Mary Michie

Mary Michie edged along an unknown road in the dark. She couldn’t see three feet in front of her but even if she could, her tears would have blinded her.

“Awkward sod would have to die during the bloody black-out”

Her heart was broken.

They’d not even offered her a bed at the hospital even though it was the middle of the night. Just sent her on her way, a grieving woman just widowed.

She wouldn’t have taken them up on such an offer anyway, she was too upset to sleep. The seventeen mile walk from the hospital in Erskine to Bridgeton in the east end of Glasgow was actually good for her in a way. It gave her time to think about her predicament, terrifying though it may be. Though, she could have done without the black, bleak darkness.

Gangrene they’d said, from an old wound suffered in the last fiasco. Lost the lower part of a leg. Her lovely man had let her children and nieces play with his wooden leg – made a big joke out of it. Finally succumbed to an injury from the first war in the midst of a second. She’d held his hand as he died. Said ‘goodbye my lovely man’. Now she had to harden her heart and look after their children.

How lonely life can be sometimes. Lonely and so, so tough. Experiences either shape you or destroy you, she thought. She had no option but to adapt.

She was glad he was out of his pain; the agonies and indignities at the end. She was also glad she could at least be with him at the end. They’d meant so much to each other.

She stumbled home to her children in the darkness. She had much to suffer yet, and she could only hope that out of darkness came some shred of light.

Bryant the Rabbit

Bryant was often amazed by how much talent he lacked. He seemed to lack that particular commodity to a degree so immense it was like trying to conceptualise the size of a hundred billion galaxies in your mind; or why anyone found Jack Whitehall anything other than deeply irritating. And it wasn’t just the amount of talent he lacked either; it was the consistency with which he lacked it. He lacked talent constantly.

But, for some reason, he had banked his whole life on the vague idea that it was there somewhere, latent and just waiting to introduce itself and make everything alright. He had strange conceit, shared by no-one else who ever knew him or knew him now that he should not be working on a help-desk for Dunlogan City Council; that this situation was somehow aberrant. It was due to this fantastical way of thinking that, ironically, he wasn’t very talented at his job either. He gave off an air, not in an arrogant way but more a devil-may-care sort of approach that the job was beneath him. He’d crack jokes with his colleagues and callers alike, engage them in lengthy conversations unrelated to anything they’d enquired about. Sometimes he’d just wander off around the corridors of the vast old local government building and chat to folk as he met them. In this way, he could be gone as long as forty minutes and had been ‘spoken to’ about this very matter on two occasions now, occurrences which he had resented greatly, airing this grievance with his colleagues apparently unaware that it was they that had expressed their dis-satisfaction over his prolonged absences.

He used words and language in a way that not any other of his work-mates did. It was like he was from another time. As if a Dicken’s character or Sebastian Dangerfield had been kicked out of a time machine to be placed here on a help-desk.

Little did he know also that several of his co-workers had complained to management about his choice of words and language and his continued re-telling, for instance, of his experiences as a sperm-donor in Liverpool. The rest were alternately bemused and amused by his apparent insistence on relating the more bizarre details of his life’s history. They felt somehow like his audience and, to Bryant, they were.

He shared nothing of what they themselves held dear in their lives. They had partners whereas he seemed to have had a string of failed relationships left somewhere in some murky, semi-comical past.

“Never get involved with a Scouse girl – fucking nightmare. Like being in a mega-extended episode of Brookside!”

Many of them had children and he did not. At least not in the normal sense. His sperm-donor story suggested he may have a few dozen roaming around the Merseyside area.

“Aw six-foot-four and wondering why they have a proclivity for strong drink and macaroon bars”

They had cars and houses and nearby relatives where he had none of these. His surviving Scottish family – a mother and brother no less – still lived in London where he himself had lived for many years; a fact he constantly belaboured them about. In reality, he had so very little in common with any form of social humanity that any of them knew or cared about.

It had crossed some of their minds that he might be from outer space like David Bowie in that film.

Of course, when you’re different, people will believe anything about you. After all, there was the evidence of his visit to the ladies toilet. Was that not evidence enough that he was a dangerous pervert? It all added up with the sperm-donor stuff and the lack of a girlfriend. And, what about all these previous women - where were they now?

