Get To Beggary!

There’s a great many of these Mediterranean Mindfulness practitioners sitting outside supermarkets these days. Like they ascetics in the bible or Jainists in India. An auldish guy here sits outside ALDI for HOURS. Right fae it opens to damn near when it shuts. Maybe 9, 10 hours in the dreich cauld and pissing rain there he will be, stoic and immovable. He’s learnt ‘Hiya’ and ‘Merry Christmas’ and that’s his shift.

Ye huv tae applaud that. Personally, I wouldn’t last an hour. No way. Sitting there wi’ yer arse freezing an’ folk walking by ye or, worse, giving ye a hard time.

“Away back tae yer ain country an’ beg”. That kind of unnecessary shite that gives us all a bad name. So what if it’s a scam; everything is a scam. I don’t see these folk giving Philip Green or Boris Johnson a hard time and they type are fleecing us on a daily basis. Naw, but ye pick on some poor auld bloke, that’s really brave, eh?

How wis it auld Bobby Dylan put it “Steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king”. Spot on Bobby Boy. My Granny knew his maw. Or was it Frankie Miller?

I want tae talk tae this auld boay, even just to ask him what he thinks about all day? Probably ‘They scabby Scottish bastards. True whit they say aboot thum, tight as a peacock’s arsehole’. They’ll probably have sayings like that back in Armenia or wherever the fuck! ‘They are tight like arsehole of peahen’ they’ll say aw that Borat-y wiy. ‘May your mother have the breath of the town goat’. Shit like that they’ll be muttering when we think they’re bein aw nice an’ cheery and that.

I found a fiver on the street the other week and I says to masel’ that I’m gonna give it to the next beggar I see. Me bein’ an auld flirt, I was glad when it was the lassie selling the Big Issue ootside Scotmid’s. I gave her the fiver and noo I cannae go there any mair cos either she’ll be expecting that kind of behaviour on a regular basis or – and this is worse – she’ll feel we have a special connection and she’ll need to pay me special attention every time in acknowledgement of ‘the day of the fiver’.

If I wis ben hauf-way racist aboot I’d huv tae say that mibbe back in her country, Outer Monrovia or wherever, a fiver means she’s noo ma wife and I’m expected to faither her children. It’s a bastard anaw, cos Scotmid’s has ma favourite crisps!