Third year they go nuts

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

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

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

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

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

"No," I tell him.

"You quote me out of context."

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

"No," he tells me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Pretty," I say.

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

"You know these women?" I ask. 

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

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

"Stop talking then," my son says.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tell me more

My son has a new girlfriend and it looks kinda serious. They've already done that Facebook "In a relationship with ..." thing, which pretty much amounts to plighting your troth these days. 

I must admit I'm worried. I don't want him to make the same mistake I did. But it's quite likely because of the way boys pick partners. 

Here's my own set of criteria nowadays: 1) nice tits 2) makes me laugh.

Now I know what you're thinking. 'How crude and unsophisticated'. And you're right of course. But it's a huge advance on what I used when I was younger: 1) nice tits 2) makes me cry. 

We guys are slow learners. It takes a lifetime to make a little progress and we hardly ever use sensible standards like pleasing personality, compatible attitudes and lots of compassion. So what we get, very often, is five minutes of dynamite sex followed by a hundred years chained to a rock while an eagle eats our liver.

I don't want that for my son. Neither would you. But there's not a lot I can do about it. Boys don't talk about their relationships or seek mum and dad's approval, the way girls do. Nor do they take advice well, especially if they're fit, intelligent and good-looking. Why should they?

Here's the entire conversation he and I have had about his new friend.

"I'm going to see somebody in Carlisle at the weekend."

"She nice?"

"We get on well."

"What's she do?"

"Musician."

"Tell me more."

"Naw."

"Awright then."

Susan and her daughter talk more about relationships in one day, every day, than my son and I have shared our whole lives. 

I guess I should have started when he was younger, so that he would take my advice now. But we were too busy talking about art, science and music, and making each other laugh. You can't do everything. And who says my advice would help him anyway?  

So I await developments with interest. I expect I'll get an email in a few years saying their eldest daughter is graduating from Harvard with a degree in modern art and musicology, and I'll wander along and introduce myself.

In the meantime, since I was told recently that my weekly musings - which I see as profound perspectives on the human condition - were "useless drivel", here's some useful advice on mate selection from my friend Iain, who has studied psychology and knows a thing or two. 

Dating agencies use a range of indicators, he tells me, over a pint of Landlord in the Old White Horse Inn. "But if you're a guy looking for a good relationship, you need to focus on three in particular."

"Say on, wise one," I tell him, sipping my hoppy bitter with satisfaction. They know how to make good beer in Yorkshire. Been doing it millions of years.

"Kids," he says. "Does she want them? Do you? Can you agree on discipline and behaviour? Differing attitudes to kids is what causes most fights in a marriage."

"Makes sense," I say, writing it down in the little reporter's notebook I carry at all times.

"Then there's ambition and careers," he says. "If she's a high-flyer and you're just looking for an easy life, it's probably not going to work."

He leans back in the old wooden armchair, takes a long pull of his beer and sets the half-empty glass on the table. 

"That's only two," I tell him, my pencil poised. "What's the third?"

"Nice tits," he tells me.

Scent of a woman

I would love to be able to identify the perfume a woman is wearing instantly, the way Frank Slade does.

"Mmm, Fleur de Rocaille," I'd go and she'd be so impressed she would leave her husband, who makes millions in the bond market but neglects her needs, and come away with me to have my babies.

Unfortunately I have the same problem with perfume as I do with classical music. I recognise lots but the names elude me. There are only three scents I can identify with certainty. And one of them is engine oil.

It's what my dad smelled of, so I still like it. Then there's Chanel No 5, my mum's favourite fragrance. And Coco, also by Chanel, a spicy scent my sister used in her thirties.

So when I join my former colleague Gabrielle at the corner table in Café Andaluz, I am pretty sure the expensive perfume that wafts my way is Coco. But just as I'm about to do a Frank Slade and say so, the doubts assail me. 

What if it isn't? Instead of sounding sophisticated I'll just seem crass. Plus Gabrielle and I have never had the sort of sub-sexual relationship in which I complement her perfume and she likes my after-shave. What we have is entirely professional and based on mutual admiration. I admire her enormously and so does she.

I'm kidding. Gabrielle is a modest, soft-spoken, slightly-built sort of person, all of which is surprising for someone in her position. I always pictured newspaper editors as large, loud and abrasive - the sort of guys, if you came up short on a story, who would chew three legs off a chair before beating you to death with the fourth.

