SATURDAY 6/4/2024: FRANKENSTEIN
FINGERSUCKING, A BANDAGED-HAND HERO, AND A SÉANCE
So tonight was to be the second and final screening of the frenetic double bill
from Hell (or punk Heaven, depending on how you looked at it) through in
Edinburgh, which was an annoying ninety-minute drive, but it could have been
worse. Well actually, it was, kind of, because I lost my glasses, and
reckoned they must have fallen out of my pocket in the hospital. Great. Sixty
quid a pair, and I couldn’t afford to replace them. Joy! Andrew and I had calmed
down from being annoyed at Dick from the night before. Fred was calm and
implacable, as ever. I never saw him lose his temper once, or even raise his voice: he was Zen as fuck the whole time
he was in Scotland. He was like a strange mix of innocent bus-window-decorating
toddler, punky teenager, and adult in the room at all times, as Andrew nailed it, which was totally correct. Why ruin what time we had left together by being
pissed off at something retreating into our experiential slipstream, and already
passing into the realms of personal legend? It made no sense whatsoever.
It was going to be a long day. The venue tonight was a place called The Banshee
Labyrinth, which is ‘Scotland’s Most Haunted Pub’, apparently. It would be
getting haunted by four shifty dishevelled adventurous wretches that night,
that was for sure, and any other ectoplasmic phantasmal attendees were optional.
But the best way to start the day off was, obviously, a nice tasty brekkie from the nearby café where we had inadvertently alienated and traumatised the female staff with images of frozen chicken shagging and wanton boozing. Only one of the women was in there this time, with – we assumed – her husband, and a wee early teens lassie serving. The woman never said much, but there was no bad energy, thankfully. Dick had his first totty scone, which is a potato scone. I have never heard this called a totty scone before; it’s always tatty scone, which makes more sense, in having a potato-based flavour to it, but I have only lived in East Ayrshire for a couple of years and am still not entirely up to speed on all its regional vocab and utterances. I also discovered that my voice was going, and I had probably caught some fucking weird cold from standing in the rain the previous night contemplating breaking into my own home. These things happen.
I had to wear an old pair of glasses for driving with. They were good for seeing straight ahead, but fucked with my peripheral vision a bit, not being bifocals. I missed a turn-off on the motorway because I couldn't read the sign, and Andrew had to guide me a bit. We got through to Edinburgh at around half three. We went to park down in a town centre spot I know, and we were perusing the extortionate Edinburgh parking prices (there is no parking in the centre of that city, so spaces are at a premium; prices are amongst the highest in Scotland) when a traffic warden walked up to us. He asked us if we were in the Stasi van, and we replied that we were. We thought he was going to berate us about not having a ticket for the van yet. Bizarrely, he pointed out a turn down the road to the right, Viewcraig Street, telling us we could probably find a spot round there to park for free. We were totally stunned. Who the Hell ever heard of a parking warden telling you where to park for nothing? They’re normally eager to hand out tickets to rake in the cash, especially in Edinburgh! Mental! We thanked him and he walked off grinning, having done his parking anarchy deed for the day
“That’s weird, they let me use it,” I mused.
“You’re Scottish. They maybe thought you looked like you belonged there,” said Andrew, grinning. I shrugged. Fair enough. He stopped off in a random pub and siphoned the python, then we headed up the hill onto the Royal Mile, Edinburgh’s main thoroughfare. We were meeting a good pal of mine, filmmaker Keith Bradley, later on, after he finished some business, but had a few hours to spare, so I figured I might as well show them a wee bit of the city, which is so small you can walk from one side of it to the other in an hour or so. It’s more of an extended village than a city, in some ways.
I am very cynical about Edinburgh, which is full of middle class international tourists clogging its every artery 24/7 365, more or less. It's is a real displeasure to try and get round these days, the streets are so chockablock with lobotomy cases dragging wheeled cases from hostel to hotel to Hell and back. I had said to the guys I would be silent about Edinburgh, so’s not to convey my cynicism and blight the place for their virgin-viewing eyes, told them at least that they would enjoy the beautiful architecture, and that every brick and building was steeped in history.
