Sinister: Manic Mungo

[P F]

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.



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