This is the story of your life..play Captain Fantastic at least for tonght

Saturday...So aye, you know man I felt quite buzzy after posting for the first time in 'about 10 year'. I finished it off in the s/h and then went straight to catch the train through to Fife for faither's bash. Well kinda straight away...after having some kinda unpleasant shit re what claes to wear and a' that....Jeez, on reading it back the sheer pissy normality of that statement has just sickened me. How could I write that??? I mean it's a true account o' what went down at that time but I feel instead like I just expressed a similar thought to what somebody 'dippit' in the media like Edith Bowman pour example might have done from time to time. The fact I got her nimm in there has given me immense pleasure. Seriously tho' I just can't hide the type o' person I am. I'm nae great thinker (!) and that is made all too clear when I let masel go and just 'write'. Domestic stuff or 'little concerns' are what flow if anything does. Nane o' that knowledge available only to Julian Barnes is evident. To be honest I would rather have some of the knowledge known only to 'Tam' Barnes, a famous small town bigot and piss heed from back hame (the guy's nimm always confused me. I think it may have actually been 'Barn' or 'Barron' but the Fife vernacular did it nae favours and the local normalisation method with odd sounding names not a mile removed from popular ones came into effect eg Andrew Matthew became Andy 'Matthews' or 'the coalman') Ma best memory of Tam was being 'stuck' on a late night bus coming back frae Edin one night. The concept of the night bus is still revolutionary in these areas of such full-scale 'slackness in the blackness'. It was plodding through Burntisland aka 'drug/ganja island', the nearest toon tae Kinghorn where ma folks and Tam stay. I saw him oot the windae. He was absolutely blootered and kinda clumping sideways along the High Street. He saw ma bus going past, simply couldnae believe it and swooned round in the most laboured and debilitated way I've ever seen while at the same time producing quite a spectacular swift and sudden sensation of a huge mass lurching and turning tide. It spoke of disbelief, indignation, bewilderment, dismay that public transport could run though HERE at such an hour of inebriation and he had missed it...shit...it was one of the purest pieces of expression I've ever seen...beautiful in it's way... but anyway, there are times I reckonI will only feel personally complete and accepted if I can write ANYTHING that is worthy of a bogus piece of Peregrine 'Peri' Worsthorne or Beatrix/Beatrice/Beatitude Campbell (is that her nimm??..short haired, northern, farcically intellectual academic...) critical analysis. The fact that I simply cannae do that leads to some great frustration...no really... I have to accept I can only function on a certain level. I just wish I could stop wanting to be 'serious' and to 'really show you' and then getting annoyed when the way I talk and think in reality sneaks in. I thought for a long time yesterday re the malaise of levity which gets in there. What I want is nothing more than to give you many tales from the inner recesses (!!!!!) and yet next before I know it it'll be aw jaunty catch phrases and T In The Park reviews mixed wi' pages and pages of me arranging to meet ma wide network of like minded friends for legendary events and evenings of barmy activity. I struggle wi' this pish man. Ma head does not stop telling me I'm a bullshit artist. I have to 'deal'. Look folks, this is a serious request. How does 'one' come to terms wi' thersel? How do you find a way of doing? A way to get by? For the most part, thae stark warnings o' a Peter Bradshaw world pervade ma thoughts and I just don't have a clue. Answers on a postcard...well...comment would be pretty guid...maybe I could start the catchphrases and say I would 'love you long time' (AAAARGH) if you gave me a comment...catch my drift?...student bands who are sufficiently guileless/stupid/pretty enough to call themselves 'Charlie Don't Surf' and get away with it...schemie DJ's who bill themselves as 'Lazarou'...pissed badger-haired fanny's strutting/wobbling round Fountainbridge in white shirts wi' 'Bickle' on the back...anyone who dishes out ganja related humour of any kind...so many folk love a' this shit...in fact 'the opposite sex' (the most sweeping generalisation in the world comes to you with a healthy dose o' casual misogyny) seem to be particularly fond of it (!!!!!)