Bryant In the Morning

Bryant had woken to a new morning once again and his first thought was that his day was now spoiled and the same old puzzle now confronted him: how on earth should he spend the ensuing hours which now spread before him like some endless desert? Hour after hour of creaking, aching boredom, a tedium he had defeated by the simple act of nightly sleep was once more his task to endure. He felt bored already and he hadn’t even got out of bed. He imagined a ‘boredom Olympics’ where contestants tried to out-do each other in ennui. Bryant felt he would be carrying the gold medals back in a suitcase. He braced himself against the coming inertia and the crucifying cold of the out-of-bed environment and rushed to his ice-box of a bathroom to empty his squeezing bladder.

No employer had deemed it necessary to offer Tam Bryant a job for going on five years now and, at his present age of forty-five his prospects were not improving with the passage of time. Ex-welfare advice worker, ex-polytechnic lecturer, ex-bookies clerk, ex-busker; Bryant had more exes than Elizabeth Taylor (who he couldn’t help thinking of without images of a large bosom tormenting his thoughts because he was many times the ex-lover too though not, unfortunately, of Ms Taylor).

What he wished he was more than anything other than ex-poor was an ex-depressive. It seemed to him that he could be brought low by the very merest vicissitudes of life: his intercom buzzer wrongly pressed in the small hours would have his amygdala in overdrive with panic and speculation, his ‘threat system’ – he was now fully aware of the pyscho-terminology – screeching in his gut like a hungry crow: sleep no longer a possible sanctuary. Was it a malevolent neighbour or maybe even the police? The notion that it was merely some drunken student attempting to gain access was now lost to his anxious brain and he’d fret and worry until the dawn light eased its way through his curtains.

Bryant’s credo was ‘expect the worst, because that’s what will probably transpire’.

Of course, anxiety wasn’t a wholly irrational response to the world. There was a lot to be anxious about. Western economies on the verge of collapse, life on the very planet itself was under threat and successive Tory governments seemed intent on culling the poor, yet Bryant was just as worried that he’d once upset a friend twenty years ago or that the slight twinge in his groin may turn out to be pancreatitis or the onset of some form of syphilis that one contracted without recourse to any form of recent sexual congress (did he really gaze at that dogs arse admiringly the other day? This too, worried him.)

He also worried he was going bald and had somewhat foolishly  ordered a hair-piece affair from a mail-order company and, due to its expense, he felt compelled to wear it and, if one is seeking to establish the reality of such an item among one’s circle of friends and acquaintances and among the populace at large, it is wise to wear it consistently. So far he had detected no half-hidden sniggers or expressions of shock on the faces of those he’d  encountered and this encouraged him to proceed with his hirsute adventure. Standing at six foot two and thin as a rake, he believed the near-russet hued toupee lent him a distinguished, elegant mien which could only appear captivating to the opposite sex, although no sign of this had as yet been evident.

He was smitten by the female who worked behind the counter in McColl’s on the high street though it worried him that she reminded him facially of his old boozing buddy Jack and worried also how this would pan out should he ever actually come face-to-face with her in an intimate setting. Surely he wouldn’t mutter his friend's name in his ecstasy?

Everyone needed something to live for: some dream or ambition or maybe just a hope. Bryant’s gamut of fantasy had lessened year-upon-year for some time now. Dreams of pop superstardom had now diminished to perhaps a single ‘like’ on his Facebook page for some dirge he’d written twenty years ago about a love lost and the possibility of suicide (the theme of all of his songs for a period of some years after the most pathetically tragic of all his love affairs when she’d left him to pursue the life of a nun).

Bryant’s breakfasts were always bizarre mostly because they depended on which ‘reduced for sale’ products he’d been able to collect. This also meant that virtually all the food he ate was a little past its sell-by-date. Of an evening at certain times (and there was no exact science to this) he’d make a tour of all the supermarkets locally (except ASDA as he loathed how they treated their essentially non-unionised work-force) and procure whichever cheap goodies were available at the designated little areas they all had for the selling of such products which was often surrounded by a group of the like-minded many of whom Bryant recognised as regular rivals.

