The Trash Whore Diaries

2011-12-20T12:40:00.007Z

The Trash Whore Diaries (2001-2011): Ten Year Anniversary Special Part II

In Japan, mums have been giving their sons blowjobs rather than let them have girlfriends.

With that pithy statement, so began the opening line of the opening blog of The Trash Whore Diaries. As inaugural lines go, December 16th 2001’s entry was an emphatic one: when a weblog has been born into this world screaming incestuous fellatio, it’s impossible to advance to writing haikus about snowflakes and serendipity.

Once a trash whore, always a trash whore.

As I sat typing those words in a Robert Gordon University computer room on St. Andrew Street in Aberdeen, I had no idea what I was about to set in motion: a sprawling, putrid tale that would encompass sperm donation, meatpaste, perjury, imprisonment and national media coverage. Had I known, I would probably have settled for a 17-syllable snowflake eulogy.

A decade on however, I’m glad that stubborn, spiky-haired bastard foolishly struck out on the path he chose, for had he elected otherwise, who knows where I’d be right now? Probably mortgaged up with an oil industry job and a Range Rover in the driveway. Even as I write these words, I can feel the bile rising up in my stomach. Blogging about blowjobs is fine, but suburban bliss? It’s a step too far.

As it was, I aimed for the gutter and struck sewage from day one.

Of course, once you’ve gone down that cum-spattered path, you can never go back: no regrets, no retractions and no recriminations. If The Trash Whore Diaries were to be encapsulated in a single sexual act, they would be a rough, hard fuck: spitting, slapping, biting and choking - the works. Dirty, disgustingly satisfying sex, but the sort of sex that should carry a health warning: once you’ve fulfilled a woman’s rape fantasy, you can’t go back to love-making. That’s just how it goes.

Back in the early days of this weblog, Bob and I were almost interchangeable, frequently popping up to finish each other’s sentences and even DJing at the band nights we held at Dr. Drakes to promote our Flowback fanzine.

Such was our camaraderie, my partner-in-slime even launched Trash Whore 2 as a short-lived sister blog to The Trash Whore Diaries. These days, of course, we’ve forged our own separate identities in separate cities; he’s Bob and I’m Kai (or is it the other way round?), while The Trash Whore Diaries have been largely supplanted by Edinburgh Uncovered, which sprang up in February of this year. EU continues where TWD left off, although its rage is now directed largely at insipid chain restaurants and pish-scented nightclubs. (Sample quote: "Doing your thing in Cav generally consists of trying to do the opposite sex’s thing; fingering, fumbling and frigging it on the dance floor, in the toilets and even at the bar. If you don’t come home with fingers smelling of Scampi Nik-Naks, you’re clearly a double amputee.")

In a week that heralds the ten-year anniversary of The Trash Whore Diaries, their successor has symbolically peaked at ten times the TWDs’ average traffic: on a good day, Edinburgh Uncovered now attracts over 1,000 readers, a small but not insignificant figure. In terms of cold hard statistics then, EU has exceeded anything that the pre-social media TWD ever achieved. That said, for all its popularity, Edinburgh Uncovered could never hope to have its creator sacked, imprisoned or featured on STV and in the thankfully now-defunct News of the World.

Over the course of the 825 blogs that have been published in The Trash Whore Diaries, I’ve covered such wide-ranging topics as ‘Why do dicks drip?’ and ‘Why is it impossible to pee straight after sex?’ This blog is the labour of one man’s love for all things bawdy, salacious, lubricious, libidinous, prurient, priapic and other adjectives that my built-in thesaurus may care to suggest. I’m planning to publish a Christmas Day special, encapsulating some of the most memorable quotes from the last ten years of The Trash Whore Diaries, and then I promise to lay the nostalgia to rest - for another decade at least.

Earlier in today’s blog, I observed that once you’ve crossed a certain line, you can never go back; once you’ve lost your hymen, no amount of reconstructive surgery can turn you into a virgin again. Once you’ve witnessed your partner bound, gagged and bukkaked, it’s impossible to beat off thinking of her in that racy low-cut top she wore to your first date. Less is always more for the senses, right?

Wrong. It has occurred to me that there’s one exception to that golden rule - burka porn. While less clothing invariably leaves less to the imagination, with the burka, the opposite is true - more is most certainly more, as my boner will attest. I don’t know what it is about the burka that turns me on so much; perhaps because it’s a throwback to a more innocent era, when the Victorians would cover up piano legs for fear of men being aroused by their shapely form. Perhaps it’s the thought of all the repressed sexuality that lurks beneath that black shroud; perhaps it’s because that buxom goddess Nigella Lawson was recently pictured on the beach wearing a burkini. Whatever the case, all I know is that when I see a set of sexy eyes framed by a burka, I see it as a challenge.

Could I cum through the letterbox slot of a burka without spilling a single drop of my seed on the surrounding cloth? I don’t know, but it’s a challenge I’m willing to accept, if only I could find a willing volunteer. Sadly my girlfriend has refused to indulge this innocuous fantasy, while my entreaties to the Muslim community have fallen on burka-covered ears.

It’s hard to define what’s so sexy about the burka. Perhaps the illicit thrill lies in it being danger porn; there is a very real danger that you could be issued with a fatwa for shooting fat wads through the eye slit. And also the danger that lurking behind that burka, it could be your mum or sister. How would you know?

Google ‘burka porn’ and you won’t find so much as a semi-inducing clip; it’s the last taboo. Search for ‘bukkake bestiality’ and you’ll probably turn up an entire pack of dogs spaffing over some Japanese chick, but search for ‘burka porn’ and you won’t find a peep. Never mind the Chinese government cracking down on dissidents - Google’s burka porn omission is internet censorship at its worst.

I’d always assumed that Muslim men must all harbour eye fetishes, and be capable of identifying a set of sexy eyebrows at 100 paces. Steven, my non-Muslim friend however (I don’t have any Muslim friends come to think of it; I’m not sure why), opined that the hands are actually the best indicator of a burka-wearer’s sexiness. Thus, should I ever fulfill my burka-based fantasy, I intend to focus on the hands, though my outpourings of pent-up frustration will be directed elsewhere.

The Trash Whore Diaries might be aiming for the gutter, but rest assured, I’ll be aiming for the starry eyes.

2011-12-16T07:27:00.007Z

The Trash Whore Diaries (2001-2011): Ten Year Anniversary Special by Bob

Under the watchful eye of the CCTV camera I fucked her up the arse over an empty beer barrel.

It’s not easy being a crack whore. Your work buys your drugs, your drugs are your sex and your sex is your work. When you come to think of it, you'd need to be banging bigger rocks than Charlie Sheen (that’s eight-gram rocks) just to differentiate between the times when you’re fucking, getting fucked, being fucked or just having your shit being totally fucked the fuck up.

Being a trash whore blogger isn’t much easier of course. You may enjoy the notoriety and all the unsolicited blowjobs it brings, but the confessional nature of the job means you’re constantly putting yourself at risk. At risk from girlfriends, their boyfriends too, from the boys in blue, and at the mercy of any potential employer who has ever heard of a little thing called ‘Google’.

‘Well maybe you shouldn’t be so stupid as to put potentially damaging details about your life on the internet!’ I hear you say. But let he who is without Facebook cast the first stone.

In many ways the Trash Whore Diaries were the precursor to Facebook, except funnier, and much less agreeable to the financial survival of its creator. Just think how different ‘The Social Network’ could have looked if only TWD had been the first to strike upon the idea of letting dirties put up pictures of themselves in their underwear, and then letting other dirties look at the pictures of the dirties in their underwear.

Sadly, it was an idea that was too simple by far. You’re on the internet, and you’re on the internet to perv on dirties - so why would you need a place on the internet just to do what the internet does?

Unlike Mark Zuckerberg, this blog has never taken to patronising its sagacious [suh-geh-shuhs – having or showing acute mental discernment; shrewd] readership by inviting to do for them what they could already bloody well do for themselves. This blog has always been about the things you shouldn’t do, or wouldn’t do, or used to do a little bit but kind of grew out of. It’s about things that are oh so wrong, but feel oh so right. It’s about places you’d rather not visit and people you’d rather not meet. And it’s about mums. With big boobies. And dogs. And meatpaste. Oh so right.

But if you’re one of those who has grown out of meatpaste jokes, don’t think that makes you the better person, because it doesn’t. The meatpaste jokes haven’t gotten any older than you after all. In life, it’s not how old your jokes are that count, but how old your best stories have become. If yours end by concluding, ‘And that was the last time I ever pulled anyone at The Palace,’ it’s about time you admitted to yourself that you’re now about as interesting as a married woman who once gave great head, ‘When I used to do that sort of thing’.

Today the Trash Whore Diaries are 10 years old. Who’d have thought it could come so far? Or for so long? Or so hard? The updates may have slowed down to a trickle of piss being forced past an enlarged prostate, but you can be sure that the occasional spurts of brilliance, which your regular host provides, will be reliably delivered all over the toilet seat as they always were – and to hell with the consequences.

So if you’re settling down to a nice hot cup of cocoa in your silk pyjamas tonight, feeling superior as you listen to your Michael Buble Christmas album, consider this: in another 10 years time you may just discover that your hard-cultivated ‘sophistication’, your adherence to social niceties, and your newly-found sense of civic responsibility are all just illusions. No more real than the impossibly large prosthetic phalluses they use in all modern porn films.

In the next decade - if you’re a man - you will most likely suffer a mid-life crisis and - if you’re a woman - you’ll divorce him. As you hang around bars a decade from now, trying to bag yourself teenagers, you may find some truth in the bottom of a glass of chateau la fete 2016; that for the last 10 years you’ve been pretending to be something you’re not.

That’s why the world needs the Trash Whore Diaries, perhaps more now than ever. To show you that another path is still possible. It’s never too late to stop growing up, to jump ahead of the curve. Don’t throw away the next 10 years in fruitless endeavour. The teenagers are out there.

I gave her one final kiss under the CCTV camera behind what was once the old Dr Drakes.  ‘You know Brooke, this really used to be the place back in the day,’ I said

 ‘I know, I used to come here too Sleazy Bob.’ 

‘Here? The venue or the beer barrel?’

She just laughed at that.

‘You know, I think you’ll find that no one calls me Sleazy Bob anymore.’ 

She laughed again as she made her way into the night, turned back and shouted, ‘I think you’ll find they do... SLEAZY BOB!'

Her laughter bounced off the cobblestones as she turned, and I watched her tender posterior disappear from view. What a woman!

As I walked down the road with a swagger in my step and a stink in my groin I had a little smile to myself as I remembered something I thought I’d forgotten. No one person lives forever, but the Trash Whore magic never dies.

Happy Anniversary Trash Whore Diaries.

Over to you Kai...

[Why thank you Bob, that was beautiful. For once, words fail me. I think I'll leave your anniversary post to sink in over the weekend before attempting a celebratory - but hopefully not too self-congratulatory - Trash Whore piece of my own on Monday. I've no idea what direction it's going to take, but now that you've simultaneously raised the bar and lowered the tone, I'll need to be at my very best/worst to prove that I've still got it/never had it - Kai.]

2011-06-29T00:58:00.012Z

I like words. Words are my business, and I love them in all their multi-syllabic sizes. Amongst my favourite vocables are sesquipedalianism, moist and pish-flaps. Like any smutty schoolboy, I enjoy the gratuitous deployment of smutty words, and am prone to the odd bout of priapic dictionary-perusing on occasions. There is one word, however, that I am loathe to use because it causes more offence than any F-word, C-word or Gash-word ever could. It is the sort of word that makes Voldemort sound like angel’s breath and spunk-monkey like a fragrant rose. The unmentionable word in question? Paedophile of course. No other word in the English language is as emotive as the P-word. In Scotland, people will readily call each other ‘c**t’ as a term of endearment, and yet paedo? It’s the sort of savage diss you wouldn’t wish upon your worst enemy, unless of course your worst enemy happened to be Craig Thomson.

: For some reason, the rest of the squad were reluctant to model Hearts' new strip

‘Ah, Craigie boy, Craigie boy, wherefore art thou Craigie boy?’ So pleaded the 12 year-old girl stationed in front of the webcam. ‘Eh...I dunno. That’s jist whit aw ma mates called me at school,’ mumbled the shy teenager watching from behind his computer desk on the other side of the city. He grinned bashfully, before appearing to suddenly grow in confidence. ‘So eh...you gonnae get yer rat oot for us noo? Seeing how ah’ve showt you ma boaby an aw that?’

Welcome to the world of Craig Thomson, footballer extraordinaire. By day, this emergent young talent plays football for Heart of Midlothian FC. By night however, he takes photographs of his hairy scrotum before emailing it to impressionable children. In official parlance, he is a paedophile, although on the terraces, you’re more likely to hear him by his street names of ‘Beast’, ‘Kiddie Fiddler’ or ‘Wrong Un’.

Last week, Craig Thomson pled guilty to ‘lewd, libidinous and indecent behaviour’ and was fined £4,000 as well as being placed on the sex offenders register for five years. Sordid as his conduct undoubtedly was, that should have been the end of the matter, right? After all, the boy had been caught purple-handed, punished by the courts and duly disciplined by his football club. Having made assurances that his recklessness was an aberration - the actions of a naive and misguided teenager - he promised that such behaviour would never occur again. And that should have been the end of the matter, right? Right. Only in the real world, it doesn’t quite work that way.

Sure, the powers-that-be might have had their say, but when it comes to paedophilia, the public always want their pound of flesh - and they’re not talking about Craig Thomson’s sweaty tadger. A man can assault another man and be forgiven. He can fuck his brother’s wife and be forgiven. He can even kill another man and be forgiven. But do so much as wave a bag of sweets outside a school and suddenly your name is mud. And not the nice sort of mud they use as facial masks in beauty parlours, but the sort of stinking Glastonbury mud that drags a man down and chokes him to death under the weight of his own indiscretions.

Believe it or not, there used to be a time when paedophilia was seen as a slightly seedy yet fairly harmless pursuit. When the children would come pelting into the house complaining that old Jimmy Rimples from the village had flashed his tackle at them, mum would clip them round the lug and tell them that they shouldn’t have been looking. That was then however, and this is now, an era when things that used to be acceptable (drink-driving; casual racism) are now A Big Fucking Deal. Technically speaking, Craig Thomson’s crime was at the lower end of the paedophilic scale. And yet technically speaking, if it was your daughter he’d done that to, you’d have chopped his sweaty ball-sacks off, passed them through a mincer and then force-fed them into his lacerated anal cavity, daubed in wasabi.

Curiously, it was not so much Thomson’s actions that caused outrage amongst the footballing community and indeed Scotland as a whole. Rather, it was the actions of his football club who released a glib statement noting that they ‘accept that there are sufficient mitigating circumstances that provide significant assurance that the player's conduct, no matter how distasteful, was the result of a grave error of judgement due to naivety and possible wrong outside influence rather than anything more sinister and it will not be repeated.’

At the mention of this, message boards and newspaper columns went into meltdown, with the moral majority quick to excoriate the beleaguered footballer. After all, what sort of external influence causes a man to act in such a manner? The idea that Thomson could have been inveigled into performing a Dirty Den by, say, listening to his Tinchy Stryder records backwards seems credulous to say the least. On the Aberdeen Mad forum, fans rued the fact that they would have to wait until mid-August before regaling the Hearts support with such cheerful ditties as ‘I’d rather shag a sheep than a child’ and the Pink Floyd-inspired ‘Hey! Thomson! Leave those kids alone!’

In spite of the footballer’s seemingly untenable position, there were still a few people willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, including Hearts Supporters Trust Chairman Derek Watson, who observed: ‘The overall situation is there’s more to the situation than meets the eye. I think the guy should get another chance...it’s a bit of a witch hunt.’

‘Mad’ Vlad Romanov, dictator-in-chief at Tynecastle, also backed the player. Back in Vlad’s homeland of Lithuania, admittedly, refusal to piece a vulnerable pre-teen is probably seen as an emasculating act of cowardice. As one Dons fan pointedly observed: ‘There are NO mitigating circumstances for an allegedly sane, mentally-sufficient adult sending pictures of his man servant to a young child. I don’t care if his bird shagged his old man the night before, he is dying or his mother ran off with the milkman.’ Another Dandie, meanwhile, observed more succinctly: ‘Big Vlad knew.’

The few apologists prepared to defend Thomson were swift to trot out the usual platitudes: the player was only a kid himself - a misguided teenager, only seven years older than the recipient of his porksicle polaroid. There are plenty of accepted relationships out there with a wider age gap than the pair, and besides, Thomson hadn’t actually had sex with her - he’d only wapped out his truncheon and jiggled it about a bit. By the age of 12, every girl knows what a penis looks like, right? Some polemicists even went so far as to argue that there are countries in which feeding a 12 year-old your length is perfectly acceptable. To make such a comparison with Thomson’s case however would be as disingenuous as pleading for leniency were five-oh to bust in and catch you with a plantation of Lemon Skunk. That shit may be legal in the Dam, but it sure as hell ain’t here.

Shit went from ‘real’ to ‘hyper real’ on Monday afternoon, when notorious football pundit Graham Spiers posted the following Tweets:

The reaction to his pleas for leniency was anything but lenient, with responses ranging from the indignant to the extremely outraged. Was Spiers right in what he said? To be honest, it’s almost a moot point whether or not Craig Thomson deserves to be given a second chance. The fact is that when it comes to paedophilia, there are no grey areas. The hang ‘em and flog ‘em brigade just won’t allow it. There is a reason why murderers and thieves can eventually be forgiven if they’re truly remorseful - it’s because we’ve all felt that way at some point in our lives, and recognise that, under exceptional circumstances, people can crack and do exceptionally bad things. We’ve all wanted to kill someone in the heat of the moment, yet the vast majority of us have held back because we possess two essential attributes known as self-control and common-sense, qualities that appear to have deserted Craig Thomson at the time of his monumental cock-out. The truth is that every man has passed a schoolgirl in the street and thought to himself ‘What a stunner she’s gonna be when she’s legal.’ It is also true however that most men don’t then attempt to fast-track her transition to adolescence by treating her to a swatch of their pork sword. Paedophilia is the last sexual taboo for a reason - because no right-minded person would even think about going there. While only Craig Thomson can attest as to whether or not he was planning on going there, when a man shows a woman his sleeping beauty, it’s not just compliments that he’s usually fishing for.

As for Spiers’ remark about ‘what the internet does to kids these days’, well... Like every virile man, I’ve seen my fair share of things on the internet. I’ve seen women shagging horses and horses shagging women; I’ve seen fart-porn, spew-porn and incestuous lesbian dwarf porn. I’ve witnessed such acts because I was either bored, curious or occasionally horny. In all my time of smut-surfing and bestial-beating however, I can’t say I’ve ever sought out underage girls, and not just because I feared I may have cause to take my hard drive into PC World one day. As for my own meat-puppet, well, it’s probably lurking on a few exes’ camera phones - and it’s certainly lurking on mine - but I can’t say I’ve ever felt the compunction to share it with anyone who wasn’t old or experienced enough to treat it to the sort of TLC it was crying out for. It would be nice to just shrug the whole Craig Thomson business off by graciously electing to forgive and forget, but what if it was your daughter who’d been in the firing line? Would you be able to cheer if he went on to score the winning goal for your team in a cup final?

When this blog first started, I must admit it hadn’t occurred to me that I would wind up penning a 2,000-word treatise on paedophilia. But then The Trash Whore Diaries is about exploring the best and worst aspects of humanity, and thus here we are, discussing at length Craig Thomson’s length. It’s probably not what people logged on here for, but hey-ho, that’s life, isn’t it? One minute you’re minding your own business on the internet; the next, someone’s poking you on Facebook with their jap’s-eye.

While all the furore hasn’t done much for Graham Spiers or Craig Thomson’s careers, there is one Edinburgh resident who’s been rubbing his nose with glee. On the other side of the city, a certain Gary O’Connor, back within the Hibernian fold once more, is awaiting trial for possession of cocaine. The prodigal son, who has a history of racking up error after error, can’t even buy a by-line in the paper at the moment, let alone a quarter-page spread. That’s the thing about iniquity - it’s all relative. How Thomson must be praying right now for police to discover a Fritzl-esque basement in Neil Lennon’s house. Until then however, he’ll continue to attract pelters wherever he plays, which right now looks like nowhere on this side of the galaxy. Irrespective of what stance you take on his indiscretion, the fact remains that Craig Thomson is not the anti-messiah - he’s just a very naughty boy.

For more foul-mouthed rambling in a similar fashion, visit Edinburgh Uncovered.

2010-12-25T14:42:00.003Z

Friends, Subjects and Fellow Countrymen:

As the alternative Head of State for this great island, may I wish you all a most wondrous Christmas and a felicitous New Year. We are nearing the end of a topsy-turvy year – an annus promiscuus – that has been both the best of times and the worst of times. As a nation, we have collectively experienced the full gamut of human emotions over the past 12 months, taking in the extremest extremes imaginable and everything in between. I too, as proud Queen of this country, have experienced the highest highs and the lowest lows life has to offer. The highs? Boshing a couple of pink diamonds on Halloween followed by a bucket of rum, a fistful of jeeftos and two dozen poodles’ legs of Tony. The lows? Waking up the next morning. Nationally, this pattern has been repeated, with 2010 seeing disparities and incongruities that have hitherto never been witnessed, and which may never be seen again. Contrasts in weather, in political ideals, in social – and in Facebook – status.

    For example, who would you estimate to be among the greatest heroes and villains of our time? The answer, of course, is that they are one and the same person. Raoul Moat? Wife-beating, cop-killing, psychotic, jilted madman. Or courageous, cop-killing, postmodern messianic anti-hero. It all depends on your outlook on life. And specifically on whether your outlook on life has been tainted... by meeting the police in real life.

    And then there’s Tommy Sheridan - bare-assed liar or unflinching mouth (and cod)-piece of the proletariat? Maybe neither, maybe both. Maybe everything and nothing. When is a lie not a lie? When it’s told in court, in which case it’s counterargument. Or possibly perjury, depending on how many members of the establishment you’ve pissed off whilst uttering said truths/half-truths/untruths.

    Depending on whether you see the glass as half-full or half-empty, the erection as half-up or half-down, will determine how you assess this year. It’s clearly been an eventful one for ex-con lefties with a penchant for piecing dirties whilst fucking off the government. No, I’m not still talking about Tommy - I’m talking about Julian. Un-American, terrorist-assisting rapist or subversive whistleblower? Once again, the jury are split, leaned on, nobbled and tampered with. Then there’s this season’s coolest, most stylish attire to be seen out in, not to be confused with this season’s uncoolest, most unstylish attire to be seen dead in - Hunter welly boots. Even Tommy Sheridan would draw the line at fucking a girl wearing a pair of those.

    We truly live in a polarised and skewed society. I mean, some of my best friends believe it is acceptable to throat-fuck a girl until she spews into her own arse-hole whilst forcing me to film the ensuing carnage. Some of my more distant friends think this a misogynistic and degrading way to treat a woman. These people make me sick. Which ones? All of them of course. That’s why we’re friends. It’s hard to witness such scenes at the best of times, but virtually impossible when you’re trying to hold a video camera steady while wanking furiously. We’re a nation who will shit, weep and spew cum, blood and puke from every orifice, then dress it up in euphemistic terms such as ‘making love’ or ‘visiting the restroom’. Then we’ll smoke a fag, chill for 20 and do it all over again. What is wrong with this country? Absolutely nothing, which is why I am so proud to be its monarch.

    This Christmas, I have eschewed the comforts of Buckingham Palace in order to deliver this address from Aberdeen’s Yangtze River restaurant. While Chinese - and occasionally Scottish - families make some din over their din sum, I sip my Tsingtao and scribble thoughts on the back of a sheet of crumpled legal correspondence. I wouldn’t want it any other way though; it’s Christmas with the one I love - me. No seasonal address would be complete of course without sparing a thought for those less fortunate than ourselves. My heart goes out to all the kids currently holed up in Austrian cellars and dungeons and destined to remain undiscovered for another 20 years. They can only dream of what a white Christmas looks like. On the plus side, those Hunter wellies their fathers/captors have bought them will be worth a fortune in 2030 when they’re still in mint condition. Spare a thought also for Madeleine McCann - I meant to take her out for a walk this morning, but I was so stoned I couldn’t remember the combination to her cage. Sorry Maddie - maybe next year.

    Before I leave you to enjoy the rest of your festivities, I would like to finish this address on a positive note however. Amidst all the doom and gloom, there are many reasons to be optimistic looking ahead to 2011. Many Christmases ago, on this very weblog (set to celebrate its tenth anniversary next year incidentally), I noted that the strange time between Christmas and New Year is a bit like the scrotum - nothing really happens there, but there’s plenty of excitement on either side. As we prepare to move from the balls to the scrotum (or possibly the arse-hole to the scrotum, depending on how bad your Christmas was), it’s time to reflect on what lies ahead, not what’s in between. Like many of you, I am about to change lanes by embarking on a journey into the unknown - in my case leaving Aberdeen to seek out new adventures and foreswear working for the man for working for this man. The last time I was self-employed, I sold drugs. This time, I’m gonna attempt to make it as a writer. And if that doesn’t work out, well, there’s always Plan B...

What does my future hold? I don’t know, though whenever asked this question, I always preface it with these five words: ‘If I’m not in prison...’. No one in this country is above the law. Not even the Queen herself. Which is why, were I to try and kill myself, I could be charged with attempted regicide and suicide. Sadly I don’t make the laws in this country - I just get wheeled out once a year to read them off a script, before retreating to my chambers to play with the corgis and roll a fat banger. There are some who would say that this country - just like the remains of my Christmas dinner - is going to the canines. Nonsense, I say. This is still the only nation in the world where anything is possible, and every underdog has its day. Believe me when I say that all of you, no matter what your circumstances may be, can achieve anything you want to provided you work hard, follow your dreams and don’t give up hope. And failing that, you can always audition for next year’s X-Factor. In this great island of contradictions and juxtapositions, there are some who believe that the current Christmas number one is the epitome of great music. There are others who believe that those responsible for it should be taken outside, shot in the head and then fucked in the ass. To which I can say only this: where’s Raoul Moat and Tommy Sheridan when you need them? Where are your heroes and villains now?

Merry Christmas, my people. Merry Fucking Christmas.

2010-09-22T14:32:00.003Z

This is a true story about how idiots are taking over the world, and why euthanasia is the only solution to this fatuity epidemic...

Once upon a time in a far away land, there lived a handsome prince named Kai. One day, while spring-cleaning his awesome castle, the prince happened to stumble upon a box of old junk. It contained, amongst other things, some antiquated computer discs and a power supply for a PlayStation2. The Prince knew he ought simply to hurl these trinkets off the battlements and into the moat below, yet a part of him couldn’t bear to see them go to waste. He might be the second richest man in the entire kingdom (after the good king himself), but Kai hadn’t forgotten his humble origins in Aberdeen. To dispose of this junk without obtaining some sort of remuneration for it would be a very un-Aberdonian thing to do. And so it was that the prince came to sell off his unwanted possessions via the time-honoured medium of eBay, until the only thing left was the PS2 power supply. This too he listed on eBay, for the fair sum of £5 plus £7 international postage. The prince may have been reluctant to see such paraphernalia go to waste, but he was not an avaricious man, and so he priced it reasonably so that all his subjects would have the opportunity to purchase this fabulous power supply. Sure enough, within two days it had been snapped up by an eBay member called tamas_sergiu.

Tamas_sergiu, whose real name was in fact Rusu Tiberiu, lived in the faraway kingdom of Romania. To travel there by horseback would have taken many months, and so it was that Prince Kai sensibly elected to post the power supply to this distant land using standard class mail. A week or two went by; leaves began to fall from the trees as summer begat autumn. Then one day, while surfing the net for Swedish dirties suitable for transforming into princesses, Kai received an email. It was from Rusu, informing him that the promised power supply had failed to materialise. The handsome prince was aghast; hadn’t he walked to the post office himself (Kai didn’t need servants to do his dirty work) and affixed the stamps to it with his own fair hands? The prince anxiously replied, reassuring Rusu that he had indeed posted the power supply, and urging him to look out for it.

Another week went by and another email arrived from Rusu. Still no sign of the power supply. The prince knew that he had posted it, but could only assume that it had gone missing en route to the dangerous kingdom of Romania. Out of the kindness of his heart, the prince decided to issue a refund for the missing item. Aberdonian he may have been, but he was not entirely callous. He sent the following message to the unfortunate Rusu, who by now had been staring at a blank screen for weeks, eagerly waiting for the chance to power up his PS2: ‘Hi. I have refunded you £7, as that is all I have in my PayPal account at the moment. Apologies for the item not arriving, but I hope you can appreciate that I posted it in good faith, and so I have lost out too. Thank you.’

