When we can't decide, we hope that you'll on my side (Or why I went away for a while this time...)

It's 10 am, in a Scottish branch of 1ne of those horrible adjunct supermarket cafes that dot the landscape, blight it in many ways, enhance it in others. Sure, they are soul-less, manned by embittered plooky face plump lassies who hiss your order by elongating the final syllable of the word, but hey, the coffees cheap. It is what it is. I find the strangest thing about going back to Scotland is that the little differences, after a long time away, jar more than the obvious 1nes. Sure, there may be a bewildering series of new roads to travail and stranges rules and regulations to decipher such as the 2 queue system in the bakery, but alcohol sold in the supermarket? Wee women in coats pushing trollies THAT quickly? Mind spin. My coffee, well, it's swirling, frothing, spinning and dancing in milky patterns around in my mind. I wonder if I concentrate just hard enough, I can make a dolphin appear in it's swirling patterns, like a Magic Eye picture. If I could, I'd probably sit in this faux cane chair forever. I'd probably fall in love with 1ne of the plooky face plump lassies and we'd raise plooky faced wee weans and argue about money every Saturday night over a Chicken Madras while Ant & Dec comedically bicker on our TV screens. Who knows what might have been right? I've got Smoosh on the IPOD, for no discernible reason. Across my shoulder, a youth in a red hooded top is blanking out his girlfriend, herself being all bad hair weave and over ambitious gestures arguing about money I presume. I tend to find in Scotland, the girls are very over dramatic with their gestures, clipping the end of their words, throwing their hands up in the air trying to communicate to emotionally stunted boys with lifeless eyes who are too busy thinking about football or boxing or something...I lifelessly watch him for a moment, stirring my coffee in opposite circles simply to break the monotony. I know life will go on of course, I could stare into the middle distance forever, stirring coffee, making patterns, hitting the repeat button on my Smoosh album until I got tenure of the faux cane chair in some sort of retirement ceremony. I could sit all day wondering why so many Scottish girls are so angry...but once We Our Own Lies finishes, I sadly know time is up...a rented suit waits for no man...

The girl in the rented suit shop asks where my accent is from. I wish I had the heart to flirt today, but my eyes are hurt and scrunched, and she's only being shop polite. I smile a thin smile and say Tasmania. I know what's coming of course - after a month, I can usually tell, it's all in the phrasing. She somewhat unsurprisingly has a cousin that lives in Tasmania. I think after a while this is akin to a hairdresser pretending to be interested in what you are doing on the weekend. My hairdresser in Burnie was interested, but not today, no need for 15 year old unrequited love stories today. And besides, maybe she does, or maybe she needs a tangent, something to kill time between DJ Havana Brown songs and measuring the inside pant leg of strangers. Moreover, this is her store, her domain, not a chain, and that at least is something to cherish. That DJ Havana Brown CD - that's her choice, the magazine she reads...that's all her. My suit will later sit crumpled and disrespected over a stairway bannister which seems a little bit of an ungreatful way to cherish the precious nature of individual choice, but I think my tip said it all. I'll stare at it for a while, because that means I don't have to put it on. I've got an aversion to trying suits on. My Mum will sometimes buy me a big buttoned and well intentioned jumper. I'll stare at the button and make some joke about old man cardigans, anything that means I don't have to parade around in the outfit. Today, I'll probably have spent most of my day talking to my auntie about volcanic ash. I know this is easy conversation, but my heart really isn't in it. There's a girl at work now who about 6ix times now has asked if I watch Dancing With The Stars. After the 4th time I said yes just to stop her asking, and now am able to tune her out easily and think about other things rather than having to explain myself. I'm a people pleaser. My auntie isn't really into notions of individual choice in the sphere of retail. She just hates Iceland and all the ash it spews forth. It's then I realise I haven't really listened to a conversation properly all day, and have had other things on my mind. In fact, it's just then I glance into the mirror and see the same lifeless eyes as the boy in the red top had earlier. If only it was a day for smiling, I'd have laughed at the grim co-incidence all day, then patted myself on the back for not saying it was grim irony, and mis-using the word...