There could be maliciousness at these places and Bryant feared that there would one day be an incident sufficiently violent to make at least the local papers. ‘Reduced Sticker Wars in Morrison’s – Man Strikes Rival over Quiche!’ It really was only a matter of time.

This morning he was having blue cheese with vegetarian haggis, coleslaw and tiramisu. He was going to add a slice of stolen to this but decided to have that for his lunch with a tin of beans and pork sausages.

We all need something to look forward to, he thought, while boiling a kettle for his third mug of tea (teabag left in!).

With the thrill of breakfast a thing of bygone times, Bryant decides to go for a walk to pass the time before the library opens. He either shuffles or schleps along the prom before deciding that schlepping is the best word to describe his self-perambulatory style, the very opposite of ‘striding’ which is a far more robust form of walking. He was by no means striding. He gazed upon the sea with something far less than wonder (he’d seen it before, it was no novelty). The day was blustery and a rain mist had completely obliterated Fife and East Lothian. 

Dogs and their owners occupied the beach, they would stop and talk to one another and Bryant had noticed this. If I get a dog, he thought, then random people may talk to me and this may form a route to houghmagandie type frolics. Their respective dogs (meaning his future partner’s and his own) could just look on or snooze on the floor (was this an inversion of the ‘dogging’ activity, somehow? Possibly not, as this activity did not have as its central feature a group of humans standing outside a car looking at dogs screwing on the seats within.).

No-one else was thinking these thoughts in the whole of this town on this bleak November morning.

Bryant appreciated his uniqueness.

The Spangle House

Often, during the long summer holidays, I and some friends would take a long trek through the countryside to the ‘Auld Hoose’, though we never actually reached this destination. The journey was a quest that was never realised. As a consequence none of us was actually sure such a place existed. 

O the old yins in the toon would garble on about how easy it was to get there in their day and the youth of today and all that but none of them would or could convincingly describe it. They’d say it was a ‘big, rambly place’ or ‘like a Lord’s Manor’ but no more than this.

Still, every summer we would head with our packed lunches and bottles of juice in the direction that myth told us it lay. This took us through fields where farmers would sometimes chase us, past reservoir’s where we’d sometimes stop and swim – the whole gang of us jumping in naked or some in underpants which would remain sodden then damp until home time. It took us through wee towns whose natives eyed us warily, though shopkeepers hoped we’d stop and buy sweets and drinks which we surely would (Archie’s big brother mind, he was more likely to pochle them).

One particular summer we decided to build a fire in a wood beside a burn. We’d stolen some potatoes from an allotment and here would be a good place to bake them.

While the spuds were baking a few of us wandered off deeper into the woods and it was then that we came across the strangest sight any of us had ever seen. Through a clearing in the trees there emerged the most magnificent structure – Ghormengastian in its aspect it was a giant palace of a place; all turrets and towers, domes and huge walls which stretched for many miles around the impressive settlement. From the crest of this most unexpected valley we gazed down upon a vast, shining cathedral in the middle of the woods.

We all stood aghast for several minutes until one of us, possibly me, said ‘does it look as if it’s made of spangles to any of you?’ Geordie, staring in wonder at this giant orange structure turned to me and exclaimed ‘It fucking is you know!’

We all looked at one another laughing, wide-eyed and freaked out..

‘It’s a giant fucking spangle house’ ‘What the fuck..!’ ‘Eh!’

The acid had truly started to take a grip.

The Goodness in Tommy Bryant

Tommy Bryant was having a bad day. For all the will in the world everything he touched seemed to turn to ruin before his eyes. The phrase ‘a good deed never goes unpunished’ had been rattling around his head and he wondered if everything in life eventually became a cliché or an aphorism so at the very end, at the final death-bed scene, some bland stranger would sidle up as you’re gasping for your final breath and whisper “life is what you make it, son, you should have listened”.

At primary school, they should have an ‘introduction to cliches’ class to prepare you.