That much was true. It was just the denizens of the place I hated, the most English city in Scotland, the island’s second financial centre after that expensive dump London. But when we stepped onto the Royal Mile, every square foot jammed crammed with wanker tourists and shit tours (though we did enjoy the bus with the name Ghost Bus Tours on it, appreciating the pun artistry behind the name) quite quickly my three amigos could see with their own scales-fallen eyes the sad truth of the matter: that Scotland’s capital was nothing but a tartan tat-wrapping tourist rat trap from one end of the place to the other. I had lived in the city for eighteen months in 2001-2002, and didn’t recall the place as being so selfie-snapping utter-cunt stuffed in April, but that’s progress, I suppose. I think this recent news story says it all:
https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/people/famous-edinburgh-street-named-as-britains-most-overrated-tourist-trap-outside-of-london-4597400
However, I tried to keep my bolshy attitude-spewing mouth mostly shut, because the architecture is still beautiful – if you can see it for international idiots (pity it’s mostly the least interesting people with money from countries that get to go abroad), that is. It was so busy it actually reminded me of the place during August and the several worthless festivals it hosts, but let’s move swiftly on before I start rage-rant-raving about that cultural hotel fire. Dick wanted to get a gift with the name Munro in it for an ex, and we found a nice wee brooch in a shop right off where we joined the Royal Mile.
We fought our way up to Edinburgh Castle, stabbing and hacking and gouging and kneeing and elbow-cracking and shooting and slashing (OK, in my head) through the molasses-thick tourist dog mass of mess blocking the way all the way up there. If we’d charged a couple of quid for every tourist video we played an unwitting, unwilling bit part in, we’d have been near-millionaires in ten minutes. You will never hear a Scottish accent in Edinburgh: the two most common accents in this place are English and American. Says everything.
You can tell when a person is Scottish, though (and you never hear a Scottish accent on the streets), sadly, as they look like drug addicts or alcoholics, at least the most visible ones, begging or attending to whatever opiate dramas consume their blighted lives. It’s tragic and depressing, in such an incredibly affluent city, on a street which hosts our very own moron-stuffed Parliament at one end, and the Castle at the other. And nothing will ever change, because the politicians of this country have vacated the working class, sniffily spitting on them from afar, and never the twain shall meet.
Anyway. We finally climbed Mount Photographing Tourist and got up to the Castle. It has an area called the Esplanade in front of it, where the Military Tattoo is held every year (another tourist gyp), and I chuckled at a thought I had. Back home in St Kilda, Fred has frequented a bar/hotel called the Esplanade (AKA The Espy), so he should have felt right at home in this namesake area, especially as St Kilda itself is named after a small Scottish island. But the extremely heavy wind blowing us around like ragdolls that day precluded any same-name bonding, and we staggered under meteorological attack here and there, snapping photos when possible, Andrew’s hat going flying, him chasing it, our chuckles probably fuelling its frantic chapeau escape velocity.
(Top two photos: Andrew Leavold)
After getting our fill of windy city blowjobs and touristy photos, we headed off down to the nearby Frankenstein’s Pub. This is a great gothic lair of a building, with a Frankenstein’s monster model that comes down from the ceiling every so often, delighting guests and inviting endless quick-catch-it snaps-a-go-go. The thing has a big bolt-brained brute bastard statue outside the front door, an eternal scary fuck-off bouncer, and of course we had to get photos of freaky fetishista Fred fellating Frankie’s fat funky fleshy fingers. The cartoonist, in his element and having a ball all the time, was always ready for a photo or video to be taken, a natural-born entertainer, and decades of being filmed or singing onstage – or watched doing drawings in public offstage – meant he was prepared at all times to have somebody catch his best or worst side for some comedic image capture. A natural wee ever-mugging character to the core.
