Craven Cottage

I went to this lovely sandwich shop today at lunchtime near my work.

It's cheap as fuck, and always packed full of people. The ones who own it are from Laos, they are dead on. There's fuck all seats though, and only room for about ten people.

In the queue, this wee fat cunt takes his coat off and sticks it on the back of a chair. Then he puts his briefcase on another chair saving it for his wee girlfriend.

Well I never! 

He looked and acted like a twat prior to this, so my worst fears were realised by this craven and selfish act.

What's more, he was patronising to the staff and had a very eager attitude. When it was my turn at the counter, he did a really clumsy, meant-to-be funny gesture to the wee sandwich woman to show her that it was me who was next.

You're an abrasive wee wanker, I bellowed, as I booted him up the hole with my winter boots.

I battered the shite out of him and ate his sandwich.

His ladyfriend looked at me beseechingly, then passionately, then with open and terrible lust in her eyes as I roughly pulled his curly hair and twisted his ear.

"Fuck away off" I said. "You're as fucking bad for encouraging him".

She nodded as if in agreement, and walked out of the shop. Your man followed her about a minute later.

Nobody smiled, or applauded, or even took much notice of what had happened. No-one except the wee sandwich woman.

As she handed me my change at the till, she paused longer than was necessary between drops as she let the coins fall into my upturned, open palm.

"Ca fait longtemps qu'il le mérite, monsieur. Mais c'est mon fils".

I ate my sandwich outside the shop, in the bitter cold, with no gloves on my hands, weeping and sneezing.

It's a terrible world in which we live.

Fuckleberry Hinn

Hey there!

It's you. How are you? I'm fine, thanks. And you? Oh! I already asked you that. How are you? Ha-ha!

How are you?

Oh... Oh! How are you? How are you! Ha-ha! 

Fuck-

That's how you do it, folks. That's having a big boys and girls' conversation. It's fucking shite. It shouldn't go like this, though. That is a bad example. The thing is, though, it often does. It often does.

The world is a wild place for the wee. It's full of pitfalls like the above aborted conversation. The pure of heart are no match for the brutality of such a world. It's a wonder that I get through at all, at all.

When I was wee, I had some stunning misconceptions about things. Do you know the game Altered Beast? I had only read it, the title, I had never heard it said, and thought it was called Alerted Beast. A subtle, yet important difference. Alerted Beast is better, no? More active, somehow.

I thought that people had to have sex in the hospital, on the operating table, to make a baby be born.

All the wee don't have a clue about things. 

When I was wee, I didn't like chips, or any food, I think. I must have ate dust or something. I ran everywhere.

I wore a red vest.

I was the lead character in many books aimed at children (in my enfeebled child brain).

I can't fucking wait 'til Summer. Summer here is class, so green and hot. It's the best time, and I think about it every day. Winter is a cunt (but not that, bad, not so bad).

I plan to lead an idyllic Huckleberry Finn-like existence with Wee Sarah on the banks of the St-Lawrence. We'll grow our own food, hunt, swim about all day and ambush wayfarers for money and all.

I can't wait!

Such, such were the joys

The first time you go somewhere, the journey seems to take much longer than it actually does. Every subsequent time you make the same trip, it seems much, much shorter.

I remember once going for a run that took several years to complete. I left at about 11 in the morning in 1978, and by the time I came back, it was 1986 and strangers were living in my house. The US government did all sorts of experiments on me, and Sarah Jessica Parker helped me escape from their clutches. It was class, but emotionally demanding. I wouldn't do it again.

Sounds a bit too fucking like Flight of the Navigator, you say? Not a bit. 

It's true though. All except the Flight of the Navigator bit. And before anyone comes up with the idea, I have a plan for a sequel, called "Shite of the Navigator". Very simply told, the young fella in question, now a man, goes for a shite one day and reappears 24 years in the past. All sorts of capers ensue, with him talking about the internet and all, and nobody having a fucking clue what he's on about. You heard it here first.

But I digress... The first time you go somewhere, the trip seems much longer than it actually takes. I've always found this to be true. This, and the fact that if you hear a new word, you'll hear the same new word about a million fucking times in the next few days.

This is true for anything, not just new words. 

The Queen, there's one. Tina mentioned to me something about the Queen the other day, now she's all over the fucking place. She's just an old woman. Her job must be shite. I wouldn't want to do it. Her children are twats.

But the Queen, though... Fuck me. On the BBC news, it says she went to a church somewhere, to give school dinners to wee imbeciles who did a play for her at a Sunday School. One fucking tube said "The Queen and the Duke spent a lot of time talking to the children and their parents. About 20 of them performed a version of Daniel and the Lion's Den for her. They practised so hard."

There is something unbearably poignant about the last sentence, is there not? Did her Majesty think it was shite?

-This is fucking dull, Philip

-Aye, a waste of fucking time

But ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls; they practiced so hard. So much practice. Such disappointment.

Read this news story for a good laugh: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8503040.stm.

Read it and weep?

I am those children who practised so hard to entertain an unimpressed monarch. That is the NCWC. 

We do it for the free bangers and mash.

Down all the days

In work today I goes to the nice lady who sits beside me, "Do you have any paperclips?".

The french word for paperclip is "un trombone".

She goes "Aye, there you go" and gave me one. 

I said no, do you have a trombone, the instrument, like. 