The prince smiled, content in the knowledge that he had done the right thing and made amends for this most vexatious of situations. Imagine his surprise when he received the following message from Rusu: ‘hi, i dont see the money from you in my paypal acount i think is a fake mail , i will send a copy of this mail to your local police, and I GIVE YOU A NEGATIVE FEEDBACK.’
The poor prince was taken aback by this outpouring of vitriol and hate. His ears still ringing from all the caps lock shoutiness, he patiently drafted a measured reply: ‘The money is in your account, but if you don't believe me, by all means contact the police and ask them to investigate. Don't just take my word for it. Regards, Kai.’
The prince hit the send button, crossed his fingers and prayed that his antagonist would be more understanding on this occasion. He didn’t have to wait long to find out, for hours later Rusu’s response arrived, and this time it was more shoutier than ever: ‘Available balance in EUR (primary): ?0.58 EUR THAT IS ALL I HAVE IN MY PAYPAL ACOUNT SO WHERE ARE MY MONEY? I WAIT 12 NOT 7 I WANT MY MONEY BACK.’

The prince drew in his breath sharply and then sighed. All his life he had strived to be fair and generous to the subjects of his father’s kingdom. One day he would be their ruler, and he dearly hoped that they would love and respect him as much as he did them, which is why this unsavoury incident was so hard to stomach. Reluctantly, the prince reached for his keyboard and attempted to draft a reply. Surely it was still possible for diplomacy to win through? His work finally done, the troubled prince retreated to the courtyard and spend the remainder of the evening pacing listlessly, pondering life’s peculiarities.

Three hours later, a Romanian man going by the name of Rusu opened his email and discovered a new message from Prince Kai. It read: ‘Fuck off and die you dirty, smelly gypsy. I hope you suffer a slow and painful death.’
For some reason, Rusu took great offence to this and, after much cogitation, bashed out the following rejoinder: ‘what? are you crazy? i recived the package today you stupid fuck, it's not my fault. call at the post ofice and ask when i picked up, you stupid fuck. asshole, think before you make any acusations, and suck my gipsy DICK .i whanet to resend you the money, but now i will not, if you dont recive 4 weaks the item what do you think? IT WAS NOT POSTED. wy did you not sent the tracking number? it's your fault, YOU ARE SO STUPID, and i hope you live 100 years i dont whis you to die, because it's to much for 7 and again YOU ARE SO STUPID. I WIL SEND YOU THE MONEY BACK I DONT NEED IT.’

On the other side of Europe, in a much more pleasant and civilised kingdom, a prince sat at his desk and drafted a response to the stramash of garbled syntax and assault-by-upper-case that he had received masquerading as an email. The prince wrote back: ‘Dude, you're the one who got all shouty and started using big capital letters to accuse me of defrauding you of £7. And I told you before, I couldn't send you a tracking number because it's impossible to track items that are sent by standard post. If you don't want to be spoken to like a dirty, smelly gypsy then don't act like one. Keep the £7, you could maybe use it to invest it in some soap.
Best regards, Kai.’

Astonishingly, Rusu the Romanian took further offence to this and, after wracking his incredibly large brain for some time, came up with the following pithy riposte: ‘i called today at paypal and the refund it was made to my card not to my paypal acount thats wy i have dont see it, MAYBE I HAVE MORE MONEY THEN YOU AND I AM MORE CLEANER THEN YOU, YOU RICE EATER. FUCK YOU. STUPID RHD FROM THIS MAIL YOU ARE THE GIPSY AND THE DIRTY ONE, I HOPE YOU EAT RICE ALL YOU R LIFE AND ONCE AGAIN SUCK MY GIPSY DICK FUCKING EMIGRANT.’

Upon reading these words, the prince decided it was only right and fair that he warn his subjects about the dangers of trading with as backward and inbred a nation as Romania, and thus he wrote a blog about it. And from that day onward, the entire kingdom of Scotland came to know that the name Rusu was synonymous with stupidity of the most retarded sort. And as for Rusu himself? Well, legend has it that he went on to father an entire brothel of illegitimate, inbred mongrels, who in turn shat out yet more thumb-clenching, drooling idiots, and thus the entire world came to be populated by stupid people. The end.

2010-09-18T16:20:00.001Z

This is the new Zambian Astronaut video, filmed in Edinburgh a couple of weekends ago. Clash Of The Titans will be appearing on Werd and Wardie's Vagabonds mixtape set for release next month. To keep you going till that drops, here's everything you ever wanted to know about Scottish hip-hop distilled into four minutes of madness. It's a big, epic track but a word of warning: don't play this one in front of your mum. It's just not that sort of a song.

2010-08-26T15:06:00.000Z

Check this out. Brand new Zambian Astronaut video (our first ever, no less) filmed in Edinburgh last weekend and then painstakingly edited using Apple's infuriatingly bug-riddled iMovie software. Much tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth later and here it is: Underworld, featuring Werd. Enjoy.

2010-08-12T16:44:00.007Z

Two blogs in one day? Madness! Thankfully, this one's as sweet as it is short. Although I've not had much opportunity to write on here lately, I haven't completely given up on the art of stringing sentences together. Every weekend for the last few months I've been swapping my dull life in Aberdeen for a more exotic one in Edinburgh, like a heterosexual businessman who transforms into a Thai ladyboy come Saturday nite. Instead of willies however, I've been playing with synths, and gargling rum in place of cum. Amidst all the carnage in Auld Reekie, I've struck up a prolific (non-gay - or at least non-consummated) partnership with Stuart Jackson. Together we form Zambian Astronaut, the finest - and indeed only - synth-hop duo the world has ever seen.

Hailing from the darkest recesses of Edinburgh City, ZA feature yours truly on lyrical and song-arranging duty, with my partner-in-crime Stuart taking care of all the production.

The two of us have been fortunate to meet some awesome artists who've collaborated on our debut EP, including Edinburgh rapper Werd and Norwegian vocalist Asa Seljestad.

If you're intrigued as to what Scottish hip-hop could possibly sound like, check out The Legacy below. If you'd prefer something a little more seductive, Butterflies is worth a listen. The latter, as well as Run These Streets, feature wordage penned - but thankfully not song - by me.

Hope you enjoy the first instalment of ZA.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://zambianastronaut.bandcamp.com/album/zambianastronaut-volume-i"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;The Legacy Ft Werd by ZambianAstronaut&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

&amp;amp;lt;a href="http://zambianastronaut.bandcamp.com/track/butterflies-ft-asa-seljestad"&amp;amp;gt;Butterflies Ft Asa Seljestad by ZambianAstronaut&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;
&amp;amp;lt;a href="http://zambianastronaut.bandcamp.com/track/run-these-streets-ft-asa-seljestad"&amp;amp;gt;Run These Streets Ft Asa Seljestad by ZambianAstronaut&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;

<a href="http://zambianastronaut.bandcamp.com/track/imperfections-ft-asa-seljestad">Imperfections Ft Asa Seljestad by ZambianAstronaut</a>
<a href="http://zambianastronaut.bandcamp.com/track/dirty-stuff-ft-werd-deeko">Dirty Stuff Ft Werd & Deeko by ZambianAstronaut</a>

2010-04-20T15:29:00.001Z

There may be more than one way to skin a cat, but what about a dog? How many ways are there to de-fur a canine, preferably while making it suffer a slow, agonizing death? I ask this not out of curiosity, but out of necessity. You see I have a problem. Actually I have several problems (narcolepsy, insomnia, anorexia and obesity to name but a few), but right now there is one problem that is afflicting me more than all the others combined. It is small – puppy-sized to be precise – and yet it is causing me to contemplate murder in the cruelest, most inhumane way.

To explain, let me tell you a bit about my current living arrangements. (But not too much, because you really don’t wanna know about the blow-up doll called Peggy Sue who sleeps on top of me every nite, or my propensity for shitting in plastic bags and lobbing them out the window when I can’t be arsed walking to the bathroom.) At present, I am a lodger. You know those sad single men who rent a room in someone else’s house because they’ve just left home and don’t have a girlfriend or any mates to stay with and so they sit alone in their room nite after nite, eating Pot Noodles and beating off? Yep, that’s me. Although in saying that, I do have a girlfriend, and a couple of acquaintances who would probably begrudgingly concede that they were my mates, plus I left home ten years ago, so what’s my excuse? Well, right about now I can’t afford to rent a place of my own (that’s the trouble with earning an honest wage), and besides, because I like being mothered, there are certain advantages that come with abiding under someone else’s roof. Such as the knowledge that I need only leave my laundry basket outside my door and when I return home my cum-stained CKs will have been exchanged for a neatly folded pile of clean boxer shorts.

The property I partially call my home, a three-floor townhouse in deepest suburbia, accommodates four people (though it could easily take more). On the bottom floor, in the humble bedroom/bathroom/utility room, there is me, The Lodger. And then, above me, there is The Family. Comprising of a married couple and daughter, they occupy the top two floors. The middle floor I am technically allowed to visit on occasions, but generally choose not to, preferring instead to fester in my bedroom, eating Pot Noodles and beating off (sometimes at the same time.) The top floor, however, I am not permitted to set foot in at all on pain of death. It is, to all intents and purposes, the forbidden floor from The Others, occupied only by ghosts, unless of course I am the ghost, in which case it is occupied by humans. Although my rented abode is undoubtedly comfortable (the middle – and presumably top – floors especially), it suffers from the malaise that affects all modern edifices; paper-thin walls and ceilings. Directly above my bedroom is The Family’s living room. Indeed, were the slender floor/ceiling ever to collapse – a not unlikely proposition – I would be crushed under the weight of their pool table. The house is so flimsy that my girlfriend and I have already been chastised twice on account of certain noises that have emanated from my bedroom. (What can I say; she never gave me any warning she was gonna do that with her finger.) Of course, it works both ways, and every sound that resonates within their living room filters through into my bedroom. Most of it – the clank of pool balls, the mother screaming at the daughter and vice versa – I can ignore. However, there is one sound in particular that has lately afflicted my earballs so acutely that I now find myself with a mind set on murder. When I first heard it, a couple of weeks ago, I thought the high-pitched squeal was that of a new toy that the daughter was playing with. My girlfriend, on the other hand, thought it was the squeak of a vacuum cleaner. (I’ve never heard a hoover squeak before, but then I’ve never attempted to do some of the things with the nozzle that she has). What neither of us considered was that it might actually be a real, live dog, and that the infuriatingly pathetic squeak was its attempt at a bark. It was funny for the first five minutes. And then it was just really, really annoying. Every morning, my final – and most precious – hour’s kip is interrupted by the yelp yelp of that odious little bastard, swiftly followed by the landlady’s screams of ‘Shut the fuck up!’ Amusement, which swiftly turned to annoyance, has morphed into apoplexy. Now, whenever my slumber is terminated by that yappity yap yap, thoughts of doggy death start brooding. What if I dropped it from the top (forbidden) floor to its death? It could be made to look like an accident. What about the microwave? The little bastard would surely fit in there. Or the dishwasher? Or, how’s about I just go straight for the jugular and rip its throat out with my teeth?

For all my threats of poochicide, the fact remains that I have yet to set eyes on the high-pitched hound. It could look nothing like the scrawny runt I have written it off as. If I sneak upstairs armed with a toothpick, only to be met by a snarling Alsatian, then it is I who will be yelping off with my tail firmly between my legs. This afternoon, while writing these words, its wretched whining became so grating that I responded the only way I knew how – by opening my door, cranking the stereo and unleashing the full fury of Blood Brothers. That appeared to temporarily disable its dismal whimpering, and I was just preparing to sharpen my knives and take the pain to another level when The Family arrived home. At this point, the little fucker had the audacity to shut up completely, making out that it hadn’t spent the last two hours torturing my ear drums. I then felt obliged to follow suit, donning my sincerest smile and making out that I hadn’t spent the last two hours thinking up ways to torture their pet. A part of me feels bad for even contemplating whacking the poor girl’s doggy, and then I start to think think maybe I‘m being a bit harsh; perhaps I could just cut its tongue off and leave its head attached to the body. But then it starts its yip yap yapping once more and my thoughts return to unfortunate altercations with soup blenders or fateful introductions to Chinese restaurateurs. There’s only space for one whining little bitch in this household, and I was here first. That doggy’s leaving here in a doggy bag.

2010-04-10T10:17:00.001Z

Aberzine Gig Night, Friday 9th April @ The Tunnels

What's this I hear? Four local bands playing in the same venue on the same nite? And admittance for just £4? What a perfect opportunity to get along early and catch every drop of sweet, sweet music as it oozes from the stage. Actually, scrap that. I missed the majority of the first act because I was too busy pre-loading on vodka Red Bull in that manner much decried by publicans and MPs alike. Actually, scrap that previous sentence too as it's mostly untrue; I wrote that part while stocking up on the aforementioned vodka Red Bull before the gig. I did actually catch opening act Which Way Now, or part of them at least, and what I heard was damn good. Unfortunately that's about all you're going to learn about them or indeed any of the acts who played Aberzine's inaugural gig as the review that follows was composed on my phone in situ while completely wrecked. Too much VRB does that to a man. Apologies for the lubricious and misogynous comments that follow; they weren't written by me, but by the alter-ego who possesses me and my pen after a few drinks more than a few too many...

Do you remember the scene in American Pie 3 where the dog swallows the wedding ring and Stifler ends up having to eat the dog shit, pretending all the while that it's actually a delicious truffle? That's what watching local bands is like. You've got to wade through a lot of shit to uncover the gems, all the while mustering your best rictus in an effort to pretend that their aural faeces are in fact delicious truffles.
Upon arriving at The Tunnels I discovered, much to my disappointment, that the first act were still on. I've never been a fan of watching bands as I find that their cacophony impacts upon my ability to talk at length about myself. However, having contrived to arrive too early, I felt obliged to begrudgingly endure the remainder of Which Way Now's set. There's a tendency when reviewing female-fronted rock bands to focus on the hot chanteuse and ignore the rest of the band. Well I'm not gonna fall into that trap. All I want to say is that even if I was the singer's brother, playing guitar alongside her, I would. Musically they were reminiscent of Puddle Of Mudd, but I don't mean that in a pejorative sense. Thankfully their singer looks - and sounds - nothing like Wes Scantlin. Is that his name? Who? OK, I'm showing my age now, I'll shut up. Trying to disassociate the aesthetics of the singer from their musical output is impossible I discovered. It's like the Lady Gaga conundrum - would anyone lust after her if she wasn't famous? I would, but then I'm an animal with no standards. Some people can look at a band like Which Way Now and see the talent oozing from every individual member. I can't. All I see is a bunch of metalheads backing a singer they all fantasize about fucking and yet don't have the social skills to approach because they've spent their teenage years locked in a stuffy bedroom perfecting their fretwork. Guys, she'll never know how you truly feel about her unless you summon up the courage to tell her, but that's never gonna happen. Thankfully, Cupid here is on hand to do the dirty work for you. Heather, here's how it is: You're good and so are your band but I think you should know that they all want a piece. If they say they're in a band with you for the music, they're lying. [Sober note to self: Did I really write that? What a cock. I need to either start drinking less, or drink so much that I'm too incapacitated to write.]
Next up was singer/songwriter and general layabout Bob Knight. Where do I start? What can I say about Bob that he's not already said about himself? Ah fuck it, I'll pass him the mic: 'You'll find the best thing about an acoustic set is it's possible to talk over it without spoiling your pint.' Then, upon fucking up the start to a song: 'You know, intros are a bit like foreplay and not really necessary.' Utter genius. Bob has always been something of a Marmite character; not brown, viscous and spreadable, but the sort of person you love or hate. I often find myself experiencing both emotions simultaneously in his presence. When he's good, he's damn good, and when he's not... well, tonite thankfully he was, so let's just focus on the good times. Gary Glitter would give the contents of his hard drive to have written lyrics as good as those found in 'Secrets, Tales and Lies'. (Not that ST&L is about paedophilia, I hasten to add. For that, you'd have to turn to the Bob Knight classic 'My Friend Bubba'.) 'Found You', meanwhile, is one of the best ten songs ever written. Fact. (Not that there is such a thing as a best ten songs in the world of course, any more than there is such a thing a best ten sets of tits. They're all good, apart from the saggy ones and the ones equipped with an extra nipple.) I played 'Found You' to my daughter when she was still in utero, the headphones placed against her mother's bulging belly. Now that Kris Watson-Morgan-Prais-Wish-8 has disappeared off the radar, Bob Knight is officially the best songwriter in Aberdeen. Where next for this prodigious talent? Tonite the Granite City. Tomorrow the Mearns, perhaps. Sadly we don't live in a meritocracy where the good rises up and the shit sinks to the bottom, so Bob's occasional flourishes of genius will never reach the audience they truly deserve. If the handful of bored looking punters in The Tunnels couldn't appreciate them, what hope is there? Talk about pearls before swine.
The third act, Panda Eyes, reminded me of the sort of bands they used to put on every Thursday nite downstairs in the old Aberdeen Student Union. And that's not a good thing. At least back then there was copious amounts of cheap drink to numb the pain of having to endure some turgid female-fronted rock band. Panda Eyes were so bad I had to go to the bogs for a line just to make them seem better. I tell you, following that band on tour wouldn't be cheap. Am I prejudiced against Panda Eyes because their female singer is about twice the size of Which Way Now's? Possibly, but even so, Panda Eyes' frontwoman would have to be Lady Gaga famous before I'd even contemplate going there.
I missed the final band, Captain Face, presumably because Panda Eyes bored me out of the venue, though to be honest I can't really remember now why I left. I'll just helpfully note that Captain Face were probably very good at what they did, whatever that was. I'd like to conclude this review by quoting the last two lines of text I entered into my phone before exiting the venue midway through Panda Eyes' set: 'The thing about background music is it's in the background. That's all I'm saying. It wasn't bad, it was just the background to the rest of my nite out. So they were either boring or I was drunk. You choose which.'
Well said, Kai. Even wasted you speak more sense than everyone else. Somebody buy that man a pint of Irn Bru to wash away his hangover.

2010-02-07T13:24:00.000Z

iPods. iPod Touches. I touch iPods. PDAs, Macbooks and DS-es - a baffling array of abbreviations and bastardizations, of bastard abbreviations - these are the names of and the ways that we while away the miles and the hours, sleeper after sleeper, station after station. We, the passengers on the East Coast Line, immersed in our gadgets and our virtual worlds, lost within our own personal (cyber) space as we rub shoulders with the stranger sat next to us and absentmindedly play footsie with the random across the table. Too close for comfort and yet not close enough to be comfortable. I too am lost in my own inner space, thinking my thoughts as I drink my drink (lukewarm Stella, that'll be £2.90 please sir) just like all the rest, only I lost my Touch around Haymarket when the battery passed away, leaving me all alone; an analogue boy in a digital world, armed only with a pen and a sheet of paper that I borrowed (in the same manner in which one borrows a cigarette) from a stranger on a train. One side in and I've only just begun trying to say whatever it was I was going to say - must elaborate less, abbreviate more (PDA, DS), running out of paper, uh-oh, txt spk, mayB not, I think not. These streams of consciousness - this stream of consciousness, is it life trying to be art or just words on a page, markings on a piece of paper, as relevant as an indecipherable hieroglyphic or a discarded shopping list.?
'Oh sugar!' exclaims the man in the seat opposite (so close, knees touching knees), his DS pressed tongue-lickingly close to his face as he fucks up the game he is playing. The woman sat across the aisle doesn't glance up, so immersed is she in her iPhone (texting? You Tubing? No, Googling for the services of a hitman, I decide, to dispose of her husband who sits across the table, staring listlessly out the window but seeing nothing of the bridges, mosses, slaps and stiles.) Unbeknown to her - though she would hardly be surprised to learn - the man sat behind her is following suit, on hardware if not on software. Her reasons for browsing - a boring husband - are understandable; his - a boring textbook (Energy Systems and Sustainability) - even more so.
'Only 15 minutes until the buffet service, including hot and cold drinks, closes,' announces the guard. I finger my empty can of Stella and survey the rapidly diminishing blank lines - six and counting down - and prepare to say my short goodbyes. All around me, the faint clicking of keypads, furrowing of brows and refreshing of browsers continues unabated. I pat my pocket to feel the reassuring clink of change, put down my pen and begin that long unsteady walk to the front of the train.

2010-02-05T17:10:00.003Z

Like a bad penny or a bad curry, The Trash Whore Diaries are apt to disappearing from sight for a while before resurfacing when you expect them least, bursting onto your screen in a smorgasbord of reconstituted prose. A four-month hiatus has elapsed since time and technology last permitted me to inflict my thoughts upon that portion of the web that cared to entertain them. (Mostly bored housewives, bored students, bored oil execs and bored… well, you get the gist of the demographic.) Since last blogging about whatever it was I was blogging about at the time (I’m guessing boobs, but I could be wrong – perhaps it was vaginas), a lot has happened in my world. I’ve moved out of the parental abode for the second time in my life, I’ve managed to avoid arrest (or should that be resist arrest?) and have even secured a job at a company whose management have been good enough to overlook my previous foibles on the grounds that when I’m not getting up to no good, I’m actually pretty damn good at doing the things that normal people do in their workplace; write stuff, sell stuff and drink lots of tea. Not only can I do all of said things, but I can do them damn well; I make a killer cuppa in fact. So happy am I in my current job that I have vowed to be super well-behaved and ultra boring by not writing about my job at all. That way, I might just have a chance of retaining it beyond the three-month probationary period. (Remember what happened to my cleaning job at a certain prestigious girls’ school in Aberdeen? Look back through the Trash Whore archives, circa 2003, if you dare.) But today’s blog isn’t all about me for once. Neither is it all about trying to be funny, as you’ve probably gathered if you’ve persevered this far. No, the purpose of today’s blog is to pay tribute to a Trash Whore devotee who will be unfamiliar to you. In fact it’s less of a tribute and more of a eulogy I’m afraid to say. Let me try and explain…

Back in 2006, I was released from prison after serving 13 months for some offences, the exact nature of which I can no longer recall. (OK, so it was drug dealing and perjury, OK?) During that time, the prison blogs I had written from inside HMP Craiginches and posted online had built up quite a following. Friends, foes, judges, solicitors and prison staff; they’d all stumbled across The Trash Whore Diaries and gotten hooked on its methadone-esque properties. Unknown to me at the time, one such devotee was a man named Gordon Sutherland who worked at an oil company in Dyce. After discovering the TWDs and rapidly succumbing to their moreishness, Gordon alerted all the staff in his office, who also subsequently fell victim. Following my release from prison, the media got wind of the prison blogs and they appeared in the Press & Journal, News of The World and on STV’s North Tonight. Around that time, after lamenting in my blogs that no one would employ me now because of my criminal record, I received an email from the aforementioned Gordon that went as follows:

Kai,
I am a manager at a very large US based, Aberdeen company that could use an intelligent, articulate guy like you. What is it that you want to do? Do you just want to get a job, or does it have to be a particular job. Your requirements appear to be quite demanding. I could give you a job in a heartbeat, but it would might not be up to your exacting standards. I have read the TWDs for quite a while now, and realise that you are a fairly smart cookie, but am concerned that you would not stick anything I offer you for very long, due to lack of mental stimulation… I can try and sort you out with a job if you like. It is not going to task your literary skills, but it is at least a start....
You reckoned that nobody would cut you an even break.

I will.....

2 conditions.
1)No mention of the company in the WHDs, there are a lot of lunchtime internet fans...
2)Nae drugs Min.... This company tests regulary...

Intrigued – and pleasantly surprised – to learn that anyone would even consider taking on a liability such as myself, I began corresponding with the mysterious Gordon. For now, he was just a name attached to an email address, and for the next three years he would remain that way to me. Although flattered by Gordon’s offer of work, I informed him that after some consideration I had elected to start up a sandwich shop with a couple of mates. Gordon (or Big Gord as I then knew him) replied as follows:

Kai,
Excellent! Delighted to see that you are making some progress.
Tell, me where [the sandwich shop] is, I might be able to throw some hungry people your way. I know that you think that I might be some official or lowlife with ulterior motives, which I understand, but I would love to buy you a beer some day. I even nipped into the Bassment a couple of Saturdays ago in the hope that you were there. (No I'm not a stalker, I just wanted to by you a drink for keeping at least 8 people at my work entertained through their dreary days!)
We will meet at some point, and you will realise that I am genuine....
Gord

And so life went on, days passing into months, Gord getting on with whatever it was he did in his life while I got on with doing whatever it was I did in mine (selling sandwiches and weed mostly, but not at the same time). Then, in early 2009, disaster struck when I found myself back in Craiginches once more, this time for getting caught with a couple of kilos of weed. (I was also still selling sandwiches at that point, but for some reason the police didn’t seem as interested in those. Maybe if they had been doughnuts it would have been a different matter.) Sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, I served eight months before being released in late August on a tag. Upon my release, I set about publishing the blogs I had written during my second spell inside. Soon afterward, I received the following email:

Kai, I don't know if you remember me, I was the guy who you refused a hand up from last time you got out. What the hell has happened to you this time? Sadly, I'm no longer working for the same company, and presently unable to make a simillar offer, but any way I can, I will help. I can point you in the right direction, of people to speak to etc, and after 25 years in the Oil Ind. I kinda know my way around. Not to be condescending, but with your imagination and flair for writing, you would be an asset to any company......
Feel free to drop me a line, and like I said I will do anything I can to help.

Regards
Gord

The Trash Whore Diaries were back, and so was Gord, my faceless personal adviser whose advice to date I had lamentably elected not to heed. We began corresponding again, and this time got as far as exchanging fone numbers. Our slow-burning relationship was now starting to hot up. After reading my blog of February 25th 2009 (published on 27th September), Gordon emailed me the following message, starting with a quote from yours truly:

Never pick a fight with anyone uglier than you – they’ve got less to lose. Looking at the scarred and stitched up faces around me, that precludes pretty much everyone.
Kai, Absolute quality.....
I used to go to college in Glasgow, (Well Paisley actually, Glasgow without the nice bits) and the only time I got into a fight was on the underground, across the road from my flat in Cessnock. I grabbed a Stanley knife off a wee tit, and fired him out the doors just as they were closing. It wasn't until the guard came along to ask what happened that I looked at it to see that there were two blades in it, flat sides together, cutting edges apart.... Ehhh??
"It's so's (sic) they cannae stitch ye back up man, better geez it here....."
Loved the coincedence that whilst you were writing that, I was, on the same day;
A) Opening my Birthday cards,
B) Enjoying being told I was unemployed for the first time in over 20 years..
C) Having my first alchoholic drink in over a year....
D) Telling my wife about B) above......
These all happened over the course of less than an hour.... and it wasn't even 10 o'clock......

It was becoming evident that Gordon and I both had problems of our own to deal with, some of which were self-inflicted (prison; drinking), others less so, such as being unemployed and, well, being unemployed. A few days later, during one of our exchanges, Gordon opined the following:

Kai,
Having read the most recent two of your blogs.....
Can I just say.... YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT!!!
A very erudite, intelligent and articulate idiot, but an idiot none the less....
As someone who can no longer stand being stuck in a steel box for two weeks at a time, deprived of everything that I love, how could you possibly be so stupid as to find yourself locked up in that shithole again..... At least I could throw a sicky and get flown back to the beach.
Now I really want to meet you, if only to slap some sense into you, because I know that there is a very clever person inside there somewhere........ Deeply inside....
I'm hoping that the story of your most recent arrest is purely just good story telling, because, I just sat reading that shaking my head, and thinking, "why am I still communicating with this waste of a good skin?"
BTW.... The "Pigs - Bacon - Filth - " are only doing a job. Neither you nor I would do it for the same money... (And trust me, my run ins with Scotland's finest doughnut munchers have not been very pretty.....)
And like yourself, I deserved everything I got.
Kai,
Just read your latest, and as you suggested "last" ever episode of the TWDs]
There is just one thing I don't understand.
If you hate this way of life..... STOP FUCKING DOING IT.
Nice to talk to you on the phone today, hope I came across well, but you sounded like a startled schoolchild.
I just feel I should take you under my protective wing......
And beat the 17 colours of stupidity out of you. (And there are precisely 17, I Googled it)
You don't think that selling, or using controlled substances is bad......
I don't think that doing 130 MPH on a Honda Blackbird up the Blackburn straight is bad........ I could have gone another 50 faster.....
But sometimes you meet people who do...
(Driving a Volvo 440 with lights hidden behind the grill.......)
Who then ask the unanswerable question.
"Do you know how fast you were going?"
Yes.... "that's intentional then ........ "
No... "Ah... driving without due care..."
Kai, we know the rules and sometimes we choose to ignore them.....
But please don't be angry about being caught.
Thankfully, I have only ever spent one night in the Travel Lodgewalk with the glass brick windows, and that even was for something I didn't do....
My mate and I were in a bar in Windmill Brae, (Peaches I think it was called back then Bugsy's now) and went for a hit and a miss before the walk home.......
"What's that hole cut in the ceiling?"
Dont know, but I bet there's a camera behind it....
I pushed aside the mirror tile and sure enough there was a camera.....
Ripped it out, and left it hanging by the wire.....
Weirdos.... cameras above the urinals..... Tsk.
Got outside, and my pal remembered he'd left his fags and Zippo on the table.....
He came back out with a suspicious lump in his coat...
"What have you done?"
Nothin' don't worry about it....
We both went offshore the following morning, and two days after we got back died in a stupid parachute accident.... (Please don't ask, there was a Toyota Supra, a towbar towrope and an airport runway involved)
After his funeral, I went back to the place we last had a pint, to sort of do a kind of "Raise a glass mate" kind of thing.....
I should have suspected something was up when the barmanager said "nah, you're okay mate, you're getting this from me"
I turned round, and one of the shaved gorillas in a suit was standing by my left shoulder...
Fuck...............
I looked at the barmaid, and she just shook her head......