...the thought o' this makes me ill...I know if I gave in and did something crap and obvious and shite then at least one chapter of both the Le Tigre fancy dress society and the Bonnie Greer life code olympians would kill me for a lack of flair and of course UNDERSTANDING...help...I endeavoured to put this madness to one side for as long as I could. I focussed on the other part o' ma heid. It was zoned into the simply wondrous and pure melody that is 'Major Cities' by The Headphones. There were times when I wish I was David Bazan. That is not the type o' 'ting I will say about folk but...'all empires eventually expire and when they finally do it's never pretty, so just sit back and wait for the attacks, especially in the major cities. Please hold my hand, sweetheart. Daddy's got you. Mama's out in the car and she packed your favourite blue shoes. Here they come, exploding like the sun, ringing in my ears like independence. I agree this doesn't favour me, still, bullies are to get what's coming' This did provide a bit o' succour. One thing came to mind tho' while I was walking. I saw the quirky Scottish character actor of stage and screen 'Molly' Innes yesterday. I can safely use (almost) real nimms here cause she's a celebrity. We were at school the gither. I had my version of a huge crush on her. She was bright, feisty, quirky in the bestest way ie she had her ain ways o' daein' things and had the intelligence and the 'way about her' to do them just like that. She looked 'unconventional'. I've always loved that big time. I once heard her described as having a look akin to having been run over by a truck. I'm afraid if you asked me to enter the world of Russell Brand and Jeremy Kyle and probed me on what 'I liked' then 'M'I kinda started things off...see earlier posts re my worries over 'sexism'...I love reddy browny gingery hair, I love petite but not skinny idiosyncratic girls who look as if they might just have 'lived' and who have loads to say re unimportant, 'weird' things, who are imperfect, who do not get excited by Peter Andre etc...to make masel feel mair precarious I'll tell you aboot the thrill I got from seeing Aussie comic Sarah Kendall last week. Her act sounded like it was written by the team behind 'My Family' but man she had lovely voluminous lustrous gingery hair. It was quite something. ..moving back to 'M'I before the police come to the s/h...she also seemed so distinct frae her 'neebors' ...this heightened my liking for her indubitably. Her pals were the most fearsome group of girls I'd ever come across..please bear in mind I was 12-17 at the time...To an individual they were haughty, aloof, venemous when approached with anything, angrily self contained, sneery, in the 2nd year pupil vernacular of the time they thought they were 'hot shit' and basically set the bench mark for a 'type' (I'm sorry) of behaviour I dinnae like...they were GLACIAL. To make it mair basic you felt like they were taking the piss out of you amongst themselves at ALL TIMES. I'd never seen a group of boys or girls display anything like this kind of containment and power up to that date. They didn't give a fuck for talking to mere mortals. They were in control and would have none of it. They were great at sniggering and smirking. As a silly inward youth (and probably as an even more stupid 35 year old wi' a' ma ideas shaped indelibly in thae horrible teen days) they scared the shit out of me. It went on for some time. One of ma pals once asked one o' 'them' out. She said she was washing her hair! As an overweight blubbery/blubby boy with no set image or standing I was on the chopping block. I can mind a shitload o' sarcasm. None of which made me feel any guid. Tho' I can remember being even more of an asshole than I am now. I responded in funny shouty/sulky ways to situ's like this. That just made them laugh louder and in a more arch manner. What freaked me out was that these folk weren't aggressive, daft, popular people at all, they were slightly on the fringes, a bit 'alternative', bright , clever. I hated the jock types and I felt I should be on the same side as 'M'I's group. They had other ideas. I know the thought police are gathering re the grouping together of females under the same description. Well I do that deliberately cause that's just what it seemed like at the time..and..cause I don't know where this is going! They were always together. Aye they all had individual traits but you didn't see them on their own often enough to differentiate! At the time I thought I was being grown up in my thoughts about them and I felt seeing what I thought was 'power' and 'strength' gave me an insight into what I reckoned 'female behaviour' was all about!! Of course now I know that arseholes are arseholes regardless of gender. I'd better tell you that I've edited this bit so much for stuff that might be considered 'sexist' that it probably doesn't make it any sense. Look I've ever read any Michel Houellebecq tomes if that eases things a bit. Why am I going on about this? I'm no sure. They were the first folk I thought of when I saw her. I found that disappointing. I wanted to show you where the 'persona' started I suppose. One of the first times I couldnae deal wi' things I didnae dig. Please refer to the previous post. In thae days I was intimidated by the idea of (as a former client of mine used to call my female colleagues) 'a female woman' and what that might be. I only