The Incredulous Despair of the Conceptual Entity

Another day, another luggage carousel. Another swirling mass of faux Armani, clip locks and zip up bags, another group of people conjoined with me in an impatient mass around a swirling conveyor belt of clear social segregation. The haves swagger away with their cases, privileged that the gods of the luggage carousel saw fit to give them the serenity only an early appearance on the belt can bring, and the have nots stay impotently furious, craning their necks desperately to try and avert the nagging feeling maybe the airline lost their luggage as the crowd thins and then thins again. In my case, at least I get to stroll past the conveyor belt with hand luggage, with a nonchalance I don't really feel. I don't mind airports, and even with Prestwicks garish purple swirling letters splashed across the wall, tartan bunnet wearing figures painted on the toilet, and total lack of amenities, I don't mind sitting quietly on a bucket seat reading a paper. I think it's a mindset thing - I've spent so much of my time in airports feeling my body float away and losing track of time studying crowds, I'm just used to it. There is 1ne amenity though in Prestwick - a rather tacky and gaudy cart style market stall selling cheap retro soccer shirts. I say retro, it's a clear sign of old age when they approximate the culture from your youth and package it as retro. I'm sure I owned some of those T-shirts in their original incarnations. The cart pusher and I presume stall owner has 1ne deep and furrowed wrinkle on his face that runs from cheek to jaw, almost like a scar, a scar inflicted by doubt and time I guess. He pushes the cart until he is just about happy with it, then slumps for a moment, but as soon as any1ne watches him, he puffs out his chest as if pride will not allow him to be exposed to the world as tired or out of breath. It's a strange spectacle, every step obviously painful, but he hides it well, flirting with a passing hens party and cracking wise to the newsagent. As soon as they go though, he sucks deep on nothing but stale air conditioned air and a sense of showmanship that keeps himself from toppling over. I myself am exhausted, sucking Irn Bru through a stubborn suck resistant straw made of hardy raw materials. I think everything was just more resillient in the past - god knows when I'm 60ty, there's no way I'm lugging a cart full of T-shirts into an airport. I'll be in my slippers by the side of the road yelling at traffic for keeping me up...it seems, somehow, pre-ordained...

Down, up, down, up, then up again I go, through the tunnels, mazes and labyrinthal nature of Scottish signposted routes. There's a girl sitting on the train platform crying, surrounded by cases, her hair an impossible style, a sort of Deal or No Deal cut but double the length and harshly straight, as if done with set square and ruler. I feel it un-necessary to intrude, since I'm cold, caught up in my book, and her sobs are somehow un-natural, whooping, the kind only made by small children when they are trying to stop their Mum from yelling at them. The crying girl disappears visually into a nearby train carriage but I can still hear her until the very last second that the door on the train shuts and vanishes into the middle distance, in true Scottish tradition so much with the mighty shove and heave of trains of yore -the kind you saw in books with billowing steam and waving flat cap wearing passengers hanging out the windows incredulous life could be this amazing - but more with a squeak of the brakes and an almost apologetic shrug of despair. My own train is running inevitably late, producing even more apologies - nothing personal of course, these apologies come in yellow fonts on blue screens - and even more of my life is held hostage to time wasting, to fate, to solitude and drifting moments. It begins to rain, and a bewildered looking German with glasses thick and impenetrable, the kind that should have window wipers or belong on a mad scientist, begins to ask a pigeon English version of what time is the train coming. My mind is pretty much shut down by this point, so I mumble something about not really knowing, and splashes off like a sulky child none the wiser, his fogged up glasses almost leading him directly into a thick red metal pole. The train, as it happens, never comes, the apologies giving way to harsher messages, the soft screen tone of yellow and blue now replaced by a harsh black and grey message, that flashes hypnotically against an equally black and grey sky, more or less absolving said train company of responsibility - probably those damn leaves. I watch it for a while, because I feel as though something has broken down, mostly my resolve. I also feel it's the British way...hey, we tried apologizing...now it's your fault...