Moira Barton, the help-desk team leader – whom Bryant had christened Morbid Bastard – thought of him, and she thought of him too often for her liking ‘you can have all the degrees you want, but they mean nothing without common sense’ (which for her meant anything the Daily Mail said) – as a left-wing waster and constantly marked him down at report time, or Performance Appraisal and Participation (PAP), and made sure he was the lowest marked of his grade.

Sitting there with his union coaster on his desk and his talk of ‘tories’ and the Queen being a ‘worthless parasite’ he may as well have been wearing pince-nez and frizzy hair and talking Russian. If there was a category for ‘Bolshevik’ on the appraisal form she’d have gladly ticked it.

He still hadn’t been forgiven for being the only one of the help-desk staff to join the strike against government cuts the previous March. What they hadn’t countenanced was that he hadn’t forgiven them either. Still, he had to try and get on with them or life would become intolerable. Or should he say even more intolerable.

He breezed in his usual manner then spoiled his apparent exuberance by expounding that last night he’d had a dream, a nightmare in fact, that he worked at Dunlogan City Council and woke up to find that it was true. This produced the usual groans from some and wry smiles from others. Morbid had placed him as far away from herself as it was possible to be on the little ‘ten-man’ team so he was free to spray his venom and wit around at will. His style of delivery still induced a response to these familiar remarks. He was nothing if not laconic and charming. Any time the subject of smoking came up, or attempts to give it up always produced ‘I tried those nicotine patches once…..but I couldn’t get them lit’. There was always someone who hadn’t got the simple subtlety of that gag the last eight times he’d cracked it then suddenly got it and the unexpected guffaw was drawn. Bryant thrived on such moments. He particularly liked to make women laugh which gave him some mild notoriety as a womaniser a tag that no-one deserved least. Still, if during the course of a working day he managed to coax that tinkle of female laughter for him, they day had been a huge success and he’d revel over it time and again in his mind.

One day, he’d made Jeanette McStay laugh, and it had moved him to go home and write a wee story about it. It involved her falling for him after happening upon him playing a ‘blistering’ Open Mic set in a local pub. She would never see this story or even know about it as she was getting married in the coming summer to one of the managers of another section.

Bryant lived in a flat down by the beachside in Dunlogan. It possessed no central heating and was freezing in the long winter months, so much so that he’d return from work of an evening and head straight for bed fully clothed. He’d moved so many times in his life that he just couldn’t face another upheaval. Every ‘move’ seemed to incur a loss. Most people he’d noticed seemed to carry their ‘stuff’ with them through their life. They chose to keep what they wanted and discard what they didn’t. Bryant had lost whole loads of ‘stuff’. Big moves, drastic moves, heart-breaking moves, moves to different cities and parts of cities had all meant he’d had to leave ‘stuff’ behind. Favourite rugs, CDs, guitars, amplifiers, furniture. Bits of himself left behind to be wilfully forgotten because remembering the stuff meant remembering why the move was made. Now he had new stuff, it would be nice to keep it.

The part of Dunlogan City Council that Bryant worked in was the McGowan Annexe in the Newcross area of the city. The building once housed a school for the deaf and owned a synonymous quiet, deferential quality that was quite eerie; as if it was a building not designed for speech. Every noise echoed a remembrance to its former incumbents and people tended to talk quietly almost at a whisper. Indeed, the help-desk, due to its inherent nature, was the noisiest part of the building. Phones were constantly ringing and the operatives spoke at a normal level, perhaps because callers would not understand why there was any ghostly need for hushed reverence.

His colleagues would spy Bryant often on a section of his lap around the building (he’d sometimes saunter around it four or five times before coming back). Though palpably on his own, they could see his mouth move and his hands gesticulating expressively, as if in some torment or frustration. They never asked him about this but would get clues from his comments on returning. They were all about ‘Why do people…?’ and ‘How do you explain…?’ and were largely ignored as his colleagues competed to be the first to answer the next call.

Then there were the days of the yellow pencil.

Dunlogan City Council had over seven hundred staff and they all had to be appraised at two times each year: in-year and end-of-year. Well over a hundred managers; all of them in fact had no idea how to do the new on-line system. There were three participants to each appraisal; the person being appraised, their manager, and the manager’s manager. Each had to have access at different stages of the process. This was the nightmare that they all phoned the help-desk multiple times about. For two weeks the phones were red-hot, and this intensity increased the closer they got to the deadline for submission. From very senior managers to bog-standard team leaders they were queuing up to receive blessed help from the ‘experts’ i.e. help-desk staff who knew precious little more than they did themselves.