saw mysteries I thought I could never fathom. I didnnae like feeling that way. I didn't know what to make of my thoughts in this area then and I still don't. I'll let you read into it if you can be Will-Geered. I bet you her pals would still be sneering at me if they met me. A wee while ago I did see that one of them was working in a cheese shop. That was some strange consolation, I guess...look..anyway...seeing 'Molly' was weird. I tried to get the glacial ones oot ma mind. I thought about just her. It didnae work entirely. I knew that she was brighter than 'them' and that she tended no to need to display it. I loved that. I thought she was approachable back then away frae 'them' and I knew that I'd never made a real effort to approach her. I never told her at all what I felt about her. That still felt incomplete yet par for the course. She probably knew...maybe. Maybe I didnae know who she was at all?? Me being me, the fact she was wi' her man when I saw her made me dwell on ma inner recesses for a wee while in a kneejerk motion. On this occasion, I soon got over it. Most folk would have thunk o' what might have been at this point but I kent masel better than that...aye the confidence o' geeks...another glorious contradiction. I saw this guy on the train ower to Fife. He was a real Toby Radloff but hide hissel under a bushel and a Gregory Peck?...heaven forfend...a very lost American family sat next to him. He was into top gear right away...he sensed they needed knowledge of the local public transportation system. He was the right guy. He pounced. He had the bearing and demeanour of a reptilian speeshiss from Pluto but he kent many things that might be handy in the event of a breakdown on the M74 e near Flitwick (I love the way that it appears to be pronounced Flit-ick and not Flit-wick...see also the time I heard a platform announcement at Brighton station requesting staff attend to a spillage (pronounced in the French style- spill-ajjjhhh- soft and langourous unlike the rough and ready spulliddgge o' ma Fife ken) on platform 7) and he reeled in the years in the verbal style learnt from his winning upbringing at Fettes in the days before he realised he was mair Housego than 'horny horny horny'. This boy was no wallflower. Aye admittedly he had nae social awareness. He was supplying the advice and you'd better listen...but he had balls 'bigger than Hamley's' and ground on and on. The family looked uneasy. Maybe where they came from social misfits were painfully awkward and shy. Surely they weren't supposed to seem like they had just brought down Barings Bank. I sat there thinking about how I would love to have this guys lack of self awareness. He did not thnk of how he came across. He answered the 'movement in his brain' and it sent him out onto the train with his factfinders and copy of the latest newsletter from Alumni relations. He could bore whole families into submission and never know it. I wanted to be him! Maybe...like most things (!!)...it's a class vibe...working class geeks are downtrodden, there is no doubt about it...when you look 'nordie' and have nae cash then you have to use the same corner shops and breathe the same air as thuggery itself. If you live in T-Hall and look like that guy frae Citizen Smith who always played characters called Ken then you're no going to get very far before you get a 'doin' if you don't keep your head down and deny the fact you know all about scale models of The Prawn Marie Rose...but if you're armed wi' a' that Youth Jazz Orchestra bolstering, live in Boglily Road (THE affluent street in Kirkcaldy) and are well acquainted with what a 'Notary' is then you have the spirit to grow and flourish. Who cares if you talk to human beings the same way you would talk to a llama as long as you have free reign to venture forth on yer knowledge o' types of church organs. The fact you attended 'Millfield' ensures you will always live in parts of the world where you'll meet like minded scallywags. You're fine, you lifeboat-obsessed David Starkey sound-alike you. It's even easy for geeks....UNDER CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES...background= blissful unawareness...discuss...I digress..back to Sat...I ended up in Kdy and met KB + missus. It was great to catch up. Not spoken to KB for a while. I had missed him as ever. Conversation was great. The old town wasnae looking quite so rosy. It dawned on me that most things had shut down since I left. Even the bus station rebuilding has stalled through 'financial difficulties'. If the town was ever properly alive it's a bit on the moribund side right now. The characters going about in the High Street didn't lift the vibe. I got a sense they didn't care about things closing. Maybe if the disco-tech shut down that would be cause for protest but not much else would rouse them frae the routine o' a bridie at Greggs followed by a shout at thae 'Gourangas'. I couldn't switch off frae ma mothers description o' some inhabitants