We got a table upstairs, looking down on the crowds and across at the fun Frankie (they are missing a trick not doing Frankie steins of beer in here!) model when it came randomly horror-knocking. I was drinking diet coke, getting hopped up on caffeine and close proximity to beer drinking and Antipodean anarchy. Eventually we were joined by the earlier-mentioned Keith. His hands were banged and bandaged up, and he looked like old Frankenstein himself a bit because of this. But this was acceptable, because he was a bona fide hero, as you yourself can read in this story:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/hero-passerby-recovering-heart-attack-32516802#ICID=Android_TMNewsApp_AppShare
The man has a heart attack, is recovering, and still saves a woman’s life! Cheers for making the rest of us all look bad, Keith! Fuck you!
We all congratulated him for his actions, of course, and gently shook his hand. He was to be filming this evening’s activities, and we’d told him if he couldn’t handle it because of his injuries it was, of course, no problem. But he was having none of that, and practically demanded he be able to do it. After drinking for a while, we headed over to the Banshee Labyrinth, where we met Ning Nong Norrissey, a punk pal of Fred’s from Australia. He'd gotten the bus up from England to hang out for the night, staying in a cheap and cheerful hostel. He’s the singer of a LOUD band called The VeeBees, named after Victoria Bitter, a Melbourne schooner-gulped thirst-quencher I have never personally tasted:
We found a table in the rabbit warren that constituted the literal labyrinth of the Labyrinth, and the guys went off to get some pizza. I wasn’t hungry so just watched the fun goth circus go by. I have always admired goth noir style, if not much of the music, and would hang out here if I lived in Edinburgh. It definitely would have been a fave hangout in my younger years if I had known about it:
The screenings had originally been set for a kickoff time of 6 p.m., but were now put back to 9.30 p.m., which was a real pisser in the time stakes. It meant we would have to get back to Crosshouse, have a couple of hours of sleep, them drive back to Edinburgh again the next morning for their train at Waverley Station at 9.30 a.m. However, there was nothing that could be done, we just had to get on with it. I went with Andrew to find the small cinema section, capacity 35. He opened a door and peeked inside, closing it after a moment without stepping inside. He told me that it was the right bit, but they were doing…a séance. I glanced inside. He was right. It was hilarious, like some sort of Gareth Marenghi or Phoenix Nights satire: “I’m getting the word…nonce!”
We clearly had a wee bit longer to wait, so I went and got a vastly overpriced (the city is hugely, prohibitively expensive) double cheeseburger round the corner, cos I was fucking starving. I then went and got the Stasi van and brought it over from Viewcraig Street, parking it opposite the venue to save everybody walking over there later. Finally the ghost hunter cunts filed disappointedly out, dead relatives still uncontacted, and the cinema got ready for us. Sixteen people paid to get in, which was far better than the GMAC non-event. Met an amiable guy named David Graham I had been talking to online before the event, and sold him a copy of my published-last-December novel Soundproof in Satellite Town.
Eventually, the screening kicked off and Ribspreader went on first. It went down gangbusters with the young-to-middle-aged drunks there to see it. Who then mostly promptly filed out when the film finished to drink elsewhere in the drinking den of doom. Andrew was understandably disappointed, but knew Ribspreader was a party drinking film and there was nothing he could do. I sat in the back row with Fred to my left during the films, and Ning Nong Norrissey to my right. He was an amiable, easygoing guy, very pleasant to talk to, and he and Fred were very happy at getting a rare chance to hang out outside Australia.
Sitting next to Fred was interesting. He drank a beer or two during his doco, leaning across to relate random facts to me. At one point, when an ex said that they had had an amicable split, he coughed and loudly said “BULLSHIT!” at the same time. Laughing in recall here. Then his girlfriend Viv (who apparently suffered bad separation anxiety that her manic wee man was abroad causing chaos) came on and said “It’s love.” Fred’s shoulders did a wee chuffed shoulder shuffle as she said it, very happy. It was strange and interesting watching a man watching a doco about himself (he says that watching it is “weird”), once again toasting the dead St Kilda soldiers lost to drugs and booze along the way. The film had such a heavy, happy, inspirational impact on me, and sitting here with the actual free spirit of such an amazing production (I have seen it probably two dozen times, I love it so much) was surreal, to say the least. It truly was great, and I savoured every moment.
