A lot of the modern DJs are humourless bores, dull tech-heads with zero personality. You certainly can’t slot Technonerd into that box. Not only did he play a blistering set in Barcelona’s Nitsa, shining in comparison to the stodgy veteran N-Sign who preceded him, he also displayed great levity, hitting the box sporting a dangling penis, swinging from his forehead!
— See? You fuckin owned that shit, I say with a passion only partly contrived, — and you owned that fuckin crowd. It was a flawless display of dance-music entertainment, the humour and wit matching the tunes and –
— I did. Conrad punches his big tits and turns across the aisle to Carl. — And I owned his tired old has-been ass!
Carl turns his head into the window, doghouse hung-over, and lets out a groan.
Conrad leans into me, and says earnestly, — You say flawless performance… this was the word you used, flawless. But this implies, does it not, that it was purely technical? It was contrived, and it lacked soul. This is what you mean, yes?
Fuck sake, what kind ay a life is this tae lead…? — No, mate, it had soul brimming out of every pore. And it wasn’t contrived, it was the polar fucking opposite. How could it be contrived, I point over at the now slumbering Ewart, — when this cunt did that to you? It forced you to dig deep, I slap his chest, — and you fucking came up with the goods. Proud as fuck of you, bud, I say, watching his face for a reaction.
A satisfied nod tells me things are okay. — In Edinburgh, the Scottish pussy is good, yes?
— The city boasts the most stunningly beautiful women in the world, I tell him. — There’s a place called Standard Life; mate, you do not want to know.
His brow arches in intrigue. — The Standard Life. This is a club?
— More a state of mind.
When we land, I scrutinise the emails, the texts, fire off some in return, round up the DJs, check into another hotel like a zombie. Get the DJs to bed, get some sleep myself, then stroll down Leith Walk in the murky cold, biting after the Californian sun, and even the Catalan one. But bold in my strides for the first time in decades, not caring about bumping into Begbie any more.
Perversely, some stretches of the old boulevard of broken dreams are not too dissimilar from parts of the Barcelona I just left: old pubs tarted up, students everywhere, rip-off flats like cheap false teeth in the gap sites between tenements, cool cafes, eateries of every type and cusine. Those sit comfortingly alongside pockets of the familiar: a vaguely recognised tab-puffing bam outside the Alhambra strangely reassuring as he gives me the snidey eye.
Down to Dad’s gaff by the river. I stayed here for a couple of years after we moved from the Fort, but it never felt like home. You know you’ve turned intae a cunt with nae life, whose fetid arsehole is owned by late capitalism, when times like this feel an imposition and you cannae stop checking your phone for emails and texts. I’m with my dad, my sister-in-law Sharon, and my niece Marina and her infant twin boys Earl and Wyatt, who look indentical but have different personalities. Sharon has packed on the beef. Everybody in Scotland seems fatter now. As she fingers an earring, she expresses guilt about them staying in the spare rooms, while I’m in a hotel. I tell her it’s no hardship for me, as my dodgy back demands a specialist mattress. I explain that the hotel room is a business expense; my DJs have gigs in the city. Working-class people seldom get that the wealthy generally eat, sleep and travel well at their expense again, through tax deductables. I’m not exactly rich, but I’ve blagged my way into the system, onto the steerage class of the gravy train that bulldozes the poor. I pay more tax registered in Holland than I would in the USA, but better gieing it to the Dutch to build dams than the Yanks to build bombs.
After the meal prepared by Sharon and Marina, we’re kicking back in the cosy cramp of this small room, and the drinks slip down nicely. My old boy still has a decent posture to him, broad-shouldered, if a little bent over, not too much muscle wastage in evidence. He’s at the time of life where nothing at all surprises. His politics have drifted towards the right, in a moany auld cunt nostalgia way, rather than intrinsically hardcore reactionary, but still a sad state of affairs for an old union man, and indicative of bigger existential distress. That leakage of hope, of vision and passion for a better world, and its replacement by a hollow rage, is a sure sign that you’re slowly dying. But at least he lived: it would be the worst thing on earth to have those politics at an early age, to be born with that essential part of you already dead. A sad gleam in his eye indicates he’s holding on to a melancholy thought. — I mind of your dad, he says to Marina, referencing my brother Billy, the father she never saw.
— He’s off, Marina laughs, but she likes to hear about Billy. Even I do. Over the years I’ve learned tae recast him as a loyal, steadfast big brother, rather than the violent, bullying squaddie that for a good while dominated ma perception ay him. It was only later that I realised that both were complementary states ay being. However, death often serves to bring somebody’s good qualities to the fore.
— I mind after he was killed, Dad says, his voice breaking as he turns tae me, — your ma looked oot the windae. He’d just been hame on leave and had gone back that weekend. His clathes were still hingin oot tae dry; everything except his jeans, his Levi’s. Somebody, some scabby bastard, he half laughs, half scowls, still hurting after all those years, — had swiped them off the line.
— Those were his favourite jeans. I feel a tight grin stretch my face, looking at Sharon. — He fancied himself a bit in them, like that model ponce in the advert who took them off in the launderette and put them in the washer dryer. Became famous.
— Nick Kamen! Sharon squeals with delight.
— Who’s that? Marina asks.
— You’ll no ken, before your time.
Dad looks at us, perhaps a bit miffed at our frivolous intrusion. — It fair set Cathy off that even his favourite jeans had gone. She ran upstairs tae his room, and laid aw his clathes oot oan his bed. Wouldnae let them go for months. I took them tae the charity shop one day, and she broke down when she found out they were gone. He starts bubbling and Marina grabs his hand. — She never quite forgave me for that.
— Enough, ya auld Weedgie radge, I say to him, — of course she forgave ye!
He forces a smile. As the convo moves on to Billy’s funeral, Sharon and I share a guilty glance. It’s bizarre tae think that I was shagging her in the toilet after that grim event, while Marina, sitting comforting ma faither with her own kids, was unborn inside her. I would now have to class that one as bad behaviour.
Dad turns tae me, tones heavy with accusation. — It would have been nice tae have seen the wee man.
— Alex, well, that just wisnae gaunny happen, I muse out loud.
— How is Alex, Mark? Marina asks.
She’s never got to know her wee cousin so well. Again, that’s my fault.
— He should be here, he’s as much a part ay this family as any ay us, my dad growls in contention, his square-go-then-ya-cunt expression on. But he cannae add tae ma considerable hurt on this issue.
— Dad, Sharon gently reprimands. She calls him that more than I do, even though she’s the daughter-in-law, and with more justification.
— So how’s the jet-setting life, Mark? Marina changes the subject. — You seeing anybody?
— Mind you ain business, nosy! Sharon says.
— I never kiss and tell, I say, feeling wonderfully schoolboy bashful as I think ay Vicky, and switch the tone myself, nodding at my old man. — Did I tell you that I’m pally with Frank Begbie again?