Even then I was impressed by how quickly two members of Grumpian's finest managed to get from all of 25 feet across the road....
"Come with us son, we've got a something to show you"
A video of my big face reaching up to the lens of a camera 2 seconds before the picture became white noise....
Bollocks....., here comes Miranda........
"You have the right to remain silent, but anything you do say will be taken down and may be used in evidence against you in a court of law"
Do you understand?
......yes.....
Bet you know that feeling!

Not long after, in October of last year, I finally met up with Gordon for the first – and alas only – time. I had caught the train into Aberdeen to go job hunting; he had driven in from Westhill to sign on. Having been seriously injured in a car accident a year earlier, Gordon was still requiring physio for his damaged back. He picked me up near the station in his 4x4 and drove me past his house in Westhill, where we stopped by his house to enable his over-zealous dog to greet me like a long lost bone. During the course of the couple of hours we spent together, I got to know a man who was as decent, kind and humorous as his emails had suggested. Gordon then drove me out to the nursery for me to pick up my daughter and we parted. Later that week, he emailed me:

T'was a pleasure meeting you the other day Kai, one of the most strange, interesting, bizarre, funny, mornings of my life.
You must be wondering what my motives for meeting you were, and to be honest, so am I, but basically boils down to two things. (I think)
1) Whether you were actually as smart as I thought you were;
or
2) You were a keyboard hero, who in fact, behind the online personna, and in real life, was a total hoser.
Can I just say you fell in to category 1
(But wash your fucking hair now and again, hippy!!!)
Thouroghly enjoyed the few hours, and hope we can do it again sometime......
(And having been to my home, in my wife's car, been raped by my dogs, I hope you feel a little less nervous of me now....)

A month or so later, I received another, more abrupt email from Gordon that read as follows:

Kai,
How are you getting on?
Hope it's better than me...
After months of asking, I've just been informed that I have a fracutered spine...
Life's great....

That was the last I ever heard from Gordon. Ten days ago, he died in his sleep at the age of 43.

Today I attended the funeral service of a man I only once met, and yet who it feel like I’ve always known. I know it’s only words on a page, but I figured a tribute to Big Gord was the least he deserved. After reading them for so long, it only seems right that his last role in the Trash Whore Diaries should be a starring one.

As I wind this rambling eulogy up, I find myself thinking back to the email I quoted earlier, in which Gordon recalled:

We both went offshore the following morning, and two days after we got back he died in a stupid parachute accident.... (Please don't ask, there was a Toyota Supra, a towbar towrope and an airport runway involved) After his funeral, I went back to the place we last had a pint, to sort of do a kind of "Raise a glass mate" kind of thing.....

I never did get the chance to have a first – or a last – pint with Gordon, so instead I’m going to the Justice Mill tomorrow, the pub we had initially planned to meet at, to raise a glass to Gordon’s memory. It's not much, but it's the best I can do.

RIP Gordon, you were one of a kind.

2009-10-13T23:15:00.001Z

'I did not have sex with that woman.'
I've had cause to issue that denial a few times before – we all have – not in reference to Monica Lewinsky necessarily, but certainly in denial of something we shouldn't have done with someone. Call it a little white lie; call it a big black lie; call it being economical with the truth, either way, rightly or wrongly, it's not entirely honest. At what point does equivocality turn into mendacity, sophistry into surreptitiousness? I am wondering this not because I have something to confess to my girlfriend (I didn't have sex with that woman, and she didn't suck me off either, in spite of my impassioned pleas for her to gobble my fat cigar), but because I have something to confess to my prospective new employers – or do I?
As some of you may know, I am a convicted criminal. A serially convicted criminal. Thus far in life, I have committed half a dozen offences for which I have been prosecuted, another 10,000 if you include every drug deal I've ever done, plus that time I thought it would be a laugh to kidnap Madaleine McCann until I sobered up and realised I'd forgotten where I put her. Although an inbred handful of offences isn't that many compared to my erstwhile colleagues, some of whom are into three figures, it's still probably six more than you've got. Indeed, if you wanted to be really harsh and write out my convictions in large letters using a thick black marker, you could probably go so far as to say I've got a charge sheet the length of my arm. There's the one for selling cannabis dating from 2005, and then the one for selling herbal cannabis in 2005. Getting caught twice in one year – how bad at dealing was I? Well, not quite that bad actually. The seemingly separate offences were actually the same crime listed twice; for some reason the filth saw fit to differentiate between herbal cannabis (weed to you or I) and cannabis (hash to you or I). Just as well they didn't sub-divide it any further or I'd also have convictions for selling red seal, pollen, white widow, sticky black, orange bud and purple haze.
Nestling snugly on my charge sheet with the foregoing crime(s) is a piffling possession charge for 0.1 grams of coke that the PF couldn't even put a value on, but could still prosecute me for. And then there's the additional offences that would show up on an enhanced disclosure, such as the £75 fixed penalty for getting caught with £75 worth of weed, and as for the driving convictions, well, let's not even go there. It would be fair to assume that there's not much chance of me becoming a Scout leader any time soon. If I want to molest young boys, it looks like I'll have to join the priesthood instead. They don't require full disclosure of anything, except to God, and he already knows that I'm a sick bastard.
Although none of my crimes are for offences that I consider to be offensive (in my warped mind, weed dealers are performing an essential public service by helping people chill out after a stressful week at work and should be knighted, not incarcerated), prospective employers may not be so kindly disposed to my selfless services to relaxation, and may even be so indisposed as to refuse me a job. No job equals no money, and no money equals going back to doing what I do best/worst, which invariably leads to going back inside and having to write more blogs about how no one will give me a job because I'm a multiply convicted drug dealer blah blah, and thus the vicious circle continues ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
How do I break this cycle of re-offending, of recidivism, or endless rejections from employers who can't see past my charge sheet? To them, I am essentially Adolf Hitler: yes, I may have some inspirational qualities, but no one is going to acknowledge them so long as they continue to be blinded by my own personal Holocaust that is to be known as an ex-dealer.
Of course one solution – one Final Solution – to this problem is to go down the Holocaust denial route: Convicted criminal? Who are you calling a convicted criminal? No boss, I'm a good boy, which is why there are no crimes listed in the Criminal Convictions section on my job application. I'm not averse to the odd lie – hell, the perjury conviction bundled in with all my drug convictions is testament to that – but in an ideal world, I'd like to be straight with people. I'd like to be able to look them in the eye and say 'My name is Kai, I'm an ex-dealer and I've spent two years of my life in prison plus another two on bail or on a curfew. Oh, and I like it when my girlfriend tickles my balls when we're fucking but if you give me this job I promise I'll be the best damn worker you've ever had, and moreover I'll never speak of my sexual predilections again.'
If the world we live in was like that depicted in the current Ricky Gervais film, The Invention Of Lying, perhaps I'd be able to get away with telling the truth. As it is, we inhabit a world of half-truths and white lies, of spin and distortion, of telling people what we think they want to hear instead of what we think. And so it is that I am supposed to pretend that I think drug-dealing is wrong, and that decent upright people like yourself don't like to get a little bit fucked up on a weekend. No, I'm supposed to tick the box that says Criminal Convictions and declare them in full and watch as someone with half my ability and half my personality gets the job instead, because my previous penchant for selling weed obviously impacts on my ability to sell tins of beans.
Of course, I appreciate that there is a recession on and nice guys who've never broken a law in their lives can't even find a job, so I should stop whining about my plight. The thing is, I'm not asking for special treatment; just a chance. When even bottom of the barrel employers won't take me on, the sort whose workforce is made up of incontinent geriatrics and the mentally handicapped (yes Asda and B&Q, I'm talking to you), what hope is there? And all the while, I know that I could make one phone call and be on my feet again with enough product to have the entire country calling in sick on Monday.
If lying on a job application to secure gainful employment would enable me to avoid relapsing into the only job I know, would that lie be justifiable, to serve the greater good? It's like that conundrum where a gunman takes your family hostage and orders you to fuck your mum or he'll shoot you all. (I often have that fantasy, though quite what it's got to do with this blog, I don't know.) Am I speaking any sense here, or am I just spouting disingenuous piffle, the equivalent of explaining that you were muffing a skank down the back stairs of Exodus so as to improve your cunnilingus technique and thus better pleasure your own girlfriend?
One place in which I have been economical with the truth – as we are entitled to be – is on my CV. This week I drew up a curriculum vitae that was probably more honest than most. It contained no lies, no embellishments and no fictitious qualifications. The only point at which the facts met with a concave mirror was when it came to explaining my whereabouts for the majority of 2009. After some consideration, I elected for the following summation: 'Earlier this year, I quit my job in order to travel the world and to devote time to writing a novel, a project I am on the verge of completing.' I didn't bother explaining that by 'the world' I meant the route between Craiginches and the Sheriff Court, but the statement was essentially true. When I phoned Careers Scotland to check that they'd received the CV I'd emailed them, the woman told me it was one of the best written CVs she'd ever seen and that I sounded like an interesting character to work with.
'Is this you just back from your travels then?' she asked breezily. At that point I broke down and confessed that the majority of my travels this year had taken place inside my 6 ft x 12ft cell.
When I was released from prison in 2006, I was frank about my convictions on every job I applied for, not out of an overriding obligation to tell the truth, but as an experiment to prove to myself that no one would have me. And I was right of course, and thus after a while I went back to working for myself, the only employer who doesn't discriminate against me. This time round, I've tried lying on a few job applications, also as an experiment to see if it will get me any further. It's what my fellow convicts – the few who have jobs – do, and they swear that no one ever checks up. Their employers may be gullible, but I imagine even they must get suspicious when their staff keep foning in sick for 12 months at a time. Thus far, lying on applications has gotten me as far as my previous post-prison experiment of telling the truth has – nowhere.
One of the other problems I face in getting a job is that were any prospective employer to Google my name, they would probably be brought straight to this page, and thus learn that not only do I have multiple convictions, but I lied on my job application and – most heinously of all – I like having my balls tickled during sex. They would also know that this lascivious, duplicitous reprobate has the potential to become the most eager, hard-working, lucid and erudite employee they have taken on, a credit to the company and to themselves. But what image do you think will be in their heads when they navigate away from The Trash Whore Diaries – me beaming as my Employee of the Month foto is taken, or me sniffing coke off my girlfriend's tits while screaming 'Oh that's it baby, tickle those cojones, tickle 'em real good!'
I guess, just as with Bill Clinton and all the other people out there who've ever found themselves in a sticky situation, I have only myself to blame. And if, when I tire of banging my head against brick walls, I go back to the job I know and love and get caught once more, I will also have only myself to blame. I like writing but I don't want to write about prison life any more. I like working but I don't want to work for anyone who is too prejudiced to give me a job anyway, so as Steve Stifler would say, 'Fuck those fuckers.'
I guess there's a third option that I have yet to explore: remain on the dole for the next seven years, by which time my convictions will have expired and I will no longer have to scribble porkies on job applications in a vain attempt to convince employers that I am the decent person that I actually am. Then there'll just be the small matter of explaining away the seven-year gap in my employment history. For now, while I ponder whether to lie or not to lie, to deal or not to deal, I will continue with my writing therapy, the blogging equivalent of attending Narcotics Anonymous and uttering the words 'My name is Kai and I'm an ex-drug dealer. I've been out of the game for 12 months now and god, I miss that bitch.'

2009-10-10T19:06:00.001Z

Complete the formula: ___________ + woman = _________.
Woman + woman = good time? Woman + dog = even better time?
Perhaps, but the truth is, there is no right answer because it's not an equation – it's a statement: Plus woman. Take a normal, healthy member of the female species, add on another eight stone of excess blubber and what do you get? Plus woman. I made this startling discovery while in TK Maxx, the Wal-Mart of discount designer stores. I shan't go into my reasons for being in such an odious emporium, but I'd like to state for my girlfriend's benefit that I wasn't trying to source her Christmas present on the cheap. Not in there, and certainly not in the Plus section. I might be on Jobseeker's Allowance, but I'd rather resort to selling drugs to avoid having to gift wrap something from TK Maxx, and not just because I enjoy selling drugs.
I was always taught at school that the opposite of plus was minus, but in TK Maxx it's small. Small woman then medium woman then plus woman. Why plus? Why not large or humongous or grossly obese? Why not so-fucking-fat-the-rail-is-bending-under-the-weight-of-their-oversized-clothes? There's nothing super about being supersized and there are no plus points to being plus. Did it ever occur to anyone that perhaps there wouldn't be such an obesity epidemic in this country if we had the balls to tell it like it is; a spade a spade, a hoe a hoe and a fat fucking ho a fat fucking ho. Instead we deal in neutered, politically correct euphemisms like 'plus' or 'extra'. Such 'voluptuous' 'bubbly' people even get their own clothing catalogues with names like 'Just Be', an abbreviation, presumably, of Just Be A Big Fucking Heifer If You Like Then And See How Happy You Are Without Resorting To Comfort Eating. It may seem like I'm having a go at fat people because they're an easy target – a target that's impossible to miss in fact, like firing a tranquilliser dart into an elephant's arse at three paces – but I'm not the only one. 'I don't think there's enough stigma,' noted Ricky Gervais in a rare moment of solemnity. 'I laugh about being fat but I should be ashamed.' Even the fully formed members of the fat club are in agreement with me on this one it would seem.
Of course, if I were obese, I must concede that I would not be penning this impassioned piece. No, I'd probably be going for my fourth plateful at Jimmy Chung's right now, just as if I were black I'd be liberally dropping the nigga word into every sentence. But I'm not – fat or black – and thus I find myself railing against rotundness whilst double-checking that there are no African-Americans in the room before singing along to 2Pac's 'Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z' in an attempt at making me feel marginally less white.
I am currently a svelte 11½ stone, my girlfriend an even svelter 7½. Combined, we still weigh four stone less than my last cellmate. No prizes for guessing who slept on the top bunk. With the only fat component my girlfriend and I have between us consisting of my fat cock, weight isn't an issue that should be concerning us. And yet everywhere we've gone this week, Fat People have been following us. It's like we've been under surveillance by the Fat Police, although not very covert surveillance, admittedly. We walk into Starbucks and there is an enormous (and I mean enormous, not fat) bitch wedged into one of the armchairs next to us. Pizza Express? Some bingo-winged blubber-bum enveloping a chair at the adjacent table. The preponderance of lard has the effect of making me want to order a skinny latte or a healthy salad, but why? I'm not the one who needs to count my calories, and I'm certainly not gonna attempt to count theirs – not without an adding machine anyway.
The worst offender to insult my thin fascist ideals was encountered in the Job Centre. I might be unemployed, but we all have jobs to do in this world. She had a job getting into her chair while I had a job not collapsing on the floor in spasms of laughter. After spending eight months inside this year, I emerged into the free world to discover that not a whole lot had changed. The earth still orbited the sun, the Aberdeen team still couldn't score and Jordan was still regularly swallowing her bodyweight in sperm. The only thing that does seem to have changed during my hiatus is the fat quota – now there's more of it on everyone. Obesity is insidious. No one wakes up to discover that they've gained six stone in their sleep and their PJs now resemble cycling shorts. We were all thin once. A few of us still are. I might be at the wrong end of my twenties; I might even have a few grey hairs (but I wouldn't know as I shave my balls religiously to prevent the horror of ever having to find out), but at least I've still got my thinness. Mind you, if you'd spent the last eight months subsisting on Rice Crispies and whiling away your evenings doing sit-ups because there was nothing else to do, you probably wouldn't be looking so bad either.
Scientists have now pioneered a new type of surgery that takes all the excess fat from female hips and thighs and inserts it where it's needed most – the breasts. It sounds like a great idea in theory, but in practice if you tried that with some of the plus women I've seen lately, they'd end up with double Z-cups, tits that spanned time zones. There's stacked, and then there's top-heavy. All women would like to have bigger breasts, but not at the expense of having to wear a rucksack full of bricks to prevent themselves from toppling over.
You know, I could probably continue blogging in this vein for another 500 words, dropping in more fattist jokes about the fattest members of society, and yeah you might laugh as you read them, but what's the point? It's not you I'm addressing, it's you – yeah you, shovelling pizza into your fat face like an anaconda swallowing a stray African child. It's you I want to make laugh. I want to make you laugh so hard you puke; puke up all that calorific dough and cheese, laugh so hard you spew yourself bulimic. Perhaps then the next time I go for a Starbucks or Pizza Express, I'll be able to enjoy my victuals without having my view obscured or my conscience troubled by the thought that one day that might be me standing up to pay my bill and taking the chair with me.
Two minuses might make a plus, but two pluses certainly don't make a minus, no matter what TK Maxx might assert to the contrary. Or to put it in formulaic terms, plus woman plus plus woman = 2plus woman = too much woman by far.

2009-10-06T17:51:00.003Z

This is the last prison blog you're ever ever gonna have to endure from me. No, really - don't roll your eyes. I'm serious about this, cos god forbid I should ever return to that place, there's no danger I'm documenting it again. If that happens, the only thing I'll be writing is a suicide note. Having perserved with The Trash Whore Diaries: The Prison Years for as long as I have, you're probably equally sick of Craiginches, even though you've never set foot in that cursed place. Although I was in prison until September, I stopped blogging about it in March, partly because I was bored of writing about prison life, and partly because I decided to focus my efforts on writing a novel instead, a project I am still working on. Assuming I can get a job and stay out of that big bad place on the hill, my book should be finished by Christmas. Then I guess I'll start looking for someone to take pity on me and publish it. In the meantime, I'll keep updating The Trash Whore Diaries a couple of times a week, blogging about everything and nothing, the way I tend to. If I stop updating, it's either because I've started dealing again or gone back inside. There, that should make the job of the CID a whole lot easier; you don't even need to leave your desks to keep an eye on me. Just keep munching on those Krispy Kremes and I'll do your job for you, just as I did back in January when I led you straight to my big bag of weed.

Although I'm not the most objective person to assess whether the words you're about to read are any good or not, I've saved this blog till last as it's my favourite prison one of all. If you don't know what it's like to be inside after reading this, you never will, short of taking that trip o'er the water to Craigie yourself.

Alright, enough preamble: Take a deep breath - but don't hold it - and enjoy the last and longest prison blog ever. Ever.

Written on: Tuesday 3rd March 2009

Thump. Thump. Thump. The dull rhythmical noise resounds around the hall. I look at the clock on the BBC News channel. 7:30 am. What is this idiot doing thumping his door so early in the morning? I don’t have to wait long to find out.

‘Boss! Boss! I need my methadone!’ it shouts.

Thump. Thump. Thump. 7:30 is the time when meds are served up in American jails, resulting in ‘7:30’ becoming a euphemism for insanity; ‘Stay away from that guy – he’s a 7:30.’ In Craiginches, the medication is served half an hour later. This guy isn’t a 7:30 - he’s an 8:00. Thump. Thump. Thump. The rest of the hall is stirring unhappily. It is bad enough waking to the realisation that you’re in jail without this migraine-inducing racket to contend with.

‘Shut the fuck up or I’ll fucking do ya!’ shouts someone commendably, issuing the standard jail threat for such situations. We thump our way through to eight when the doors are opened and the cons spill out into the hallway. The junkie dashes off to the front of the meth queue to take up his grievance with the nurse. The thumping might have stopped but another sound swiftly takes its place in assailing my senses, a single word that every prisoner dreads to hear.
‘Court’ says the screw curtly, sticking his head around my door. Court? Oh fuck. Prison is bad, but court? Court should be a joyous occasion, the opportunity to stand before one’s peers and clear one’s name of the unfounded allegations that have despoiled it. Court is where heavenly utterances such as ‘Not guilty’ and ‘Bail granted’ ring out; it is the place where men are set free to skip their way out of the dock and pull cartwheels along the corridors of justice. Not this court. This is the Sheriff Court, the court of broken dreams and punitive injustice. It is the place where hopes are dashed, families are separated and men are broken, condemned and set about by other broken condemned men.
I have only been in jail for six weeks but already I have lost count of the number of times I have been hauled up in court, only one of which was for the offence I am currently remanded for (being caught in possession of a rather large bag of weed). Once they have you under lock and key, the powers-that-be are prone to dredge up every other minor indiscretion, including non-payment of parking tickets and failure to put the toilet seat down after peeing. It is less about bringing an already condemned man to justice and more about administering a few gratuitous kicks to said man now that he is on his knees and begging for mercy. I have already been in court three times in as many weeks for the heinous crime of being caught in possession of 0.18 of a gram of cocaine some ten months previously, a quantity described by the PF as having ‘a nominal street value’. (I couldn’t bring myself to tell the justiciary that I wipe bigger amounts off my kitchen worktop the morning after a fun-filled nite before. But then they wouldn’t understand. After all, they work for a government that sincerely believes a gram of cocaine can yield as much as 50 lines. 50? They’re having a fucking giraffe. I make it two, and stingy ones at that.) After having the temerity to disport myself in a public place while in possession of microscopic quantities of fun dust, I remained at large for a further nine months. During that time, the police could have come and charged me, but they elected not to. Perhaps, understandably, because they had better things to do with their time, like snort all the drugs they'd seized and circle-jerk in the Masonic Lodge. Now that I am remanded in custody however, I am a sitting duck, on call 24/7 to boost their clear-up rate. It is not uncommon for offenders, once in prison, to be charged for additional analogous offences, even though the police know they were committed by someone else.

‘Got him in for HBs? Might as well tack on another dozen housebreakings while he’s here.’

Now that I am in jail, it is not just the police who are taking my previous misdemeanours seriously. The good sheriff of Aberdeen is also of the opinion that my crimes are of the gravest nature possible. So grave in fact that he has decided to refer the matter to the High Court that dealt out my three-year sentence for perjury in 20005 in the hope that they will recall me to serve the remainder of that term. (Although I was released from prison in 2006, technically I was still four months shy of completing my three-year sentence in 2008, when that whopping 0.18 of a gram weighed me down and rendered me incapable of running from the police.)

Today isn’t about the quark-sized sprinkling of coke however. Today is about an even more serious offence – failure to pay a speeding ticket. For this crime, I must be hauled before the District Court where the judge will hand me a £150 fine, converted to seven days imprisonment because I am already in prison and thus unable to pay it. The seven days run concurrently to the remand I am already serving, meaning that I will not even receive any additional time. The cost to the oft-cited taxpayer of all this hullabaloo? Thousands of pounds, including the fees for court officials, solicitors, judges and the Reliance turnkeys who have to transfer me back and forth to Craiginches every time the case is called. The cost to me? Fuck all, apart from another wasted day. Yes, even in prison it is possible to waste a day that could have been spent more productively, sleeping or wanking.

The holding cells within the Sheriff Courthouse are truly awful, even by prison standards. I know them affectionately as Hell On Earth. We have spent so long in each other’s company that we are on first name terms.

‘Hey Hell, how’s it hanging?’

‘Ah, back again Kai. What for this time?’

‘I’m fucked if I know, Hell.’

The moniker is appropriate, for it is quite possible that Satan’s spawn were conceived within one of these foetid pens. Indeed, look closely and you can still see traces of his iniquitous DNA splashed across the concrete floor. Or is it the saliva that has been spat out by a million chain-smoking convicts? It’s hard to tell. Either way, I know I’m going to heaven when I die because I’ve already spent eternity in this earthly hell. In the corners of each cursed cell, where the grimy walls meet the grimy floor, there are mounds of accumulated dirt – out of reach of the floor-scrubbing machines – laced with the excretions of every man every to have darkened their steel doors.
I alight in Hell at 8am. By lunchtime, thanks to the efforts of eight perma-smoking, perma-spitting men, the floor has assumed the consistency of a skating rink. Hell has frozen over. Bored YOs slide from one side to the other, grinding the saliva into the floor with their trainers. This claustrophobic coffin contains more germs than a chicken-pox party and is laced with the stale air of 100 long-haul flights. These horrid surroundings bring out the worst in the horrors who inhabit them, men who are not known for exhibiting their best qualities at the best of times. In the holding cells, it is the worst of times, it is always the worst of times. Countless years of countless lives have been wasted within these damp walls; wasted in waiting to be hauled up in court for spurious offences and then hauled back down to wait some more, and wasted in the years of punitive sentences handed down by grouchy judges, slapping on an extra year because that’s how long they spent queuing at the Haudagain roundabout on the way to work. In prison, inmates take reasonable care of their cells, sweeping and mopping them out. The holding cells make prison seem like a luxury resort however. The men caged inside them are transient, passing through on their way to marginally better things, and couldn’t care less about a building whose masters couldn’t give a damn about them. The detainees save their worst behaviour for this, the worst of all supposedly civilised establishments. Upstairs is all red carpets and elaborately-carved coats of arms; downstairs, out of sight, it’s Hell On Earth. Bored prisoners burn their nicknames onto the ceiling with lighters (‘Skosha’, ‘Toshy’, ‘Jamie 4 Stacy’), they vandalise the CCTV camera, they smear their lunch across the walls, they chase gear and puke all over the floor and they smash the supposedly unsmashable window in the legal representatives room. They verbally and physically abuse the Reliance guards, hurling insults, hot tea and cups of urine. They fight in court; with the turnkeys, with their co-accused in the dock and with the police trying to prevent them from receiving parcels from their mates in the public gallery.
Further along the hallway from my designated dungeon du jour, there comes the incessant banging and shrieking of the women, trapped inside their very own concrete cell. They are, to a skank, junkies and whores. Rattling from heroin withdrawal, they take to rattling their door in a vain attempt to inveigle the turnkeys into supplying them with medication. The only attention they can attract however comes from the bored and horny men in the cell across the hallway. These sex-starved reprobates encourage the whores to flash their tits through the peephole, promising snout [tobacco] in return. When the emaciated breasts are proffered to the peephole to sate each gender’s respective cravings, the promised snout then fails to materialise. Bumped again.
I could tell a million stories about the seemingly million-strong army of men I have shared cell number eight with. Run a swab across the clammy, condensation-laced walls and you’d probably get a match for every suspect on the national crime database. Each one is a walking, gouching tragi-comedy. If these walls had ears, they’d have long since been plugged up with dowts and bodily excretions. With the aid of an industrial-sized box of cotton buds, however, they’d have been privy to some extraordinary confessions. There is the guy who removes his t-shirt to reveal the tattoo that stretches across his back – LeeAnne. Two weeks after the ink had dried, they broke off their engagement when he found out that LeeAnne had been shagging his best mate. The relationship might be over, but the scars will remain forever. His tat’s too large for a cover-up; the only hope is to find another girl called LeeAnne and settle down with her. And possibly to ditch the best mate too, if he wants to avoid history repeating itself. There is the junkie who is sat in the corner of the cell snoring. He is off his face on methadone and is looking forward to going to jail to remove the bag of smack he stuffed up his arse before attending court. I had hitherto considered it impossible to fall asleep on the hard bench seat, but today I have learned that where there’s a will to imbibe enough opiates, there’s a way to lapse into a coma. There is the hyperactive YO, charged with 200 separate offences, mostly involving theft of cars, motorbikes and anything else that can be hot-wired. The charges fall broadly under the category of theft, although ‘charged with being a little shit’ would be a more appropriate summation. In court, he talks back to the judge, calls the police witnesses grasses and loudly acknowledges his mates in the public gallery, much to the chagrin of the sheriff. The sheriffs, who hate every ne’er-do-well who passes in front of them, reserve particular loathing for this young offender. This may have something to do with the fact that a few months previously, he stole one of the sheriff’s cars, drove it to Perth and flogged it for drug money. Also joining this merry band of renegades in holding cell number eight is the alkie who stopped necking tins of special brew, not to cut down on his drinking, but because his body has developed an immunity to them. Every day he wakes up with the shakes and by lunchtime has succeeded in shaking them away with the aid of a litre of vodka. To pay for his habit, he and his mate do a nice line in stolen vehicles. Using a pick-up truck, they drive about looking for cars to tow away for scrap. Their selection criteria are remarkably relaxed; if it’s parked on the street and there’s no one about, it’s there for the taking. Smash the window, remove the handbrake and hitch it up. Once furnished with the £60 that each vehicle brings, it’s back to the offie again. The alkie also does a nice sideline in witness intimidation, having gotten off with eight attempted murders to date. Today, this motley crew of alkies, junkies and thieving YO’s are supplemented by the obligatory Weegie, who’s in for ‘bottling some cunt’. The deed was performed, predictably, with a broken bottle of Buckfast in his local kebab house. After busting the man’s head open, the Weegie fled still clutching the weapon in one hand and his chicken pakora in the other. And finally, today’s cheery intake is completed by a mad old bastard who whiles away the hours pacing the cell and conversing with himself. He should clearly be in a mental institution, although given the number of loonies to have been temporarily binned in cell number eight, it is an asylum in all but name. The YO’s spend the next four hours teasing the old boy mercilessly, trying to convince him that he is off to Polmont Young Offenders’ Institution.
At I sit, head in hands, on the bum-numbing bench, hemmed in by bodies on both sides, I reach into my pocket and pull out a small speck of dirt. On closer inspection, it turns out to be a tiny crumb of weed. It was given to me in the holding cells some weeks previously by an inmate who was feeling unusually charitable as he had just been granted bail. The crumb had probably been wedged between his toes or worse, up his arse, but I was in no position to refuse his fragrant morsel. ‘Here, anyone fancy a joint?’ In that moment, I know how it must feel to be a genie, smug with the satisfaction that comes from seeing faces light up as prayers are answered. Unusually for a genie, I appear before the puff of smoke and have only the power to grant one wish, but once stoned, all other wishes will be swiftly forgotten about anyway. One of the Aladdins takes out his papers and quickly fashions a single-skinner. It is inhaled deeply and passed around. We spend the next hour giggling at the proclamations of the mad old head-case, who curiously hadn’t seemed that funny up until now.
‘Kai, pull your trousers up’ chides the Reliance guard escorting me along the subterranean corridors towards the bus that will transport me back to prison proper.