Tommy was a do-gooder. He liked to do good for people and, in these mendacious times, this was not the sort of approach that was likely to get you the big house and the roller. His friends and family would say that’s all very well, Tommy, but it’s yourself you have to look out for and, today, he was tending to see the wisdom of that advice. A nightmare was unfolding of labyrinthine proportions.

Never had the words ‘I’ll help you’ been so regretted and these three innocuous words had led him into a world that only Frankie Kafka, that dark comedian of the surreal, would appreciate.

At the centre of this drama was a singularly improbable item – a Grandfather Clock!

Dan McCafferty was a lanky shambles of a man, his ineptitude being little assisted by an unknowable plethora of street and subscription drugs taken in God-knows-what quantities. Beneath this psychotropic miasma he possessed a street-cunning that was innate and local. In Craigbath, you didn’t survive without street-smarts so acute you could spot a soft touch at a thousand paces.

Such an animal was the bold Bryant.

“You’re Grandfather clock, you say?”

“Aye, boss, wiz only away 3 months and they’d evicted ma flat man: aw the gear you goat me, stereo and the couch and that, but the clock as well. Need to get it back man”

You never knew when McCafferty’s tears were genuine or when they were just another of an array of manipulative tools which included going completely spare and potentially violent and seeming to offer one of his many female relatives in an apparent erotic trade for your helpful services.

When the DWP had top-level meetings about policy objectives they projected an image of McCafferty on the wall to keep them focussed on their right-wing agenda. Iain Duncan Smith in his time as that department’s supremo had an effigy made of Dan and would point at it frequently muttering “That’s the reason why” to anyone who would listen….

“The world’s number one scrimshanker”

Mr Duncan Smith, who’d married into vast wealth, wasn’t far above scrimshanker status himself, although he would never quite see it that way.

For what had McCafferty contributed to the great scheme of things? His human being? That he existed in whatever oblique and half-formed shape was not in question, but what was this existence worth?

This is hard to measure in any qualitative way as theologians and existentialists will disagree profoundly on the matter; much easier to asses quantitatively as, indeed, members of Mr Duncan Smith’s party are wont to do. Suffice to say that, as a burden on the state, Dan McCafferty was English Premiership grade. He could barely tell you what day of the week it was or who and who was not actually related to him but he could pinpoint exactly how many points were required for Higher Rate disability benefits and the exact criteria for access to the Scottish Welfare Fund. In this fiduciary expertise he would have been a natural choice as Chancellor of the Exchequer or CEO of the IMF, except, of course, you would never be sure if he’d turn up for meetings and he’d probably be blitzed out of his skull if he did.

Dan was lumpen proletarian without ever being aware of the fact. In fact, if you’d told him he’d assume it was an ailment and ask if it merited an increase in benefits.  In Craigbath, having C.O.P.D. was like having letters after your name.

And now there was the matter of the clock.

“So you’ve lost your flat on the Links?”

“They changed the locks”

“And all your furniture?”

“It was in storage but then they said they selt it in an auction. Ma 3-piece-suite, boss”

He begins to whimper again.

“But, it’s the clock you're bothered about?”

“Aye, man, fucking tragic, boss”

And where was he for the three months? Saughton, most likely. He liked a wee holiday there once in a while. Once, quite recently, he was found on top of the police station roof, his addled though agile mind deducing this as the best tactic for a wee trek to the pokey. Or perhaps not! His roots were in the travelling community for which Craigbath was a favoured locale. He could have been in Arbroath or somewhere on a wee inter-tribal visit.

Aaaah! The penny dropped. Travellers. Grandfather clocks. Travellers liked grandfather clocks, they were somehow symbolic. To own one was a marker. A totem. An indicator that you were of the fold: like a handshake to a Freemason.

He looked at Dan afresh and saw his anguish was real. Behind those pallid, muddied eyes was a pride that had its origins in the mists of country time: a lineage like a regiment might have: a Romany past which coursed through this mock-shambolic figure to his very blood and now it called out to the goodness in Tommy Bryant. For all he knew his own ancestors had travelled the roads and byways and he’d always possessed what he’d described to himself as ‘the call of the wilds’. He thought of the gypsy curse.

“About this clock, Dan?”