Besotted

Have you ever been besotted? I know I have, and it’s not the best idea. Eyes meet across crowded room sort of carry on then can’t leave each other’s side for a second kind of style. Gradually, over the next weeks and months, you discover other stuff; the ‘real’ stuff of folk’s lives. The criminal insanity and the love affair with next doors Pomapoo. The uncle that no-one talks about and the fact emerges that the entire family supports a team fae Govan.

That was the case with Charlie McBride and his Doreen. Got her up the duff and had to marry her and from then on his life wasn’t worth living. It became apparent over time that she was a devotee of the Russian monk, Rasputin who had once beguiled the Tsarina and had been bludgeoned to death and thrown into the Nevka River (she said he had ‘soft eyes’).

Doreen and her mates would have ‘Rasputin nights’ when there would be wild talk of stealing horses and pornographic Tupperware with Boney M blasting away in the background. Their poor kid she even named Grigori and sent him to school wearing a cowl.

Things came to a head when she demanded flagellation. Charlie could only find a fish slice which failed to satisfy her need for pain while he stumbled over words reading her extracts from Doctor Zhivago.

Strangely, he met a Russian lassie named Tatiana and they now live in a two bed up in Castlemilk.

Doreen settled down wi’ a riveter called Davie. He disnae even know who Rasputin is.

But he soon will.