“Who’s got the yellow pencil?” became a question so oft-repeated that God in his heaven must have been awoken by its insistence and wondered ‘what the hell has happened down there?’

If you could see a yellow pencil depicted on the screen in front of you that wasn’t ‘greyed-out’ then you had access to the appraisal and could input your comments. Therefore, the question “do you have the yellow pencil” became ubiquitous but the problems did not stop there. Some had ‘the yellow pencil’ at the wrong stage of the process i.e. a manager’s manager had it before the manager had made any comments that he could either ratify or not or the member of staff had access before there was anything input for he or she to comment on. As the final submission date grew ever-nearer the mass panic was about how to get all concerned at the right stage of the process.

Only two members of the team had powers of I.T. intervention i.e. to take over control of other folks machines: one was Morbid Bastard who had no idea what she was doing and had attempted to avoid the whole debacle by claiming she had ‘faith in her team’ and the other was a wee guy called Joseph who was quite understandably of people asking him to ‘do this one for us’. So, the team had to try and guide people through the best it could.

Bryant oscillated between breakdown-time hysteria to screaming hilarity. He envisioned staff being escorted from the building by nurses as they gibbered ‘but, he said he had the yellow pencil’. For weeks after he’d approach members of the team in a surreptitious manner and whisper with hand half-over mouth ‘who’s got the yellow pencil. Is it you…?’

Bryant generally sat alone at a table towards the rear of the canteen. He liked to read a book or look out the window at the snow falling if it was that time of year. The other four at lunch sat together (the team would have two lunch sittings, the other five manning the phones). He couldn’t imagine joining them. Any patter or banter he had was strictly for the work area; he wouldn’t know what to talk to them about in a lunch-break situation. He feared, quite correctly, that it would be then that the stark divisions and differences in their lives and concerns would be truly and bleakly glaring.

Sometimes he’d be joined by the big lugubrious bloke, Stuart, who monitored everyone’s internet usage. In fact, all he’d ever talk about was everybody’s internet usage. Basically, Stuart had no-one else to sit with either, and they had a mutual though unspoken recognition of this fact. Bryant dearly wished that Stuart did have someone else to sit with because he dreaded these assignations intently. They had become two people who had long ago exhausted every topic of conversation they could possibly share (Stuart monitoring everyone’s internet usage) and were now compelled to continue to sit together until the end of time or until one of them died. If it hadn’t been snowing really quite heavily Bryant would be walking the streets of Dunlogan quite happily to avoid sitting here with Stuart.

This is what happens with outsiders; people who don’t quite fit in. He imagined that his fellow team-members were highly amused by his lunch-time predicament. He hoped they were; at least would be entertained by it.

“If people didn’t use the internet at work at all and just stuck to the intranet, then they wouldn’t run into trouble” If he’d said this once he’d said it six times and Bryant had always responded “then, what would you do Stuart? You’d lose you’re cushy little job”

Stuart had ended up doing the internet monitoring job basically because they could find nothing else that he was any good at. He’d been on the help-desk for a while but had ended up off long-term with stress, then they put him on Recruitment but he’d somehow managed to lose a load of online applications so now they had him sat in a corner of the HR department scrutinising staff internet usage to make sure they weren’t watching porn or learning how to make bombs. He had to hope some of them were otherwise they may have had to make him sit in a darkened room ordering bin liners.

Moira Barton was one of those people that was bad at her job but refused to recognise this fact, and so far this lack of self-insight had served her well. Aged just thirty-two she had become leader of her own team. She did what many bad managers do and courted favourites and used these to ostracise those she did not approve of or felt threatened by. The person she liked to ostracise most was Neil Bryant whom she disapproved of heartily and felt threatened by. She disliked clever people. By clever she meant people who didn’t read the Daily Mail (Bryant read the Guardian, the very worst choice of all in the eyes of Moira – Guardian readers liked Asylum Seekers and single mothers) and people who used big words (he’d used the word ‘procrastinate’ last week). He was also a trade unionist and had a Social Science degree. He was, she summated, the very epitome of everything she hated in a human being. And now he was sat in his chair on her section, her section – dressed as a rabbit.

