time when friends and relatives used to welcome me into their homes, enjoy my company for days on end, and seem to be sad when I left. Those days are gone. Now even my sister makes me feel I've outstayed my welcome, half an hour after I've arrived.

I suspect the signs have been there for a while. But not being particularly perceptive I hadn't twigged that the true meaning of "Will you still be here on Tuesday?" is "Can you bugger off today?"

The suspicion that my charms are waning penetrates my carapace of confidence the day after I've filled my petrol car with diesel and Helen and I are starting to tackle the full veggie breakfast she has just cooked for me.

"So what chaos are you planning to bring into our lives this morning?" she asks, and I look up in surprise from a succulent-looking mushroom I'm about to skewer.

"I didn't plan yesterday," I say. "It just happened. Thanks for your help by the way."

"It happens ... mumble, mumble, mumble," she says, turning her back to reach for the dish of tomatoes and lowering her voice at the same time.

"I didn't catch that," I say, popping the monster into my mouth and getting that lovely 'shroom-flavoured juicy squirt as I bite.

"I don't want to hurt your feelings," she says.

"You can't hurt my feelings," I say. "I'm not a big girl."

"All right then," she says and hesitates. "Things like that happen around you all the time?"

"Well that is hurtful," I say and her jaw drops.

"I'm kidding," I say. "Things like what?"

"Like the time they thought you were a terrorist at the airport," she says. "You got body-searched and we missed our plane."

"How was that my fault?" I say.

"You were wearing a T-shirt that said 'I found Jesus in the Qur'an'."

"Well I did," I say. "I thought it was an interesting fact people should know about."

"Then there was the time you went missing when you were testing a nuclear submarine in Barrow, and they thought the Soviets had got you."

"How was that my fault?" I say.

"You went for a drive, didn't tell anybody and only got back the next day," she says. "Then there was that time, wearing a green and white top, you got into Ibrox through a small side door, and nearly got lynched by the security guards."

"How was that my fault?" I say. "Oh never mind. You've made your point. I wasn't always mature and sensible."

"That is not my point," she says. "My point is you're still not mature and sensible. Isn't there something called a chaos attractor. That's you."

"No there isn't," I say, putting my fork down and reaching for my mug of coffee. She is clearly unhappy and since Helen usually bottles up bad feelings about people, it seems serious that they're all coming out now. I'm going to have to be soothing, tactful and diplomatic.

"That's a common mistake among the scientifically illiterate," I tell her. "There is something called a strange attractor, a structure in phase space often associated with chaos, which is an inordinate sensitivity to initial conditions. 

"Then there's a song called Chaos Attractor by a Japanese metalcore band with an amazing madman drummer. But I am clearly none of those."

She is shaking her head now. "You also tell people stuff they don't want to know," she says. "And you have a seriously misplaced sense of humour."

"Some folk like it," I tell her. 

"Not many," she says. "Listen to me. You remember I asked if you would still be here on Tuesday?"

"Yes. I said I didn't know."

"Well I'm going to ask you again," she says. "And this time the answer is, 'No, I'm leaving after this delicious breakfast you just cooked for me."

"Go on then," I say, putting the coffee mug down on the table and studying her expectantly.

"Go on what?" she says.

"Go on ask me," I say.

She sighs. "Will you still be here on Tuesday, Douglas?"

I suck my teeth. "I don't know," I say.

"Ahhh!" she screams and bangs her head several times on the table.

Later that day I relate the whole incident to Susan, looking for a little sympathy and wondering if I should get medical help for Helen. "She seemed very overwrought when I left," I say.

"Trust me, she'll be much better now," Susan says. "Do you think she'll have you back?"

"I'm not sure," I say. "Maybe not for a long time."

"That's bad," she says, looking concerned. She knows how much Helen means to me. "What are you going to do now?"

"I thought I'd stay with you a few days," I say.

She turns away so that I don't see how delighted she is. Then she turns back again. 

"Will you still be here on Tuesday?" she says.

Ringo's Revenge

Photo by Shona Howat

When you write about real people you need to be really sensitive sometimes.

Mention individuals only when they do or say something extraordinary and you risk not only upsetting them but also violating Kant's categorical imperative, which is always a risk for a writer.

So when Chuck tells me he wants a chat, as he sits on the sofa with little Sally - who's contemplating the world she recently entered and, by the look on her face, judging it all right so far - I take him seriously.

"What seems to be the trouble, laddie?" I say.

"I want more," he says.

"More what?" I say.

"More lines. A bigger part. The last post I was in I only got one lousy line."

"But it was the most important line in the piece," I tell him. "In fact it was the single most important thing anyone's said in all the posts I've written so far. That's impressive."

He nods, clearly realising it's a good point, so I press my advantage. "You're like Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now," I tell him. "Small part but enormous impact."

"That was a good film," he says.

"Let's hear you deliver one of his lines," I say.

"Which one?" he says.

"I dunno. How about: "We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't allow them to write 'fuck' on their airplanes."

