So yesterday, I ended up bringing down a local TOTE outlet, and arguing with my Dad about the merits of Free Range Eggs. Dad made a big deal about buying free range eggs, instead of caged eggs, and I rather annoyingly (to him) pointed out that doubtless they were the same eggs, it's not like some chickens are on a pension plan and laying eggs when they feel like it, and in fact he was paying an extra dollar just to feel a little bit less guilty about the chickens. He then went on a massive rant about my drinking bottled water, how it was out of the tap not a mountain stream, and then we went to the TOTE and put some grand final bets on and the sheets with the betting odds and numbers were just terribly dis-organised and incomplete, and we had to point it out didn't we. I think we broke their spirit. I didn't mean to, I really didn't, I'm just having a bad run with store keeps. Today I've just been asleep. For what it's worth, Dad watched the Grand Final with a 67 year old woman who had a Buddy Franklin love heart painted on her face - which made me question how long I can continue on my current Miley Cyrus phase before I just seem like a demented old stalker. When I lived in Ayrshire, the local football team was routinely hounded by a groupie called Fat Anne (which was either irony or she was treadmilling because she wasn't that fat, or maybe America has changed my standards of fat), a forty something in acid wash jeans who was always trying to get onto the team bus. By chance, one day at the ground I got to talking to Fat Anne (I'm always wary of this since set up + introduction always makes it sound like I'm about to crack onto her, but I was 10, so I put it down to cultural research) who was telling me about her conquests quite openly, and even though I was young (you don't think she was hitting on me was she? I hadn't considered that, that's slightly weird and wrong) I could tell something about her was a bit sad and desperate - or at least I did, until much later, when I saw her at the newsagents a few years later, putting up a sign that said she and her husband (who, of course, played for the team) had just taken ownership of the place. I was proud of her - I mean, she had set out to achieve a goal and she had, she had landed a footballer. She was a WAG, albeit of the mid 90s Scottish First Division kind, selling copies of the Sunday Post rather than buying expensive jewellery. Still, I can't help wondering what might have been for me and Fat Anne...we could have been so happy together...if only I wasn't so judgemental...of acid wash...
When I saw Fat Anne and her new life, it was 1995, and I was on holiday in mid 90s Ayshire. The holiday was an absolute debacle - it snowed for three straight weeks, my friends were all heavy drinkers where I wasn't, they were all into Oasis where my most contemporary musical reference was Black Box (I stand by that by the way) and the people I was staying with had a huge fight and one of them moved out of the house, leaving me to care for my elderly grandmother, who, deprived of her daily source of aggravation, turned her attention to me, timing her vacuuming to start at exactly the moment I wanted to watch the Simpsons. In the midst of all of this chaos, snow and comparisons between Britpop and Europop from 1989 where the girl in the video clip didn't actually sing the song (heartbreaking me like when I found out wrestling wasn't real), we had a trip to a place called Dumbarton, where we went to watch some red hot first division soccer action - the ground announcer told us the players had all been sacked and replaced by twenty-two penguins, a pipe band sprinted off the ground mid performance because of snow, and my friend got hit in the arse by the ball. A woman in a sheepskin coat, when we asked her where the football ground was kept saying "You WANT THE FISH MARKET!" - obviously, in spite of these magical moments of hilarious fish and football foibles, three intervening years had stripped me of most of my relevance to my friends, and vice versa. I ended up for most of the holiday hanging out with the St Mirren supporters club (they gave me a signed St Mirren shirt once, at a game the team lost 3-0 to Hamilton. When I took it out the bag a man said "Pit it away son. Naebodys fuckin impressed wae it the night"). It was just one of those things of course, but I don't think me turning up with my dated references and Australian accent and them sipping lagers and talking about girls as if they were the bass player from the Bluetones and having trendy mod hair was what we in the trade call "common ground" (after all, even Fat Anne had moved on and grown...or shrunk, depending on perspective, and whether you were referencing outer or inner beauty).
