The Mos Eisley Mardi Gras

The Monday Reek

Howay Lums, less than a week to go before my exile across the border begins and I'm beginning to feel like Steve McQueen on that boat in Papillon especially as I have no idea where I'll be living yet, or indeed what I'll be living in. A cardboard box, a wheely bin, a bus shelter, I have many options in my price range. I have a phone call on Monday to set the relocation agents scurrying across the metropolis looking for that elusive penthouse loft conversion with river views and only 5 minutes from work, I think it may be a tall order as I have specifically stated that I am not willing to sleep with any cash rich old Arabs or murder and assume anyones identity.

Back to the weekend though and I have to say, it started off with some real rock'n'roll on Friday night with my attendance at the end of season curling club dinner. It was in quite grand surroundings of Kincaid House in the nearby village of Milton of Campsie and possibly because of that, I was instructed to wear slacks. Now, I don't think anyone under fifty has ever worn slacks, or even I suspect, know what slacks are, so I played it safe, wearing a grey suit and subdued tie. Not that I am fond of exuberant ties and novelty ties should, whenever they are spotted around some knobs throat, be jammed in the doors of train carriages, just as they are leaving the station.

So the dinner went well and then the bombshell, with the revelation that everyone around the table was expected to stand up and tell a funny story or something. My curling colleague to my right then produced a notepad with four or five pages of jokes. The only rule, apart from the one ordering us to tell a humorous story was that it should be clean and free from profanity. The first old fella got up and told a joke about a bus conductress. This was topical stuff I thought, my Gran was a bus conductress until they got rid of them all in 1972. The story took an unexpected turn that ended with the bus conductress hanging her open legs out the back of the bus because the driver had had mustard on his sandwiches.

Frankie Boyle can sleep easy I think but after that there was a definite awkward silence only punctuated by fake appreciative mumblings, until my note padded chum thought he would take up the running with his researched efforts. It was car crash comedy, there may be some cancers that are funnier than the offerings he served up. Thanks for trying isn't what you want to hear when you have finished your little piece, no matter how well meaning it is. Another, longer, stagnant silence. Then I entered, stage left.

I still believed at this point that we all had to do it and we were going to be there all night waiting for all these old jokes and stories to be drawn like a lanced boil out their heads so tried to think of something to say that could be made to sound remotely entertaining. So off I went, telling the true story of how my very first boss when I started working in the distillery at Cambus used to say the fish he caught last night was so big, he "used its een fir curlin stanes" (een = eyes about 500 years ago in Central Scotland). That got a little spontaneous laugh, I think it was the way I told it, so on I ploughed with another of his tall tales. "Last night the coal board were roond at ma hoose, they werny happy wi ma gairden, there tellin me to stop growing ma carrots because ther knocking aw the miners helmets aff ". Another little laughter burst, but then I did over cook the accent a bit, still, you have to remember the audience and mine were all almost over 105. I like to think that it was too hard to follow so nobody tried and we wrapped up the evening on that hilarious note, though maybe I may have inadvertently loaded the straw that finally broke the camels back of the audiences appetite for funny curling stories.

Saturday and still no car for the weekly visit to see the children and this Saturday has brought an added complication because my bubble headed daughter had left her jacket in a shop in town and I, because I only live 10 miles away from it in the opposite direction could just nip in and get it. Of course I can sweetheart I said and off I went to catch a bus to town then a train to Alloa. Incident free and the weather was gorgeous so it was actually all quite pleasant being moved about the country with minimal effort. Sorry did I say incident free, I meant a total balls up. I went to the wrong shop, thereby asking the wrong shop assistant to retrieve from the wrong lost property bucket, the wrong jacket. It was the right colour, and material so I think its an easy mistake to make, especially if you discount its tiny tiny size that would hardly fit a 10 rear old, never mind my 16 near 17 year old woman-child.

Alloa with the sun out. The temptation to expose as much flesh to the sun as possible cannot be resisted by the fine folk of Alloa. Acres of wobbly blue white skin, a scrabble bag of indian ink tattoos anywhere within reach of their right hand, normally the lower left arm, where mum will be lovingly etched or perhaps, dad. At least most of them are spelled correctly. Faded baggy vest tops, hurriedly pulled from the suitcase from last years holiday and the obligatory tracky bottoms. I suspect these and the lovely grey marl sweatpants are worn purely because of the effort it saves, what with having no buttons or zips to bother about, all that fastening is just a hassle we can do with out.

Maybe it was because it was the finest day of the year so far, and right bang in the middle of the Easter holidays to boot, but Alloa resembled some alternative universe Miami South Beach or The Mos Eisley Mardi Gras. After 15 minutes of course, the skin isn't pasty white, its taking on tones. Not tones of bronze and rich dark tan though, oh no, tones of blotchy pink, like a tiger prawn with a well skelped arse. If you look hard enough, if you can that is, sometimes you can see shapes like the way you can on the surface of the moon. The blotches are trying to spell out a message perhaps, HELP, probably.

Still, a good thing about Alloa is the number of Bookies there are in town means virtually everyone has one each so none of them are very busy, even on Grand National Day. I manage to get the bets on, with the normal scatter gun science that has proved so fruitless in the past 30 or so years and settle down to watch the race with No1 Daughter. Clare Balding is looking well, in a manly kind of way but who is that resident BBC bookie. Some fat cockney that looks like he should be selling meat pies in Albert Sq, a gangsta butcha. Big hand for the horse that just decided, after being pampered like a premiership footballer, fed all the best oats, put up in the cosiest of stables and driven around in the finest horseboxes, that he just didn't fancy it and stayed on the start line when all the others were mindlessly tearing off to their uncertain destiny.

I used to smoke, I haven't for well over a year now and when I think of the money it used to cost, I'm even more happy I have managed to cut it out, but it does make it easy for me to justify spending money on DVDs. But honestly, when you see The Thing for £2 in Asda, its more of a crime not to buy it and for less than a packet of ten fags.

Sunday and I'm in Love. In love with a mobile phone I spotted in the window of a Virgin Media Shop. The HTC Desire, its a bit of a poncy name, but it could just as easily been called the HTC 5dollaifuckyoulongtimeyankeeboy for the allure that it gave off on first sight. So I immediately signed up for a two year relationship with the thing, lets see how we get on.

Lang may yer lum reek