A huge, big, white bunny rabbit.

Moira felt unsteady and held the back of her chair (a special swivel one for team-leaders). She hadn’t even had time to take off her jacket. The rest of her team and many on neighbouring teams looked to see how she would react. Many had been sniggering and whispering since he’d come in dressed this way. They wondered if he’d travelled in that way (he had) and what was going to happen about it. People had been phoned and had come from other parts of the building to see him sitting there. He’d said ‘hello’ and ‘good morning’ to them as if nothing was amiss and was quite busy answering early morning phone calls. Young Simon who sat next to him on the team said ‘what the fuck, Neil?’ and laughed uproariously. And now Morbid Bastard had arrived and she looked as if she’d seen one of her team sitting there dressed as a rabbit. She turned on her high heels and almost ran out the office. It was obvious she was off to look for someone senior to herself.

Some murmured that this was all to do with the trouble over the key to the archive vaults.

It was sometimes necessary for a member of the help-desk team to visit the archive room. A phone call may have been received concerning an ex-employee; dates of employment, grade or whatever and their file would have been archived in the vaults on the basement floor. Morbid Bastard had designated Bryant to be the officer who would collect files on these occasions. There was a basic problem with this assignment and that was that the help-desk team did not possess a key to the archive vaults. Two keys were in existence, one held by the pensions team who needed access to the vaults due to imminent redundancies and the other was held by the recruitment team who provided references for employers. Neither of these teams was at all keen on lending the key out to anyone else including the help-desk team. Bryant had been discovered one day attempting to take the relevant key belonging to the pension’s team of its hook on the wall and all hell had let loose. ‘That key must be available to my team at all times and MUST NOT be removed by other teams’. E-mails of this nature flew around. Morbid Bastard bottled it, the other team leader was a higher grade and Bryant was left in the invidious position of receiving requests for files from his team and not having access to a key to procure them.

And now he had come to work dressed as a six-foot-four white bunny rabbit.

Brenda McLair looked over at Neil Bryant dressed as a rabbit and felt deeply sad. What a thing to be doing and why was he doing it? She’d giggled along with her colleagues at first and she’d thought better of it. This was an act of not-so-quiet-but-really-quite-public desperation, and it wasn’t funny at all. She’d always been fond of Bryant and could see a great gentle kindness within him. Really too gentle and too kind, and that was his trouble. She loved the names he made up for some of the staff he didn’t like (which amounted to quite a few). There was Morbid Bastard obviously and she smiled when she thought of Morbid having to tell her boss that Neil Bryant was sitting dressed as a rabbit. They’d think old Morbid had finally lost it. Then her own boss, Joyce Fraser, whom he’d branded Fatticus Mongnicitus. Not very PC for a union man making fun of someone’s weight but she was an old bitch right enough. She and Bryant had often discussed how it was that so many complete incompetents, folk who are totally useless at ‘managing’ people get to be managers?

She thought of the time out smoking in the bike-shed in the freezing cold. He’d joked that the smoking ban had been brought in to improve people’s health now, as well as cancer; they were risking hypothermia and double-pneumonia by standing out in the icy winds puffing on fags. She’d asked about his past and he’d mentioned he’d been doing a PhD and teaching in a ‘plastic-university’ as he’d put it then a relationship had gone wrong and he’d looked sad. Then another joke; she knew he liked to make her laugh. She was attracted to him but there was a frailty to him that frightened her, as if he’d crack under hardly any pressure at all. There was little to support and sustain such sensitivity that he had. She wondered if this was maybe a very public breakdown?

In actual fact, Bryant was enjoying life as a giant rabbit immensely. So much so, that he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it long ago. He was utterly and ridiculously apparent at the same time as feeling completely anonymous. He didn’t exist anymore, only a giant rabbit did. He wasn’t Neil Bryant now, he was a huge rabbit. The idea was fascinating. Even on the bus this morning he could hear the laughter and the jibes of the wideos but they weren’t aimed at Neil Bryant, they were aimed at a big white rabbit. And for some reason he felt immune from the prospect of violence, far more so than Neil Bryant who’d been picked on for a lifetime. In a strange way, it would be in thoroughly poor taste to start beating up someone who had the balls to come on a bus dressed as a rabbit. He knew that he better not depend on this though, but who cares? he thought. he always felt threatened anyway.

