Personal Blogs

It was awkward. Social niceties had brought us all together, but some of us weren't having fun. He was holding forth about a personality type, which he clearly despised, and which, as was obvious to the other diners, was my own.

She, his partner was doting, she was stroking his hand.

I was getting worried swift-flicked-glances from the rest of the table. There was a potential for a horrid scene here. It's a known that I usually react badly to such provocation.

I sized him up, we did owe him after all, that's why we were paying for the meal. I reckoned that it would be close battle, but that I'd have the benefit of surprise. Which counts for much.

But I was tired [not fatigued, I just wanted to be not what I was] and I couldn't really be bothered. I had other weapons.

I ordered a lot more drink.

As he stepped out of the taxi, having had, a rather-large, lecture on female circumcision, I saw his face. He'd have been happier if I'd repeatedly punched it.

He'd made the ultimate arse move; arguing with a woman when drunk. Only idiots play that game.

We'd avoided the touristy spots, although all of central Paris can be described as a touristy-spot really, so we weren't prepared for what we saw when we reached the top of the escalator.

We'd spent the day in the Jardin des Tuileries drinking the cheapest of cheap-lager.  Lunch was bread, carrot rapé and a soft-cheese that might well have been Brie. In deference to our hosts we had something red, which came in a large screw-top bottle and tasted a little bit like wine with that. I was smoking Gauloise for similar reasons.

The game kicked of at eight, so it was dark as we made our way to the Metro. I think that it was Coco who cracked the semi-obligatory, "won't have much fun in Stalingrad" Joke.

There were a few Jambos on the train and there was an, I thought typically-French-looking guy, sporting a St Germain scarf sitting in front of us.

"We'll follow him...", I pointed at the back of his bonce.

He swivelled, "I live on Dalry road".

"But you know which station to get off at?"

"Aye".

"Then we'll follow you then". I was tempted to remark on the stupidity of supporting a Paris team when you lived in Edinburgh. But when in France...you let these things pass.

We hadn't really thought too much about how many Jambos were going to be in attendance I suppose. Perhaps we might have suspected that there would be quite a few if we were considering people. But as the escalator lifted us up out of the depths of the metro we could hear the signing.

The square was a wall-to-wall of maroon and white clad Edinburgh folk. There must have been at least two thousand drunken Scots. All with at least one glass in each hand and jumping around like they were at the [what was, even then retro] school disco.

Away up in Gorgie at Tynecastle Park
There's a wee football team that aye makes it's mark
They've won all the honours for footballing arts
And there's nae other team to compare with the Hearts".

For the next three hours the only time that any of us stopped singing was when it was our turn to get the drinks in. [Yes! you could drink in the stadium, you've got to love the French.]

We got stuffed four-nil. But that wasn't the point. As fans we won hands-down. We ran through our entire repertoire. This may be just me time-travelling in my head, but I think that this was the first time that we sang the travelling-song.

"And Now, The end is near
We've followed Hearts from Perth to Paisley
We've travelled far, by bus and car
And other times we've went by railway

We hate the Hibs, they make us spew up
So make a noise you Gorgie boys
We're going to Europe

To See H - M - F - C
We'll even dig the channel tunnel
When we're afloat on some big boat
We'll tie our scarves around the funnel.
We have no cares, for other players
like Rossi, Boniec, or Tardelli
When we're overseas, the hibs will be in Portobelly".

[Sang to 'My Way'.]

Afterwards, the Scots boys-and-girls and the French boys-and-girls had much fun in the cafés.

I woke up in the Montmartre about four with, of all things, a nearly-full pint of Guinness clamped between my thighs. It took me ages to get back to the hotel.

Sunrise, Pilling sands. West coast for sure, but the seeing the sun come up is always somewhat special wherever you are. We were strung-out and strung-out along the beach.

I wasn't thinking about much, I was barefoot, my baseball boots tied around my neck and covered in sand—there had been shenanigans in the night. I wanted a fag but everything was soaked. What we did have were a couple of cases of ready-mixed cocktails that tasted foul but which we were drinking anyway. Mine was a metallic pina-colada.

The girls were mostly sprawled on the shingles sporting sun-specs, the boys were all over, pretending to be explorers. Pat and another couple of the guys were doing some kind of pogo thing, I wandered over to see what this was all about.

"Look trampoline sand!"

They were jumping up and down, the sand was acting strangely like rubber. A slight alarm bell rang in my head and I became aware of a noise that hadn't been there a minute ago.

"What's that noise?"

