I Want to Sing for Mrs Popeye

Everyone’s got a story. This is a truism, but, think of it. All the billions and billions of stories past and present. I just live in this wee town on the edge of Edinburgh, but this wee town, this wee sleepy hamlet contains enough stories for a lifetime. An endless episode of Jackanory.

What about the Bulgarian family. What is their story? They are the most industrious family in Portshee. Bin-rakers and beggars people cry them but, whatever it is they do, they sure graft at it. I put an auld hoover down by the bins the other day and they had it away before my back was turned. Fix it up and sell it. More money for the family back home. Many people deride them as ‘bloody immigrants’ but theirs is an interesting and somewhat sad tale of exile and toil. How would we like to be displaced in a foreign country leaving many of our loved one’s behind. I’ve heard folk decry them for hogging all the computers in the library for the internet but, really they are just contacting family and friends back home. Who could begrudge them that?

What about the auld fella at the bottom of the close, what’s his story? Poor old bugger can barely get about due to a seriously gammy leg. Does he mind that I’ll wait ages holding the door open for him when I see him hobbling home? Probably he does, as it makes him try to pick up speed. Probably hates my guts for doing it. Walking past his flat reminds me of when I worked in a bookies in the auld days. The acrid smell of fag smoke. Pungent like a diseased lung.

I was the very last board-marker in the UK. Marking up the prices and the results, red, blue and green. ‘Bags forecast from Fontwell’ would have me scurrying along my wee platform, marker pen at the ready. Sometimes you had to be like one of those mad cartoon characters, all arms and legs whizzing trying to keep up with the fanny on the tannoy thing – Derek Thompson it was – smarmy fuck and no friend to board-markers. Auld style bookies for auld yins soon to be dead, then the SIS screens for the new breed of mug. Death of the board-marker! No-one ever thought of that. The auld punter’s chum. They’d chatter away to the board-marker (probably trying to put him off; make him put up the wrong price) about the horses or dogs they’d backed or about their neighbours or their grandkids or whatever. Auld yins will spraff about anything.

There’s an auld yin in this town that dives about on his wee Motability go-kart like a mad thing. He’s got some sort of Tourette’s that makes his arms flail like a cowboy on a bucking bronco and his involuntary shouts at passing pedestrians are random and not always clear.

“Nyaaar grunt nyeef” he shouts and tries to turn it into a greeting, wee go-kart jerking and whizzing and spluttering as his arms wave ‘hello’ and ‘help’. He speaks often to Mrs Popeye who runs the wee caff of the same name. There’s a hairdresser called ‘Bluto and Olive’ next door which is run by a Kurdish bloke. There’s obviously some local, historical connection but I’ve never been able to get to the bottom of it.

Mrs Popeye speaks to everyone. Except me.

This town is split in two but tries to get along. There’s a posh side, and there’s a not-so-posh side. The posh side has craft bakeries and beer shops and twee little outlets selling artifacts nobody needs at prices only a few can afford. The not-so-posh side has pubs with all-night licenses and charity shops. It also has one of those ‘pay-day loan’ shops and a Co-op Funeralcare.

I have an inkling I’d be an asset to the funeral industry. I don’t do too well with living humans so I’d mibbe fare better with the dead. Also; I look bloody great in black and there’s nothing sexier than grieving women.

I’m a very sympathetic/empathetic sort of guy, actually. I’d be very good with folk when a loved one had just died. Take everything off their hands, give them that relief at least and be someone they could talk to. It’d be quite genuine too, nothing phony. I actually quite like people in extremis, when they’re vulnerable. It’s the run-of-the-mill mundanity day-to-day that gets me down. In relationships, I’m the greatest thing in the world when she’s depressed or upset. When she’s happy and in let’s-go-for-a-picnic-with-my-friends mode, then I fall apart and can’t take it.

Load of shops owned/run by be-turbaned folk in this wee town. An Asian mafia. They don’t half graft though, eh? Never off sick or late, always first to have your Guardian ready. Totally reliable and totally canny. Wee guy in the sweetie shop even sings you a wee Asian tune as he reaches for your baccy. ‘Anything else, sir? Papers?’ I always want to ask them about how they find it here, what do they think of Scotland and that, but you can’t really can you? Sounds like you’re asking how they like the weather. A wee bit seedy somehow.

I’d like to know, though. From what I can gather immigrants have mixed feelings towards us which they generally keep to themselves which, given the current political climate, is probably just as well. Be great if they were all on truth drugs.

“You Scots think you’re so great. Well, you’re a big bunch of wasters too shit-scared to even take control of your own country”

We might well get a shock if our immigrants were impolite enough to say what they really think.

Mrs Popeye speaks to everyone but I have no clue where she comes from. She has the prettiest smile and I think she may be Mauritian. Somewhere exotic-sounding anyway. Exotic and sunny. So how come she ends up in a wee Scottish town on the edge of Edinburgh? What’s the story, Mrs Popeye?

I want to sing for Mrs Popeye!