He watched them all through his rabbit eyes peering over at him, still laughing even after half an hour or so. What made him laugh was that he was answering phones perfectly normally to people who didn’t know, had no idea, that he was dressed as a giant rabbit.

Bill Struthers was a career-long local government man. He rocked no boats, and went with flows. And now, for the first time in his entire forty-year career, from two-tier to unitary authority, through boundary changes, cuts, planning and plots and counter-plots that would make the Borgia’s seem like Quakers, a member of his staff was telling him that a council officer was sitting at his work-station dressed as a rabbit.

“And have you spoken to him yet?” He didn’t like Moira Barton; he’d seen her type too often. Mad careerist but incompetent as hell. Dangerous too. Had once had a friend of his up for sexual harassment. You couldn’t sexually harass her type with a blow-torch. Hard as nails.

“Erm, not yet Bill”

“Well, don’t you think you should, and make sure his union rep is with him?”

“Well, Bill, I was wondering if you would….erm, should. He must have lost the plot. He could be dangerous”

She had a point there, Struthers thought, he was retiring in six months and he didn’t want to be left open to allegations that he’d put his staff in a vulnerable situation. And what if something did happen? He was dressed as a rabbit, after all.

“Right OK. You go find a union rep – George Campbell would be best and then come back here”

After she’d left Bill Struthers pondered about what was the issue here. Obviously the chaps mental health may be a factor. It wasn’t normal to come to work dressed as a rabbit. But, other than that…? George Campbell would know full well there was no dress-code to enforce. The Help-desk didn’t actually see the public so they could all be dressed as rabbits and it would make no difference whatsoever. The only other issue would be if it was distracting or upsetting the other staff, he supposed. He decided they’d go with that one.

George Campbell was union Branch Secretary and fancied himself something rotten. Polished cowboy boots, dress trousers and a definite quiff, he was a rockabilly union rep and sharp as a needle. He didn’t like Moira Barton either and liked even less that one of his troops had apparently come to work dressed as a gregarious plant-eating mammal of the furry persuasion. He’d stood on picket lines with Neil Bryant, loyal as they come, and now he was either making some opaque eco-political statement or he was cooking on another planet. He decided immediately that they’d plead the latter, but he’d need to speak to him alone first, which is what he told Moira Barton.

Work was continuing as usual on the Help-desk, the nature of it ensured this. Phones didn’t answer themselves. By this time the entire team had arrived and only Moira Barton was missing in action, but the team were used to that; she wasn’t exactly integral to the running of things. Strangely; as a collective group they weren’t all that surprised that they had in their midst a Bryant dressed as a giant rodent. It was if they’d always expected such an occurrence, and it actually seemed to cheer them all up. They were now the team with the rabbit working on it and, in a less generous sense, proved their point that Bryant was indeed a strange nutter and not normal like the rest of them. Yes, there was definitely a collective sense of vindication. Weren’t we always telling you that we had a weirdo on our team, an outsider, who one day for sure would turn up to work dressed as Harvey the rabbit?

Bryant seemed his normal self; quoting Burns on the phone to folk, all his little aphorisms and jokes. Helpful and formative and generally acting like a perfectly sane giant rabbit. His big bunny ears flopped and quivered expressively as he explained premium rates for Sunday road-working and the statutory hours expected of estate concierges.

But, he knew this false orderliness couldn’t last. His first visitor was George Campbell who asked him to join him in the union room. This necessitated him walking through the adjacent ‘spur’ of this grand old civic building. Never before had it seen his like as Bryant strode down the central corridor as if it was indeed a rabbit that controlled the place. Rabbit-in-Chief.

“This for charity, Neil?” asked George Campbell, who really had thought he’d seen it all. He’d once successfully represented a member who’d accessed highly salacious pornography on his work PC two hundred and seventy seven times on the grounds that he was ‘severely sight impaired and couldn’t read the splash-screen warnings’. He offered Bryant a strong cup of filtered coffee, another American affectation that he fostered.

Bryant snorted out a laugh “Nah, it’s definitely not for charity George..”

“Can ye not take the head off that thing while we talk; it’s more than weird having a discussion with you dressed as a rabbit I can tell you”

“It’s aw one piece George, sorry”

“You are clothed under that costume I take it?” George asked this with mock-alarm but he was very much hoping for the answer he got which confirmed that Bryant was at least attired in shorts and a t-shirt. The idea that he may have been naked under the costume had an anthropomorphic quality that Campbell did not want to ponder for long.

