1. Rain all the way to bumping dazed and awed at a modernist monument in a green field. Memories of Muldoon in the paper, writing �Long Island� and �Hurricane Alison� in the departure lounge. Down the aisles the scraped blonde stewardesses in their cobalt skirts and orange tans. Prestwick�s desolate fields, distant water, ticketless train North through Troon to the jolt of Glasgow Central, the great wooden halls. 2. In the city of stone, rain coming and going, past Starbucks and the other chains: one shopping avenue turning into another, like an endless allegory for the world I love, the anonymous town whose geography you�ve not grasped, just bleeding street to street, leaking people. Reading about Eco over a �3 burger. Horse racing on a TV, Irish newspapers plastering the walls. George Square like a place in Alice or Talisman, a new magic spot. 3. Kelvinside, architecture, picking at phrases and buildings. Pewter Pot, thinking of how it all came together. Driven by Chu. Honey�s alive. Locals do pro jobs of Elvis and the Carpenters. The Nipper sings �This Charming Man�, just this once, to a sparkly backing track. Chu walks �Ticket To Ride�. The video looks like a scene from Glasgow Transport Museum. Dick has never sung karaoke before: a whim takes him and he redefines the whole weekend. Strange string jabs, tempo changes, mad lyrics: I can�t believe them as they flash up. �Someone left a cake out in the rain / And I don�t think I can make it / Cos it took so long to bake it / And I�ll never have that recipe again�. The second instrumental break, turning into a Bong theme, is longer than many whole songs. For days we debate it: even whether the phrase in the song is �MacArthur�s Park�. Defining. 4. The Care Bear sells cakes, others buy ale. Shearer waving across the room, saying it�s like �This Is Your Life�. Big Jim walks in to similar effect. Possibly the best disco in the world: where else would you get Twisterella, Like Lovers Do, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun and The First Picture of You in a row? (Let me know.) The lad Stout is slender and elegant. There should have been a poll to declare him the best dancer. He�s John Revolting, with or without a Neutron Bomb. Watching Dicky Knee dance to Hazey Jane II, it moves me, his movement; maybe just because Nicky D always reminds me of him. So does May, I say, on another day: I understand, he says. The cops come looking for us, or maybe YOU. Perhaps they had heard about a new drug, �Cake�. 5. No mornings in Glasgow, only the provocation of an Orange band passing down a high street, its pipes poignant and militaristic at once. I�ve never heard anything like it, not so casual and close-up, and I think about our proximity to Belfast. The kids gather round the TV like it�s 1959, or really 1989. Mediocre media bands, such pointless contingencies, so meaningful at such a unique convergence. We marvel at Bowie�s plans to storm TV with the gospel according to Patricia Hewitt. 6. Back down the orange tube, dark dank and sodden, what romance a fraction of its map promises. The CD fairy has bought and brought a CD, bearing the gospel according to Marion Brent. The park drips with memory and promise. In the epic boozer only the journey from catsup thru mayonnaise to BBQ compensates for the result before us. The lads weigh up the girls and their Moomin accessories. On the pink cinders at the heart of everything we kick our frustration into the dust. I flick the ball over 96 and volley it in: he says it was like Glenn Hoddle. Then he decimates us. It�s almost an honour to lose to such quality. Jairzinho with a McGrath knee. I make the rusty bar clank. It spits back the ball. The Nipper plays with a grudge in his foot and a song in his heart. It�s �Dancing In The Dark�. Not that one. Magnificently he backheels in my corner. Zola with a Mike Joyce cardigan. 7. I practise ways of saying �That�ll be Dale Winton�s best man happy� as we descend on the many-layered labyrinth. Literally, but not figuratively, I meet Pat Nevin on his way down, greeting the passing lads who coo his sudden name. Spaceship hall of golden landing lights. Delgadoes are loud, climactic, not very eloquent. Mull Historical Society are energetic rock: everyone goes shopping. Belle and Sebastian are polished, transformed from whenever you first saw them, though maybe not from whenever you last saw them. They switch instruments like they�re REM making Out Of Time. They play them all rather well. I don�t know how they do it. I�d like to find something to complain about, but I can�t. But everyone else can: in the long post-morten (harket) the consensus is against new songs. I realize something I�d not grasped till now: * Belle and Sebastian have ceased being twee*. 8. Backstage the clan Murdoch hang out with glamour kids and Stevie W music. We go instead back to the 1960s and drink a box of beer. The passing time makes everything funnier: we don�t need �drugs�. The CD fairy disapproves of Wings. I admit, the way it keeps stopping and restarting doesn�t improve matters. I blame the CD. The CD player. The owner. The parents. The Teacher�s. The Rolling Rock. My editor drinks vodka with no chaser, like a Boy Racer seeking the greyhound of the dark hour before the dawn. We all disagree about Storytelling. Amazingly, many haven�t even heard it. And I thought *I* was no fan. Shearer shows up in the middle of a mid-night quest for a wee lassie locked in an office somewhere whom he must pick up at 3. I don�t know if he made it. I don�t know if she moved. We remember how we started, and how I ended up with more than I started with. Dicky K doesn�t remember his funniest lines, viz: a) �Sure, it�s a slippery slope, but who cares?� b) how the Nipper had made �hipster� mean �contrarian� c) �Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! The Monkey Gibbon!� You had to be there. It still wasnae funny. 9. 96 (for it is he) says �My name�s Cook � am I a cook?�. A colleen asks about films: �Has anyone seen 200 Cigarettes?�. Alasdair: �No... have you lost them?� 10. In Carsmile�s face weariness and hope strive for dominance. 