My taxi driver is an avuncular fellow. He has one of those clingy student beards that seem unfinished and patchy, and I somehow envisage if he was telling a story, he would thump you on the back gregariously and let out a throaty laugh at his own wit. Funny though - those people are the most sour of drunks. He has picked me up from the UK countryside before apparently, although I don't remember him. He also likes debate, I can tell. Say 1ne thing, even polite agreement, and he'll twist it round to show he's a reasonable man. I was able to gather all this because on the way home, he stopped to help a fellow taxi driver directions, and they sat on the hard shoulder next to a petrol station swapping war stories, as rain danced on the ground in pretty patterns, and his radio station seemed perpetually set on M People. I'm not sure how you search for the hero inside yourself at 8 in the morning on a garage forecourt, but maybe I'm just too hard boiled. He thumps his taxi driving friend on the back, hard enough to make him wince, and walks back towards the taxi with the broad smile of the perpetually lunatic or over-caffinated. He's instantly off on a rant about how McDonalds workers get ahead in life simply by virtue of working at McDonalds or something. I myself have my nose pressed against the splash stained window, staring out at a million fields, all soaked in drizzle. For some reason, when I drive through Irvine, I'm obsessed by what's not there...where are all the kids? Where are all the people playing...even in bright sunshine, I don't think I've anyone playing anything. Swing parks unswung, fields unfielded, school playgrounds uncluttered by frisbees. I don't have a summation of this, and certainly if I shared it with Patchbeard, he'd turn it around and say the fields were full of kids and I was an idiot for even thinking it...his girlfriend, he says, is very fond of Irvine. I suppress the tempation to consider that this Canadian girlfriend may be some sort of conceptual entity, a mere figment and story telling device by which to make further points about immigration and the government. I'm just suspicious I guess, as I am with anyone in life who, like he, is going to quit their job...tomorrow, I promise. I suspect even if she is a conceptual entity however, she would be unimpressed and despondent at his lack of knowledge of how to go around a roundabout...maybe they teach it at McDonalds...

The man next door where I'm staying 1nce had a big husky and a small yappy dog that only shut up when the big dog yelped at it in a display of husky power. Beyond that, I can't tell you why we're talking in the driveway, in the rain, but he knows a lot about me. I love when people know you from fragmented moments of your past - and I realise there is a certain symmetery to the conversation. After all, I know him as the man with the dogs, he knows me as that boy that ate a lot of Creme Eggs. It's true, he did have dogs, and i did eat lot of Creme Eggs, but the fullness and richness of our days - the twists and turns of our rapidly passing into history lives - isn't prevalent in our rainy time consuming conversation. I presume he then went into his house and spoke to his wife about how much I'd changed. Well it'd be weird if I still looked 8ight. I shouldn't scoff, he's being polite, and anyone with a quiff so rich probably deserves some attention. I leave him with a promise to catch up before I leave that we both know will never be fulfilled and fumble with a key that clangs against the lock of the door in a strangely metallic and painfully teeth grinding way. Eventually, I make my fingers work properly, make them grip the key tightly enough to break the fortress wall, and go into the empty house. It's empty because my auntie has decided that I should be fed only on chips and gristle - I blame her, when really it's my own doing - and walk slowly up the stairs and throw myself on the bed with an overdramatic flourish. It has taken me about an hour to get from the airport to here, but I can't sleep because I'm tired, and I stare at the ceiling, and try and count the raindrops bashing off the window sill. Outside, some children actually are playing, leaping into puddles like they can smash them through force of will. I drift off to sleep to the gentle hum of the rain, and have a dream about a Canadian girlfriend with long blonde Melanie Adams like hair, who has just left me for some1ne who can make a Hash Brown properly. She's patiently explaining that's it's not you, it's me, and how could she turn down a McDonalds graduate. It seems even in my dreams, the irrefutable logic held within most arguments against myself seems utterly water-tight...

Still, it's her loss. She missed out on sharing my Creme Eggs...