Glasgow & Other Twonkery

OK, so this blog is not exactly fizzling with activity. I have an excuse, however. I was, last Tuesday, given the Most Concise Hermit Award in the Hermitage. Apparently, all those years giving uninteresting two-word responses to people have paid off, and I am now the proud owner of one shiny quartz mantelpiece filler. Little do they know, I am merely the last in a long line of Scottish men who really don’t have much to say for themselves.

We acknowledge the general limitedness of small talk among all subsets of society, and choose not to participate in the vocal inevitabilities. Among co-students, phrases were parsed pertaining to essays, along with hilarious asides about a frazzled mental state derived from writing so damn hard and fast one’s nerve endings were shot to buggery. In truth, I don’t find writing too hard, it’s the sitting down every day that really smarts. My following contributions to the MA banter were: “Ha ha. Right.” And the classic: “That’s good.”

But enough of this silliness. Did you know that I’ve moved cities? Yes, I am now in Glasgow, looking down upon the burly Glasgow folk with a critical eye, as if to say: “Oh, you silly peasants!” The move felt right: Edinburgh was fine for a certain period in my life, a period we’ll call “education” for ease, but Glasgow is more about living like an actual human being. Not some amorphous brain vacuuming up facts and knowledge. But. My flat is, oddly, about two minutes away from the Glasgow campus. Ahem.

I like Glasgow already. It’s not as cramped. I can swing four cats without killing a tramp. And the tramps are more spaced out. No more strategic triangulation outside the train station. Simple swerves around postboxes or pretend gazes off into the distance. And the air! Well, it might smell like sewage and blubber in a cheese and onion crisp packet, but it’s better than the perfumed oil slick stench from Auld Reekie. Fact.

Edinburgh retains a sense of haunting desolation from when it was the murder capital of the UK, and although this might please those insufferable twonks who think ‘death’ and ‘blood’ are cool (why isn’t the hospital the coolest place in town, then? tell me that, brothers!), for those like me prone to genuine moments of loneliness and despair, Glasgow has more scope for genuine violent interaction. There’s nothing like a good kick the nuts to bring you screaming back into life, in all its giddy pointlessness.

P.S. New short at Metazen.