"Uh, uh," he says, wagging his finger at me. "Rule Number 1."

"Sorry," I say. "'No swearing in front of little Sally.' I forgot."

"So you're telling me I'm the Marlon Brando of your blog?" he says, the scepticism audible in his tone.

"Yes," I say.

"Nah, that's ridiculous." he says. "I'm not buying it. I still want more lines."

Sally breaks wind loudly, opens startled blue eyes, gives me a huge smile and promptly falls asleep again.

"Sorry Chuck," I say. "I've lost the thread. She is gorgeous, isn't she?"

"Everyone says she looks like me," he says.

"Don't you believe them," I say. "She's gorgeous."

"So what do you think then?" he says. "Can you beef up my part?"

I shake my head. "I don't see how. You're a major character in your own life, but I only see you every few weeks."

"I have interesting opinions though," he says.

"What about?" I say.

"Life, love," he says. "Music."

"You're a good singer; I'll give you that," I say. "But you don't have musical opinions I want aired on my blog."

"Why not?" he says.

"For one thing you refuse to grasp how good Ringo is and how much influence he's had on every rock group since. Which is strange since one of the most obvious is your favourite band Oasis. They even used his son Zak on drums for years. And they still sucked."

"You're off on one again," he says. "Oasis was a great band."

"I don't think so," I say. "And neither did their leader. 'Any Tom, Dick or Harry can be in Oasis,' Noel Gallagher said. 'Just so he's got the right haircut.'"*

"Yeah, well you shouldn't listen to Noel," he says.

"But I should listen to you?" I say.

"Of course," he says and goes quiet. So I take the opportunity to study little Sal again. She's blowing bubbles in her sleep now and looks like she might be teething. But she should be too young for that.

"I've got it," he says.

"What?" I say.

"I know how you can give me a bigger part in your blog and make it appeal to people who don't have zimmers, bus passes and hair growing out their ears."

"Go on then."

"Well you said I was a good singer. How about I record something and you put it on your blog? A bit of audio would spice it up, make it more interesting to the YouTube generation."

Sally seems to be shaking her head in her sleep and I can't say the idea appeals to me either. 

"How about I make you more interesting instead," I say. "I could turn you into a closet homosexual."

"Don't you dare," he says. "I'm a happily married man."

"What about wearing pink knickers and a bra at the weekend?" I say. "Plenty of married men do that. Doesn't make them less manly."

"No!" he says, getting up to go and reaching down for little Sally, who seems amused. "Don't write anything like that. I'll let you have a recording."

"You'll need to be quick," I say. "You got me thinking now. I could make you a criminal mastermind, who fools everyone with his just-a-regular-guy routine, but ..."

"No!" he is shouting now. "I work in the sheriff court. Listen I'm off. I'll be back soon with that recording. Don't do anything."

"I just hope you can sing faster than I can write," I say.

He turns around and his mouth opens.

"Uh, uh," I say, wagging my finger at him. "Rule Number 1."


* Peter Green. Man of the World. BBC4 Documentary, 2012 (Noel Gallagher speaking at the 6 minute mark).

White room

"So I'm superfluous?" I say to my son as he's giving me coffee and a custard slice in the front room of his flat, overlooking Great Western Road.

"I was going to go for 'obsolete'," he tells me.

"Even worse," I say. "Either way you don't need my help?"

"Why would I?" he asks.

"I'm better at filling in forms than you."

"Not by much," he says, which is true. But you get used to trying to help your kids. The knowledge that they're as capable as you, maybe more so, takes ten years to penetrate, in my experience.

"Not to change the subject, but about this room," I say.

"What about it?" he says.

"'Silver horses ran down moonbeams in your dark eyes,'" I say.

"I know," he says. "Except the sun shines here all the time. This is my studio. So I want it white and I want it minimalist. Lots of light, no distractions."

"Well that's what you got. But spend much time in here, you'll go snow-blind. Also you need chairs. My bum hurts already from sitting on the floorboards."

"You're too skinny," he says. "The human arse is supposed to be fleshy. It wants padding. You ain't got none. Eat more cakes and you'll be comfier."

"Trouble with that is you can't tell the calories where to collect," I say. "Suppose I stuff myself with custard slices for a month and the fat goes to the wrong place, like my head."

"Nobody would notice," he says. "There is something you can help me with, come to think of it."

"Yeah?" I say.

"Yeah," he says. "Personal statement for Art College. It's about who I am, what I've done, why I'm doing what I'm doing, and what I want to do in future."

  

"You any thoughts?" I say.

"Millions," he says. "But not sure how to write them so they make any sense."

"You talk, I write, you edit," I suggest.

"Fair enough," he says. "Well, I've always done art stuff. But if I was painting I used to try to make paintings."

"Pfff," I say. "How dumb was that?"

"It was," he says. "I'd get pissed off because they'd never turn out right."

 "So what's the alternative?" I say.