"What noise?", they were whooping and jumping for all they were worth. I looked seawards, there was a disturbance on the horizon. There was a ribbon of something between sand and sky that hadn't been there a minute ago.

"Shite, the tide, it's a bloody riptide here...let's get out of here". I looked back at them, Pat was up to his knees in the sand which had stopped behaving like rubber. He was shrinking as I watched.

"I'm stuck".

I hope that I'm never ever that scared again, I can't even imagine how scared Pat was.

Panic and adrenaline took over. We hauled him out [he dislocated a shoulder during the process] and then we ran for the shingles.

The tide was a foot or so high and moved about the speed of city-traffic. There was a part of me that said, 'so what', but I knew that if it caught us we were likely to be over as people. It would knock us over and drag us under. Thankfully we'd had more time than we deserved.

The girls were laughing at us as we made the beach, Pat immediately started moaning about the pain in his shoulder and I noticed that I'd lost my baseball boots.

I really wanted a fag.

It was what they'd brought me up for: to make a judgement when they couldn't.

They were right, but it hurt me to say so.

I'm a good boy.

He'd been calling me Dave for about fifteen years; it had gone way beyond the point of me saying anything about it. The only thing that annoyed me any more was that it was the same name that Trigger mis-cries Rodney in only fools and horses. I felt like we were ripoffs of a sit-com.

Most people around me were aware of the problem, and yet still...

"Why are you calling him Dave?"

There have been many awful moments in my life. This was one of the worser.

There's an odd protocal to jail-cells. At the least the ones that I've been in.

Glasgow, Saturday night, holding-pen in Paisley; I'm lying on the concrete double bed, looking at the toilet-in-the-corner and wondering why the cop-bastards haven't given me a blanket or a crash-mat.

The shiny-eyed burglar-lad is well tucked up. So is the blood-covered boy who's fetal in the corner. That's the one whose tears are just-about over his entire face, the one who is beginning to annoy me with his keening. He has two blankets.

Despite blanket distibution problems I'm the alpha criminal-in-residence.

Then Jesse arrived.

It was clear that he was a known, because there was a bit of almost-casual violence and fliff-flaff between him and the turn-key.

After something of a rant to the general population about this, Jesse turned upon to us and ascertained our issues.

It takes a wee bit to frighten me, Jesse managed to.

"Breech?", he looked at me.

"Yes", easy for him, I was wearing a scarf. He looked at the burglar, he asked, and was answered and then we all looked at the poor wee boy in the corner.

"Ah stabbed ma da..."

Jesse turned to me and said, "you're the only wan gettin out any time soon".

My mum, my dad and me were way too early for my wee brother's wedding. We had an hour to kill, so we found a café. I'd have rather gone to the pub, but that was pushing it, it was only ten o'clock.

There was a bit of a stoshie getting the coffees in, for me. Dad has never been socially comfortable and my mum is way too so, to the point of offence. Really I should have done the ordering, I didn't.

My mum ordered a latté and my dad an espresso. I thought that I might die. Seated all around us were burly guys in hi-vis jackets tucking into fried-stuff on rolls and reading the Sun. This didn't seem like the place...

The girl behind the counter didn't even blink, "shall I bring them over?" It must have been clear to her that we weren't going to be able to manage this ourselves.

I should point out at this point that we had obvious physical issues. My mum had finally completed her full-set[she's now broken both her shoulders and both her hips] and that my dad had just had his hands fixed surgically. Both were sporting, what can only be described as, comedy bandages. The couple that had only two working left hands between them and I shuffled over to a table.

After that I settled down a wee bit, until the tie incident.

Both dad and I were wearing sorta-suits, neither of us had ties on; me from choice, him because there was no way that he, without two-handed-help, could put one on. My mother produced the thing from her purse, the one that she had stored in my dad's pocket.

That's easy to write but wasn't so easy to do; it took some minutes and we attracted attention. The term bloody-footers crossed my mind. I was tempted to step in but didn't, the bitching between them was too enjoyable, and it seemed to be going down well with the room.

When the thing finally appeared it was down to me to attempt to put the bugger on the man. Ten minutes later it became clear that I wasn't going to be able to do this. I can barely put a tie on myself and doing it for my dad in front of a caféful of beaming workies...

The girl behind the counter and I shared a look: it was clear that she would have been able to help, in fact every bugger in the place probably could have done a better job than I did, but by that point I was too humiliated to ask.

I took our cups to the counter and said thanks. As we walked out the door everybody in the place said it back to me.