11. I can�t believe the thrills of the city. I blame Love and Money. They go to my feet. A pint of Belgian beer is cheaper than a can of Foster�s in my local off-license. I look down a long table at the last supper, through smoke and daylight. Scotland has no geezer nouns but an adjective. RJG identifies �The Missing Link�. The Missing Link calls us, cruising through the gloomy Sunday. It�s nae gloomy. As soon as my editor leaves, the heavens open. Up stairs out of the pour we remember auld fitballers: Ian Ferguson, Jim Bett, John Hewitt. Tony Day. Action at Tesco�s, threats at Sainsbury�s. 12. The western road in evening light; Dicky K�s place is like Bath, an extravagant splendour. A fact-checker is something to be. � I�ve always thought Scotland has good light, he says. I agree, but then � where doesn�t? (Someone - who? - says it in print about the South of England: such claims begin to Cancel All The Way Through.) The Blue Skies enter the quiz. The thrill, the challenge, the teleology. I can�t believe how much everyone knows. The kindly lights shine a dab of their glory on me. 96 wins a bottle of vodka. If only Jerry was around to make a start on it. 13. My second kebab has no bread, no salad, just healthy stuff like chips. Jack and I eat on the pavement, remember the Czech Republic, and listen to the dark river. It crashes under night and day. I hate pool, but this is the world�s best pool hall. Wee Ailsa puts on the Sundays and Danny Wilson, and the club downstairs has to listen to it too. I disagree with everyone about Orange Juice and Aztec Camera. I can�t believe no-one considers them funky gibbons. The motorway roars at night like a concrete river. Dicky K says he likes singing, and delivers a Sandie Shaw number. 14. The East End emerging impoverished at Glasgow Cross. Old drunks saluting RJG�s air-force jacket. In the hothouse ��Heroes�� plays somewhere, air raid sirens sound elsewhere. We wonder what the obelisk is for, I wonder why the wee kids never come here, and why it�s deserted now. I read the �LLPJ� notes, and actually she comes in this direction, as you�ll all recall. Union Flag on a building: we take a vote on whether it should be a Saltire. Naturally only a Sassenach would think so. I snap a bridge without the Care Bear on it. Architecture and religion, maybe morality. The river, I say on more days than one, looks so good tonight. 15. St Enoch�s to Hillhead: I find it cool the way the kids use the tube, when I wouldn�t: reassuring me it has a purpose. At Omar Khaiam�s we have fried onion rings and a steakknife, and cops show up again. � Perhaps, says Cookie, they thought this was a criminal record. It�s Real Gone Kid. To be listening to Real Gone Kid in a pub next to Glasgow University, with rain sheeting down outside, is about as much as I can hope for at this time of life. Then �Call Me� plays, which is more than anyone could hope for. We count pubs, and agree that Jackson Browne�s �Take It Easy� beats the Beagles�. 16. You can write details about the days, and a wise man says the details are what matters. But so do the generalities: the feel, the flow, the freedom. We won�t be kids for long. We piece together the lyric in the Caernarvon, and study a map of Scotland. Oban, Mull, Peterhead, Ayr where Lloyd played in the Cristal Palice. 96 realizes something big and simple in our presence: we came early to B&S, but even we missed out on their prime. 17. The basement heaves with people and red light. A guitarist croons about �poets, kings & clowns�. I get introduced as a virgin: I sing most of my song OK. � Great song, says someone. Maybe it was the author of �all you poets, kings and clowns�. A Dutch vanilla duo sing about �spicy coffee�. The song goes �Spicy coffee, Spicy coffee, Spicy coffee, Spicy coffee / I love coffee, I love coffee, I love coffee, I love coffee / and coffee loves me�. 18. The Piping Centre is posh and spruce for its dowdy-road surroundings; the vibe is Scottish Conservative, that odd forgotten theme. I reach Buchanan Galleries and remember that it�s a shopping centre, not a gallery. In George Square I find myself in a crowd, tumbled like an Oedipa Maas into yet another strange scene: the square is filling with hundreds of working-class women who�ve marched from Kelvingrove, on their first day�s strike from working as nursery nurses. Their joy at hearing 60s records played for them, their cheers for everything the speakers say; maybe for many it�s their first demo, for I hear a delight in it that reminds me of fictional representations that I usually find unrealistic. Yet this is real. Surprise at their own unity, their capacity to do this: as women, too, maybe scorned by men � and I look at the few men here and wonder about their own sense of it, and how it all fits with trades-union masculinity and all. And that feeling of relativity: this is one strike, one issue among so many, and will never really be top of an agenda � but it means so much to them, and here and now it�s the issue that matters. Wandering at the edge of the ending crowd, I find Tommy Sheridan, CND badge on his grey suit, talking to groups of women. The first picture of him: the penultimate picture of May. 19. I walk into an old silver dream of Glasgow: out the windows of the Gallery of Modern Art I watch the plazas and bollards, coffee shops and cool people. I remember a tape I never made in May 1991: it was going to start with Goodbye Mr Mackenzie. 20. St Vincent�s Street is like Manhattan. We order lunch in the world�s best pub, under the portrait of Brian O�Nuallain. � This, I say when my Dublin Grill comes � this is the best thing ever. I have been saying it every day. We take a picture of it. Even the Guinness feels like Dalkey. Ecstasy, we agree, or perhaps he�s just hulmering me. I let him walk back to Broadway: I climb past Strathclyde to the black stone Cathedral. In the cellar I visit St Mungo�s tomb: like Pippin or is it Merry I drop a lucky penny down his well. The brass-rubbers grin kindly. A woman is asking attendants about the stained glass, talking about being a Catholic but still liking it here. � It�s all the same God, says an oldster. � Really? I think: Then why the schisms? The cobbles shine with passed rain like a BBC drama from 1990. At the airport Celtic fans sport sombreros: the departure lounge shows them the original Milan match with Wolstenholme commentary. I hope they�ll get lucky. They don�t. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+