“So whit’s it aw aboot Neil? Have you lost the plot son?” Campbell was actually much younger than Bryant but his experience and street-nous was much greater, also he was his Branch Secretary. Both men accepted that all of this was valid reason for Campbell’s fatherly approach.

“Guess I must have George. I’m dressed as a rabbit!” This was not meant to be clever or wise-ass. 

The pair shared banter like the working class warriors they were. Many a freezing-cold picket line morning added credible value to their comradeship.

“Seriously though, Neil. Is this some sort of crack-up? Stress? Problems?”

“No more than usual, George. Maybe it is some sort of mid-life crisis? I am kinda sick of working here but then, I’m kinda sick of a lot of things..” This statement hung in the air between them. It begged a closeness that could exist but wasn’t sure it wanted to. Campbell broke an uncomfortable silence.

“Nae problem then. We get you signed off with work-related stress. Take six months, weigh-up your options, then come back if you want. We’ll get you moved to another team; everyone knows you and Barton don’t exactly ‘hit-it-off’”

“Mibbe yer right George. But that does kinda put it all down to me though doesn’t it. It does kinda lay it all at my door. I mean, there’s nothing else wrong with the place. Barton’s no’ an incompetent, vindictive bitch. It’s just me that’s lost the plot. It’s just big wierdo Neil that’s finally cracked under the strain. It’s no’ the petty wee moral judgements and favouritism; it’s no’ the bullying and whispering; it’s no’ the havin’ to work with fucking scabs who won’t even support their own interests. It’s just big, stupit Neil Bryant who we always knew was weird cos he reads the Guardian and goes on strike. Nah fuck that George. Let them discipline me if they want or can. Ahm like that cunt in that film ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m fuckin’ not gonna take it anymore…”

There was a prolonged silence before Campbell uttered the immortal words..

“Well Neil, I have to say. That’s the best speech I’ve ever heard from a man dressed as a rabbit”. And with this they both cracked-up laughing until they thought they would never stop.

Moira Barton sat prim in her chair next to her boss. She almost swooned when close to authority; it almost gave her an orgasm, the thought of it. During sex with her husband Graham who was a team leader in accounts, she’d helped make sure of that, she thought of figures such as George W Bush and Peter Mandelson to bring her to sexual climax. She’d recently had a helluva time explaining to her husband why she’d cried out ‘O Barack!’ as she’d reached her peak of ecstasy.

On the opposite side of the table was George Campbell, whom she despised with a passion bordering on the murderous. Union reps for her were in league with dark forces like Osama Bin Laden and Ken Livingstone. She took every opportunity while on her team to downgrade and malign the man (a strategy she had to be careful about because he was actually two grades above her). She spoke of the time when he ‘stole in front of her’ to use the running machine in the gym, how much he sweated, and she actively discouraged her little entourage from joining the union yet raged over Bryant’s pro-union stance. In short, one didn’t ‘get on’ by being involved in dirty things like unions.

And next to the Beelzebubian Campbell sat Bryant in his rabbit suit. Barton was sure he was smiling behind his big lagomorphian face.

Bill Struthers spoke first. “Neil, can you maybe explain why you’re dressed this way?”

Bryant looked around at his three companions quickly as if for confirmation “You mean the rabbit suit?” Campbell stifled a laugh and Struthers smiled and was glad of the break in the tension. Barton could only feel betrayed by this sense of collusion.

“Yes Neil, the rabbit suit”

Finally, he’d got their attention….!

The Grandfather Clock

‘A Grandfather Clock you say?’

Looking at Chas McKinven, you’d never in a million years think of him owning a grandfather Clock never mind his urgency over it.

‘They wulnae geemie it back boss, says it’s in stores or sumfin’

Bryant had been working here two years now. Two long, harrowing years; and he thought he’d heard it all, but he never had. There was always something else to surprise him.

McKinven appeared as a shambling wreck of a man. Appeared? Sometimes, if you saw him outside the confines of the office he could look almost alright. Talking away to his mates full of the usual macho bravado that you needed in an area like this, but as soon as he walked through these doors he crumpled like an empty crisp bag in the rain. Which version was the act it was impossible to say. Probably, elements of both.  