of Fife as being 'basic folk'. Man, this is a proley town. You only need to be in Kdy for 1 min to know you ain't in Edin. Over here 'the festival' means the Bevvy Park Beer Festival, A special event which attracted Jakeys and metallic drongoids with full body tattoos alike. What else CAN you do here except grog?? Doing it in a novelty stylee in a big tent is a truly memorable experience. Where's the Whittards and the Wholefood palaces? Well, we've got Relzo's pet stores and TanFastic. It's even less sophisticated than G/D which is the Lumphinnans of MidLothian. The populace are happy wi' what they have, not in an ecstatic spontaneous way. They just don't know anything else to compare it to. A bit o' lustre and some vibrancy simply couldn't be found on Saturday. Awbody trudged round and round counting the times you made it past the building site which was the old Littlewoods and will soon be the new 'Denims' (I think he means Debenhams) as ma faither called it. To point oot the inevitability of the experience I did genuinely see Bottle John...maybe I should tell you who he is...or not...ok, he's a guy with a learning disability who used to live in the same street as me in the T-Hall part of town. Kdy is not a liberated pliss and he's treated in quite an offhand way by the locals who have probably seen him every day of their lives for years and years. He's not a young man now but folk still scowl and cower away frae him. He was once described to me as 'simple'. He's very high profile in T-Hall. I used to see him a lot when I lived there and I picked up a few of his wee stock phrases. When I worked wi' folk wi' learning disabilities I picked up that most clients tend to have strange non sequiturs that they repeat over and over. BJ always used to look at me and say "I ken that boy. He's ma brother". Another one was "I'm coming to your door tonight". He tended to say these things to most folk tho'. Not awbody knew how to take him. He is obsessed with buses and you often see him going back and forward down to the High Street on the buzz bus things. He has a few odd 'ways' about him. You often hear him before you see him. He has a totally manic laugh that can just erupt out of nowhere and echo round an empty bus. As the moniker suggests he has a thing for collecting those 10 p deposit glass bottles and handing them into chippys. He's almost part of the furniture in that part of the town. Seeng him made me a little tiny bit nostalgic but then the fact I knew I would see him and other faces made me think I would never really escape. It'll never change. I'll come back again. He'll be wandering around the bus station. Bill Gimmix's gut will be bulging through his Harley Davidson cut off outside the Indoor Market. The 'sweary man' will be screaming 'THEY'RE ALL FUCKING YANKEE BAMS' at a group o' petulant Rockport schemies outside Royals. Mr. High Energy and brother will have opened and closed another shit record shop. 'Big Kenny, the 'morbidly obese' serial cider drinker frae Betty's' will have gone into singleton despair and used his 33 RPM voice to kill everyone in his path. (I can see it now. Here's the next in an ongoing series of guides to local uber-legends) Will there be any escape? I have a fear of ending up here SOMEHOW. A lot of folk choose to do it. Please please please don't let it happen. Never let it happen. I dinnae want to die in the land of the Tasty Tuck...as day turned to night in the kingdom, I went to ma faither's 70th bash. I just dinnae have much to report that you couldn't deduce frae yer knowledge of me already. I didn't feel at home. Some of mother's anxieties vexed me bent. I felt as if I hadn't evolved 'correctly'. I wasn't drinking. That felt wrong. I ate fattening food. I was truly wracked with guilt afterwards. I am struggling wi the diet at the moment. Had a few bad days. Am having the worst food pangs I've ever had. I think that contributed to ma mood yesterday. I was fucking ravenous. I just couldn't eat enough food. I didn't have much that was really bad but generally ate too much. Today's been the same. I did have one bad thing. I'm struggling. I doubt if I'll lose much mair at this rate. I'm looking for signs I'm putting weight on. I think I am. From experience I know I do put on weight very quickly. I seriously have to watch. I'll settle for staying round about 15 stone if I can. Fuck. I know I want to and I know how to do it but I'm starting to think it won't be as easy as all that. No sure there's ower much left to say. Sorry for the disjointed nature o' the last twa things. No sure what I wanted to say but I knew I wanted to say them. Am feeling a little odd today. Work was shite. I don't want to be there. Putting the effort in for nae cash is galling! I really feel like taking some time off and recharging tho' I know it'll most likely end up being a negative factor for me what wi' too much time on ma hands and a' that. I'm very tired tonight. No sure I'll sleep tho'. One of those...