Robbie is 18 years old. He lives in a dog of a city called Glasgow. He is walking to the train station and carrying a 7inch blade. He doesn’t know that the blade is phallic. He doesn’t have too. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change a thing. Robbie has the eyes all screwed up like some pissed off eagle. He wants to scare somebody. He wants some little middle class runt to shit in their silk pants. He wants to see them turn pale and quiver and squirm. Robbie walks with his head held high - proud, fearless, young. As he walks into the station two police officers are waiting nearby. They look big, two Gorrillas of the suburban zoo - you got a banana. They approach Robbie who looks like your typical youth, cap raised hig on his head, like some twisted crown, his socks tuck over his tracksuit trousers, his trakcsuit jacked peppered with hotrocks from smoking far too much weed, smoking himself into some kind of weed psychosis. One of the officers asks him what he is doing here. Robbie says he is going into Town, to have a drink, meet some buddies. The taller officer asks hgis bame, announces that he will search Robbie, he finds the knife. The officers radio in. They call a meat wagon round. They put Robbie in the meat wagon. In a few weeks there will be a report on this incident. Robbie was a fool.
In the same distrcit as Robbie several days later, two men carrying ladders were posing as window cleaners, they wore hats to fight of the frost, they smoked cigarettes with relish. They each dreamed separate dreams which invovled the love of a fine young woman. They cleaned the windows of the old, the forgetful, the Jew, the Christian, the oblivious, they managed to make a reasonable small wage…and just as they were about to call it a day…up came a thin young man with an attitude problem…he told the two men (Adrian and Bob) that they had no right to window clean in this area, that this was his area, he was the local window cleaner, he had a valid licence. He had called the police. Adrian and Bob knew that they had been rumbled. They wanted to make quick money. They didn’t have time to get a licence. Everything needed some kind of paper work. Before Bob and Adrian could get out of the district the police turned up and the two men were arrested and a report was sent to the Fiscal God of petty crime.
Goerge Fulham was 51. He was playing amatuer football with all the lads from his work. They were all pretty unfit. Drank beer, pissed razors, shagged sleep mares, fantasised absentmindedly about school girls, while waiting traffic jams. But they all played the game with such conviction. This was their faith and their church. For 90 minutes they ignited the body, fired their passions and wet the appetite. But, near the end of the game Old George fell down, a fish out of violent water, everybody stopped and rushed toward George like he was some kind of answer. He was having a heart attack. George had had a heart by pass 5 years earlier. He felt fit enough to play. He had made a error of judgement.
Jim Wholeness was just sitting watching BBC SCOTLAND NEWS when the doorbell went. He answered. A young man with a hood on stood looking cold. He asked Jim for some water to fill his car up with, his car had broken down, somewhere near Jims house. Jim obliged the guy with a large jug of water, Jim shut the door, waited for the guy to return. Seen some images on the news of cancer, knives, colostomy bags. Then he heard a smash outside and he looked out - his car was one. That bastard had stolen his car. Jim alaughed out loud. It was all he could do. He was rich enough to know the insurance would cover it.