This area was where poor people lived, but they weren’t like poor people of 100 years ago, or even 30 years ago. These were the poor in the era of Technicolour, the digital-age poor. Poor is a relative term. They certainly weren’t rich, not in any monetary sense. There were some Catholic monks in the church along the road who were maybe spiritually rich. At least you hoped they were, otherwise what was the point?

Poor, yet they managed to have all they needed, and it was his job to maintain this status quo.

These sorts of neighbourhoods were forever changing. If you went back in a time machine 50 years you wouldn’t recognise it as the same place. Once thriving industries cease to thrive then disappear. Maybe a building stays that gets used as a thousand different things. The city council begins a new initiative to gentrify the area; community development agencies move in by the dozens; new houses appear nice on the plans but ugly and cheap looking when they’re up. Pipes and fixings turn to rust quickly in this rainiest of places.

The reason affluent neighbourhoods stay exactly the same through the decades and centuries, is because they were built that way; sturdy and constant like the people that can afford to live there. The only ‘community development’ they want in Stockbridge Village is better parking facilities at the local Waitrose or a hot-stone therapist that does home visits.

Maybe in Stockbridge Village they worried about Grandfather Clocks!

People were born. They had no choice in the matter. If you were born around here a number of factors became important. Who would be your parents? Would you be tough enough to survive? Maybe you’d be good looking, maybe not. Maybe you’d be clever, maybe not.

Maybe you wouldn’t stand a cat in hell’s chance!

People joked about the spurious lineage of some of the ‘families’ around her, but it was often no joke. Jeremy Kyle wasn’t popular for nothing. He’d hit upon a motherlode of dysfunction; a shit-storm of broken-ness. Probably, his show played it up a bit with the help of would-be celebrities but, in essence, it was based on reality. There weren’t ‘extended families’ in the old sense, there were ‘sprawling jigsaws of families’. Try and be a family genealogist around here and you’d have your work cut out. It sometimes appeared that everyone was related to everyone else.

McKinven here had sisters, cousins, brothers, step-fathers, step-mothers, aunties, uncles, wives, girlfriends, ex-wives, ex-girlfriends, ex-in-laws, and a fair selection of outlaws. He’d been in and out of jail so many times only the authorities had any chance of making sense of the mosaic of his life of crime and misdemeanours. He was on prescribed medication, un-prescribed medication, heroin, methadone, Valium, legal-highs, alcohol, probably solvents for all anyone knew. He had bruises, limps, broken bones, chib-marks, scars from ancient feuds with family, friends, police, courts, social workers, support workers, job centres, doctors, doctors receptionists, psychiatrists’, housing officers. The whole panoply of community support knew well of Chas McKinven.

And, here he was bubbling like a child about a Grandfather Clock.

Folk died young in this area. Some bright-sparks at the university had done a study of it and come up with a number. Fifty-four was the average life expectancy. It was no surprise whatsoever to hear of a client dying, thought Bryant, no surprise at all. A judicious period of time was waited then their file was archived. Folk you’d been speaking to about very intimate health problems one day were dead the next. Overdose or misadventure? - impossible for even the doctors to tell.

Some indeed, many were different. A brother/cousin/some sort of relation of McKinven’s, James, was to be seen regularly wheeling a Flymo around in a wheelie-bin. Red-bearded and Jacobite-fierce he’d mow a lawn for a small price or maybe free for an auld wifie who’d give him tea and a sandwich; determined not to be ground down again by his own nature and environment. Not easy to clean your act up in an area where low temptation lurked around every corner. People were beaten up for ‘swimming against the tide’ in this locale.

Easy for someone like Bryant to say ‘but surely’ and ‘perhaps if you’ to folk self-isolated from old habits and old acquaintance. Easier to drown than to stay afloat the rest of your life. The rest of your life is a very long time. Well, maybe not, if 54 is when the race is run.

He and his three adviser colleagues were life-support in this area, well, along with doctors and maybe the odd decent housing officer and drug counsellor. They came here when snags were met. Post Office pin numbers were lost, payments hadn’t come, new benefits needed applying for, Sherriff Officers had come banging on the door, food bank referrals, a whole raft of problems were laid at these doors on a daily basis. Bryant often wondered how they, the clients, would cope without this place? And, yet probably they would find a way.

They had to..