‘You pull them up,’ I reply. ‘My hands are kind of tied.’

I am double-cuffed, my hands bound together and then separately handcuffed to my designated prisoner escort. In the absence of a belt (prohibited lest I attempt to strangle myself or any one of my odious cellmates), my trousers are snaking slowly south.

‘Here, pull your trousers up!’ shouts a pig as I am marched past the adjoining reception area of Grampian Police’s custody cells.

‘I can't,’ I retort. ‘Besides, with an ass this beautiful, it would be a crime not to show it off.’

The filth return to their duties; detaining a forlorn man whose nose has been burst open, most likely by a well-placed porcine fist. He mops at his beak with blue roll as the blood seeps through.
Inside the Reliance van that will take me on the short journey back o’er the water, I undergo the usual de-cuffing procedure. First, the set of handcuffs shackling my wrists together are removed. Then I step into one of the booths while the turnkey I am attached to stands in the gangway and latches the door. It will now open only a few inches, just far enough for him to reach in and remove the final restraint. The door to my booth slams shut and is double-locked. If the holding cells are tiny, the booths on the bus are minute, each one no bigger than a toilet. My knees are crushed against the far wall and my lungs are filled with the scent of stale tobacco, vented by the previous inhabitant of this hobbit-sized hovel. If you suffer from claustrophobia, it is not a good place to be. And if you don’t, ditto. I peer through the scratched window, engraved with the sentiments of condemned convicts; ‘Nine moon for a poxy breach.’ [Nine months imprisonment for a poxy breach of probation.] The engine roars into life and the turnkey turns up the radio. As we crawl along Union Street in the rush hour traffic, a Transit van draws level at the lights. I press my face to the tinted glass window and smile at the female passenger who momentarily finds herself sat two feet away from me. She waves. Then the lights turn to green and we are off again on our separate journeys. The Reliance van rattles over the River Dee and the jail looms into view. As the shutters roll up and we enter the belly of the beast, Primal Scream sing us through the last leg of the journey. ‘Thieves keep thieving, dealers keep dealing, junkies keep scoring, whores keep whoring.’ The van shudders to a halt and, together with my fellow thieves, dealers and junkies, I alight once again, back where I started.

2009-10-02T22:52:00.007Z

Written on: Wednesday 21st January 2009

This is the first blog I penned upon my arrival in Craiginches this year. Now that you've read the tales of my first few months inside, it's time to go back to the start and describe the events that led to my incarceration there. Having written and typed this blog, I have vowed never to read it again, as the day it details was quite possibly the worst in my entire life. Nevertheless, hopefully you'll be able to read it and have a good laugh at my expense. With my reputed way with words, it should feel like you were there yourself, experiencing the action as it went down, the only difference being that you won't get a two-year prison sentence for your troubles.

'Alright mate, worra you in for?' enquires the Scouser, pushing his face against the peep-hole in the cell door.
'Con-sairn n' supply,' replies the Scouser on the other side of the steel divide.
'Wo' were you caught with?' asks the first Scouser in his sing-song refrain.
'Box an' a 'alf o limo,' [1.5kilos of cocaine] replies his fellow displaced scally.
It reads like something out of The Trash Whore Diaries: The Prison Years, only this isn't 2005. Four years have passed since my notorious prison blogs came to the attention of the police, the justiciary and the national media. I'm older and wiser now, and certainly not stupid enough to wind up in Craiginches again.
The two Mickey Mousers finish their conversation and the one locked inside the cell turns and grins to his pad-mate. 'You hear that? We can gerra fone off that lad for a monkey [£500]. Fucking boss lad!'
I nod. 'Nice one.'
Oh dear. I may indeed be older, but wiser? Wise up, you're having a giraffe. Where did it all go wrong (again)? Allow me to rewind one week and indulge you with a tale that includes all the essential elements of a ripping good yarn; big bags of weed, a perilous rope ladder descent and a pile of pigeon shit. It's like The Trash Whore Diaries never went away.
Thursday 15th January, 15:00. It is a typically dreich day in Aberdeen and the heavens are trying their hardest to hold off the inevitable downpour, like a kid bursting for the toilet who keeps crossing and uncrossing his legs. The skies might be grey but the sun is still shining in my world. Work is over and the only appointment in my otherwise empty schedule is dinner at 8:45 with my favourite girlfriend in The Silver Darling, my favourite restaurant. Speaking of favourites, in the oversized boutique bag clutched against my chest are two more of my favourite things: my latest purchase from my favourite clothes shop – a Giancarlo Rossi trenchcoat – and a big bag of weed. The weed, I should point out, was not purchased in the clothes shop, but from one of the many Vietnamese whose cannabis cultivation keeps me in such fine apparel. Upon reaching Chapel Street, I jump into a taxi and ask the driver to head to my mate's flat, whereupon I intend to dispense with £1000 worth of my Viet-Cong friend's green goodness. When I get to the flat however, my mate informs me that he doesn't have any scales suitable for weighing up a bar of weed. His only go up to 50grams, and to dispense a quarter of a kilo in such increments would take ages. It is here that I make the first of what will prove to be several fateful decisions, culminating in my arrest, eight hours hence.
'Let's just go to mine and weigh it,' I suggest. 'I've got proper digis there.'
My mate agrees and we set off to my flat nearby to take care of business. Ten minutes later, the deal is done and I show my mate out, locking the door behind him. I am just about to pack away my shit and stash it when there is a knock at the door and I hear the two words that every drug dealer fears: 'Grampian Police!'
I freeze. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Had they chosen any other moment in which to come calling, I would have answered the door with a smile and obsequiously enquired as to how I could be of assistance. But right now, with ten grand's worth of Class B drugs sitting on my kitchen counter, not to mention digis, baggies and a potent odour of eau d'marijuana wafting through the flat? No danger. I can only assume that the scum must have detained my mate leaving my flat with the bar on him, and now they've come to claim the rest of the two kilos. Fearing that my door is about to be put in by the drugs squad, I do the only thing that any quick-thinking dealer in my situation would do: I grab my shit and lob it out the bathroom window. Weed, baggies, scales; the lot. Even my mobi goes plummeting two storeys to its death. If the flat's about to get busted, I'm not taking any chances.
With the premises purged of all incriminating items, the only thing left to do is sit and wait. Five minutes pass and I hear nothing. I put my eye to the spyhole but there appear to be none of Grampian Police's unfinest clogging up my stairwell. They must be waiting for me downstairs, I reason. Well, if they want a piece of me, they might as well have me now. Waiting will only prolong the inevitable and besides, with my handset scattered to the four winds, it's not as if I can call my mate to determine whether or not he has been lifted. I cautiously make my way downstairs and open the communal door a crack. There are no meat wagons, squad cars or Ford Focuses parked outside. No uniforms wielding battering rams and no balding men in suits whispering into walkie-talkies. The coast appears to be clear. I make a break for it, and set off at a brisk pace to my mate's flat. If he's made it back to his without being intercepted by the filth then perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps the police were calling round to attend to an entirely unrelated matter. If that is the case then the good news is it looks like I'll live to fight another day. The bad news is I've needlessly chucked ten large of product into the close behind my flat. Still, the weed can be recovered. First though, I need to find out what exactly has just happened.
My mate looks surprised to see me. He is sitting in his flat calmly smoking a joint and I am not quite sure how to explain my sudden reappearance.
'Um, see when you were leaving my flat just now, did you see any pigs hovering about outside the building?'
My mate shakes his head. 'No, nothing like that at all.'
I briefly explain to him what's just happened, without divulging the bit about me jettisoning all my G. The last thing I want is for anyone to know that there's a veritable gold mine waiting to be discovered behind my flat. I take the joint proffered to me and inhale.
My mate frowns, momentarily lost in thought, and strokes his chin. 'The only thing I did see when I left your flat was [X] pulling up outside in his girlfriend's car and going up the stairs.'
X is an acquaintance of mine and fellow dealer who has been crashing at my flat for the past few weeks. If the police were nowhere to be seen at the time of the incident and X was the only person in the vicinity, it can only mean one thing – it must have been he who uttered that fateful shout. No doubt he meant it as a joke, but nevertheless, as a fellow disciple of the game he should have known better and, as a supposed mate, he has needlessly landed me in the shit, quite literally as I am soon to find out.
I return to the scene of the crime and try to figure out what to do next. The good news is that my weed has landed in an inaccessible close, hemmed in on all sides by lofty granite walls. No one is getting in there easily to retrieve my sticky green. The bad news is that includes me. My mood is rapidly starting to assume the same complexion as the darkening sky.
I am in a bind, but I know this problem can be solved if I think it through logically. I need to get my precious cargo back, of that there is no doubt. Thankfully, due to the dinginess and inaccessibility of the close, neither my neighbours nor the police are aware of its current location. Unfortunately, due to the construction of the adjacent flats, I am unsure which of the surrounding buildings – if any – have back doors that exit onto the decaying close.
My first port of call is to an industrial premises two doors up from my flat. It is a sprawling warehouse that sells wholesale electrical goods.
'Excuse me,' I begin, 'I wonder if you can help me. I live just round the back of your premises and earlier I stupidly left my shopping bag on the open window ledge and it's blown into the close out the back. Is there a door in your warehouse that leads onto there?'
'I don't think so,' replies the boy, 'but we can have a look.'
I follow him up a staircase and along a metal gantry into the bowels of the warehouse. He stops at a rack of dusty shelves laden with light bulbs and ducks underneath. We squeeze ourselves into the tight space between shelf and wall and peer through the cobweb-festooned window. My destination, the cunting close, is visible but there is no way of getting to it from here. I dust myself down and exit the warehouse. Plan A might not have come to fruition but am not deterred and will plan my way from Alpha to Omega if that's what it takes to get my treasure back.
My next stop is the pub around the corner, my local, and the next most likely building to exit onto the close. I walk in and give the same spiel to the woman at the bar. To my delight, I learn that the pub does indeed have the door I am looking for. Unfortunately, the keys to it are held by the landlord, who won't be there until 11am the following morning. If I can hang tight until then, the weed will be returned to its rightful owner. The trouble is, I don't know if I can wait that long. It has started to rain and in the uncovered close, my weed is getting wetter by the second. Moreover, what's to stop the pub landlord from arriving early and deciding to inspect the contents of my goody-bag? The last thing I want is a bacon-scented welcoming committee waiting for me when I roll into the bar. I will resort to this option if I have to, but right now it's time to explore more immediate avenues of entry. I exit the bar and turn left onto the street adjacent to mine. I am pretty certain that the first block of flats here must also back onto this cursed close. All I need is to get my foot in the door. I try a few buzzers and after a while someone reluctantly lets me in. Inside the dimly-lit hallway I see exactly what I am looking for: a small door that undoubtedly leads onto the close. All I gotta do is open it and follow the yellow brick road. Unfortunately, it is bound with a chunky padlock. The only way that's coming off is with a crowbar. I jump in a taxi and head to B&Q. It's time to purchase a crowbar. While I'm there, I also acquire an icepick, for extra leverage if required, and a rope ladder in case I have to resort to Plan Z. I also pop past John Lewis and pick up a serrated knife. If I get into the close, I will need the knife to hack through the anti-pigeon netting that encloses the dank, cess-filled corner into which my personal supply of cannabis was hurled. It occurs to me that if I am interrupted while trying to force open a padlock in someone else's block of flats while armed with a crowbar, ice pick and bread knife, I will have some explaining to do. I buzz my way into the block again, only this time the occupants descend the stairs to determine exactly who the hell I am. I reel off the same story as before, and the couple eyeing me suspiciously appear to relax. Unfortunately, with them standing right in front of me, I can't exactly wap out the crowbar and start chipping away. I retreat to my flat and reluctantly begin to ponder Plan Z.
Plan Z is the most dangerous proposal of all. It involves hanging a rope ladder out the bathroom window and descending into the murky, pigeon-infested depths of hell. Upon opening the bathroom window and peering tentatively over the edge, one thing becomes immediately apparent: one rope ladder won't be enough. It's gonna take two of these babies tied together plus a whole lotta luck, bravery and stupidity to pull this one off. I've got the latter two in spades, but the luck? Only time will tell. First, I need to return to B&Q for another rope ladder and then I need to recruit a willing helper. A couple of hours later and I am back at the flat armed with everything I need for a quiet nite out, dangling from my bathroom window. By now the combined taxi and DIY bill has ran to £150, but if this works, it will all have been worth it. And if it doesn't work, well, I don't even wanna think about that right now.
After a couple of stiff drinks to quell the mounting sense of trepidation, I attach the two ladders and lower them slowly out the window. Combined, they stretch to 26 feet, but even that isn't long enough to reach the bottom of the scummy close. Still, it looks close enough and I'll mind the gap when – or if – I get there. With my girlfriend pleading with me not to proceed with this harebrained scheme, I grab hold of the window ledge and lower myself onto the first rung. It rattles uneasily. Inches away from my face, pigeons take flight in all directions. Feathers mingle with the rainwater that cascades from the broken guttering. The air is thick with the stench of bird shit and piss. I begin my descent. Far below me lies the object of my desire – a carrier bag of weed, torn open at the seams like a haggis, its contents mingling with the elements. As I reach the bottom of the first ladder, I encounter my first problem; the rails clasped onto the window ledge above me are starting to slip.
'Kai!' screams my anguished girlfriend, 'I can't hold it. Get off the ladder, you're going to fall!'
Quick as a flash, I grab hold of the adjacent drainpipe and shift my weight onto it. It is coated with moss and pigeon shit and I struggle to maintain a grip. If any of my neighbours were to poke their heads out their bathroom windows right now, they would be treated to a truly bizarre sight. As it is, the neighbours are currently the last of my concerns for all my faculties are focussed on keeping me attached to my precarious perch while my girlfriend repositions the ladder. With the clattering of the metal rungs against the granite wall and the increasingly agonised shouts emanating from my girlfriend echoing around the close, I am aware that our covert operation is about as inconspicuous as a boner in a set of Speedos. Still, I'm too close now to contemplate turning back. I quickly descend the final rungs and land on terra-almost-firma with a squelch. I am up to my ankles in a thick carpet of pigeon poop but I don't care – I've made it and my coveted treasure is finally within arm's reach. I grab hold of the carrier bag and begin scooping up the sodden buds. With most of the weed salvaged, I tie the bag in a knot and prepare to ascend the north face of Kilimanjaro. Just as I am grasping hold of the bottom rungs of the ladder however, I hear the clatter of bolts and the sound of a door opening. Voices spill out of the bar.
'..heard a commotion...was a lad in here today with a blonde streak in his hair, said he'd dropped something out the back...'.
I duck down behind the anti-pigeon netting and begin sinking deeper into the shit. The darkness is broken by the strobe of flashlights, scouring every corner in search of the prowler. The rope ladder dangles incriminatingly out of the window, silently screaming, 'He's over here, come get him!' The flashlights move closer and a shadowy presence looms over me, parting the tattered netting. An arm reaches out and grabs hold of the bedraggled figure lurking within its folds. I stand up and stare into the eyes of PC Plod.
'What're you doing in here?' he demands.
'My jacket fell out of the window, I was trying to retrieve it,' I vainly proffer.
His colleague pushes past me and – to my satisfaction – wades ankle-deep into the pigeon poop soup. To my intense dissatisfaction, he spots the carrier bag and, after examining its contents, begins shouting into his radio, 'I need more units down here, and send forensics and a photographic unit. We'll need to capture this one in situ!'
I forlornly extend my arms and the cuffs snap on. I am well and truly busted.

Next week: My final - and finest - prison blog, then we're back in the present day. Woo-hoo.

2009-09-30T18:44:00.003Z

Written on: Tuesday 24th March 2009

Thanks to Operation Lochnagar, Grampian Police’s campaign to arrest anyone who has so much as smoked a joint - even if it was in a previous life - the jail has been rapidly filling up like an incontinent granny’s nappy. Now, overloaded with pish-scented junkies and dealers, it has reached bursting point. Prisoners are being shipped out left, right and centre to any jail that will suffer them, while the remaining many are left to fight it out for what little drugs, visit space and bedding can be found swilling around inside granny’s sodden pish flaps. Even the cell I share with no one but my miscreant self has fallen victim to overcrowding, accumulating bodies at an alarming rate. Unlike the junkies to have recently alighted at Craiginches from the ghettoes whence they came, my own gaggle of gouching minkers were here all along; I just hadn’t noticed them before. By day, they make themselves scarce, but by nite, once the sun has gone down and the door to my tiny cell slammed shut, they come out to play, piling out of a hole in the floor and flitting across my cell like remote control cars being operated by Parkinson’s sufferers. I am referring to The Others who inhabit Craiginches, making full use of the facilities as they coexist with the cons – the silverfish. These silvery moons previously raised their tiny heads during my last prison sentence, when, as I blogged at the time, my cellmate proclaimed them to be dirty wee beasties that could give you ‘a dose o the shites.’ Although blessed with wings, these little fuckers have no idea how to use them and are as ungainly as Bambi on ice. They multiply like Karen Matthews’ offspring and, like my two favourite fingers, are happiest when embedded somewhere damp and warm. I have taken to squashing the silverfish into oblivion with the sole of my trainers, but for every one whose innards Artex the floor, another 10 join the party. According to the maintenance man I summoned to lay sticky strips for them to witlessly affix their spazzy wings onto, the silverfish are harmless. Nevertheless, I refuse to accept uninvited visitors in my cell; the jail is overcrowded enough without these asylum seeking bastards turning up on my doorstep and protesting that they would be tortured if I returned them to their own despotic country. Torture? I’d give them torture. I took a cup of washing up liquid and poured it down the hole, followed by a kettle of boiling water and some sterilising tablets. That shut them up for a few days. I couldn’t get the silver-backed beasties out of my head however, and when issued with a literacy test paper, used to assess the lack of educational ability within the jail, I felt obliged to slip in a dedication to my erstwhile pad-mates. The test included such brainteasers as ‘Make a sentence using the following words: chips, food, favourite, is, fish, my, and.’ After some consideration, I finally managed to crack the code, and smugly jotted down the correct answer: ‘Is chips and fish my favourite food?’ Next, the worksheet notably upped the ante, amicably requesting: ‘Tell me something you are interested in using two or more sentences.’ As readers of this weblog will attest, I am not accustomed to stringing multiple sentences together. Nevertheless, I was determined to pass the test with flying colours, and, after much huffing and puffing, was able to construct the following two-sentence dedication to my uninvited co-pilots: ‘I am interested in capturing the silverfish that flit across my cell at nite and pulling their wings off. I boil their tiny corpses in the kettle to form an elixir that has aphrodisiacal properties.’
While I have been busy strengthening my erection with a little help from the silvery moons, those filthy swines at Grampian Police HQ have also been springing a collective boner over the seeming success of Operation Lochnagar. The force boast to have performed over 100 drug raids and arrested 150 people during the three-week blitz. A resounding success then, surely? Actually, no. If you examine the small print, it is plain to see that Operation Lochnagar has been an abject failure. In spite of pouring tens of thousands of pounds and hours into ridding the streets of the scourge of modern society (that’s drugs to you or I), the pigs have thus far only recovered a paltry £80,000 worth of product. To put that into perspective, the bag of weed I was found with at the bottom of that pigeon-infested close was worth £30,000 in pig prices. And it didn’t take the entire drug squad from Grampian, Tayside and Strathclyde Police to get that result – I handed it to them on a pigeon-shitty plate, because I’m nice like that. The £80,000 of goodies Grampian Police smugly boast to have taken off the streets equates to about a kilo of smack, aka fuck all. Aberdeen gets through 20 clicks of nasty a week, plus all the crack, coke, weed, pills and whatever else it can shovel into its collective system. Nevertheless, it wouldn’t do to admit to the failure of such an ill-thought out scattershot operation, so instead the police must work with what little they’ve got, demonising petty users and small-time dealers. Among the Mr Bigs to fall victim to Lochnagar were a man who was remanded in prison for passing a dealer’s number onto an undercover cop and a guy who was locked up simply because there was a text on his fone from a mate looking for pills. Scroll through your inbox and you’ll probably find a similar text somewhere from one of your mates. Best delete it quick – in fact that won’t work, will it, cos now they’ve got technology to read your deleted messages. In that case, the only thing for it is to throw your fone away, buy a new one and shop your mate to Crimestoppers. That way, you’ll be doing your bit to help rid our community of the drugs that blight civilised society. Cos drugs are BAD, remember? Sure, drugs might have played a major role in your conception (cos your folks sure as hell weren’t sober that one time they did the funky dance), and they might be the reason you found the courage to approach your future girlfriend in the club and they might also have made for some of the best nites out, festivals and lazy Sundays of your life, but if the police say that drugs are bad, we’d better believe them cos they know what’s best for us.
The few successes that the police have had in their drugs blitzkreig have been the result of ‘intelligence-led policing’, also known as grassing. The police wouldn’t know shit if it shat on them from a great height were it not for grasses singing like karaoke canaries. Junkies, strung out to fuck, dropping names so they’ll be released from custody to go and score. The jail is full of them now; junkies and grasses and grassing junkies and junked-up grasses. The pishy nappy that is Craiginches is swimming with back-stabbers, traitors and double-crossers who’ll ask their fellow con for a shot of his fone and then, when he’s not looking, stick him in to the screws for having a mobile. Among the victims of such ‘intelligence-led’ policing was a junkie who was detained even though he had no drugs on his possession. Due to ‘information received’ however – that other great euphemism for doing the dirty on your mates – the police knew he had a half ounce of smack up his arse. Determined not to let this one get away, they decided to play a game of pass the parcel; the junkie was locked in a special cell where two pigs sat with him, monitoring his every move, until, three days in, he finally relented and passed the parcel. Just think of that scene in American Pie: The Wedding where Stiffler follows the dog about for days until it excretes the ring it has swallowed. Although I have never been one for podging things up my backside (I don’t think my carrier bag of weed would have fitted in any case), I must confess that the idea of clenching one off into the waiting hand of the law amuses me greatly. The police got their shit-stained parcel but they never got the man who'd kindly excreted it for them - the judge threw the case out because they had broken the law in detaining him for three days without charge in the cells.
For all my denigrations of Grampian Police, I have no objection to them taking smack and crack off the streets, as these are the drugs that deserve to be dressed up in hyperbolic labels. They are the nasty ones that old ladies are mugged for. In my opinion, everyone should have the right to shovel whatever they like into their bodies in the privacy of their own homes, be it speedballs or Space Raiders. Nevertheless, given the thieving, granny-bashing tendencies of those with a proclivity for ingesting the white and broon, it is understandable why such substances are illegal. After years of thinking that to go undercover required simply donning a Nevica ski jacket and approaching junkies to ask if they knew anywhere they could ‘chase the dragon’, the CID are finally starting to wise up. One of the gaggle of junkies I have shared the holding cells with during my many appearances in the Sheriff Court told of passing a dirty, smelly junkie in Tillydrone who was bent double, spewing their ringer. Upon closer inspection, however, the marginally less dirty, smelly junkie relating this story to me discovered that it was one of Grampian Police’s unfinest, going incognito. You could call it dedicated police work, masquerading as one of them in an effort to inveigle users into taking pity on their ‘habit’ and passing on their dealer’s number. I call it entrapment. Another junkie recently sent one of his runners out with a quarter of smack and a dagger concealed about his person, as is standard procedure in such transactions, to sell to a couple of Irish punters. The runner came running back a few minutes later exclaiming ‘They’re fucking polis! They wis asking me who I got my stuff fae and all sorts!’ It would appear that the CID still have some learning to do. In their haste to lock up anything and anyone who’s dabbled with the D word, there have been plenty of fuck-ups along the way. With court papers, dossiers of evidence and citations flying in every direction, the overworked Procurator Fiscal’s office has misplaced warrants and mislaid evidence. Charges have been mixed up, with the wrong men taken to court for the wrong offences. A few weeks ago, a Scouser caught with nine ounces of each (smack and crack) walked free from court after his papers were lost. I wouldn’t want his squeaky voice or diminutive stature for the world, but I wouldn’t say no to some of his jammy Liverpudlian luck.
Incidentally, it is not just the police who have been looking for drugs in all the wrong places. Last week, one of the screws walked into a cell in A-Hall to be greeted by the disturbing sight of a convict bent double with his trousers pulled down. His cellmate had a Moray Cup bottle with the bottom sliced off pressed against the boy’s arse and was attempting to use it as a plunger, only instead of a sink, it was his pad-mate’s arse he was trying to unblock to remove the two ounces of smack contained therein. With friends like that, who needs enemas?

2009-09-27T22:22:00.007Z

Written on: Friday 27th February 2009

I wrote this piece in the style of a serious journalistic article, so if it reads more like something out of The Guardian than The Trash Whore Diaries, you'll know why. Don't worry, normal puerile service will be resumed with my next update.