She laughed and laughed and mimed playing a trombone, then I laughed (it was quite funny, I didn't expect her to do that). I said something about starting a band.

She laughed again, and turned away. She's nice, and comes from Haiti. Her ma and da do, she was born here.

I did need a paperclip, though.

I turned too, chuckling quietly in a touchingly pathetic moment of indulgent reverie. If I'm not careful I'll turn out like that Colin Hunt fucker from The Fast Show. I fear, alas, it may already be so.

But would that be so bad?

On the way home, I saw someone had put all snow on top of a bus shelter to look like a bobble hat. It was fucking brilliant, really impressive. It looked exactly like a giant bobble hat. In the same view, a policeman was directing traffic with a gracefulness I'd rarely seen, almost as if to music. I was impressed again.

I am easily amused, like wee Sarah. She likes to touch different fabrics, and pull necklaces and other things that dangle and hang. We have all necklaces hanging from hooks, and I take her over to pull the fuck out of them. She always throws them on the ground and drops them all over the place. Tina picks them up, then. 

Her face goes all concentrated as she does this. Her innocent curiosity is a joy to behold and is a wonder to me unlike any other I've ever experienced. 

And all the while I'm chuckling quietly, in a touchingly pathetic moment of indulgent reverie.

La Vie rêvée des singes

Last night I had a great dream. I dreamt I was able to fly. Someone was flying about and I asked them how to do it. The person goes "All you have to is believe!". So I ran and jumped into the air and did believe and was flying. It was class. I flew about in a daring manner like one of those wee World War I planes at an air-show, doing loop-the-loops and all that shite. I felt exhilarated when I woke up.

I looked for deeper meaning all throughout the day, but I know that it's a simple enough message. I hope I wasn't inspired by the insipid fucking slogan for the Winter Olympics that you always hear on the TV. Believe. That's what the slogan is, they invest it with such earnest weight when the voiceover says it. Believe. Believe fucking nothing, yis cunts. Fuck your making everything venerable. 

That's what modern life is, alas. People ruin everything for the wee. 

The two most inspiring books I've ever read are:

-Conrad Hilton's autobiography

-Paolo diCanio's autobiography

My dream was brilliant. 

The picture at the top was sent to me earlier as part of a forwarded story email, and is so hauntingly strange that I thought I would include it.

It's actually me and Wee Chub-Chub going for a walk in the future dressed as cowboys.

The Road to Higan Pier

I think Higgins still goes there on solitary adventures for ice cream treats, the strange romantic fellow that he is...

So said Stephen Maurice Graham, author of the brilliant "Leftovers" and "400 Facts", when talking about Bangor. Bangor is a shite town near Belfast that's always cold. It's a windblown and seedy place by the sea. It has a pool where you can paddle about on giant swans. That isn't important though.

What is important is that Christopher J. Higgins goes there on solitary adventures for ice cream treats. Something about this sentence breaks my heart every time I read it, but in a good way. 

I know he likes to go there. He'll often suggest it as a nice day trip, something pleasant to do on a Spring afternoon. He fucking loves it. He is a good person. He'll watch the boats in Belfast Lough, and maybe chuckle at some seagulls fighting over a discarded hamburger. He might stroll along the promenade, if it's a nice day. He'll buy an ice cream in Maude's and gently, carefully wander the roads, alone and content.

Knowing he does this is wonderful. When I was very, very young, I had an illustrated book about a brother and sister who discovered a fairy in a forest. I can remember fuck all about the story, just that the sister was good and the brother a nasty wee cunt. Anyways, the fairy turned the boy's head into a donkey's head to teach the wee cunt a lesson. The picture on the page was of him, the wee boy, sobbing with his giant donkey's head in his hands, full of remorse for all the bad things he'd done. The fairy went "Aye, OK, I'm only joking, I'll turn your head back normal now, don't worry. But don't fucking bother people again, right, you've learned your lesson." And turned his head back to a normal boy's head.

The image of the sobbing donkey-headed boy always stayed with me, I felt so sorry for him.

The mental image of a bright faced Christopher enjoying his ice cream in Bangor affects me as much, yet for its tender, innocent beauty, rather than its sadness.

Truly, the only Christ the Wee deserve.

The red vest

When I was very, very young I had a red vest.

Vest is an ambiguous word. I call it a vest. It was sleeveless t-shirt. Like a muscle top for a tiny child. It was red and made by Lee. It said Lee on it, in white writing. I wore it when I was 5.

I got it at the Lee factory in Newtownards. I wore it a lot. I insisted on wearing it everywhere. I got my school photo taken in it in 1988. It was always summer. I can't remember there being any cold weather until I was much older.

I remember we were in the car with my dad, up at where my grandparents live. We were driving to the beach. My cousin was in the car too. We always were loads in the car, we didn't give a fuck about wearing seatbelts or any of that shite. My dad was telling us about all the cool things we were going to do that summer, like swimming at the sea and climbing up mountains. 

He mentioned a few things like this, and after every suggestion, I'd ask "Can we wear vests?". It was important. I wanted everyone to wear vests.

I think my ma probably threw it out when I was a bit bigger. It would have been class to have passed it on, like a small, smelly family heirloom.

-See that red vest, the wee one with the big fucking hole in it?

-Aye

-It's three hundred years old

-Fuck me

It was a golden age.