Eventually it was over, and some of the youngsters who had filed out earlier had filed back in two-thirds of the way through. There were four Irish students of around twenty, two guys and their girlfriends, and the guys got a caricature done. Fred had a caricature of two women having sex, and he drew the guys’ faces onto them, which they thought was hysterical. David also got one done that he posted on Facebook, and I am surprised that it’s still up – I just checked. Keith was walking round quite happily filming all the sketchy sketching and comings and goings, small camera in his bandaged hands, shooting footage that will not doubt look great on any future Blu-ray release of Pub. Andrew was talking about having one for next year and coming back over here, so we’ll see. Fingers crossed.
(Top three photos: Andrew Leavold)
Dick had been drinking quite heavily throughout the evening, and I got a wee bit more trepidatious with every beer he had, because no fucking way was I going to put up with a repeat of the previous evening’s shenanigans. I told Andrew I would rather leave Dick in Edinburgh overnight and then meet up with him the next morning at the train station. In the event, there was no misbehaving, and things went off without a hitch…except when we got back to my flat. I pulled the van up, and Dick instantly jumped out and pissed behind a bucket next to a shop next door. I asked him if he couldn’t have waited until he got in my flat to do that, and we ruefully answered that he thought we had just stopped in the middle of nowhere for a piss break. I was just glad it was far too early in the morning for my neighbours to see him doing it, and couldn’t care less.
Fred said he didn’t want my bed, because he would be too tempted to just stay up and read my books, which he had gotten into the habit of doing upon retiring – he’d haul out a few different volumes from my bookcases and peruse them into the wee small hours. Said he’d read a lot of them, and I believe him; he used to review books for a publication, after all. But I insisted he have the bed and we all crashed out, me on the living room floor across from Andrew under some duvets, for about three or four hours. We then had to get right back up, collect our few remaining braincells, and drive right back to within a few hundred yards of where we had been the night before nearly seventy miles away. Mental! Still, it had to be done.
SUNDAY 7/4/2024: HILARIOUS LITERARY PORN AND A DEAD SCOTTISH POET PILGRIMAGE
So up we yawningly staggered at 6 a.m., me making us a cup of coffee. Andrew gave me fifty quid, despite my protestations. I needed it – I was going to have to buy new glasses, after all. On the way home earlier that morning we had been having a crazed, hilarious, mental conversation that Keith had correctly identified as being like verbal jazz, with myself, Fred and Andrew just saying whatever hilarious, rude, erudite, crude shit and stuff and nonsense came into our minds as we drove. I had told the guys on the way back to Crosshouse about the James Joyce sex letters that he had written to his wife Nora. He loved it when she farted.
“You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole.”
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/02/02/james-joyces-love-letters-dirty-little-fuckbird/
Laughing here. You get the general idea. Needless to say, our freeform jazz
sleaze conversation on the way back to Edinburgh was sporadically informed by
wee Jim’s farty-arsefucking tendencies, mixed with Rudy Ray Moore raps, Fred
sketching, Andrew keeping me right on the motorway turnoffs, and any amount of
other hilarious madness. I hadn't laughed until I cried in many years, and bashed the steering wheel with my hands in joy and gleefully begged for them to stop in my crap, cold-torn voice. But we got through there in plenty of time, and I
parked just off Princes Street, just across the road from Waverley Station. We
stood and chatted for a while, me pointing out to the guys the stairwell off
Princes Street that would take them down into the train station just over to
their left on the opposite side of the road, next to the Scott Monument. Then I
hugged them all goodbye.
I told them I was going to miss them, and I was not lying. I didn’t get to know Dick all that well, as he had a day-and-a-half away in Loch Ness but, looking at his page on Facebook now, and seeing his film and music tastes, his John Waters fandom, I realise we have a lot in common that we never got to discuss at any great length in such a short time. Which was a shame, but there’s always next year and the sequel, eh, Dick? I certainly can’t wait to see what mad shit you come up with. The constant introduction of weird, unexpected twists and characters in Ribspreader certainly kept the viewer on the edge of his seat, wondering what the fuck was going to happen next. And never once could you guess. Which is great.