Gabrielle is nothing like that. Nor does she resemble my previous female boss, who survived in the hard male world of engineering by being extra smart and wearing tight, red skirts around an ample bum. If the brains didn't give her the upper hand at a tough meeting, the body would.

Gabrielle follows a third way. Her combination of charm, intelligence and hard work won everybody over. Except maybe me. She and I travelled the same road mostly but there were a couple of bumps along the way. In the end she used a word about me I couldn't forgive. She said I was sensitive.

See, in the West of Scotland it's fine for women to be sensitive. It means they like Dolly Parton songs and don't beat their men up more than once a week. But when it comes to guys, sensitive is a euphemism.

It means soft, effeminate and temperamental. Gabrielle let slip once that I was one of those writers who had to be "handled carefully". I guess she had a point. I blame Albert Einstein. 

I'll spare you too many details, but I wrote a piece about science education that included a footnote linking to an explanation of an aspect of relativity I'd written for young learners. It got praise and I was pleased with it. 

A few days later, faster than light neutrinos filled the media and folk were lining up to say relativity was busted. Gabrielle suggested deleting my footnote. I told her relativity was a bedrock of modern physics and had survived so many tests this one was almost certainly wrong. And even if it wasn't, E = mc ² would survive unscathed. 

But my footnote did not appear and when I emailed to ask why, she replied that someone on television had said something different to me. "Tough decision," she added, which I read as sarcasm and my head exploded. 

I seethed and simmered, called a meeting and asked why it was so obvious that the opinion of some random TV punter, filtered through her non-scientist ears, was much better than mine. The expression in her eyes, even before she spoke, told me I'd got it wrong. 

"It was a scientist from CERN," she said. "I really meant it was a tough decision. I never do sarcasm. Ever."

I believed her and apologised. But from then on I had a label on my forehead that said "Fragile, handle with care." 

You know what it's like when you've got it wrong with somebody. It makes you nervous. So I sit down, we order a selection of Andaluz tapas and I suppress the urge to mention her scent. 

And what do you know? She mentions mine. "It's Lynx, isn't it?" she says. "My son used to wear it when he was sixteen."

"You like it?" I say.

"It's lovely," she tells me.


Footnote. Another of Frank Slade's skills is dancing the tango. Here's me doing it, with my sensitive side showing, as seen by my niece.

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.

The secret of success with women

Big guy everybody loves at Christmas. And Santa.

Brian is a bit of a babe magnet. He denies it modestly, but the evidence is there for all to see. Beautiful blonde wife he's devoted to. Women gazing adoringly, when he goes out. 

If I've heard "Brian is lovely" once, I've heard it a dozen times.

So this evening I've decided to get the secret out of him, as the two of us are having a whisky together in his lounge, while the females of the family are off somewhere, buying Christmas presents.

"Is this a Glenlivet?" I say, sipping the mellow malt.

"Singleton," he tells me.

"Close," I say. "The distilleries are only ten miles apart. Same water and air. Same smooth, sweet, fruity Speyside."

He noses his glass. "True," he says. "But I think you'll find the fruit notes in The Singleton are blackcurrant with a hint of espresso coffee, while The Glenlivet is powerfully pineapple."

I take a sip and survey the guy over the rim of my glass. He is probably right. He always is. It's what makes you want to slap him round the head. I don't because I'm too civilised for violence. 

And because he's six feet three.

A man of studied calm, eclectic interests and impressive erudition, Brian read philosophy at Cambridge and has about 5000 books around his house. He is an admirer of the empiricist philosopher and urbane 18th century gent, David Hume.

"He is happy whom circumstances suit his temper," Hume wrote. "But he is more excellent who suits his temper to any circumstance."

Which pretty much sums up young Brian. Nothing seems to faze him. I don't believe he has ever lost his temper. I've never seen him show irritation even, which is some feat in a modern world that starts irritating me as soon as I notice it's still there in the morning.

"So listen laddie, what is the secret of your appeal to females?" I say. "And none of your false modesty."

He considers the question, his head tilted to one side, studying the light shimmering through his whisky. "Maybe it's because I don't try to impress," he says quietly. "I just chat to them."

"What about?" I say.

"Anything." He shrugs. "Everything. Books, films, music, history, philosophy, sport. It's not rocket science."

"I know that," I say. "I can do rocket science."

"You have to remember that women are people," he says, and I place my whisky down on the coffee table and study him closely, trying to figure out if he's pulling my leg. 

"You mean they are like people?" I say.

"No," he says. "They are people." 

