From a Polyp On the Ocean Floor

I was once a polyp attached to the ocean floor in the deep, deeps of the sea. This was a long time ago, about 40,000 human generations ago when folk didn’t know any better. I tell them this at medicals and they look concerned and start scribbling notes.

“What do you call it when two brothers who are writers fall out?”

They look at me blankly, so I answer.

“Scribbling rivalry!”

They jot down some more notes.

Outside in the waiting room it’s like world of the zombies. All sorts of the city’s mendicants and wasters and some who are actually, genuinely ill who could be doing without all these shenanigan’s.  They’re forced to because of the wasters and a vengeful Tory government of toffs and kleptocrats who want all the money for themselves and seek to demonise like it’s the sixteenth century and they’re after witches. This time the scapegoats are poor white trash from the schemes.

“Yes, I was a polyp once. A proud working polyp with prospects of one day being a floaty-about thing.”

Outside there are groans like from the Thriller video. Folk moaning as if in some physical or mental agony (possibly both).

“Ah cannae be daen wi’ this. Three hoors ahv been waitin’”.

Short of staff, you see. All the medical assessors off sick with stress.

You can imagine the ATOS Christmas party. All the anecdotes about folk lowering trousers and defecating on desks. Claimants pretending to be chickens, etcetera, etcetera.

 

Quota’s, but. What about the quotas? How many of us duds have you got to fail every week?

What if someone’s genuinely ill but you need your own personal wee quota filled by that one solitary person, the last one on a Friday?

Moral dilemma. A bollocking from your team leader or you send that person into the beckoning hell of appeals and tribunals where they’ll probably win but might die in the attempt?

 “You too, genetically, derive from a polyp. From a polyp to an ATOS medical assessor. Some journey”. 

They don't look like they see the joke.

The Inexorable Rise of the Robot Pharmacist

The gallimaufry of addicts outside Morrows Pharmacy were getting restless. In fact, they were near revolting.

“Trouble with the robot,” was what they were being told by the wee wifie, Maureen, who worked behind the counter and smelled of Locketts. As if it wasn’t head-fuck enough to crave heroin or at least its fuzzy substitute, Methadone, you were getting told stuff about robots! These folk were paranoid already without hearing that Artificial Intelligence was against them too.

“A fucken robot is keepin’ me fae ma gear” wails Sandra Knox, a slattern of the parish, as she washes another Valium down with slugs from a can of Dragon Soup.

Henry Stanton stood apart from the keening mob. He too needed his daily fix, but he’d taken a Sociology module on day release from Saughton and had an interest in the human condition. That the human condition was becoming increasingly febrile in the face of obstinate technology humoured him greatly and took his mind from his chemical need.

It also tickled his dark sense of the absurd that this chemist was situated right next door to an undertaker’s shop. He wondered if the two had a little scam going. He’d seen Soylent Green, too. Although why anyone would want this mephitic collection of humanity as food he couldn’t imagine. All gristle and spoiled meat.

The robot that dispensed medicines at Morrow’s had become notorious but once you had been assigned a chemist it was too much trouble with the authorities to change to another. That is unless you knew someone of influence at the Social Care Hub across the street.

“Ev’ry fucken mornin’ it’s the same fucken hing. The fucken hings fucked, ken?”.

Verb, adjective or noun, it was all the same to Rab Tennant a ragged tatterdemalion of a figure who regarded language as a means of declaring war. If he’d ever spoken a fond word, he’d done it very much in private and under the influence of some diluted opiate or other.

What none of them knew – not even the sociologist – was that Morrow’s brand of robot dispenser – the HH Eugenik 18 – was not a machine programmed to hold their type (benefit claiming junkies) in any great esteem. In fact, it was programmed to annoy them like this eight mornings out of ten: make them wait for their much-needed elixir until their bones were rattling and their nerve-ends squealed like rats in a trap. And who were they going to blame?

Stanton noticed an old railing that seemed to rise out of the scrubland surrounding this little row of shops. It was an extraordinarily elegant piece of cast-iron work with pretty volutes and spheres denoting what looked like sunflowers reaching to their mother star. He wondered from what age this functional artwork came from and who on earth had chosen Craigpollock as its setting?

Inside the pharmacy an intricate and gleaming piece of functionally dysfunctional technology whirred and spat and hissed at distressed alchemists and shop assistants while outside the miserable sinners wailed and chorused their discomfort.

Henry Stanton gazed on the old railing in wonder.

So much beauty and symmetry in the world. You just needed the right pair of eyes.

Titties and Tromboncino's

 Colourful cast of characters up at The Glebe. Maybe the pandemic or all of this good weather that’s attracted so many volunteers to help out with the bucolic substances; the plants and the flowers and the tromboncino’s.

The Harlot Nun stands in the shade of the sycamore tree taking it all in. The Canada Geese swoop low over the breezy loch and the crows (Russell and Cheryl) wait for the next chance of food. All is quite still except for the click of secateurs and the chummy chatter of potato gatherers.

There’s Catheter Colin, Iron Arse and The Gloomy Demon all marvelling at the rude-brown mis-shapes. They hold them up to the sun and make Benny Hill jokes about their rudeness.

The Glebe is a place just seething with sexual tension. Maybe it’s the rite of spring all around or the rush of growth at summer’s end? The flagrant flowering, petals and stems? Or it could be forbidden fruit, this is manse territory after all and even John Knox must have felt horny on occasion (and did he think of Mary the Queen of Scot’s in chains?)