"Process," he says. "It's the big thing I've learned. Art is about the process not the product." 

"Sounds vague and meaningless to me," I say.

"It's not," he says. "It's perfectly clear. It's about having ideas, developing them, generating ideas from those ideas, linking back to other people's stuff. That's the process." 

"But surely you got to produce something or what's the point?" I say. 

You do," he says. "Lots of stuff. You just don't make that your main aim. You don't force it to happen."

He sips his coffee and looks out the window, towards Chinatown beyond the red flats. "I was talking to Stu Kidd about this," he says. "He's a musician so he got it right away. Said some of the tunes on his latest album with The Wellgreen had been dicking about his head for years."

"An album is a product," I say. 

"Course it is," he says. "But if he'd produced it when he first got the ideas, it wouldn't have been as good. I guess it's about stocking your brain with stuff and letting it percolate and form connections, then come out in its own good time."

"My point exactly," I say. "There's stuff in my head been percolating for decades. You should use it more."

"I was going to go for centuries, chief. It's too long. You're a bit like these custard slices," he says, picking one up and waggling it at me.

"Squishy and strangely comforting?" I say.

"Well past their sell-by date," he says.

Sex and chocolate biscuits

The tables on the pavement, as we drive past, tempt us to stop and try Montgomery's in Radnor street. But the menu offers little hope of solid Scottish sustenance.

"We got bagels, waffles, croissants, muffins, panini, pastries and gateaux," I read aloud from the menu. "With an 'x'. Clearly a cultured cafe. But I see no sign of eggs."

"You want to ask?" my son says. "I like it out here in the sun so I'm prepared to be flexible."

"For a change," I smile, getting up and heading for the counter at the far end of the high-ceilinged interior.

"Ask if they've any gluten-free food too," my sister calls after me.

"No," the well-aproned guy behind the counter replies to both questions, in an accent that tells me croissants were not prominent at breakfast, when he was a boy.

Cheese panini, assorted coffees and chocolate crispy biscuits keep everyone happy and we settle down to chat in the sunshine.

"You spoke to anyone yet about your feedback art ideas?" I ask my son.

"Nah," he says. "Still trying to work them out."

"I guess someone might steal them if you talk about them too soon," Sis says.

"That's not how it works," he tells her. "You share. You throw out ideas and people pick up on them. It's a great atmosphere at Art School."

"Sounds like my attitude to food," I say, reaching over, breaking off a piece of his panini and popping it in my mouth. "Food's communal. So is art, you're telling me."

"So is anything creative," he says. "It's a very human trait. Watch what someone's doing, copy and adapt it. Music's the same. 'I like that wee riff so I'll pick it up.' All this copyright just lines lawyers' pockets."

"Don't musicians need copyright to make money?" I say.

"Maybe the really rich ones," he says. "But I've a lot of pals who are musicians. They all share stuff."

"Do they earn much?" I ask.

"Not sure any musicians do. I guess the Stones get by. But Stu Kidd is a really good musician - plays with several Glasgow outfits. He makes a living teaching music. Dave Towers is a great saxophonist. He sells insurance."

"Some creative people make it pay," I say. "I've been earning a living from writing for 15 years."

"Yeah, but that's journalism. It's hard to make ends meet doing the pure thing. You sold your novel yet?"

"No," I say.

"There you are then," he says

"What sells books, I think, is coming to the end of a chapter and there's a puzzle," Sis says. "Dan Brown is good at that. Even if you don't like the story it keeps you reading."

"I was thinking of churning out a sex novel bestseller," I say. "To fund the writing I want to do."

My son chokes on his coffee. "What do you know about sex?" he says.

"I knew enough to make you."

"Anyone can do that. Look around - kids everywhere. Just because you can procreate doesn't mean you can write a bestselling sex novel."

"Listen laddie, I was young in the 1960s. We invented sex."

"Yeah but in those days it was five minutes, boys on top, roll over for a cigarette. People won't read that now. You got to stretch them. Tell them stuff they'd never think of themselves."

"We discovered the clitoris."

"That's like saying you discovered Auchinleck. It's on the main road. You can't miss it. What about the G-spot?"

"I've heard of it," I say.

"Not good enough," he says. "You got to be able to find it in the dark with handcuffs on. You have to play tunes on it with your fingertips. Can you perform an F sharp chord progression on a woman's body?"

"You're making that up," I say.

"I'm not," he says. "Have you taken part in a mozzarella sandwich? Can you do the chocolate chip muffin?"

"You're reading that off the bloody menu," I say.

"I am," he says. "But I'll guarantee people are doing them to each other right now, somewhere nearby. Face it chief, you can't write a modern sex novel. Not unless you get someone else to do the research and write up what they tell you."

I raise my cappuccino to my lips and study him in silence.

"Not a chance," he says.

I start to turn towards my sister. "Don't even think about it," she says.

"Oh bugger," I say. "You're right, of course. It's going to have to be the crime novel then. Does either of you know any bank robbers?"