‘Who’s got a blade?’ The inquisitor glares accusingly at the men gathered around him. They look at each other nervously. No one answers. ‘Who’s got a blade?’ he repeats, the inflection rising angrily this time. He eyeballs each one in turn, silently demanding that his request be met. Eventually, the awkward silence is broken and a blade is produced, a disposable plastic razor. For the next 60 seconds, the aggressor is placated. That is how long it takes him to wrap the implement into the folds of his t-shirt and expertly snap off the plastic casing, exposing its razor sharp workings. Suitably tooled-up, he promptly sets about finding an unwilling recipient upon whom to model his makeshift shank. The first man to look at him the wrong way or say the wrong word will be swift to feel his wrath. ‘If I don’t get my meth now I’m gonna do someone!’ he screams. His colleagues stare awkwardly at their feet, not daring to make eye contact with the agitated complainant. No one doubts that he is deadly serious about making good on his threat. The deep scar etched into his left cheek is testament that he is accustomed to getting just as good as he gives. ‘C’mon then,’ he spits, his knuckles tightening on the plastic handle. ‘Who wants some?’
It could be a scene from any troubled housing estate in Western Scotland, but in fact this is Aberdeen and the action has just played out inside the walls of Craiginches Prison. The blade-wielding menace has already been removed from society, but that hasn’t removed his willingness to lash out at everyone and everything that affronts him. According to a recent United Nations report, Scotland boasts the highest murder rate in Western Europe. Between 2007 and 2008, half of all Scottish murders were committed using a blade. John Muir, whose 34-year-old son was stabbed to death in Greenock in 2007, has led a campaign calling for anyone convicted of carrying a knife to receive a mandatory jail term. In spite of delivering a 15,000-strong petition to the Scottish Parliament however, his proposal has yet to be adopted by Holyrood. But even when those convicted of carrying – and using – a knife are jailed, the problem doesn’t end there. Prison merely contains the threat, like trapping a wasp in a jam jar. Once released, the aggressor emerges into the world madder than ever, hell-bent on retribution and revenge. Indeed, although prison may succeed in temporarily separating assailant from assailee, it is not even an effective means of separating the former from their weapon of choice. The plastic knives issued to inmates at mealtimes might be about as lethal as water pistols but there are plenty of other devices that the enterprising criminal can fashion into a shank. Where there’s a will, there’s a way to sharpen any number of innocuous items into lethal weapons. Surrounded by their disgruntled peers, many of whom are also in jail for being too quick on the draw, they soon resort to taking their grievances out on each other using an array of improvised invasive devices.
The razor blade-wielding convict who was incensed at the lack of methadone didn’t get a chance to carry out his threat on this occasion. The disturbance was spotted by the prison officers, who promptly locked up all the inmates, thereby separating the wolf from the rest of the pack. Other targets of knife rage in Craiginches haven’t been so lucky. Last week, another incensed inmate took his cellmate hostage using two improvised shanks fashioned out of a razor blade and a tuna can lid. It sparked a 13-hour siege that only ended after a lengthy stand-off with 20 prison officers, negotiators and riot police wielding shields and batons. The next day, in the holding cells at Aberdeen Sheriff Court, the victim showed me the marks on his neck where the blades had been held to his throat. ‘I thought he was gonna kill me,’ he confessed.
The holding cells are a series of squalid concrete rooms, each barely bigger than a domestic bathroom. Inside them, up to ten prisoners at a time are crammed together to await their court appearances. In these grim, squalid dungeons, the talk is of slashings, beatings and stabbings. Young Offenders, whom violence excites even more than their passion for sex, drugs and stolen cars, re-enact their previous skirmishes in high definition for the benefit of the assembled throng: ‘Boom! Boom! Boom! I just kept plugging my cellmate, did the boy 17 times through the leg with a biro. He was screaming for me to stop!’ In prison, the pen is often mightier than the sword.
Although Aberdeen’s inmates are not afraid to dispense summary justice with a few fell strokes, it is Glasgow that excels at this form of ultra-violence. Known as the murder capital of Europe, it has more deaths per capita than such cities as Minsk in Belarus and Istanbul. One visitor to the Sheriff Court holding cells was a Birmingham man, awaiting sentencing for drug offences. He had spent the last three months on remand in Glasgow’s Barlinnie, an experience he was not anxious to repeat. ‘All they speak about is stabbing there,’ he told me. ‘It’s all slash this, slash that. It’s mad; they’re in jail, they ain’t even got nothing worth slashing each other for.’ One particularly unpleasant technique favoured by Glaswegian gangs is the double-cut; two razor blades bound together, a few millimetres apart. Slash your victim across the face with such a device and you will create an unstitchable scar that causes hideous disfiguration.
In spite of the lawless nature of prison life, there is still some honour among thieves and slashers. Sex offenders and ‘granny bashers’ [muggers who prey on the elderly] are universally derided within the penal system and prone to being viciously attacked (with shanks, of course). And yet, paradoxically, the same convicts who will decry such ‘beasts and cowards’ feel no compunction in stabbing an unarmed opponent. Not having been raised a street-fighting man, I cannot muster the same enthusiasm as my peers for slicing and dicing anyone who crosses my path. Call me old-fashioned, but I am of the opinion that bread knives are best suited to slicing bread. With such a pacifist philosophy, one would think I shouldn’t have too many enemies in prison. However, one thing I have learned from my time inside is that it’s not only violence that begets violence; words too can have the undesired effect. Following my release from prison in 2006, extracts from an online weblog that I had secretly maintained while inside were published in The News Of The World under the headline ‘Stabbed In The Neck Three Times…Over A Packet Of Custard Creams.’ As I was walking through the jail last week, following my re-incarceration, a familiar face caught my eye. ‘Here, you’re that lad that wrote about me!’ exclaimed the inmate, the look of recognition slowly turning to anger. ‘I should fucking do you!’ His threat appeared to be in jest, but given that he had previously plugged a fellow prisoner in an argument about a packet of biscuits, I couldn’t be too sure. Even if I was given to fighting, I wouldn’t have squared up to him though. Not in here, where the philosophy I have adopted to stay alive is one of the oldest in the book: Never pick a fight with anyone uglier than you – they’ve got less to lose. Looking at the scarred and stitched up faces around me, that precludes pretty much everyone.

2009-09-23T20:56:00.002Z

Written on: Wednesday 25th February 2009

Spring arrives in Craiginches, bringing with it birdsong and sunshine. And violence too of course, that age-old harbinger of seasons changed as fists are raised to commemorate the lengthening of days and strengthening of golden rays. Out in the fields, March hares box, snowdrops blossom and lambs frolic. Inside the prison walls, however, springtime is observed in time-honoured tradition, with the spilling of sacrificial blood.
The planet is a single organism with a delicately linked ecosystem in which every action has a knock-on effect, causing seemingly isolated incidents to invoke unforeseen chain reactions, the implications of which can be felt on the other side of the world. The scientist James Lovelock named this Gaia: ‘An ecological hypothesis proposing that the biosphere and the physical components of the Earth (atmosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere) are biogeochemical conditions in a preferred homeostasis.’ In the Pacific, a butterfly flaps its wings, causing a current of air that slowly grows to become a breeze, then a gale and then a fully-fledged hurricane. As Pacific weather systems change, this in turn causes an area of low pressure to spread across the Atlantic, sending clouds scurrying to the south. While a storm rages on the other side of the world, the low pressure reaches Europe, bringing with it more clement conditions. In Scotland, rain and snow is finally dispersed, making way for longer, brighter days. As sunshine increases, so do temperatures and tempers too. Every time the mercury rises by another degree, so too does the disquiet of the men trapped inside Craiginches. Its state-of-the-art air conditioning system (a few foam blocks plugged into gaping holes in the windows) is no match for the warm weather, and before long, warm has begat hot which in turn has boiled over until some poor cunt’s been smashed in the coupon, all because a butterfly in Hawaii had the temerity to emit one flutter too many.
Ostensibly, the fight was over a game of pool, but it could have been any one of 100 insignificant events that acted as the catalyst. Once sparked, it duly exploded in the faces of those involved and from its point of origin exsanguinated over the entire hall. It started at the pool table, discolouring the green baize as spattered droplets rained down upon it. From there, it spilt onto the protagonists’ clothes and then onto the floor, leaving a crimson trail that ran the length of A-Hall. The dispute started in the black quarter, the end of A-Hall that was long since appropriated by the Yardies and designated their unofficial headquarters, the place to hang out and trade tales of guns, bitches and food [drugs] in high-speed patois. The only requirements for admission onto their turf are a sufficient amount of pigmentation and the ability to exchange clenched fist greetings with shouts of ‘Bumber clart!’ and ‘A’ight blood, wag wan?’ Wag wan? It was going fine actually, or at least it was until all the talk of blood clots gave way to the real thing. Black-on-black violence is generally unheard of in the jail; the Yardies have no desire to engage in internecine conflict, for there are more than enough white guys willing to do the honours. On this occasion, however, even the solidarity of the Jamaican diaspora was not strong enough to resist the power of Gaia.
One of the Yardies, EZ, had developed a habit of interrupting the pool playing of his fellow bloods by stealing the balls and running off upstairs, refusing to return them until they reluctantly abandoned their game and let him play. If anyone – white, black or yellow – had tried to do this at the other table in the hall, they would instantly have been on the wrong end of a pool cue. Because the Yardies club together for solidarity however, EZ’s spirited actions were tolerated. Besides, he is only 20, still technically a Young Offender; a young blood, not that he would have been seen associating with the skinny white boys who make up the rest of the jail’s YO contingent. After weeks of hijacking pool games, to the chagrin of the players, EZ finally tried his luck once too many and was taught a lesson he wouldn’t forget in a hurry. Having gone through his usual ball-stealing routine, much to the annoyance of his fellow blood, Mach, EZ decided to introduce a new trick and began dropping the pool balls onto Mach’s toes. Given that Mach was only wearing flip-flops at the time, this was understandably painful. Not as painful, however, as the tit that was about to follow his tat. Eventually tiring of having his toes used for target practice, Mach grabbed hold of EZ’s shirt and the two Yardies squared up to one another. Before their startled blood brothers lounging around the table could pull them apart, Mach lashed out and landed a direct hit on his fellow countryman. Boom! EZ’s nose busted open, exploding in a shower of blood. It rained down around him, spattering the pool table and all those in attendance with wanton disregard for rank or reputation. By the time the screws had rushed to the scene (foregoing the gang salutes in their haste to enter the black quarter), it was all over bar the shouting. All they could do was lead the disconsolate EZ away, his nose in bits, blood pishing down his face and drip-dripping all over the polished linoleum. As the cons were swiftly checked up, Mach was carted off to the digger, EZ to the doctor and the jail’s designated blood cleaner to the scene of the crime. ‘That’ll spill over onto the street’ warned Huxley, my cellmate and senior member of the black quarter. ‘EZ’s a gun man, he might seem like a boisterous YO in here, but out in the real world he’s deadly. This one ain’t over.’ It may not have been over, but our rec time certainly was. From behind our door, we watched as the crimson trail was painstakingly wiped away. Such is the frequency of scarlet spillages in the jail, each hall has a designated inmate who has taken the course, received the certificate and been given the go-ahead to don the blue latex gloves and mop up his colleagues’ hep-ridden lifeblood. It’s a shit job, but it pays handsomely by jail standards; £4 per call-out, the equivalent of two days’ wages. No sooner had the Wet Floor cones been put away however when the blood cleaner was summoned yet again to work his magic.
At lunchtime today, the morning after the carnage of the nite before, there was no sign of EZ. By all accounts his nose was looking fat, even by black standards. His job, serving lunch at the hotplate, had been taken by another. In EZ’s absence, however, the hotplate was still a source of hot gossip and hot-headed action. To prevent the entire hall from descending upon the hotplate at once and causing chaos, the screws unlock a few doors at a time, first one side of the bottom flat, then the opposite, then, once they’re safely fed and back behind their doors, they move onto the second and third flats. Situated in the centre of A-Hall, on the bottom flat, my cell is directly beside the hotplate. While being on the bottom floor has its disadvantages (it is the noisiest part of the jail), it does mean I get served first at mealtimes. After queuing up for lunch (a polystyrene salad box consisting of half a tomato, some cucumber slices, coleslaw, lettuce and a slice of inscrutable luncheon meat), I made the short walk back to my pad and was swiftly locked up with my co-pilot. Just as I had finished demolishing my gourmet grub, there was an almighty bang as something – or rather someone – cannoned against the cell door. Huxley and I rushed over and peered through the gaps in the door, where we were treated to a smorgasbord of sights and sounds that instantly made us forget about the meal we had just eaten. Who needs limp lettuce when your appetite has been whetted by a healthy dose of ultra-violence? The first thing to assail our senses was sound; the sound of a body hitting the floor via our cell door swiftly followed by the protagonist’s shouts of ‘He tried to slash me, boss! He tried to fucking slash me!’ Outside, just inches away from my eyeballs, it was chaos; plates, food, cons, screws and blood scattered everywhere. It wouldn’t take Grissam to solve this crime scene. As they queued for lunch, one of the cons had indeed threatened to slash someone. The would-be-slasher had his very own slash mark running the length of his face, proof – if it were needed – that he’d seen a few blades in his time. The subject of his threat was Scotty, a burly Cockney geezer with hands like wrecking balls. Faced with such sharpened hostility, Scotty sensibly decided to act first and put his god-given weapons of mass destruction to good use. In one lightning-fast blow, he smashed into the scarred coupon, knocking it and the body attached to it floorwards. The punched reverberated around the hall, and could even be heard by the cons behind their doors on the top floor. The recipient of the percussive punch was out cold, his jaw broken and blood, once again, spattered over the A-Hall linoleum. The geezer hadn’t even had to deploy a swift one-two to ground his opponent; just as with EZ, the one was all it took. Although both fights were settled with a single punch, it was unanimously agreed that Scotty had landed the killer blow. After hitting the deck in a heap of scattered plates, splattered blood and splatted food, the victim lay there for a few seconds, out cold. (‘He looked like he’d been hit by a shovel’ noted one con later. ‘Sparkled’ was how Scotty went on to proudly describe it.)
As one of the screws firmly marched the irate Englishman back to his cell, the victim steadied himself and tried to get to his feet. Still in a daze, he stumbled and fell headfirst into the hot plate. It was a final flourish that would have done any spasticated ballerina proud. Taking pity on the prone prisoner, two screws hauled him up and off to hospital. The shout to ‘Check up!’ went out and the cons were duly checked up while the blood cleaner returned once again to perform his duties. I watched through the crack in the door as, on bent knee, the cleaner painstakingly mopped up the blood from the floor, the adjacent table and the hotplate. Had the blood splashed any higher, the rack of pepperoni pizzas that were waiting to be served up would have been turned into black puddings.
After lunch, Scotty was led off to the digger to spend a few days in solitary confinement, but within shouting distance of his temporary neighbour, Mach. Although the screws are officially obliged to take jaw and nose-breaking incidents seriously, unofficially they were swift to congratulate Scotty for disposing of an inmate that no one in the jail cared for. One screw shook the victor’s hand. Another greeted him ‘Scotty! Or should we call you Rocky?’ Even the Reliance turnkeys who run the Sheriff Court holding cells, two miles away from Craiginches, were talking about That Punch the next day. When an inmate falls in the forest that is A-Hall, everyone hears them make a sound.
With ill fortune’s penchant for tripartite pacts, the jail waits with bated breath to see who will be next to hit the floor in a shower of blood. All it takes is the wrong word said at the wrong time, or a flutter too many on the other side of the world. That is the power of Gaia.

2009-09-20T19:16:00.002Z

Written on: Wednesday 19th February 2009

Out of sight, out of mind. It is a phrase that could have been invented to describe prison life. Once that steel door has slammed shut for the first time, you may as well no longer exist as far as the civilised world is concerned. Friends, family, girlfriends and business acquaintances; through every man’s life these come and go to a varying degree. Upon his incarceration, however, they mostly go. Such companions, hangers-on and well-wishers may start off with good intentions, but by the time a few weeks or months have elapsed, the letters, visits and fonecalls start to dry up. It was thus with great surprise that the inhabitants of Craiginches woke up this morning to discover that the entire country was suddenly fixated on their plight and that for one day only, The Lost Boys were very much in sight and in mind.
The first signs that someone – other than the screws – was watching our every move appeared in The Daily Record, which ran a story about the poor standard of laundry service provided by the jail. Apparently, this resulted in prisoners’ boxer shorts being lost in the wash, forcing them to have to wear their fellow cons’ kecks instead. It was flattering to know that the nation was choking on its cornflakes in righteous indignation over the whereabouts of my cum-stained CKs. It was also baffling however to think that The Daily Record was more concerned about my dirty underwear than my mum had ever been. Why had the national press taken it upon themselves to highlight this previously undocumented prison phenomenon? As a page-turner, the story must be right up there with The Plight Of Endangered Water Voles and Revised Wheelie Bin Collection Days.
But it wasn’t just the Record who wished to go on the record regarding the welfare of us poor prisoners. The Daily Telegraph had a similar tale of woe, focussing on the shocking standard of jail food. Coming from a broadsheet whose readers’ idea of slumming it is downgrading from Marks & Spencer to Waitrose, I found it comforting to know that they were thinking of me as they nibbled on their pain aux chocolates. What issue of prison life would the press decide to document next I wondered - the lack of conjugal visits? The paucity of silver cutlery and china teacups at mealtimes? The reason for the glut of seemingly random jail stories finally became apparent when I picked up The Press & Journal to be greeted by the headline ‘Inspector issues a damning verdict on Aberdeen Prison’. To celebrate the publication of the Prison Inspector’s report on Craiginches, the paper had devoted two pages to cataloguing the many woes to have afflicted what was apparently Scotland’s Shittest Jail.
It began: ‘The people of the north-east have been let down by “dreadful” conditions inside Aberdeen Prison – leading to more crime on the streets… Andrew McLellan found it was badly overcrowded, short of staff, had a “shocking” drugs problem, a building not fit for purpose, and “no chance” of any improvements being made…Conditions at Aberdeen Sheriff Court, meanwhile, were also criticised by Mr McLellan… “The conditions at Aberdeen Sheriff Court are disgraceful. Dramatic improvement is needed immediately.”’
Fair point, Mr McLellan, although it doesn’t require the title of Chief Prison Inspector to deduce that the Sheriff Court is a bit poopy. I was not exaggerating in a recent blog when I observed ‘The holding cells are a series of squalid concrete rooms, each barely bigger than a domestic bathroom. Inside them, up to ten prisoners at a time are crammed together to await their court appearances. In these grim, squalid dungeons, the talk is of slashings, beatings and stabbings.’ If the inspector had only bothered to read The Trash Whore Diaries like the rest of the SPS staff, he need never have set foot inside that filthy, not-fit-for-purpose prison.
The intense scrutiny of Craiginches wasn’t just contained to the print media. On the way to the Education Department after lunch, we passed two Scottish Television trucks in the yard, one fitted with a giant satellite dish for live broadcasts. At six o’clock, STV would be presenting a half hour news special from the beleaguered jail, boasting ‘unprecedented access’ to the prison that everyone was dissing. It was officially open season on Craiginches.
Although the bewildering barrage of media attention gave the cons something to speak about other than the usual drugs/violence/more drugs, we all knew that the ‘damning’ findings would not serve to better our existence. Even if the public were able to muster some sympathy for the inmates in Scotland’s worst jail, we would be out of mind (or maybe just off our minds) by the time the broadcast had ended. It was Comic Relief Day but without the red noses. Does anyone really think about those poor African villagers with no running water on the other 364 days of the year?
For the live broadcast, the STV anchorman was to be positioned in one of the prison halls, where he would link between pre-recorded sequences and live interviews with the governor and the Scottish Justice Secretary. Thankfully for them, the cons would be locked up at this time, thus preventing the show from degenerating into a raucous, expletive-laden PR disaster. Those gouching, gurning faces would be safely out of sight behind their doors. Of course, containing the threat provided no guarantees that the show would go off without a hitch. If there is one thing prisoners are good at, it’s being heard when not seen. To prevent a barrage of abuse from flooding through the cracks in the cell doors and drowning out the anchorman, the governor had sensibly opted to film the event in B-Hall, the smaller, more civilised of the two halls. B-Hall is where old lags who can’t stand the hustle and bustle of jail life go to die. Unlike its rowdy neighbour, A, B is devoid of hyperactive Young Offenders and newly-admitted junkies intent on booting in their doors as they sweat out the gear. To err on the side of caution, the governor also visited each cell in B-Hall at lunchtime and warned the inhabitants to behave. Nothing was being left to chance.
At six o’clock, as the cameras cut to the intrepid STV anchorman embedded deep in the bowels of Craiginches, the A-Hall cons cheered and booted their doors, the traditional way of acknowledging any shared TV moment such as a goal being scored in a live football match. For the next 30 minutes, we were treated to footage of prisoners fighting and getting caught passing drugs in the visit room. One of the screws showed off a cardboard box full of contraband that had found its way into the jail – mobile fones, syringes, screwdrivers and of course drugs. Much to the relief of the governor, the live sections passed without incident. The B-Hall cons, who had the power to sabotage the show, were as good as bad men can be. Just as I was starting to think they’d been spiked with double methadone and had all fallen asleep, the inmates finally found their voices as the anchorman was signing off, emitting a few belated whoops and cheers. Children and animals are regarded as the two biggest liabilities on live television. Convicts can safely be added as the third.
After the show had finished and we were unlocked for rec, I stepped out into the main hall of a jail that, according to the Prison Inspector, had a ‘shocking drug problem’. To the casual observer, surveying A-Hall, it would be easy to conclude that the Inspector had perhaps been egging it a bit when he made this claim. As far as the eye could see, there were no drugs or drug-related activity taking place, just a load of convicts running about and playing pool. Was it really that bad? ‘Here, Kai.’ A voice beckoned to me and I turned round to see a familiar jail face. ‘Kai, do you want a line of coke?’ I didn’t need to question the pope’s Catholicism or the bowel movements of bears in woods. If the Chief Prison Inspector had decreed this establishment to have a shocking drugs problem, then I would take it upon myself to clean the place up… by taking all the drugs myself. I followed the boy upstairs and we ducked into his cell. Inside, it was a veritable cave of iniquity. Coke, smack and hash lay on the worktop, as did the tools of the trade; clingfilm, tooters and scorched foil. The con tipped some light brown powder onto a Caramel wrapper and, clenching the tooter between his teeth, lay back on his bunk and lit it from underneath. He inhaled deeply. His padmate, who was already wasted, rummaged about in his socks for a while before eventually producing a knot of hash, which I gratefully accepted. I then proceeded to rack up two lines of ching, one for each of us. After polishing off the white powdery goodness, I thanked the pair for their hospitality and left them to polish off their brown powdery badness. Drug problem, what drug problem? Everything your habit needs can be found under one roof here at HMP Craiginches. No problem at all.
Of the many Craigie-centric reports to have surfaced in today’s press, the best one of all was not actually about drugs. Like all things concerned with Craigie, however, it came back to drugs in the end. Under the heading ‘Inmates vanish with savings scheme cash’, the Press & Journal reported: ‘Crafty prisoners signed up for savings accounts behind bars – then vanished when they were granted loans on the outside…Bill Harkis, of the North East Scotland Credit Union, said: “One or two of the prisoners ripped us off. They came out, got a loan and didn’t pay us back. It’s frustrating, but part of the credit union is dealing with financially excluded people. There’s a bit of a risk involved sometimes.”’ Bit of a risk? Lending money to prisoners in the expectation that they will pay it back is a banking decision that even the much-maligned Sir Fred Goodwin would baulk at. The folly of issuing sub-prime mortgages seems like a good bit of business compared to issuing credit to Craigie’s sub-primates. The report concluded ‘Some of the prisoners who took advantage of the system borrowed loans of up to £200 for white goods then failed to pay them back.’ White goods? So that’s what they’re calling crack cocaine these days.

2009-09-16T22:29:00.006Z

Who lives here? Ooh I guess that'll be me then. Yep, that cosy top bunk was mine for the majority of 2009. But how on earth did I manage to take a picture of my homely prison cell? Surely that would have required access to some sort of camera device and a means to transmit the image wirelessly to a third party outside the jail. Perhaps something like... a camera phone? Contraband items such as cellular telephones in Scottish prisons? Surely not! Next thing you know they'll be smuggling drugs in as well.

Written on: Friday 13th February 2009

‘Here.’ I proffer the tooter to Huxley who looks up from the book he is reading. (Guns & Gangs, a history of black gun crime in Britain.) ‘Nah dude, you go first,’ he insists. I lean over the worktop and demolish a fat slug. Standing upright, I push a finger against my right nostril and snort, waiting for the cocaine hit to kick in. ‘Mash up, mash up!’ exclaims the stereo. I instinctively turn up Annie Mac and wait for the tune to drop. It builds up slowly, the beat repeating over and over as it builds towards the climax that is preceded by the inevitable pause. And then it drops. ‘Dun-du-du-du-du-dun’ goes the phat bassline. Fucking tune. Huxley reaches over and demolishes his rail. He is feeling good. So am I. The tunes are banging. It’s Friday nite, which can only mean one thing – Snafu. Knock back some Havana, straighten my hair, have another liney for the road and get ready to rock and roll. There is just one hitch; the front door is locked and I don’t have the keys. Neither does Huxley. As it stands, we ain’t going nowhere. Not tonite, not tomorrow, not even this month. Jail really fucks up your social life.
I jump onto my berth on the top bunk and glare at the resolute cell door, willing it to open. It doesn’t. It is of little consolation to know that we are not alone in our frustration. In cells the length and breadth of A-Hall, the cons are in a similar predicament. Only not all of them are as keen to leave as we are. It all depends on what they’ve been taking really – uppers or downers. On the second flat, a ghetto blaster has been cranked to the max and the bass is pumping out at ASBO-invoking levels. It shudders through the hall before escaping through the gaps in the window bars and out into the yard. That will be the Yardies, bringing the party as usual. One of them sourced some bicarb earlier and, after obtaining an eighth of Huxley’s powdery white goodness, set about trying to rock it up. By the sounds of it, his chemistry practical has been a success. They must be climbing the walls in there. In the adjacent cell, the neighbours are more placid. Indeed, they don’t seem remotely perturbed by the hard house vibrating through the bricks that separate them from the blacks on crack. That’s because they are smacked off their tits thanks to the parcel that one of them took in earlier at a visit. One swift kiss from his blonde, one almighty swallow and, back at the hall, one bout of induced vomiting. On the bottom flat, the YO’s are stoned as usual. But because the Young Offenders are young and offensive, they can’t just chill and enjoy the vibe like self-respecting potheads. No, they have to jump about like toddlers who’ve necked too much Sunny D, making animal sounds through the crack in the door, vandalising the window panes and shouting obscenities through the resulting holes. From the cell across the hallway, there comes a dull thumping. This is not another competing bassline but the sound of someone desperately trying to summon the screws. The thumper’s cellmate has spewed everywhere and then passed out. It transpires that the boy has lapsed into a coma after nailing his week’s allocation of vallies in a oner. Holding back one’s medication is a common jail practice that involves pretending to swallow your tablets in front of the nurse, only to spit them back up once out of sight. Save up a few days’ worth, bosh them all at once and you’ll get a proper dunt. That or just lapse into a coma. On the top flat, a similar incident is taking place. In the end cell, an inmate is convulsing, rolling about on the floor in a series of violent spasms. His cellmate presumes that the boy is just strung out and leaves him to rattle off the worst of the gear. The next morning, he learns that heroin had nothing to do with it for once; the guy was actually having a series of epileptic fits.
Back in cell 1-11, there is still no sign of the keys. Not only that, but I can’t seem to find the Havana or my straighteners. Oh well, I guess another liney will have to suffice. ‘Ready or not, here I come.’ The Fugees mash-up kicks in and I crank it up. It’s a tune. They all are. Perhaps I’ll just stay in after all and listen to the show. I can easily go clubbing some other time. I run my tongue across my teeth. My mouth is numb.