As it turns out, and I only found this out much later, my friends went to a New Years party when I was there and didn't ask me to - I don't hold it against them, it wasn't their party, I didn't drink, and my impression of Nathan Buckley wasn't going to help me pick up. And they took me lots of other places, like ten pin bowling. So it wasn't a woe is me kind of moment, although it was a little disappointing. I didn't know this of course when I snuck out (I only say snuck out because of the natural suspicion of my grandmother, who was always concerned you were up to something, even if, unlike this case, you really weren't) the door at 1 in the morning to go for a walk. If you are in Ayrshire, especially if you find yourself by some quirk of fate in the mid 90s, I wouldn't advise a wander around at night. The local paper makes that especially clear. In the bushes it sounded like someone was being bashed up, so I didn't stop to ask them if it was true Blur had lost the Britpop wars.s It was a strange walk, because I was in some pretty miserable circumstances, being alone on New Year should have been cause for a three volume poetry set about alienation and despair, but I wasn't that bothered. What I did find to think about it was that no matter where I had gone, due to my circumstances, I was always the foreigner, always the one who was away, always the one who's out of place. At least I was, until I turned the corner down Hill Street (fans of the 80s may wish to make some sort of Hill Street Blues joke) and saw a party going on in a front garden, which was absolutely insane since it was snowing heavily, but there was definitely some kind of commotion in the front garden. A man called out to me something that was in typically Scottish fashion half accusing and half friendly, and my frozen ears couldn't pick it out. However, what he was doing was askaccusing (not a spelling error, that's the best description for Ayrshire speak in the world) me of failing to possess an alcoholic drink, which is a crime at most times in Scotland, never mind New Year. I had to admit, I didn't drink, and he nearly coughed up a lung in laughing. His wife procured a Budweiser from the fridge (they could just have left it in the snow really) and invited me inside. Now, this is obviously dodgy behaviour, you shouldn't accept 1am invites to parties from snow loving strangers, but I did, and I had a fantastic time - in fact, it was the first time I had something that didn't turn out to be a candy heart, and as they took me into their home, Black Box was playing on the TV in some sort of nostalgic music festival. As for my friends? Well, I found out a lot later that one of them had lost his virginity at the party, however lets just say the four seconds that the young lady spent with him weren't memorable...he never lived it down. Fat Anne put it up in the newsagents window...what it did tell me was that their cool and their unhappiness with my lack of cool was all empty pointless posturing, and they were dorks, just like me. At this point, for the rest of the holiday, I adopted an enigmatic and dismissive grunt...worked a treat...
What the whole holiday did signify was that my life in Scotland, or at least, my dream to move back there and live, had more or less died. Two years earlier when I was there on holiday I had more or less had a complete nervous breakdown in the airport, but now I was ready to move on, move away. I still remember that when I sat up on the last night, after the final night out we had participating in ten pin bowling, being dropped off home and sitting up all night, almost relieved that I had that farewell, and seeing Oasis on the TV and thinking, wow, they actually aren't that bad, still not as good as Blackbox...but I'm sure they won't screw it up. And then my Gran started vacuuming. Learning a lesson about the posturing of the cool, even if it was just from watching the Bluetones on TV or reading and studying the NME, well, it's not easy to learn as a teenager - you always think there's such a thing as the cool kid, but it's not true. Our cool kid at school ended up having sex with a PE teacher in a bath. I mean, she was nice and all, but I wish I'd learned this lesson a lot earlier, had worked at school with more confidence, had been able to look people more in the eye. As it turned out anyway, I had to more or less get straight off the plane and go to Grade 12 camp somewhere in Tasmania, and I can't even remember where we went, but there were rusty swings, games of Celebrity Head...and me, in store bought London clothes, having a vast knowledge of the intimate details of Cool Britannia, I had taken my first drugs, I had been dismissive of people who had been dismissive of me and I had, well, not quite a mod haircut, but whatever it was looked quite cool. I also still had my enigmatic grunt. I was a new man, and the cool kids of Grade 12 noticed, and gathered around to learn my wisdom, to quiz me about Scotland, to just listen to my new accent, and as they gathered, I realised, at least for a brief moment, that cool was just an act. And act I could...as as they gathered closer, I told them that the coolest band in the world...was still Blackbox. OK, it was an act that still needed work...
Oh, and obviously drugs are bad, don't copy that floppy, and teach your kids to swim. Kids lerve wadder (Rolf Harris taught me that, but I'm sure Fat Anne would have as well...)
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