I joked that the sequel should be called Legspreader, a porno. “You know where to stick it, Brian,” said Fred instantly, funny and salacious. He looks innocent, but he also, obviously, has a sleazy, (p)imp of the perverse side to him, hardcore sex and swearing and boozing and chaos. It was hard to reconcile the footage I have seen of him onstage, exposing himself, doing all kinds of crazy shit, with the pensive, intellectual, funny, creative man I had just hung out with for several treasured days. He was so quiet that thinking of him as a madly humourous, shouting, exhibitionist punk singer was almost impossible. He’s a man of few words unless he wants to be, is all I can say. He’s a graduate of a real art school – Prahran Art college – but is also a graduate of the school of life, having made a peerless, eccentric art statement of his whole life. And long may it continue.
And then my friends were gone and, sighing, I turned my attention to getting back home alive without falling asleep and crashing. I decided, as I was in Edinburgh, to a do a wee quick pilgrimage to the grave of William MacGonagall, a Scots-Irish poet whose name had been depressingly nicked by JK Rowling for a character of hers, leading endless lobotomised Harry Potter fans to take photos of his resting place for absolutely the wrong reasons. I started to go back the way I had come in the van, back up the hill…to see a one-way sign. Shaking my head, I turned back round, going back down towards Princes Street. Which, insofar as I knew, you could not now drive cars or vans on. Fuck it, I had to go somewhere, didn’t I?
I sat at traffic lights onto the main Edinburgh thoroughfare looking left and right, clueless as to what to do. Some vehicles that looked like civvy cars went along Princes Street. I just thought aw, fuck it, and turned right when the lights turned green. I just drove straight ahead, acutely aware that I was on the same roads used by trams, awaiting a frightening crash, feeling like I was being observed by every single security camera in Scotland. But I managed to make it to the end, somehow, thank fuck, and I turned left up Lothian Road after a taxi, where I knew I was on solid ground. But driving up Princes Street early on a Sunday morning, conspicuous as Hell, with little traffic on the road as camouflage…was not an experience I would be keen to repeat. I doubled back over to Greyfriars Kirk, where MacGonagall is buried (also home of Greyfriars Bobby, Scotland's most famous loyal corpse-sitting pooch), found his grave, took a respectful couple of photos, then got into the Stasi van and back through to Crosshouse before the city could really wake up and turn into crowded-pavement-Hell central. Good riddance to the fucking place.
And that, Gentle Reader, after perhaps too many words, is that. I can now hear my front door rattle when it’s windy, because there’s no glass in the inner door to deaden the sound. I have to put a piece of envelope in between the door and the frame to stop it vibrating and doing my head in. There is not much else to say, really. So I’ll just leave you with a Fred joke:
“What do you call an island full of Scottish guys called Billy? A Billy colony.”
I may have fucked that up in the telling, to be honest. You’d have to ask Fred how it goes. If you’re ever lucky and honoured enough to get the chance to do so, that is. Here’s hoping. Get back her next year, guys! Priming some more doors for smashing already!
THE END(?)
PS: For those caring, empathetic souls paying attention, and worrying about my vision and finances: I never did have to buy new glasses. I found the old ones in the bedroom I had crashed in on the door-smashing night Dick was in Inverness. I had just been so fazed by the whole thing that I had put them down and forgotten doing so.
PPS: My eye has healed right up, thankfully. I don’t think I would suit the pirate eyepatch look. Thanks for asking, though.
PPPS: As anybody can see, I have basically just done a hugely detailed tour diary about the guys’ Scottish leg of their trip. I saved as much of it as I could for our own great memories, and have allowed the general public to read it. I hope that you enjoyed it, I know I certainly did. Would have finished it weeks ago, but had a few health problems to get over. Including the cold caught in this very story, which knocked me on my arse for weeks.
Post-credits treat: here's The Man Himself excellently reading a wee snippet for my book. Check out the Facebook page for more, including purchase links. Enjoy!
Post-post-credits treat: here's some excellent Edinburgh footage shot by Keith Bradley. Slainte!
Excellent account G. The lads need to return
ReplyDeleteCould not agree more. It was an amazing time from start to finish.
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