"Surely men are from Mars and women from Venus," I say. "Everybody knows that."

"We are all from Earth," he says, sounding like one of those long-haired, airy-fairy, love and peace, get a job in banking as soon as I graduate hippies that were around when I was a lad.

"Let's say you're right," I say. "Does that mean I should just be myself around women? Then they'll like me too?"

“'Be yourself; everyone else is already taken,'” Brian says. 

"I've always liked that quote," I say. "Ralph Waldo Emerson wasn't it?"

"Oscar Wilde," he says. "What Emerson said was: 'To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.'”

"Really?" I say. "Thank you for correcting me. Anyway the point is it's all about being yourself. That's what you're saying, isn't it?"

He scratches his chin. "It's not that simple, I'm afraid," he says. "'Be yourself' works for me. But that's because it's me. It's not going to work as well for you, because you'll end up with you. Same idea, different outcome. 

"You see what I mean, don't you?"

"Yes I do," I say, gritting my teeth, reminding myself that Brian only looks average size because he's seated, taking a swig of his Singleton and detecting for the first time those bloody notes of blackcurrant he was on about.

Get out, pervert!

Carol apologises more often than anyone else in the world. My sister probably comes second, closely followed by several other females I know. It's a girl thing, I think.

This morning Carol got started early, when I opened the bathroom door to find her naked in the shower, and exited with a swift apology. But not swift enough. She beat me to it by half a second.

I mean think about it. You've got your hair nicely lathered and are enjoying the luxury, in the chilly winter months, of hot water blasting your skin, soothing your insides and setting you up for the day ahead, when an ageing member of the opposite sex ruins the relaxing moment by blundering in and sending your fight or flight hormones soaring.

I know what I'd have done. I'd have screamed "Oy!". Closely followed by "Get out pervert!" 

But not Carol. "Sorry!" she said at the time, then "I'm really sorry" later, when she's dressed and I'm trying to apologise to her. "I should have locked the door," she says. 

"Well maybe," I say, "But you're far too quick to apologise. All the time. For everything. Like when that little dog took a liking to your leg and started humping it. You said 'I'm sorry about this' when everyone looked at you.

"You were sorry for what? For making your legs so irresistible that other species want to have sex with them?"

"For stopping the conversation," she says. "For attracting attention."

"It wasn't your fault," I say. "Then there was that time someone smashed a bottle of red wine at a party and the hostess went 'Aw Carol!' and you immediately apologised, even though you hadn't done it. That wasn't your fault.

"Then there was the time your uncle told you he had obsessive compulsive disorder aggravated by being somewhere on the autistic spectrum."

"And I said 'I thought you were just a wanker,'" she says. "And everyone laughed but him."

"So fair enough that was your fault," I say. "And you were right to apologise for hurting his feelings. But not for intending to."  

"I didn't mean to upset him," she says. "It was just a one-liner." 

"I know it was," I say. "And it was funny. Not because he is a wanker, but because - if you want to get technical - of the bathos of the pithy pejorative juxtaposed with the orotund psychological pseudo-diagnosis."

"Exactly what I tried to tell him," she says.

"The thing is," I say, warming to my theme. "The crux of it is that what you're doing all this time is apologising for being you. And that's the last thing you should do. You're smart and funny and kind. Your first thought when someone's in trouble is what can you do to help. I think you're great. You just have to stop apologising."

"You're absolutely right,"she says, and I know what's coming next and that there's no force in the universe strong enough to stop it. 

"I'm sorry," she says.

Science of sorry
Men think they've done fewer things wrong, which is why women apologise more often.

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."

A wonderfully fluffy pussy

Having recently celebrated her ruby wedding, Molly is reflecting on her enduring marriage to my oldest friend Iain. 

"We are very different people," she tells me, as the two of us are sat in the front room of the house in Bradford that I've visited for not far short of their forty years together and now feels like a second home to me.

"I noticed," I say. "He's a bit of a prat for a start."

"He is," she says. "Which is why the two of you get on."

"He and I have a lot in common."

"But he and I don't," she says, giving the cat that's just wandered into the elegantly decorated room a tickle, and getting a rumbling purr in return. "That's my point."

On my last visit, when this hairy moggy had wafted into the room, his tail held high, a friend of Iain's had blurted out, "What a wonderfully fluffy pussy." 

I'd spluttered drink and sprayed the feline with an aromatic mist of fine Ardbeg. He liked it and has rubbed against my leg with greater ardour ever since. It's a memory that makes me smile but a dangerous distraction from Molly's conversation.