2009-09-13T16:59:00.002Z

Written on: Monday 16th February 2009

Monday morning, 9:00am. Rush hour. Cars snake slowly along Wellington Road, their drivers tooting and cursing at each other. Valentine’s Day has been and gone and any love engendered by it has swiftly melted with the snow. Rain falls horizontally, mixing with the slush and salt to form a dirty brown paste that clings to everything it touches, tarnishing alloys and destroying loafers. It is the most depressing day of the week in the greyest, dreichest city in Scotland in the most violent, murderous country in Western Europe. At this exact moment in time, no one wishes they were here, but they are, so collectively they grit their teeth and get on with it; the school run, the morning commute to work, the consignment of fish bound for the A90 and beyond.
I see none of this – the commuters, the slush, the rain and the traffic – but I know it’s all there, just on the other side of the perimeter wall. 30 feet the wrong side of it, in HMP Craiginches, there is no work to go to, no kids to drop off at school and no appointments to be late for. There is no reason for this day to be any more depressing than the 100 that preceded it. Each one is, after all, identical in every way. Yet even in here it is impossible to shake off that Monday morning feeling. Within seconds of being unlocked, 45 minutes earlier, one of the cons on the second flat [landing] dragged a Scouser into the shower area and laid into him. Perhaps their dispute was over drugs. Or perhaps he was just pissed off because it was Monday.
Inside cell 1-11 on the bottom flat, my pad-mate and I are oblivious to the stresses and strains of the outside world. Ours is a scene of domestic bliss. While Huxley boils the kettle, I am busy scrubbing my underwear in the sink, having left it to marinate for a while in Lynx shower gel. The kettle hisses and we prepare to make our respective breakfasts. For my co-pilot, this consists of cornflakes with sugar, milk and a drop of hot water. For me, Frosties, milk and sliced banana. From the stereo in the corner of the cell, generic ned beats pump out. It is the only CD we have and it has been played 100 times over; ‘Watching the sunshine, show me the sunshine, come on give me the sunshine.’ The chance would be a fine thing. Here, on the bottom flat, no sunlight ever pervades these walls to lighten up our day. All we can see – should we care to look – is razor wire, concrete and the occasional low-flying seagull. There is a click and our door unlocks. ‘Kit change’ shouts the screw. I gather up my dirty laundry – an Aberdeen Prison-stamped towel, a pair of Aberdeen Prison-stamped tracksuit bottoms, an Aberdeen Prison-stamped jumper and, yep, an Aberdeen Prison-stamped t-shirt. The items are deposited in a wheelie bin and I am issued with clean ones, like for like. We return to our cell and are promptly locked up again. I wring the water out of my Calvin Klein boxer shorts and hang them on the pipes to dry. Huxley sparks a rollie. Shortly, the door will unlock once again and I will be escorted to the education department. There, I will assemble the jail magazine for the reading pleasure of its illiterate population. After that, the rest of my day will be taken up with lunch, sleep, gym, dinner, sleep, visit, letter-writing, TV and yet more sleep in that order. It is not the most enthralling way to eke out one’s days, but at least mine’s is an existence free of stress and responsibility. No deadlines, nowhere to be, no obligation to get out of bed. If you want to escape from the pressures of everyday life, don’t book into an expensive spa – just go to jail.
On the other side of the wall, the morning rush hour is still in progress as the good people of the world crawl agonisingly closer to wherever it is they are going. As they inch their way slowly through Torry, they barely glance up at the imposing granite wall that shadows the road, or the CCTV cameras that monitor their steady progress. They are not to know that just a stone’s throw away lies Aberdeen’s best-kept secret; an exclusive gated community where living is free and responsibilities are left at the door. As the crow flies, my world is not a million miles away from theirs. In reality however, we are a million miles apart.

2009-09-07T21:31:00.005Z

Written on: Sunday 8th February 2009

It came, as these things always do, out of nowhere. It ended, 13 hours later, in a flurry of shouting and stomping, of broken glass and riot shields, of batons and razor blades. Just another quiet evening in A-Hall.
Sunday February 8th, 15:05. It is rec time in Craiginches, that special time when all 200 inmates are afforded the privilege of recreating with one another. For some, this involves partaking in such wholesome activities as pool and snooker. For most, rec involves recreating the sort of chemical world they have become accustomed to, one in which life’s harsh realities are softened by the consumption of hard drugs. In ones and twos, cons scuttle across the walkways like cockroaches in a kebab house, scouring every available corner for proscribed morsels. Men duck furtively into cells and alcoves and hold whispered conversations in booths and shower areas. ‘Got any hash min?’ ‘Ken anybdae wi ony B’s [smack]?’ ‘Got a bag [smack] fer us? I’ll swap you for ma difs [DFs; prescribed medication].’ Conspiratorial whisperings aside, the hall is a sea of tranquillity. Only the clank of snooker balls and the loudmouthed Yardie patois emanating from the black quarter, where every conversation must be held at 100 decibels, belie the calmness. In a few seconds time however, a dorsal fin will break the surface, causing a wave of excitement that will ripple around the hall. As the narrator of America’s Toughest Jails is prone to warn, rec time, when the prison population are allowed to mingle freely, is the most dangerous time of day. If the shit’s gonna go down, you can bet it’s gonna go down here and with little warning. Without the element of surprise, violence rarely works. ‘Excuse me mate, mind if I stab you for your medication?’ ‘Actually I’m kinda busy just now pal, can you come back in an hour?’ This outbreak is no different.
Out of nowhere, a convict on the second floor grabs his startled cellmate off the landing and drags him into their cell. The door is then kicked shut and an almighty ruckus ensues. (When the incident is eventually dealt with in court, the PF will no doubt refer to it as ‘an altercation.’) The aggressor, an unassuming bespectacled man in his early thirties, is mightily pissed off. The reason for his pissed off-ness, as I understand, is the Prison Service’s decision to transfer him to Perth the following day. If it was me, I’d have been overjoyed; Craiginches is hardly the epitome of good living, even by jail standards. Although he doesn’t look menacing, the con boasts some heavy previous; as well as being on remand for attempted murder, he has formerly dodged a murder rap. What he is about to do, in comparison, is but a fly swot. Before the screws realise what’s happening, the door to the cell is slammed shut and its contents trashed; windows are broken and the TV is hurled to the floor, its cathode ray tube exploding into 1000 pieces. Glass shards litter the floor. Incandescent with rage, the transfer-listed con then produces not one, but two shanks and proceeds to take his cellmate hostage. The first weapon has been constructed out of a razor blade, the second from a tuna can lid. Used rightly in the wrong hands, they are both lethal. The con grabs hold of his cellmate and pushes the blades into his neck. The two men will remain in this awkward embrace for the next eight hours. As the commotion alerts the screws, staff are summoned from all corners of the jail. The rest of the cons are immediately ordered to ‘Check up!’; return to their cells for an early lock up. With a serious incident in progress, the screws don’t have time to police the rest of the prison population, even if they have been recreating peacefully. Rec time is over.
From behind our doors, it is hard to tell what is happening. In jail, rumours spread faster than hepatitis, but beyond the basics, no one is too sure if blood and guts will be making an appearance. We hope so. All we catch are snippets of shouted dialogue, the clatter of footsteps urgently ascending and descending the stairs and the incessant ringing of fones. The screws erect a large plastic canopy around the cell door to shield the proceedings from the prying eyes of the cons, who have been peering out through the cracks in their doors and shouting encouragement. After a while, the hall quietens down again. No one is sure if the incident is still in progress or if a truce has been secured. Eventually, we get bored of listening at our cell doors and return to our TV viewing. Then, at about midnight, we hear raised voices again followed by screaming. It would appear that there is life in this one yet. The level of activity is stepped up again; telefones ring off the hook, radios crackle into life and there is a constant to-ing-and-fro-ing of staff; prison officers, nurses, presiding officers. Then, as I watch through the crack in the door, I hear the entrance to A-Hall clatter open and the ominous sound of marching boots. An army of riot police (or maybe it is riot screws) trudge up the stairs, their protective gear rattling against the railings and echoing round the hall. Their faces are obscured by the protective masks that cover them, their bodies clad in stab-proof clothing. They look like cricketers sent out to the crease, only instead of bats they wield truncheons and shields. One of their number is videoing the show on a digital camera. I’d like to think it’s so he can show the highlights to his family later (‘Look what daddy did at work today – I bashed an idiot’s brains in!’) but the reality is more prosaic; if the hostage-taker later alleges rough treatment, the video should repudiate his claims. It is only once the camera has been turned off that the screws will administer the kicking he so richly deserves. No matter how justifiable their reasons for being here, there is something sinister about watching the full weight of governmental authority prepare to swing into action and crush the rebellion. The black-clad heavies could be straight out of a Robocop film.
The terrified inmate has now been held hostage for eight hours. His neck is marked by the pressure of the blades pushing against his throat. For the next two hours, the riot crew wait on standby as negotiations and ‘dialogue’ takes place. The turtle suits could just charge in and overwhelm the captor, but that would risk harming the ‘innocent’ victim. Eventually however, after much shouting and pleading, the exhausted con stands down his weapons. The riot crew enter and cuff him with zip ties. He is marched off to the digger [solitary confinement] to await his inevitable transfer to Perth. The hostage, remarkably, is also led away in cuffs and placed in one of the bare sui-cells in B-Hall. There are no warm blankets, cups of tea and cigarettes for him. This is not how freed hostages are treated in the movies. His ordeal is far from over; after all, he still has a three-year prison sentence to serve. In due course, he will probably launch a claim for compensation. In due course, his former cellmate will certainly appear in court and be charged for his aggression. He will probably end up serving an extra four years. With the riot crew gone, the rest of the staff gradually trickle out of the hall. Calm returns to the jail once more. I step away from the crack in the door and get into bed. The show is over. Just another quiet evening in A-Hall.

2009-09-05T11:12:00.004Z

Written on: Wednesday 28th January 2009

Ever since finding enough crumbs in my pocket with which to fashion an SS [single-skinner] in the holding cells on Monday, the entire population of A-Hall has become convinced that I am the holder of all things THC-laced. If the rumours are to be believed, I am currently sitting on a stash of Marksist proportions. (That’s Howard Marks, not Karl Marx by the way.) Cons who had previously not given me the time of day – Yardies, junkies, YO’s [Young Offenders] – now made a beeline for me, to savour my delightful company, gaze upon my handsome features and, of course, to pester me for drugs. In exchange for furnishing them with the tiniest knot of hash, I was offered tobacco, a shot of a PS2 and – had I pushed my luck – quite possibly sexual favours.
‘Here min, you’ve got hash tae sell, hiv ya?’ exclaimed the squeaky-voiced YO’s.
‘A’right man, wots dis bout you avin sum ganja?’ lilted the Yardies. At one point I looked up from using the communal fone to see a con making a smoking gesture in my direction. He certainly wasn’t after a rollie. Everywhere I walked I found myself being summoned into peters [cells] for hush-hush conversations about hash. If I still had my big bag of weed that is currently under lock and key at Filth HQ (assuming the pigs haven’t smoked it), I could have become fabulously rich in GV [Golden Virginia], the standard jail currency. If smoking was my game, I could receive enough tobacco to puff my way to an early grave. If the custard cream cons don’t kill me, the baccy will. In the police interview following my arrest, I had done my utmost to convince them that I wasn’t a dealer and that I certainly didn’t possess any weed. Now that I was in jail, where I should be free from such aggressive interrogation, I found myself on the defensive again. A dealer with weed is wanted by everyone; customers, pigs, rival dealers and thieves. But a dealer without product? Who wants to know? I deal therefore I am. Without my raisson d’etre, I fear I’ve become obsolete.

2009-09-02T10:21:00.002Z

Written on: Tuesday 27th January

‘Fit did ya go to the Evening Express for the last time you was in?’
The voice whined through a crack in the door, flooding my cell with indignation and ire, while an eyeball eyeballed me through the peephole, demanding that I account for my previous sins. From the restricted view afforded me, I couldn’t put a face to the pinned pupil, but I didn’t doubt that it was toothless, scarred and emaciated.
‘I didn’t,’ I replied to the disgruntled stranger. ‘It was the Press & Journal.’ My accuser, who could have been any one of a hundred identikit junkies, dwelt on this for a moment.
‘Fit did ya dae ‘at for, saying a’ the cons wis junkies?’ continued the junkie, who clearly had a bone to chew – or rather gum – on.
‘Because most of them are,’ I replied truthfully. At present, two thirds of the inmates in Craiginches are on methadone. That means two thirds of them are junkies. I was never any good at fractions, but by my reckoning, two thirds could safely be classified as most of the sum total.
‘Yer a fucking bam,’ grunted the junkie, unimpressed with my reasoning, and sloped off in search of some foil with which to chase his pain away.
The next day at rec, another junkie approached me in the hall. (Or perhaps it was the same one, who knows?) ‘Here – you’re the boy that wrote that stuff aboot the custard creams!’ he shouted. (The headline in the News of The World article that had published my weblog was ‘Stabbed In The Neck Three Times…Over A Packet Of Custard Creams’.)
‘Yeah. And?’ I shrugged insolently.
‘I’m gonna fucking do you,’ came the swift reply.
Retribution and Revenge? Ah, do come in, I’ve been expecting you. To be honest, I’d been anticipating those two rearing their ugly heads for some time. Ever since The Boy Who Wrote That Jail Weblog got the jail again, it was only a matter of time before the inhabitants of said jail confronted him about his previous thought crimes. Why anyone in Craigie should give so much weight to my thoughts on prison life as opposed to those of my fellow cons baffled me. Still, it was strangely flattering to learn that they had been hanging on my every poisonous word. I had thought that three years of hard drugs and hard jail living would have blunted their memories (and that’s just the screws I’m talking about), but I was clearly wrong. Clearly, Custardgate (as the News Of The World article shall henceforth be dubbed) was still A Big Fucking Deal. The way things were going, I was in serious danger of being stabbed in the neck three times over a blog about being stabbed in the neck three times. It was enough to make anyone want to reach for the custard creams and indulge in some comfort munching.
‘Fuck it,’ I shrugged to myself. If I’d intended to spend my whole life looking over my shoulder, I’d have asked the Good Lord to reincarnate me as an owl. As I was thinking these resolute thoughts, another con approached and proceeded to quiz me about Custardgate. He wanted to know how much I’d gotten for selling my story. I explained to him that I hadn’t sought any money for it. ‘Fuck sake, ya coulda got two grand for that!’ he exclaimed, mentally trying to work out how many tenner bags that would buy.
I could understand a few of the cons being pissed off if it was their personal indiscretions that had been daubed across the The Press & Journal and News Of The World. What I couldn’t quite comprehend was their anger at my portrayal of the prison in general. It wasn’t as if I’d dissed their own homes and families, although to many, Craigie was a home from home and its inhabitants were their family. All I’d done was tell it like it was. What were they expecting, a narrative in which Craiginches was like something out of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, with chocolate rivers and glass elevators whisking the cons o’er the water to court every morning? Junkies, dressed like Oompa-Loompas, dancing arm-in-arm down the hall to collect their meth?
And it wasn’t just the cons who were queuing up to have words with me about my words. The screws were also eager to find out if The Trash Whore Diaries would be making a reappearance, no doubt anxious to see what dirt I would be dishing on them and what jail scams I would uncover. Sadly both groups are out of luck. Do they really think I’d be stupid enough to start my jail blogs again, with the entire prison population looking over my shoulder? Actually, yes, I am that stupid. Only this time round, I’ll be publishing my blogs in time delay, using the same technique they employ to bleep out the swearing when the Oscars are screened live. I’m writing these words in January 2009 but if it’s still January when you’re reading them, it’s more likely to be 2010. Hopefully by then my neck will be sufficiently far from jail to avoid being breached thrice over on account of a story about a story about a packet of custard creams.
Although it feels like the entire jail intake is out to get me over perceived slights to their fine, upstanding reputation, thankfully I still have one ace to call upon at the turn. In the Sheriff Court holding cells on Monday, one of the cons from B-Hall started mouthing off about me being ‘a bam’, quite possibly on account of a weblog I once wrote about…yeah, you get the picture. Although I wasn’t there to hear his denigrations, unfortunately for him, someone much scarier was; an acquaintance of mine whose reputation precedes him in jails the length of the country. Upon overhearing the mouthy con’s diatribe, my boy swiftly covered the CCTV camera with his left hand and hooked the complainer with his right. ‘Sorry,’ sputtered the busted coupon, ‘I didnae ken you knew Kai.’ Sometimes it’s good to have high friends in low places like these.

2009-08-31T02:15:00.005Z

Written on: Monday 26th January 2009

Of all the sounds to echo through the halls of Craiginches, by far the most repetitive is the rattle of keys that heralds the opening and slamming of steel doors. All day, every day, screws jingle-jangle their way the length of A-Hall and back again, locking and unlocking, opening and closing, checking and rechecking numbers. They're not called turnkeys for nothing. So when my afternoon perusal of The Daily Telegraph was interrupted by the all-too-familiar scrape of metal on metal, I barely glanced up as the door swung open. The key-wielding screw thrust a skeletal figure into my cell and proffered it like a zoo-keeper feeding fresh meat to the lions before rapidly retreating behind the sanctuary of the metal door. I didn't even have time to appraise and reject this tasteless morsel before the zookeeper was gone, off to throw fish at the sea lions in B-Hall presumably. I put down my paper and studied the pitiful serving of yellowed skin and bones. Five foot nothing of black teeth and jail tats gawped up at me, smack oozing from every pore. Part of my five-a-day this most certainly wasn't. I'd seen more meat at a vegans convention. (Not that I made a point of frequenting vegans conventions. I was a carnivorous lion, remember?) This wasn't even a meal fit for a convict, never mind a tiger, or whatever animal it was I had appointed myself as for the purposes of this tenuous metaphor. If the junkie had noted the disgusted expression on my face, he might also have concluded that I was a cat of some description, albeit one who'd just finished grooming himself and couldn't abide the taste of his own genitals.
'Alright min,' slurred the tasteless titbit through a haze of methadone. 'Got any baccy?'
I took a deep breath and began to patiently explain to my new friend that no, I didn't have any tobacco, and moreover since this was a non-smoking cell, he'd have to move. Although no puritan when it comes to smoking, I've learned that a non-smoking cell has its advantages, not least in situations such as that in which I now found myself. Given the choice between being locked up with a chain-smoking, gear-chasing junkie or having a single cell in which to sleep, wank and control the TV, it was a no-brainer. Speaking of no brains, my guest was on the scrounge already, scavenging for dowts [fag-ends] to fashion into a rollie. Some people might argue that soft drugs don't necessarily lead onto harder ones, but you try finding a junkie who doesn't smoke. It's like the old cliché about Muslims being terrorist sympathisers. They're not, but who would you rather have sweating profusely next to you on your flight – Nigel Brown or Rachid Ismael Mahmood? No one ever tells you that stereotypes are often true.
Upon learning of the predicament he now found himself in and the lack of opportunities this would present for further blackening his charred lungs, the junkie took the hint and set about making an undignified exit from the cell. With the door locked however and the gap underneath it to small for even his sleight frame, outside assistance would be required. As luck would have it, the one time a turnkey was needed to turn keys, none were forthcoming. After five minutes of pressing the buzzer and booting the door in vain, the junkie began ranting at the screw who had locked him in this hell of clean air and no medication.
'I swear that screw done this just tae wind me up!' he raged. 'I swear I'll put him flat on his back when I see him!'
With no prison officers available to extricate us from our dagger-clenched embrace, we reluctantly stood down our weapons and observed an uneasy truce. Neither of us wanted to be here, and certainly not in the present company, but for now we had no choice. To kill time instead of his cellmate, the junkie began recounting the events that had led to his incarceration. On this occasion, he was remanded for a series of assault and robberies. The reasons for our enforced cohabitation soon became clear.
'I had to go on the bottom flat cos I'm disabled and they had to put me in with an Aberdeen lad cos o my previous,' he explained. Previous? 'When they was admitting me this time, they says tae us, 'Are you a racist?'' (On my own admission sheet I'd denied being racist, sectarian or homophobic, informing the screws that I hated everyone equally.) 'I says tae them, 'Fit dae ya think? Just look at my previous!' See I've got a few racial convictions so they cannae put me in wi any coloureds. And I hate Pakis too. Just the way they smell.'
He may not have been Asian, but my newly-adopted gear gremlin was not exactly redolent of roses either. As he explained, I would not enjoy being locked up with him because 'Junkies aiways smell funny when they're sweating oot the kit.'
'I hear the Scousers hiv plenty o gear tae sell in the hall,' he continued, 'an hash an a'. Here, ya see that hash is back up tae a Class C, is it?'
'Actually I think it's a Class B now,' I corrected.
'Is it?' The junkie looked shocked at this revelation, as if the reclassification of cannabis might force him to rethink his entire policy on recreational drug use. 'It wiz right doon tae a Class D for a while, wiz it nae?'
I duly learned that my new co-pilot was 30 years old, had been in and out of jail since he was 16, had two kids – one of whom was in high school – and had 'been in every peter [cell] in the jail'. Oh, and he hailed from Northfield, but you assumed that already, didn't you?
'Do you take any pills or anything?' he enquired, clearly concerned for my well-being. Or possibly just to see if he could tap any vallies off me. After ascertaining that there would be no drugs forthcoming from my clean-living self, the junkie settled for the next best thing – a cup of tea and a rollie. From the plastic bag containing his jail-allocated possessions, he removed a heap of sugar sachets that looked suspiciously more than the standard weekly ration. 'I chored em at my induction,' he explained. 'Just kept sticking em up the sleeve of my jumper.'
I made a mental note to keep an eye on my possessions for the remainder of our uneasy cell-sharing arrangement. While the kettle was boiling, the junkie took out an apple and began carving it into small pieces with a plastic knife. What used to be a set of teeth were too knackered to bite into anything. Now all he could do was gum his food; death by a thousand mastications.
'Aw, this is a tune!' The 4Music channel was playing in the background and as his favourite song came on, the junkie cranked the TV up to distortion-inducing levels. The self-declared racist then proceeded to happily duet with the blacker-than-black Akon.
For all my smug stereotyping, my room-mate turned out to have a few surprises – as well as sugar sachets – up his sleeve. I discovered that he used to be a boxer with an impressive array of amateur titles to his name. 'What caused you to give it up?' I asked, waiting for the predictable response about gear habits and jail time.
'I had to gie it up when I had my heid burst in by a paving slab and a nail-gun,' he explained bluntly. 'Here – feel.'
He pressed my hand against his scalp and forced me to caress his lumpy scar tissue. 'Who did that to you?'
'My cousin. I was owe him a tenner,' came the reply.
There wasn't really much I could say to that. 'There's an Evening Express here if you wanna read it,' I noted, pointing towards the newspaper on the desk.
'I ca' read,' said the junkie. 'I wisnae in school much, I wiz aiways getting expelled for fighting. Only school I niver went to wiz Harlaw.'
'Here, how old do ya think I am?' he asked suddenly.
I stared at him for a second before replying. '30.'
He recoiled in surprise. 'Here min, at's spot on. How did you ken?'
I smiled. 'You told me five minutes ago.'

2007-02-15T00:12:00.000Z

With today’s headlines predictably dominated by my shocking failure to update The Trash Whore Diaries, this comparatively trivial morsel of news may have escaped your attention: ‘Woman, 30, battles for right to die’. Thankfully I am on hand (belatedly, admittedly) to give it the prominence it so richly deserves.
‘A terminally-ill woman began a ground-breaking bid to end her own life yesterday in a legal case which could have implications for hundreds of patients a year’ reports the Press & Journal. ‘Kelly Taylor, 30, who has been given less than a year to live, argues that medics are breaching human rights laws by refusing to provide treatment which will lead to her death. She is attempting to compel doctors to vastly increase her morphine dose to sedate her into a coma-like state.’ Where’s Harold Shipman when you need him, huh? It would appear that this woman has become so accustomed to sponging off the NHS she expects them not only to feed her - by dint of a nasal tube - but also to kill her at her behest. Next thing you know, she’ll be asking them to cover the cost of her funeral as well. Oh, hang on a sec… ‘An initial hearing at the High Court in London yesterday heard Mrs Taylor would also be seeking damages under the Human Rights Act.’ So let’s get this straight; she wants them to kill her and then she wants to sue them for not having killed her sooner? Is it any wonder the NHS is in financial meltdown when there are people like Kelly Taylor burning it for every penny it doesn’t have? If she really wants off of this earth so badly, why doesn’t she go ponder the matter in her car…with the engine running and the garage door shut? I mean, I’m gonna hazard a guess here and say that Kelly Taylor isn’t quite as robust as Bruce Willis. In fact given her terminal illness, I’d imagine she’s about as unbreakable as a Shoji paper screen. So why all the hullabaloo over a task so simple that even a terminally ill patient could perform it? Hell, all she needs to do is pull out her feeding tube and she’ll be dead within a week. But then it’s not about the dying, is it? It’s about a cry for attention, just like it is with all would-be suicidees. Let’s cut to the chase here: Kelly Taylor is dying which, sarcasm aside, is pretty shitty. What’s even shittier though is that the world in general hasn’t paid her the slightest bit of notice. You’d have thought the human race could have had the decency to don sackcloth and ashes or at least observe a minute’s silence to commemorate Karen Taylor’s misfortune at being the first person ever to be stricken by a terminal illness, but no, civilisation appears to have selfishly overlooked her plight. So what does Kelly do? She does what any attention-seeker in her position would do; calls up the media and unleashes a two-pronged assault on the NHS, ordering them to kill her and suing them for not having had the decency to do the job sooner. Why, you may be wondering, does Ms Taylor not take matters into her own hands and end her wretched life? (And I mean wretched in a literal - not a pejorative - sense.) Instead, she seems intent on prolonging her suffering by pursuing her case through the courts. Doesn’t that defeat the whole point of dying quickly to ease the pain incurred by a terminal illness? In fairness to the woman, I guess you could reason that in her weakened state she might be physically incapable of committing suicide, and would require the assistance of a third party - i.e the NHS - but you’d be wrong. The fact of the matter is, Kelly Taylor is so accustomed to sponging off the state, she’s become incapable of doing anything for herself. I mean, why bother going to the effort of stockpiling a fatal supply of medication when you can get the NHS to do the job for you and railroad the media into drumming up a few murmurs of sympathy into the bargain?
A few weeks ago, I penned a blog in which I pondered why we, as a society, are loath to speak ill of the dead. Well it would appear that the deceased are not the only ones to be undeservingly feted and sainted, for so are the dying. It’s the only reason I can think to account for why no one has had the sense to tell Kelly Taylor to quit whining and die quietly like every other terminal NHS patient. I’m not mocking her affliction but I am mocking her propensity for afflicting the rest of us with her maladies and malaise. As someone once said, the best things in life are free, and when you happen to be afflicted by a terminal illness, death is the best you can get. For zero pounds and zero pence (or the price of a Bic razor at the very most) an untimely demise can be yours. So why all the fucking about with lawyers and courts and doctors to obtain permission to commit suicide? Did Kurt Cobain seek permission from his fans before he/his wife (delete according to which theory you ascribe to) pulled the trigger? Did Sylvia Plath seek permission from the gas board before sticking her head in the oven? No. So why should Kelly Taylor - no matter how heart-rending her plight may be - involve the media - and by proxy you and I - in a matter that is no one’s god-damn business except hers? Life might be sacred, but death, it would seem, is profane.

2007-02-08T12:12:00.000Z

I was sitting in the bandstand above the St Nicholas Centre - the very same bandstand that never resonates to anything more musical than the squawking of pigeons - eating my lunch when I got thinking. The thing I found myself thinking about the most was my lunch, probably because it was staring me right in the face. When I had finished ruminating and masticating my sandwich, I turned my attention to dessert, a baked snack that purported to be a ‘Delicious Handmade Chocolate Brownie’. I took a bite of it and discovered, much to my delight, that it was indeed delicious. But handmade? I couldn’t really say. It was around this time that my culinary thinking mechanism went into overdrive, and I found myself pondering the following conundrum: Why are handmade goods automatically assumed to be superior to their machine made equivalent? Weren’t machines given these jobs in the first place because they are better than humans? More efficient, more reliable and less likely to leave blood, hairs and semen in the food. Why would I want some minimum wage stranger’s chicken-choking hands interfering with my brownie mix? Give me a sterile electric whisk every time. Some things just shouldn’t be made by hand. Like chocolate brownies. And condoms too. I don’t want some Philippino sweatshop worker getting two cents an hour to finger a condom that’s destined for my dick. Not unless I’m personally paying her the two cents an hour, in which case she can finger my sheath until I render it unsanitary. I'm not so keen on homemade goods, but ho made does it for me every time.

2007-02-06T21:51:00.000Z

In case you weren’t aware, I happen to be a dad. And not just any old dad, but a proud dad. I’m proud because I played my part in creating another human being, and that sets me apart from all the other dads out there. Sure, I know their errant sperms also fertilised eggs, but not in the way mine did. Mine was different because it - she - isn’t like all the rest. She’s special. And in proudly believing that my child is superior to all others, I must surely be unique. Of course, raising a hyperactive, destructive, rampaging toddler - even one as adorable as mine - brings with it its own problems; no sleep and not enough sex, screaming tantrums (not least from girlfriends peeved at the paucity of sleep and sex) and of course dirty nappies. But I’m not here to whine about the trials and tribulations of being a father. After all, I have it on good authority that my parents went through exactly the same rigmarole with me. Admittedly, I don’t recall any of my supposed brattishness, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, and say for the sake of argument that they did change my nappies and mollify my tantrums. In selflessly doing the same for my own progeny, that doesn’t make me dad of the year.
It’s a fact of life that shit happens, but when you’ve got a baby, shit³ happens. Several times a day. Thankfully it’s not all bad however; in fact to my surprise, it’s mostly all good. Remember Listitis, the weekly themed list I began in The Trash Whore Diaries while in prison? Well today it’s back, featuring a compendium of my top reasons for having a baby...

1. You get to use the Parent & Child parking spaces at supermarkets. OK, so you can use them anyway as customers are not obliged to undergo biological testing to certify their paternity, but now that I’m a bona fide dad with brat in tow, I can use Parent & Child parking without getting glared at by irate mothers. They should really be thanking me for forcing them to park further away, thereby walking off some of their excess baby fat, but for some reasons the stroppy bitches don’t see it like that. And frankly, I’ve no desire to incur their wrath. They’d most likely reverse over me several times and then escape a murder rap by citing post-natal depression.