Another coffee, another morning, not long after. This shop is somehow even more corporate than yesterdays, unglamourous, right in the heart of Paisley, tracksuit wearing mothers taking a break their most important clientele. 1ne of the kids is throwing spoons around like javelins. No one stops him, no one even moves, and he learns to run the world through pure anarchy and noise - bit like PETA in kid form. This coffee is far more acidic, for some reason, pure early morning airport, like a practice coffee. It's gluggy. I haven't had 1ne like that since the 1ne I had at a Manchester Truck Stop just before I went to Switzerland that was just glug with 2wo sugars. I'm flicking through the paper, but it's nothing but faux controversies and sad eyed celebrities emerging from rehab blinking into the light and calling their publicist. I was glad to get out of the front of the car I was in. Why they thought I'd be the one to make conversation, today of all days, I'm not quite sure. I hate being in the front of someone elses car, so tantalisingly close to the radio but never given permission to turn it on. When that person what is driving the car - as they say in London - is flicking through their own struggling roladex of conversational topics only to settle on hows work, the desire to hit the volume and tune out even if it's only Train on the CD player is hard to fight. How is work? It seemed like a strange question - after 8eight weeks, I couldn't even answer. I was still trying to remember after my 2nd cup of glug. This 1ne didn't have sugar in it, I thought I'd try my glug pure. The Scottish way. My family of course don't speak, and I hadn't really noticed them coming in. 1ne audiciously has a glazed donut, which is weird, because I hadn't seen donuts for sale. And I'd really like a donut. On such incidents, war can be declared you know. Of course, on the day of a funeral, how can you possibly wonder about sprinkles, you can't really kick up a fuss. But damn it all, if I'd like someone to to clock little Jimmy Javelin over the head. Hell, I'd do it myself, if the reward was a donut, but such is fate, of course, the procession must move on...

My leg is pressed up against the radiator in the community centre, 1ne of those old sharp 1nes of whitest white and sharpest sharp. I would complain, but it's a funeral, it's not like it's allowed. I have a keen eye now at funerals for the truly upset and the sandwich stealing hangers on. I also know in all 3hree funerals I've been too, I've stared mostly out of the window and taken no real active interest in what's going on. I can't cope with it, I hate it. I hate people saying somehow playing a badly muzaked version of their favourite song and making a pile of sandwiches was what they would have wanted. Clearly, what they would have wanted was not to die...but I digress. My auntie is doing a tour de force of the room telling everyone she hasn't cried yet, which seems faintly wrong, and I've had so many sandwiches I suspect people are nudging each other wondering who I am. My uncle, if he hadn't died, would have eaten a lot of sandwiches, amongst stories of urban Glaswegian deprivation only partially true. I miss him. I'm sure it was a lovely service of course, probably shouldn't have let my leg burn or stared out the window quite so much - and in a moment of quiet reflection on the sandwich table covered dance floor of whichever Coatbridge association this reception centre truly represents, while resisting the chance to engage the group in a morale boosting game of darts, a girl comes up to me. She's always fancied me, I thought she was my cousin when she wasn't, and had it been the 1980tys, we probably could have got her and I a sitcom deal such was the hilarity. Her Mum joins her, and they engage in some nudging conversation which is somehow meant to indicate she'd dump her boyfriend for me. At least that's what I think - no one is QUITE that keen to engage in nostalgia for how she used to laugh at my jokes. I probably was meant to re-ciprocate this conversation, but I don't have the energy. As is the modern way, we promise to be friends on Facebook, and her and her Mum seem oddly excited by the prospect. It's all quietly disconcerting. Someone takes a photo of me, almost without me noticing, and there in someones camera I rest, a million miles away, my expression glazed, my sandwich 1/2 eaten, and a moment frozen in time forever. They'll probably stick it on my summation in death cork board 1ne day, and a circle will be created. Maybe someone will note it on Twitter, in a far more succinct fashion than I can...

I walk back to the car, put on Smoosh, and fall asleep for roughly 3hree days. The fate of the suit, sadly, remains unrecorded...