"Sorry?" I say.

"I said take cooking dinner," she repeats with a tinge of asperity. "With me it's fast and functional. I make the meal and clean up as I go. Iain is different. He turns it into a major production. First he puts on that terrible, wailing blues he listens to, like Arabs burying their dead. Then he dives into the kitchen.

"Five hours later he surfaces with something that smells and tastes incredible and is laid out like a gorgeous work of art. But behind him he's left a scene of terrible devastation, like a Scotch invasion of the football pitch at Wembley."

"Bottles of whisky have never invaded Wembley," I say and instantly regret it. But it's too late to back off so I chunter brainlessly on. "The word you're groping for I suspect is 'Scottish'."

"The word you're groping for I suspect is a clip round the ear," she says, reminding me she is not a woman to be taken lightly, something Iain learned long ago and one reason, no doubt, that their relationship lasted.

There are others. Complementary qualities seems to work in a marriage. Molly is a kind, chatty, no-nonsense homemaker and former career woman in a man's world. Iain is philosophical and funny, with bulging brains but a tenuous grip on everyday detail. 

He once drove all the way to Scotland to scatter his mum's ashes, but forgot the ashes. I could just picture her, back on his living-room mantelpiece, shaking her head in long-suffering resignation.

"You're not listening any more, are you?" Molly says. 

"I'm getting nostalgic," I say. "I like it here and I'm a bit strapped for cash right now. How about I move in with you until I get back on my feet again?"

"What?" she says, her complexion, always pale, going several shades paler. 

"Iain and I are very alike, as you said, so you wouldn't even notice there were two of us. When one came into a room the other would leave. That way you'd only ever get one prat at a time."

"I need a whisky," she says, standing up and clutching her forehead.

"You don't drink," I say.

"Only in emergencies," she says and totters theatrically out of the door.

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.

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."

The Good Life

Al has never been what you'd call conventional. He figures things out for himself and this takes him to places, sometimes, that can seem peculiar to travellers on tramlines.

So the potatoes stacked high in his kitchen window don't bother me any, as I wander around the back of his house, hunting for some sign of his whereabouts. We're supposed to be having a meal together, but he is never easy to find in the sprawling old Bearsden bungalow he has occupied for years. 

A woman once shared the house with him, but she is long gone. She was a police officer, not a profession noted for original thinking, and the disparity grew too great in the end. So they drifted amicably apart. Al does everything amicably. Yet I've seen him drive people insane.

Once he has figured something out he will not budge. He has anticipated your arguments and refuted them in his head. "Doing the sums," he calls it. But not being combative or fast on his feet, this can come across as stubborn and pig-headed. 

At his work, as a marine engineer, his creative thinking saved lives and millions of dollars. Now in his retirement it makes him grow big fat vegetables, worry about climate change and exercise his sideways sense of humour on unsuspecting strangers.

"I hardly ever drive these days," he tells me, when I find him behind the broccoli in his garden, and ask why the car in his drive is laced with spider-webs. "I've done the sums. I don't need to. Five minutes walk away is an Asda's, two Indian carry-outs, a fish and chip shop and a brand new Alzheimer centre."

"That's handy," I say, taking the huge heads of broccoli he hands me and accompanying him to his kitchen.

"Very," he says. "First time I saw it, on the way to the supermarket, I went in and had a look at their leaflets. Got talking to them. I asked what they did and how long they'd been there. Said I hadn't noticed them before.

"On the way back from Asda's I called in again, had a look at their leaflets and got talking to them. I asked what they did and how long they'd been there. Said I hadn't noticed them before."

"I had an aunt who got Alzheimer's," I say, stepping over buckets and basins bulging with big red potatoes, and finding a small space to stand. "I phoned the Society and they tried to be helpful. But there's not much anyone can do. You think you'll catch it?"

"Probably," he says. "You know why I was a good engineer?"

"You'd a brain bigger than ten of these potatoes," I say.

"Certainly," he says, taking the heads of broccoli from me and piling them in the sink. "But also I'm aware of something other people keep forgetting."

"Which is?" I say.

"The world is not organised for our benefit. Things go wrong. It's the first principle of engineering. Shit happens."

"Doesn't make you a cheery companion though," I say, trying to catch sight of him beyond the stacked pyramids of potatoes.

"But it means I prepare for every possibility," he says. "I do the sums. When I retired I put my money into National Savings. Everyone said I was stupid and should invest in shares. What happened?"