2. You’ve always got a packet of baby wipes on standby. For cleaning cum off your dick; for cleaning cum off your girlfriend’s tits; for cleaning cum of her sister’s ass before the family dog wakes up and tries to lick it off. The possible uses for baby wipes are endless. Oh, and supposedly they’re pretty good for cleaning babies’ pooey bottoms with too. Who’d have thunk it?

3. You get chatted up by MILFs in coffee shops. Picture the scene: you walk into Books & Beans with the bairn in tow and locate the table with the high chair, only to discover that a yummy mummy has beaten you to it. You’re just turning to go when she calls out; ‘Here, we can share the table if you like.’ The next thing you know, she’s whipped out a portable baby seat, made from an apron tied around a chair, and the four of you have begun bonding over baby food. One minute you’re asking how old her kid is; the next you’ve ascertained that she’s eating alone because her man’s always working abroad, leaving her with kids to raise and itches to be scratched. As an icebreaker, babies are truly indispensable; after being flashed a cutesy smile and high-pitched ‘Hiya!’ from my butter-wouldn't-melt bairn, even the frostiest of MILFs can’t help but crack a smile and thus acknowledge the fuckable father pushing the pram. They don’t say it but I know what they’re thinking; ‘If I play my cards right, his perfect DNA could be making me a beautiful baby just like that.’ And they don’t know it but I’m thinking almost exactly the same thing…only in my fantasy, the sperm doesn’t end up in their uterus. It sure as hell ends up everywhere else though.

4. Chicks on the bus flash you knowing smiles. As I explained in January 3rd’s blog, ‘After somehow completing the Byzantine task of lifting pram, pram cover, shoulder bag and baby on and off the bus, I realised that I had developed a newfound appreciation for Heather Mills. It’s hard enough holding a baby and buggy, but to do so while hopping onto a bus with a prosthetic limb tucked under one arm? I couldn’t do it if you paid me. Although if you paid me £20million then, like Heather, I suppose I could give it a shot.’ What I didn’t explain was that there is one small advantage to lifting your baby onto a bus, plonking her down in the aisle and then returning to stow the buggy and pay the driver: by the time you’ve climbed the stairs onto the gangway, the bairn has trotted off towards the back of the bus in that cute, wide-eyed loping way that only babies can. (Or that only my baby can anyway.) In the process, the tot has attracted doting smiles from all onboard - old ladies, skater boys and hot chicks. Upon catching sight of me - the lone parent - struggling manfully onto the bus, their looks turn from adoring to sympathetic; 'Look at that poor boy - a single father, reduced to bringing up that cute wee bairn on his own. How could the mother walk out on them like that?' I can’t bring myself to tell them that mumsy is at home sleeping any more than I can bring myself to tell mumsy that all the women on the bus - old ladies included - want to mother my baby and smother my baby face between their heaving bosoms.

5. You get second helpings of everything. Every meal your baby can’t finish - porridge, pasta and mum’s milky paps - is yours to dispose of as you see fit. And we’re not talking leftover soggy seconds here - we’re talking the finest organic food that looks even finer than the luxury cat food that used to make my mouth water so much when I watched the Sheeba ads while in jail.

And that’s about all the reasons I can think of for having a baby, but what reasons! Free Parent & Child Parking, limitless baby wipes, second helpings of dinner and admiring glances from MILFs? It almost makes the ensuing 18 years of penury and teenage tantrums worthwhile. I’m not saying you should go out there and start trying to make babies on the strength of the above incentives, but it’s comforting to know that should you ever find yourself getting fast and furious without a connie, having vowed to pull out at the last moment, but it feels so warm and wet you just can’t bring yourself to disengage, well, it’s not all bad. Parenting isn’t a chore - it’s an investment. Get it right and they’ll pay to put you in a nice nursing home in 40 years time. Get it wrong and they’ll kill you for your inheritance.

2007-02-05T12:31:00.000Z

I never used to be able to understand how couples could stay together in a loveless relationship, co-habiting long after the co-joining of bodies had stopped, but then I moved in with a girl of my own and discovered the bitter truth. The fact of the matter is that people stay together long after the love has left the building because it’s easier that way. Sure, one of them could move out and move on, but that would involve disentangling joint mortgages, finding new lodgings and fighting a bitter custodial battle over the family dog. It’s far simpler to stay together by default until eventually the irreconcilable differences - i.e. the husband’s penchant for wearing adult diapers and holding S&M orgies in the basement - force them apart. Living together without the love might not be ideal, but the other alternative - separation - is a logistical nitemare. I dread the day when push comes to shove and my girlfriend boots me out of the house for good, leaving me shivering on the front step with only the embers from my smouldering possessions to keep me warm. (That’s why I don’t keep lighter fluid in the house; hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Especially a scorned woman who’s high on lighter fluid.) I might not have a mortgage and sprawling CD collection to split, but I do have a bairn to share, not to mention a cumbersome 42" plasma to move, which I vowed never to dismantle and reassemble again. Thankfully, my relationship has yet to reach the point of having to worry about the intricacies of disengagement. I’ve not even got to the loveless stage yet, let alone the irreconcilable differences part. Although I can’t therefore claim to share the aforementioned husband’s penchant for wearing adult diapers and holding S&M orgies in the basement, I can sympathise with his predicament. After all, his wife can’t exactly be normal either; if she hadn’t turned into such a frigid bitch, he wouldn’t have been driven to seek fulfilment in less salubrious ways. Until her mood-swings and his swinging got too much however, an uneasy truce prevailed. Sure, he might have hated the cow, but for all of the five minutes a day he saw her for, it was easier to maintain the status quo. A few moments of awkward smalltalk over breakfast is a small price to pay for avoiding a costly divorce.
As it stands, I see about as much of my girlfriend as I do the postman. (Although she sees a lot more of him. In fact she sees all of him.) I don’t particularly care for the postie - not cos he’s fucking my girlfriend but because he’s a fucking postie - but so long as he keeps delivering my mail, I can abide with him. Likewise my girlfriend; sure, she bugs the hell out of me sometimes, but the friction is kept to a minimum because we hardly ever see each other. And we do manage to grab some quality time together, we’re usually more interested in generating friction of the mutually pleasurable sort. Ours isn’t a loveless relationship - at least I don’t think it is - but we see so little of each other it’s hard to tell. (For example, as I am writing this blog, the clock on the computer indicates that it is 12:21pm. I’ve been up for five hours, but have yet to set eyes on my girlfriend, who is still sleeping. By the time she arises, I will have left to go into town and by the time I get home, she will be leaving to go to work.) Although living separate lives under the same roof is not ideal, on the plus side, it means we treasure the snatched moments we do get together. Late at nite, when the bairn is asleep, the day’s work is done and Desperate Housewives isn’t showing, we are able to curl up on the sofa, hold hands and just talk. And it is at these times that I am reminded precisely why I love my girlfriend: because of her blondisms.
My girlfriend isn’t blonde, but that’s not to say she can’t act like one at times. I’m lucky because I get the best of both worlds - a pretty brunette with all the dizziness of a bleach blonde, but without the visible roots and the cupboard full of peroxide. (Peroxide wouldn’t normally bother me, but while electronically tagged I’m anxious not to leave myself open to prosecution, not least for stockpiling materials that may assist in the commission of an act of terrorism.) Like all true - and fake - blondes, my girlfriend is prone to spouting fatuities from time to time. (Example: ‘Why is Boxing Day called Boxing Day - is it because after Christmas everyone gets rid of their cardboard boxes?’) Her most heinous crime however is to fail to get my jokes. Ask women what they look for in an ideal man and they’ll say ‘Someone who makes me laugh.’ Well guess what - my girlfriend got such a man and yet what do I get in return? Nada. Not so much as a snigger or a nod to acknowledge my comedic efforts. Much as I would like to make out that it’s because my jokes are so high-brow, the fact of the matter is they are puerile and predictable. Yet even corny counters deserve some recognition surely? ‘There’s a new film out called Déjà Vu’ remarked my girlfriend the other day. ‘I’m sure I’ve seen that one before somewhere’ I replied. My girlfriend stared at me blankly. Another time, she informed me that the toilet was leaking. ‘I just went in and found this puddle of water all over the bathroom floor’ she complained. ‘I bet that came as a shock to the cistern’ I interjected. Once again, my half-assed joke failed to elicit the half-assed laugh it so richly deserved. And that’s why I’m re-telling this anecdote - I need you to laugh to make me feel special. This weblog is an outlet for all my brilliant - and not so brilliant - one-liners that go unnoticed in real life. My girlfriend doesn’t laugh at anything I say; my daughter laughs at everything cos she’s too young to know any better, but you - I like it when you laugh, because it is discerning laughter, measured to fit the quality of the joke that precipitated it. My girlfriend, to give her credit though, does have her own occasional moments of wit, even if it is left to me to apply the finishing touches. ‘Before I started going out with you, I used to think you’d have a really small penis that wouldn’t touch the sides’ she once confessed. ‘Thankfully I was proved wrong.’ ‘Yeah, I know - it turns out that I’ve got an enormous penis’ I replied modestly ‘…and yet it still doesn’t touch the sides.’

2007-02-01T12:47:00.000Z

Although my updates have been about as frequent as my underwear changes lately, rest assured my interest in The Trash Whore Diaries is not waning. (Dirty underwear, on the other hand, has never interested me, unless it is of the Japanese schoolgirl variety and I am inhaling its heavenly aroma.) Frankly, life has been a bit hectic lately, what with my endeavours to obtain a proper job, be a proper dad and commit improper acts with my girlfriend. By the time the day’s job hunting is over, the bairn is sleeping, the missus sated and South Park finished, I’m too shattered to produce anything more creative than a Walnut Whip-esque spirally shit. And satisfying as it is to stand up and admire one's own handiwork, it’s not the sort of thing you can publish in your weblog. After all, for all its scatological references, the TWD is not Ratemypoo.com. So until tomorrow or the day after tomorrow provides me with enough respite to squeeze out a proper blog, I will leave you with these small crumbs from my over laden table of literary sumptuousness - the weirdest weekly search terms that have led the world’s freaks to my weblog.

‘Having caned her he put his cock into her vagina and fucked hard’
I should think so! After caning the bitch, administering anything less than a hard fucking would be a complete anticlimax. Canings followed by tender lovemaking just don’t work, and believe me, I’ve tried.

‘filling her white ovulating pussy with potent black cum’
I hate to break it to you, but it doesn’t matter how black you are, your cum will always be as white as the palms of your hands. Especially if you’ve been palming off into them.

‘whore charges for pissing in her mouth’
Tight bitch. (And by tight I mean stingy, not vaginally tight.) She ought to be paying me for the privilege of being coated in my amber nectar.

'how do i stand to poop in my nappy diaper'
Who typed this - a two year-old? Well if they can work the internet, I’m pretty sure standing to shit shouldn’t be much of a problem to master.

‘i want a baby but i've still not fallen pregnant’
Well you’ve come to the right place darling. Send me £9.95 in a SAE and in return I shall mail you 10cc of the manliest, most potent cum every to further the human race. 100% conception guaranteed, or I'll refund my money shot.

‘how do you deal with a crack whores past’
What past - the fact that there was once a time when she wasn’t a crack whore? You don’t. All you can do is load up another pipe, light it for her and then tell the bitch to start sucking on you dick to pay for the next one.

‘nite vision hidden blowjobs’
If you were to ogle a blowjob through nite vision goggles, would the cumshot look green? Mind you, my cum looks green anyway, although I believe the medical term for it is a penile discharge.

‘smearing faeces in toddlers’
Shouldn‘t that be the other way round? I mean, everyone smears toddlers in faeces from time to time, but smearing faeces in toddlers? What kind of a sicko would do something like that?

‘white trash sluts who fuck on there period’
I wouldn’t have said there was anything particularly remarkable about this search term were it not for the fact that the next person who accessed my blog did so by searching for ‘cleaning and hygiene’. Proof that there really is something for everything in The Trash Whore Diaries.

2007-01-30T13:04:00.000Z

In the five years in which I have been intermittently writing The Trash Whore Diaries, I have introduced a motley crew of bizarre characters to you, delineating their idiosyncrasies, extolling their virtues and ridiculing their vices. Who can forget such mavericks as Paul Macklin - knife-wielding, Yardie-slashing, cop-hating psycho - and Alex Dick - ginger-haired, sexually predatory, odious yet hilarious prick? Today’s blog is dedicated to one such Trash Whore legend, a guy who back in the day starred in more than his fair share of blogs. Long-time readers of this weblog may recognise the name of Dave Bradley. To the uninitiated, he looks something like this:I could explain the context of the fotograph but I don’t see the point, for the picture itself tells you all you need to know about Dave Bradley. Four years since the scoundrel last appeared in The Trash Whore Diaries and two years since I last set eyes on him, Dave Bradley is back by dint of an appearance in today’s Press & Journal. We’ll get to that story in a minute, but first, allow me to refresh your memory by reprising some of Bradley’s more memorable cameos in this weblog…

26th June 2002: My marketing mentor at the office was a certain Dave Bradley, the same Dave Bradley who had played bass for Sirius at our Elgin gig, despite not knowing any of the songs, before proceeding to go skinny dipping in the North Sea. Today he was wearing a suit, talking like a toff and looking like a yuppy competing with his brothers for a share of daddy’s inheritance, desperately trying to look sophisticated in order to impress. But like all good personal sellers, there was method in his madness as I was soon to discover. Dave had only been with the company for ten days, but already he had been promoted. He had a certain flair that both endeared and endangered him to the public in his quest for bites. I sat down on the other side of the table, picked up the extra handset and listened in as Dave dealt his dodgiest lines to members of the unsuspecting public. He had decided to appropriate an eccentric upper-class accent for the purposes of his job, and it went something like this: ‘Oh hello! Is that Mrs Smith? Oh jolly good, marvellous! I’m Mr Bradley from… and I’m carrying out some market research in the Bridge of Don area for a competition we’re running next week giving homeowners the chance to have a luxury kitchen installed at no cost at all. Now let me see, I’m just looking up your details on my fictional computer in front of me… ah yes – you’re the property owner and your kitchen is over five years old, could you verify that for me? What do you mean you’re not interested, not interested in what – a million pounds?’ The woman starts to explain why she is not interested and it is at this point that Mr Bradley hangs up. He is rude, obnoxious, over the top and a complete maverick. Yet somehow, it works.

1st July 2002: Dave Bradley is definitely madder than an FCUK condom. Today he was perfecting his fone technique, which involved calling up housewives and trying to sell them kitchens by introducing himself as Mr Bin Laden, Michael Caine, Mr Spam Javelin or, best of all, Mrs Haemaphroditey. The rest of the morning passed quickly, with Dave trying out a number of stupid voices on unsuspecting fone victims, his best one being ‘The Constipated Yorkshireman’. He also did his best to slip into the conversation, wherever possible, the fact that he’d ‘Just cracked one off.’ That boy needs therapy, he really does.

11th July 2002: Dave Bradley lost his job last nite, and it was in unusual circumstances. It wasn't his punctuality or his lack of respect for managerial authority that got him into trouble. And it wasn't even his fone manner - calling people up and telling them he had a colostomy bag and was a raging paedo had nothing to do with it. No, it was a lot simpler than that. David Bradley lost his job because he wrote 'No Brains' next to Billy's name on the whiteboard. It wasn't unusual for staff to have nicknames added beside their formal monickers - Dave was 'Bradders' or 'Tosser', Darren was 'Dazza' and I was 'Sickboy'. The problem with labelling Billy 'No Brains', apart from the cruelty of the insult, was that his was the only nickname that had been added to the board… And so it was that on 11th July 2002, Mrs Haemaphroditey found his/herself unemployed again after just four weeks as a kitchen telesaleser. But like a bad kebab, I have a feeling we'll be seeing more of the smooth-talking scoundrel in the days to come.

16th July 2002: Dave returned to work today, one week after he was given the sack for making fun of Billy No Brains. The kebab did indeed resurface for sloppy seconds, just as I had predicted, and it was ranker than ever….Mr Bradley celebrated his return by announcing to those unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end that he was calling from The Floating Fortress Of Doom and had a colostomy bag attached to himself. After a week away from the office, Bradders was madder than ever. The psychotic look of pleasure that wells up in his eyes when torturing his victims over the fone has to be seen to be believed. I wouldn't want to be his pet hamster.

17th July 2002: Behind Stevie, sitting at a desk of his own, is Dave Bradley, known to everyone else in the office - and himself - as 'Tosser'. Tosser Dave is drinking beer and foning householders on his sheet to inform them that he is a small Brazilian frog, and would they like a luxury kitchen installation at no cost anyway?

22nd July 2002: There's also a new manager, Paul, who is assisting Alex and possibly trying to tame the deranged beast that is David Bradley. Today he was 'The Second Coming of Jesus Christ', doing research 'into your anus' and a friendly telesaleser who promised Mrs Lamb that he wouldn't fleece her for a kitchen. Most of Dave's off-the-cuff comments went unchecked until Paul had the misfortune of calling back a potential customer who was puzzled as to why the previous gentleman had said 'You may have seen our company before on Crimewatch.' Every circus needs a clown. It's just a shame for the residents of Aberdeen and Tayside that we got Pennywise.

28th July 2002: The Essex girl, who had never had the pleasure of Dave Bradley before, was astonished by his fone manner, especially when he started informing members of the public that he had a dripping penis and would they like to smell his cheese?

3rd August 2002: Dave Bradley, a performing seal whose name may be frustratingly familiar to you, was sent home from work on Thursday for misbehaving yet again. It wasn’t a member of staff he had insulted this time, but a member of the public who had the pleasure of learning that ‘My name’s Dave and I’m a wanker’ as well as some gooey details about the pre-cum developing in Dave's boxers. Fooling around in front of Paul is one thing, but when the branch manager is in the room it’s career suicide, or at least it would be if Dave had a career to live for in the first place. As a salesman, Bradley is pretty average, but as a morale-booster for the rest of the staff, he works better than any hot coals team-building exercise. Telesales is not a job; it’s a means of venting your frustrations on the rest of society

6th December 2002: David Bradley, who is back within the fold for the fifth (or is it the sixth?) time. To the public, this means receiving more calls like this: ‘Hi, my name’s Mr Bradley and I’m doing market research into your redneck community...Let me just check – you own the property, the kitchen’s over five years old and you love the cock, am I right? What do you mean you don’t understand? Are you retarded or just senile? How old is the kitchen? It’s hardly quantum physics. Jesus Christ, I’d better go – a building’s just fallen down.’

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. (Incidentally, if you enjoyed that selection of vintage me, might I suggest you check out the TWD archives. Sure, some of it’s more immature than an aborted foetus but it’s also damn funny in places, if I say so myself.) In the four years since Dave Bradley last disgraced The Trash Whore Diaries, our paths have crossed on occasions, such as the nite I witnessed him eating omelette ingredients before sticking his fingers down his throat and making himself sick, frying up the resultant vomit and eating it for a £200 bet. Having not seen hide nor hair of Dave in over two years however, I thought he’d either grown up and gotten a proper job or been tracked down and slain by an irate telesales customer. Imagine my surprise when I opened up the Press & Journal this morning to find a fotograph of Dave Bradley being dragged across a lawn by his legs accompanied by the caption ‘Student James Provan’s friend David Bradley pretends to eat grass as a human lawnmower.’ The story (which can be viewed in full here) noted: ‘An Aberdeen student whose film about making pancakes was seen by thousands on the internet and then millions more on US TV is to have another one of his clips used in an advertising campaign. James Provan's video showing him getting out of bed and cooking up his favourite breakfast treat last year became one of the most popular clips on the website You Tube, which allows users to upload their home movies. Now the 24-year-old computer science student's latest opus is to be used in an US TV advert for an internet service provided by media giant Time Warner. Filmed in his parents' garden in the Aberdeen suburb of Milltimber, the animation shows a leaf collector sucking leaves off a tree and includes him pushing his friend along the grass as if he were a lawnmower….The Aberdeen University student's films have now been seen by about 3.5million people online…Producers of Good Morning America, one of the most popular TV shows in the US, contacted him after You Tube put the clip on the website's main page.’
And here it is - the clip itself, featuring Dave ‘Lawnmower‘ Bradley:

People, places and governments may change, but Dave Bradley will always be a tosser of the highest order. And I can’t pay the boy a higher compliment than that.

2007-01-25T12:03:00.001Z

I encountered an inspirational piece of graffiti today, scrawled in an uninspiring place - the bogs at Cornhill Hospital. In my experience, public toilets are an excellent place for picking up ideas, and sometimes random strangers too. The best graffiti slogans can always be found in toilet cubicles. My favourite scribbled one-liners, as blogged some years previously, emanated from the gents’ at Aberdeen University, where I was pleased to learn that ‘Will Young turned gay here’. Not only that, but beside the toilet roll dispenser, someone had helpfully written ‘RGU Management Degrees – please take one’. Today’s permanent marker masterpiece was less comical but eminently more inspired. It simply read: ‘Assassins Of Allah.’ My first thought upon reading it was ‘What a great name for a band!’ Not as great as Merchants Of Despair, as explained in some detail previously in this weblog, but brilliant nonetheless. Upon getting home, a quick Google search revealed that the band Hawkwind have already used Assassins Of Allah, but only as a song title. As a band name, however, Assassins Of Allah would really come into its own. Sure, your Asian tour would be more disastrous than Jade Goody's mooted diplomatic trip to India, but look on the bright side - at least you’d be guaranteed a large, vociferous crowd at every gig. In fact the audience would be so proactive, they'd probably make effigies of the band and wave placards with their name on. Given that Hawkwind were - and probably still are - a trippy, drugged-up space rock band, it was not surprising that one of their fans should have wound up in Cornhill, presumably after suffering one too many bad acid flashbacks.
As I was leaving the ward where I had been visiting an acquaintance, it occurred to me that the offices within the hospital were probably no different from those of any other institution. I wondered, therefore, if the office staff at the mental hospital were permitted to display the same hackneyed notice that can be found in office blocks the world over: ‘You don’t have to be mad to work here…but it helps.’

2007-01-24T12:40:00.000Z

Despite having done nothing of note lately other than scratch my balls and take my daughter to Ramboland (though not at the same time), I seem to find myself in the local and national press once again. I thought I had used up all my column inches and screen time last year when The Trash Whore Diaries and accompanying ‘Perjurer Wrote Blog From Prison Cell’ story graced the Press & Journal, News of the World and North Tonight. Now I’m back in print due to popular demand, or possibly due to it being a super-slow news day across the country. First up is today’s issue of The Times, where on page 27 the following column filler, entitled 'High Prais', can be found: ‘Three Indie pop musicians in Aberdeen named their band after the criminal lawyer who defended one of their friends in court. Edgar Prais, QC, was unable to keep Kai…, 23, from being found guilty of perjury in 2005, but the band was impressed enough with his performance anyway to officially adopt his name.’
Next up is the Daily Express, which under the headline 'Band name is music to QC's ears' reports: 'One of Scotland's top criminal lawyers has been honoured by having a band named after him...Mr Prais defended Kai..., 23, of Aberdeen, when he appeared in court in September 2005 accused of committing perjury in the trial of a man accused of two attempted murders....[The band] were so impressed by Edgar Prais QC's court room skills that they chose to honour him with the biggest gesture they could think of. And yesterday the respected advocate said he was delighted to hear he was now proving a big hit in clubs across the country.' Then we have The Sun, which opts for the headline 'It's songs of Prais' accompanied by a similar report. The Daily Record and The Scotsman also follow suit. The Press & Journal, naturally, expands on the story, devoting half a column to the astonishing revelation that a band should choose to name themselves after a man who actually exists. On page seven of today’s paper, the following account can be found: ‘One of Scotland’s top criminal lawyers has been honoured by having an Aberdeen band named after him. Members of indie pop band Edgar Prais chose to name themselves after the veteran QC after he defended one of their friends. Mr Prais acted for their friend Kai…, 23, [incidentally I must thank the press for shaving a couple of years off my age] when he appeared in court in September 2005. But despite [Kai] being found guilty of a perjury offence and sentenced to three years in jail his friends thought the Edinburgh-based QC did a “sterling job”. They were so impressed by Edgar Prais’s skills that they chose to honour him with the biggest gesture they could think of. Yesterday the respected lawman said he was delighted to hear he was now proving a big hit in clubs across the country. Edgar Prais QC said: “I can’t imagine a finer compliment. I know the band are from Aberdeen and that they are something called an ‘indie band’…although I don’t know what that means. I only hope their music is better than their taste in band names!”’
Prior to my imprisonment in September 05, the nascent Edgar Prais band - at that point unnamed - had begun practising at my rehearsal studio. Their drummer, Christy, had attended my perjury trial and was wowed by the flamboyant Edgar Prais’s skill as a rhetorician. (Sadly the jury weren’t quite so enamoured with his oration, although I suspect their majority verdict had more to do with my inescapable guilt than any failings on his part.) When I learned, while in prison, the name that the band had decided to adopt, I was mildly amused. I never thought much more about it however and certainly never envisaged that it would become a talking point (albeit on a snail’s paced news day) in the media.
The story really began to gather momentum last week when I bumped into my solicitor in town. He asked if I knew the band Edgar Prais and why they had chosen to name themselves after the Edinburgh QC. The real Edgar Prais had been sent a gig poster with his namesake printed on it, and was curious to know how this had come about. According to my solicitor, word was going about in legal circles that after Edgar Prais succeeded in acquitting a man charged with murder, the exonerated defendant proceeded to form a band in his honour. The real version of events - that it was a convicted perjurer, not an acquitted murderer who inspired the band name - was far duller. It seemed the Edgar Prais story was destined to be retold and embellished until it became the stuff of urban legend.
For the final word on the Edgar Prais story, we must go back a few months to when I was still in Craiginches. I was sitting in the education department one morning chatting to another inmate when he informed me that he was due for a meeting with his defence advocate, Edgar Prais, to discuss his forthcoming trial. The accused had yet to meet EP, and asked me if I’d ever heard of him. I explained that Edgar Prais was widely regarded as being among the top three advocates in Scotland and that he usually handled the most serious cases - rapes and murders. That he had failed to secure an acquittal in my trial was through no fault on his part. ‘I think Edgar Prais specialises in cases that involve sexual assault, but he seems to cover a lot of other stuff too’ I concluded. ‘So what is it you’re charged with anyway?’ ‘Rape’ replied the man. Ah, rape. So that’ll be an alleged rapist I’ve been sitting next to in the education department for the past few weeks. Thank you for telling me so soon. Funnily enough, when the case came to trial, Edgar Prais succeeded in acquitting the man of the double rape allegation. Consequently, it would appear that one of two inferences can be drawn from this: Either the man really was innocent, or maybe, just maybe, Edgar Prais was so damn good at his job that he got the dirty beast off with rape. One thing’s for sure - I might have chosen the right QC for my trial, but I chose the wrong offence. Next time I need to summon the help of Edgar Prais, I’ll see that it’s not for perjury but for his speciality - the old ultra-violent in-out.