"They lost their money in the crash and you've still got yours," I say.

"Correct," he says. 

"But what's the use of sackfuls of cash you don't spend and have no one to leave to?" I say.

He goes silent. "I have someone to leave it to," he says, not meeting my eye.

"The policeperson?" I say. "Have you two got back together?"

"Don't be daft," he says. "Getting back with your ex is like breaking into Alcatraz."

Again the silence, stretching. "I'll tell you sometime," he says. "Maybe."

"Fair enough," I say. "Now about these root vegetables. What's the plan? You already have enough to feed a medium-sized medieval village."

"Well, I never turn the heating on in here," he says. "So these potatoes will feed me for five years. I've done the sums. Whatever happens - power failure, premature senility, the end of civilisation - I will survive."

"In here with your potato mountain?"

"In here with my potato mountain."

"All you need is Felicity Kendall," I say. 

"Only if she doesn't eat," he says. "I didn't include her in my sums."

It's all in good working order

"See here's the problem," I tell Susan, as we're sat in front of the television watching Run Fatboy Run, with our dinners on trays on our laps. "I've been eating too slow and watching too well. My macaroni cheese has gone cold."

"Stick it in the microwave," she says, without looking at me.

"Normally that would work," I tell her. "Though chips don't come out as tasty as they went in. But I've also got salad on my plate, entangled with the pasta and chips. When you microwave lettuce it goes limp, warm and slimy, like a politician's handshake."

She lifts the remote and presses the pause button, then turns slowly to stare at me. "Do you want to watch this film?" she asks. "Or talk drivel about salad?"

"I was planning to do both," I say. "But I can see now that's not going to work. Press play."

She does and we see the novice runner Dennis getting his giant blister pricked by his mate Gordon. It's such a well-acted scene that it makes me laugh every time, as the tension builds to the pus-in-the face climax. I still have my pasta problem but a solution has come to me.

Five minutes later I'm back from the kitchen. "Did your need for hot pasta overcome your dislike of limp lettuce?" Susan says.

"No, it's too horrible," I say. "So I picked out all the bits of salad with my fork and ate them, then I microwaved the chips and macaroni, then I added more salad from the bowl. Quite clever actually."

"Yeah, you're a mastermind," she says. "Took you ten minutes to outwit lettuce."

She presses the pause button again and I stare at the frozen figures, unwilling to turn and look at her, as I can sense what's coming next. "So are you going to wear a kilt at Mairi's wedding then?" she says.

"How many times are you going to ask me?" I say.

"As many as it takes you to get the answer right," she says.

"I'm not going to wear a kilt," I say. "I've never worn a kilt and I'm not starting now. It's fake Scots culture that projects a quaint, kitsch caricature of us to the world. It also has martial overtones which I hate."

"Men in kilts make women go weak at the knees," she says.

"What would I do with a wobbly-kneed woman," I say.

"You used to know," she says.

"Listen," I say. "The last thing I need is to enhance my allure. I have to work hard to tone it down or women I've never met sexually harass me in the street."

She shakes her head. "It's a strange planet you live on, Douglas. The entire wedding party is wearing kilts. You'll look out of place in a suit."

"I'm not part of the wedding party," I remind her. "The groom's mother has vetoed it. So I'm to be banished to the boondocks, perched on a bar-stool at the back of the hall with a small telescope to see what's happening."

"You're at the table right next to us," she says. "Brian's wearing a kilt."

"He is not," I say.

"He is. Told us yesterday. So that's the full set. Except you."

It's my turn to shake my head. "Brian? Well, that's disappointing. I had him down for a man with a backbone like mine, impervious to pressure from strong women."

"He is," she says. "He just knows when to relent to make people happy. Doesn't make him less of a man. More, if you ask me."

She pauses then plays her trump card. "Marie says you'll look lovely in a kilt and would you please wear one for her."

Marie is the bride. Girly, gorgeous, funny and feminine. I've had a soft spot for her since we met.

"Oh for heaven's sake, all right," I say. "I'll wear a bloody kilt. But don't expect me to enjoy myself. It'll feel like I've betrayed my principles. I'll be hot and uncomfortable. I won't know how to sit down, dance with decency or take a leak. And I'll get groped by all the gays."

"You'll love it," she says. "There's just one more thing."

I turn to look at her and my mind goes numb with sudden dread.

"Marie has found these gorgeous pink sporrans in a wedding catalogue ... "