2007-01-23T14:13:00.000Z

(Wednesday 22nd November 2006)

‘Verdict On Devoted Dad Killing’ read the Press & Journal billboard outside Marks & Spencers. The devoted dad in question was Dean Jamieson, whose killers had just been found guilty of murder following a five-week trial. Seeing the headline got me thinking about dead people and the way in which we - the living - canonise them. If Dean Jamieson were still alive, would he be referred to as a devoted dad? Let’s look at the facts: While it should be noted that the father-of-four opted to stay at home and look after the kids rather than go to work, that makes him no different from the millions of other housewives and husbands who bring up their children while their partner goes to work. For example, I’m currently a househusband, left at home to look after my daughter while my girlfriend works, but that doesn’t necessarily make me a devoted dad. For all you know, I could be smoking crack and fist-fucking whores while the bairn clings to the bars of her cot and screams for a nappy change. Anyone can be a dad; to be a devoted dad however requires large doses of one essential attribute - devotion.
Dictionary.com defines devotion as ‘profound dedication…earnest attachment to a cause, person etc.’ Was Dean Jamieson devoted to his kids? Let’s look at some more of the facts: It was noted in the Press & Journal that the Kemnay father was prone to going on three-day drinking binges that usually culminated in him showing up at the house unannounced, skint, bladdered and in need of £20 to pay for the taxi that had taken him home. Does that sound like a devoted dad to you, downing ten pints and ten rum and cokes in the Criterion Bar, as he did on the nite of his murder, before attempting to make it home only when the money ran out? Surely a devoted dad would be at home tucking his kids up in bed and reading them a goodnite story. Of course getting pissed from time to time doesn’t make you a bad father. But neither does looking after the kids make you a good one. I’m not suggesting that Dean Jamieson didn’t love his kids; merely that the facts of the case don’t tally with the maudlin reporting of it.
Why are we, as a society, loath to speak ill of the dead? If all sinners become saints upon their deathbed, what’s the point in living a devout life? Far better to skull fuck puppy dogs and deal smack to school kids, safe in the knowledge that you’ll be canonised upon quietus anyway and thus guaranteed a prime position in heaven at the right hand of God. (If sinners do become saints upon their death, God’s right hand must be significantly larger than his left to accommodate all the thrones pulled up around it. Not to mention all the wanking he does. After going flat out to create the earth in seven days, he’s had fuck all to do since then but sit about masturbating.)
Of course ‘devoted dad’ Dean Jamieson isn’t the only victim to be posthumously bigged up by the media. A few weeks ago, the following piece appeared in the Press & Journal: ‘The airline passenger who led a fight back against 9/11 hijackers is among ten heroes to be hailed by Gordon Brown in a new book, it was reported yesterday. Todd Beamer is said to be one of ten 20th century figures chosen by the chancellor. Mr Beamer spearheaded a bid to storm the cockpit of United States Airlines Flight 93 - which crashed.’ Given that the plane crashed, taking with it all evidence as to whether Todd Beamer did indeed storm the cockpit, have you ever wondered how we can be so certain that he was a hero? Incredibly, it all comes down to two words that he uttered during an in-flight call to his fiancée: ‘Let’s roll.’ Then the call broke off and the plane crashed shortly afterwards. Based on these two words, it has somehow been deduced that Todd Beamer went on to storm the cockpit, attack the hijackers and attempt to regain control of the aircraft only to tragically die in his valiant attempt at averting disaster. As well as being feted in books and the media, his character has even been immortalised in the film United 93 including, naturally, the immortal line ‘Let’s roll.’ So was Todd Beamer a hero? Well, once again, let’s look at the facts: This guy was on a hijacked airliner that he knew was headed on a suicide mission straight for the nearest metropolis. Todd Beamer and his fellow passengers were fucked, whether they acted or not. So if Beamer did indeed storm the cockpit in an ill-fated attempt to prevent the aircraft from crashing, these were merely the actions of a desperate man trying to save his own skin. A hero is someone who puts themselves at risk to save the life of another. Todd Beamer’s death certificate was already signed by the time he acted. He had nothing to lose. In the end, his actions only served to bring the plane down prematurely. Had he stayed put, perhaps the plane would have crashed into a building, taking out even more innocent victims. Or perhaps the military would have shot it down and a few passengers might have survived. We’ll never know. What we do know is that Todd Beamer’s actions - be they courageous, foolhardy or selfish - didn’t make one shred of difference. If a man jumps into a freezing lake to save a drowning puppy but ultimately drowns along with the mutt, does that make him a hero? No, it makes him an idiot. Similarly, had Todd Beamer succeeded in his mission, I would readily join in the chorus proclaiming him a hero. But the bottom line is, it didn’t pan out that way and - albeit through no lack of effort on Todd’s part - it all went tits up. No happy ending, no handshake from the president, no hero’s welcome.
The rest of the world might have extrapolated on the basis of two words that Todd Beamer entered the cockpit and simultaneously entered into folklore, but not me. While it is certainly one theory that cannot be discounted, there is another one that I believe to be equally plausible: When Todd Beamer shouted ‘Let’s roll!’, he wasn’t urging his troops to storm the cockpit, but rather was expressing a desire to enjoy his final minutes in this life. If the complete transcription of his final call to his fiancée were made available, I think you’d find his words were actually ‘Fuck the no smoking signs, I’m gonna spark up a fat cone. The rest of you might be going down, but I intend to fly before I die. Pass the Rizlas and let’s roll!’
You may think I’m being a bit harsh on Dean Jamieson and Todd Beamer, but ask yourself this: Is that because I cruelly disparaged them? Or is it simply because the subjects of my mordant rant happen to be dead? Had they survived their respective fatal encounters, no one would bat an eyelid at a lighthearted blog at their expense. As soon as they pass over to the other side however, it becomes a capital offence to speak ill of them and their ilk. Well given that they’re not here to defend themselves, I’ll make a deal with you to even the score: Not only do you have my express permission to speak ill of me now, while I am alive and kicking, but once I rendezvous with the reaper, I urge you to diss, cuss, denigrate and castigate me. Piss on my grave; use my ashes to grit your path. Frankly, I couldn’t care less, cos by that time I’ll either be sucking Satan’s scaly pecker or smoking crack with Jesus and his homeboys. Whatever my fate, it will be safe to say that a few choice words uttered by the living won’t impact upon my decaying bones.
Whether they be alive, dead or in a persistent vegetative state, don’t saint the unsaintly and deify the ungodly. Oh, and one other thing: If you’re thinking of renting United 93 to watch action superhero Todd Beamer utter his immortal line before single-handedly kicking the terrorists’ asses, here’s a spoiler for you - Don’t bother. They all die at the end.

2007-01-22T00:30:00.000Z

Last nite, I found myself studying the notice board in my local chipper while waiting for my artery clogging fare to fry. As I casually scanned the advertisements for piano tuners, plumbers and mechanics jostling for space on the crowded cork board, my attention was drawn to an unprepossessing business card. Hand-written upon it was the following message: ‘Do you find your ironing load stressful? Well let me ease that load. Give Elaine a phone. £15-20 per load.’ I was immediately tempted to wap out the moby there and then and ask Elaine if she would ease my load, but decided against it. Nice as it would be to have someone else do all the hard work, it seemed somewhat profligate given that there were girls by the harbour who would perform the same job for a tenner. In fairness to Elaine though, she lived within cumming distance of my village abode, whereas the harbour hoors wouldn’t risk venturing this far out of their pimps’ sight for any less than a teinth of white and broon. At £20 a load, perhaps Elaine wasn’t such bad value for money after all. But before I could pick up the fone and ask for my load to be lightened, another notice caught my eye. This one had been posted up by the local Girl Guides and listed details of the meetings held by their various groups. These all sounded wholly unremarkable. All of them, that is, except for this one: ‘Beavers. Age 6-8 years. Wednesday 6.-7.15 at the primary school.’ With underage beavers and load lightening mums competing for my hard cash and cock, I was truly spoilt for choice. In the end however, I wimped out and spent my wad on hard chips instead. Empty balls would have been nice, but as my empty wallet and girlfriend concurred, a full stomach was even nicer.

2007-01-21T01:17:00.000Z

When I used to deal drugs, before police and prison put paid to my profession, I was always amazed by the assortment of words used by my customers to refer to the same sticky substance. I might have only been selling one product - weed (with the odd bit of pollen and resin thrown in, which is essentially weed with added dirt) - but there were a hundred different names for it. Remember the drugs education classes you used to have to sit through in secondary school (or primary school if you hailed from Torry)? They used to make you learn some of the ‘street’ names for hash, so that in the event of some shady stranger approaching you outside the school gates and offering you a ‘spliff’, you would know that he was referring to a rolled cigarette containing cannabis. You would also know that if you were to inhale said spliff, a good time would be had by all, probably culminating in you accepting a lift from the stranger to pick up some more of the good shit from his dealer. In reality of course, those drugs awareness seminars were useless, for hash - like all illegal drugs - has so many different names that you could take a PHD on the subject and yet struggle to cram them all in to your final thesis . I always thought it would make for an interesting blog to list the miscellaneous terms I’ve heard stoners use to refer to hash. While I was actively selling the stuff didn’t seem like the best time to announce my insalubrious profession in my weblog however. (OK, so I’ve admitted to far more incriminating things in my blog, but let’s not go there.) But now that I am a model citizen once again - in looks and occasionally in conduct - I am able to publish without being damned. For no particular reason, I present to you a list that is of no particular use to you whatsoever - 42 names for hash. If I’ve missed any out and you‘re feeling pedantic, add them in a comment at the end of this blog.

Bar
Bifta
Black
Block
Broon
Brown
Bud
Chronic
Dairty
Dope
Draw
Dirt
Dirty
Dirty res
Ganja
Hash
Herb
Good Stuff
Green
Leaf
Mary Jane
Poll
Pollen
Pot
Product
Res
Resin
Rocky
Schmee
Shit
Shizzle
Skunk
Smoke
Snifter
Snifter McBifta
Soap
Soap bar
Soapy
Soapy joe
Stuff
Weed
Widow
Wood

It has occurred to me that I may unwittingly be providing undercover cops - who still call joints reefers and pay 30 for scores of res - with all the information they need to infiltrate the rough and tumble world that the rest of us operate in on a daily basis. But in actual fact, the above list merely shows that anything and everything can be, has been and will be used to describe the wondrous substance that is cannabis/weed (that’s cannabis resin/herbal cannabis to you coppers). So if the clueless CID ever intercept my text messages and note my request for ‘10 key of wood to be picked u fae the don’, maybe I am ordering ten kilos of hash, to be collected from the River Don. Or maybe I’m simply ordering 10 kilos of timber from an Aberdeen supporter. Although given my previous, I’d stake out the littoral location just in case, boys, if I were you. The leopard never changes its spots, right?

2007-01-20T21:25:00.000Z

Much as I enjoy writing about all things trashy, whoreish and trash whoreish in The Trash Whore Diaries, I do also have a life to lead outwith my weblog. With a baby to change and a girlfriend to mollify (or is it the other way round?) I'm kept pretty busy these days. So busy in fact I occasionally find myself longing for the good old days in Craigie, when I could bash out two 1,000-word blogs a day and still have enough time for a gym session and a hearty nap before dinnertime. Nevertheless, this busy life I lead does have some things going for it. Like sex, which has been known to happen on occasion, when the baby is asleep, the girlfriend is at home and in the mood, it's not that time of the month and the planets have aligned to bestow me with a ball-draining. Judging by the text my girlfriend just sent me from her work, it would appear that today is just such a day. I had been planning on bashing out a blog, but after reading her lascivious message, I decided my time would be better spent bashing out a quick one and and then washing my knob before she gets home and climbs aboard, promptly dirtying it up again. But don't worry, in all the excitement over my impending emptying I haven't forgotten about you entirely. To tide you over until tomorrow, I leave you with this - the article I wrote for last month's Red Final. While I'm scoring at home, you can read all about scoring from the comfort of your own home, for the article you are about to ogle is on the subject of goalscoring celebrations. Excited? You should be, but not as excited as me. I'm hard already, but that's because I'm off for a pre-sex wank to prevent premature ejaculation when the main event commences later. Just think; by the time you've finished reading this article, my spunk will be sticking to the wash basin.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy getting to grips with my piece. I know I certainly will...

You don’t see it at Pittodrie, Tynecastle or Ibrox. You rarely see it at Stamford Bridge, Old Trafford or the Nou Camp. You certainly never see it at Allan Park or Borough Briggs. And yet it is the scourge of the modern game we like to call fitba, afflicting every club the length and girth of the country. I’m not talking about venal agents, avaricious players or endemic simulation. (That’s diving to me and you. As pejoratives go, ‘Simulating bastard!’ doesn't quite have the same ring to it.) The problem that weighs heavily on my mind is more serious than that for it strikes at the very heart of the game, spoiling the sacred act of scoring, football’s apotheosis. And yet in spite of the pervasiveness of this scourge, you won’t see it at any of the aforementioned stadiums for, like dwindling attendances, it is a problem that is conspicuous by its absence - the goalscoring celebration. As sure as sectarian singing follows Her Majesty's huns, celebration follows the act of scoring. After all, if you can’t celebrate your team sticking one past the opposition, what can you celebrate? Admittedly, if you’re Bernd Schneider, having just put the thirteenth past San Marino, the celebration might be more muted than most. Otherwise, however, it’s bums off seats and hands in the air time. It doesn’t matter which team you support, be it Aberdeen or Arsenal, if you persevere for long enough, you’ll eventually be rewarded with a goal to celebrate. Yes, even at Pittodrie it is possible to witness such a wondrous spectacle, provided you stay until the bitterly cold end. And when such a moment does transpire, it will invariably be accompanied by fists raised in jubilation, arms extended in triumph and shirts grabbed in elation, as all goals have been marked since football began. And therein lies the problem.
In recent years, football has moved on. The clothing has changed, the hairstyles have changed, the stadiums have changed, hell even the rules have changed. The only thing that is still stuck in the Dark Ages (OK, make that the 19th century) is the goalscoring celebration. And frankly, it’s starting to jar. What was once a spontaneous outpouring of elation has become an ossified exercise in banality. Instead of galvanic displays of exuberance, we are treated to enervating reprises of the previous Saturday’s half-arsed celebration, the same one that was rolled out the Saturday before that and the whole season before that. While there are only so many ways to score a goal (in spite of Jamie Langfield’s calamitous attempts to conjure some new ones), there are an infinite number of ways to celebrate one. Or at least so you would have thought. Yet what do we get, at Pittodrie on a Saturday afternoon and on the Premiership highlights on a Saturday night? Arms in the air and hugs all round. Professional footballers can be wonderfully creative when it comes to being tackled in the box, yet the moment the ball hits the back of the net from the resultant penalty, they suddenly come across all gauche, exhibiting all the grace of a Buckied-up ned pegging it from the cops, as they attempt to run the length of the pitch only to be pulled back by their team-mates, who are hell-bent on wrestling them to the ground. In the end, the exuberant scorer gets as far as the halfway line before having his jersey pulled off his back by his equally exuberant team-mates. That’s not a celebration; that’s a stramash.
A good celebration makes a bad goal good and a good goal better. It is the Wonderbra of football, covering a multitude of sins. Just scuffed a mis-hit cross that fluked in? Expiate it with a memorable celebration. Unleashed a 40-yard screamer into the postage stamp corner? Ice it with an equally stunning celebration. A good celebration can both atone for and complement everything that has gone before, be it a penalty-box scramble or an unstoppable piledriver. Robbie Fowler’s penalty spot-snorting celebration has been etched into football folklore but who can recall the goal? And everyone remembers the drug-crazed phiz of Maradonna charging towards the camera at World Cup 98 (except for Maradonna of course) but what about the goal that precipitated it? Goals, by their very nature, are ephemeral. One is quickly forgotten about as soon as it is supplanted by the next, unless you’re Gary Dempsey, in which case every goal is to be celebrated as if it were the last night of your life, the stag do that precedes 50 years of wedded hell. (I had been intending on making Darren Mackie the butt of all my goal drought jokes but the sleekit bastard appears to have rediscovered - or rather discovered - his scoring touch in recent weeks.) And yet, in the 21st century, the goalscoring celebration has become more hackneyed than Setanta’s football punditry. As a case in point, pick a football match - any football match - and watch what happens when the ball hits the back of the net. If I was a betting man (which I was until my missus cut up all my cards and cancelled my Ladbrokes account), I’d lay a tenner that the goal will be accompanied by one of the following celebrations:

1. Hands Up.
2. Bodies Down.
3. Babies Out.

Hand Up incorporates all celebrations in which arms are raised in jubilation; punching the air, salutary waves to the crowd and other such scintillating variations. Bodies Down covers all celebrations in which the players end up prostrate on the pitch, either by sliding along the grass, diving on top of one another or simply lying on their backs with their arms in the air. Babies Out is a unique celebration that used to be reserved for special occasions - i.e. following the birth of a child - but now seems to be wheeled out every weekend. One can only assume that it has become as common as Cockneys due to the high number of illegitimate kids fathered by professional footballers these days. The Babies Out celebration consists of one or more players extending their arms and moving them from side to side as if rocking a baby to sleep. The perpetrators of such choreographed observances clearly know nothing about parenting or they wouldn’t simulate rocking a baby to sleep with a violent action more akin to lobbing it into the canal inside a bag of bricks. Rock a baby like that in real life and you’ll get charged with infanticide. Perhaps a more appropriate celebration would be an exaggerated signing motion, as if writing a cheque to pay for child maintenance. Not only would this gesture signal that the father was absolved of all other parental responsibilities, such as rocking the baby to sleep, but it would make for a more joyous celebration, smug in the knowledge that the goalscoring bonus will easily cover the child maintenance and still leave some for champagne and strippers. It’s certainly one for Neil Lennon to bear in mind, for the next time he manages a goal, the chances are he’ll have spunked out a few more illegitimate brats of the ginger variety.
To find a celebration that doesn’t conform to the three trite models described above requires a trip to the most incongruous location - The City of Manchester stadium. Not known for their scoring prowess, Man City are one of the few Premiership clubs to eschew mealy-mouthed celebrations for making a three-course meal of it. Recent notable flourishes include City’s late equaliser at Everton, in which Joey Barton mooned at the crowd. The gesture came naturally to the Scouser, who is accustomed to baring his arse, albeit in the cop shop for a rubber-gloved official to reach in and remove the narcotics stashed within. The Everton fans were less enamoured with Barton however, possibly because they feared he was going to follow through and ruin their pristine pitch. Then there’s Man City’s commemorative corner flag series. First came Corradi’s in the 3-1 victory over Fulham. After scoring, the Italian removed the corner flag and knighted his team-mates with it. A few days later, against Villa, Corradi again interfered with the corner flag after scoring, this time playing it as a guitar. Sadly, most Premiership footballers are more blasé when it comes to celebrating. Consider Thierry Henry, whose celebrations are so nonchalant that they are hardly worthy of being called celebrations; acknowledgements would be more appropriate. Henry doesn’t shrug off his achievements because they come so easily to him. Rather, he plays it cool because he doesn’t want to look like a dick for over-celebrating if the effort is subsequently disallowed, as happened to Didier Drogba. After hitting the back of the net, the Chelsea striker ran the length of the goal line gesticulating wildly to the fans to share in his moment of glory. The only trouble was, the fans weren’t gesticulating back, for like everyone else in the stadium, they had seen the linesman’s raised flag. But there’s also another reason why Thierry Henry and his ilk serve up such lacklustre celebrations - because they are not obliged to. You see, teams like Arsenal don’t need stunning goals complete with matching celebrations to enjoy the game; they’ve always got the dainty passes and pretty stadium to ooh and aah at. At Pittodrie, goals are essential in order to restore circulation to fingers and toes and erase all memory of the preceding 80 minutes of shite. (Incidentally, if you’re wondering why this article is so Anglo-centric, it’s because theirs is the only football available to us mortals who can’t afford Setanta. I would love to comment on the goal scoring nuances of the Scottish game, but between attending Pittodrie on a Saturday and watching Scotsport’s blink-and-you-miss-them highlights on a Monday, I’m not party to many SPL celebrations.)
It may seem fatuous to list lame goalscoring celebrations as the greatest malaise affecting football in the 21st century, but then isn’t the game supposed to be about entertainment? If so, then surely such embellishments are as essential as the strike that precipitated them. Despite the attempts of football’s killjoy governing bodies to regulate the act of celebrating, there is still much fun that can be had without players leaving the pitch, removing their tops or flicking a middle digit in the direction of the opposing fans. It’s high time professional footballers stopped celebrating their achievements in insalubrious nightclubs and began celebrating them where it matters - on the pitch. I don’t want to see goals marked with back slapping and handshakes all round; I want celebrations that are actually celebratory; effusive, ebullient, flamboyant or - to put it in plainer English - fucking crazy. Chefs spend hours perfecting their signature dishes, so why can’t more strikers spare a few minutes on the training ground to develop their own signature celebrations? Robbie Keane might have his two-gun salute and Peter Crouch his robot, but these efforts are too lame to count. Coming from the land that invented Morris-dancing however, we should expect nothing less. Surely though the home of Scottish country dancing should be able to conjure up something better? The English clubs might enjoy hegemony over TV rights, media coverage and pecunious foreign investors, but the one thing they can’t monopolise is goal celebrations. Whoever said that the best things in life are free was a scrounging cheapskate, but when it comes to goals, he’s got a point. The ceremony that follows a net-bursting strike should be an unfettered and unmetered celebration of one of life’s best things. No matter which rich oligarch buys out the club, the one thing he can never control is the manner in which goals are memorialised. The day has yet to come when, after opening the scoring, the players line up on the turf to spell out their sponsor’s name. Thus when it comes to celebrating, all teams are on an even playing field. For once, Aberdeen Football Club find themselves in a position to become trendsetters by developing the neglected art of goal aesthetics. Where they lead, other clubs will follow. To perfect their celebratory techniques need only take a few weeks of double training sessions. In the morning, Calderwood and Nicholl can put the squad through their paces, concentrating on fitness and ball control. Then, after lunch, Redz & Co can help the first-team work on their synchronised goal celebration routines. The number of permutations is virtually limitless. They could develop their own corner flag technique for instance; Mackie scores, pushes the flag between his legs and pretends to wank it off. Or better still, offers it to Nicholson to deep throat. Such homoerotic celebrations could win the Dons a whole new fanbase amongst the gay community. Admittedly, some diehards might not be too happy at the idea of sharing Pittodrie with a bunch of limp-wristed turd-burglars, but frankly the club can’t afford to be choosy right now. It’s got to be preferable to opening the whole of the South Stand up to the old firm. If Mackie wants true immortality however, he first needs to stick one past the huns before celebrating by launching the corner flag into the visiting section. As the missile bounces off a blue-nosed coupon and the referee reaches for a card, Aberdeen’s prodigal son can proudly troop off the pitch to chants of ‘Nice one Mackie, nice one son.’ In one fell swoop, the Dons’ most infuriating striker would have become the talk of not only the town but the entire footballing world. Remember when the Klinsmann celebration first caught on? One German dives onto his front and skids across the pitch and suddenly it’s ubiquitous. (Trivia geeks may be interested to know that the correct term for this is a meme; ‘a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition analogous to the biological transmission of genes.’ In other words, Mackie performs his flag-throwing celebration and the next thing you know, kids all over the country are being rushed to A&E with projectiles lodged in their craniums.) Of course, Mackie et al don’t have to resort to flinging corner flags. There are all manner of props that could be used to mark the occasion; they could dry-hump Angus the Bull; perform a pole dance on the goal frame; dive into a puddle and pretend to swim; pick up a sod of turf and apply it like war paint. Aberdeen might not be able to afford 50-foot plasma screens or even a toaster for the players but they can afford a decent celebration. Admission to the game might be a wallet-busting £21 and the match programme a hefty £2, but witnessing Darren Mackie remove the corner flag and pretend to machine gun the visiting support with it would be truly priceless.

2007-01-17T13:20:00.000Z

What is the price of sex? Down by the harbour, it’s £70 an hour or two tokes on a crack pipe. Or at least so I’ve heard. At home however, sex is supposed to be free. (Unless it’s sex with the Swedish au pair, in which case it costs double time and your marriage.) So why do I find myself paying the highest price of all for cumming in the comfort of my own home? Allow me to elucidate…
The bedroom in which my girlfriend and I perform our bedroomly duties is ostensibly perfect, the sort of idyllic setting in which women the world over dream of losing their virginity. (And not just because it happens to me my bed and therefore my meaty shaft pummelling their hymen into oblivion.) In the centre of the room, there is a wooden four poster bed bedecked with strings of star-shaped fairy lights that hang behind the headboard and gently illuminate the proceedings. The bed covers are black, the lights are low and the mood is quintessentially romantic. It is not the sort of seedy bedsit in which one gropes, makes out or - god forbid - fucks. No, this room is designed for making love in. All that’s missing are two components - a beautiful girl and a horny boy with a ball-load of spunk. Thankfully, my girlfriend has pulchritude in abundance while I am similarly well-endowed in the sperm department. Like the bedroom itself, we are ostensibly perfect and fit for purpose. But then the beautiful girl jumps on top of the testicularly blessed boy and the problems begin. No, not those problems – these problems: As our bodies start to convulse, so does the four poster bed, which in turn causes the fairy lights to join in the jouncing. These rattle against the wall with the resonance of a ghost rattling its chains, causing a cacophony that wakes the bairn, who was hitherto sleeping in the next room. There follows the sound of covers rustling and cot bars creaking as the baby stirs and promptly bursts into tears. My girlfriend’s sighs change from pleasure to displeasure as she dismounts and dashes through to calm the caterwauling. A few minutes later, she returns, I re-erect and we go for take two. Only now I can hear the sound of the bairn’s mobile in the next room, exuding mollifying melodies to induce her back into soma. Soothing as the lullaby is, it is the last thing I want to hear right now, as the music naturally makes me think of my daughter lying in her cot, and nice as that thought is, it is not conducive to sustaining…yeah, you know. I can’t even bring myself to say it in this context; it’s just wrong. And so we start again, trying our damnedest to block out the cutesy sounds emanating from the next room while stifling the rhythmical sex sounds emanating from our own, but this time we just can’t get into our groove, knowing that if we surpass the decibel threshold again, the bairn will reawaken, and will stay awake for an hour or more just to spite us. My girlfriend wearily dismounts and walks through to the adjoining bedroom while I head to the bathroom and empty my pent-up frustrations into the sink.
What is the price of sex? When it happens in my bedroom, in all its headboard rattling glory, the price is no sleep by dint of a screaming brat. While sex can be bought, sleep will always be priceless, which is why I find myself reluctantly eschewing the romance of a fairy-lit four-poster bed for the substance of a cold, loveless fuck by the ocean’s edge.

2007-01-14T02:29:00.000Z

‘Kai?’ ‘Yeah?’ ‘I’ve got something to tell you…I think I’m pregnant.’ Of all the April Fools to play on a guy, this has to be one of the cruellest. The only trouble was, it was only January and my girlfriend wasn’t fooling. Neither was the pregnancy stick that she held in front of her as incontrovertible proof that our life was effectively over. To say that I was taken aback would be something of an understatement. I knew that my girlfriend had been complaining of feeling sick lately - in the mornings no less - put had put it down to her valetudinarian disposition coupled with a reluctance to get out of bed before midday. Of course, every guy - whether he admits it or not - has envisaged the day when his girlfriend sits him down and inflicts those dreaded three words upon him. No, not ‘I love you’ but the other one: ‘Darling I’m pregnant.’ But I’d already had that moment, two years previously, and have the kid that proves my girlfriend wasn’t kidding. Which is why I thought I was safe, for a few more years at least. Lovely as my daughter is, looking after her is a full-time job with unsociable hours, shitty pay and no pension plan. With two screaming brats on the go, I really could kiss goodbye to my sex and social lives. (Although in saying that, Alex has two kids and he somehow manages to lead an active life. Socially at least.) My girlfriend had previously assured me that she didn’t want another baby for at least five years, which suited me just fine. While I had no idea whether I would want a second sprog even five years down the line, by which time the existing one would have just stopped using nappies and started cleaning up after herself, was another matter, but I intended to cross that bridge when I came to it, and even then I reserved the right to chicken out at the last moment and plunge over the parapet into the icy water below.
When faced with news of the gravest sort, a man’s typical response is to make a joke of it. That buys him enough time to work out how he really feels about the matter, instead of blurting out the first thing that comes into his head - ‘Let’s keep the baby!’ - which he may later come to regret. My reaction was no different. ‘I’ve got something to tell you…I think I’m pregnant’ my girlfriend had announced. The bombshell had barely landed when I calmly replied ‘Well so long as you’re not three months pregnant, I can handle it.’ For my girlfriend to be fostering another foetus was one thing; for it to have been conceived while I was still in jail would be quite another. The expectant mother assured me in no uncertain terms however that it had to be mine, fixing me with the sort of glare that screamed ‘Don’t you dare try and wriggle out of this one!’ I had no reason to doubt her, for she had been telling the truth the last time I was confronted by a pregnancy stick. If her ‘women’s intuition’ coupled with a Boots testing kit said that she was packing and my ball juice was responsible, who was I to dispute it? Given that the baby-to-be was irrefutably mine then, this left one other pertinent question to be answered - how? For my girlfriend to have fallen pregnant was little short of an immaculate conception. It wasn’t that we hadn’t been fucking regularly - we had, in spite of our daughter’s best efforts to invoke blue balling through her inopportune bawling - and it wasn’t that I hadn’t been ‘making love’ to her vaginally. I shan’t go into details about the contraception we were using, but let’s just say that short of pulling out and plumping for a pearl necklace every time, I couldn’t have been any safer. And yet in spite of our best efforts to stem the flow of tadpoles to the rendezvous point, one had slipped through the net. I might as well face it; my balls were so big and manly and their contents so potent, they overrode every contraceptive barrier put in their way. All that unspent jizz must have built up while I was in jail, until Vesuvius finally erupted the nite I got home, leaving a trail of creation in its wake.
Although the conception was seemingly a done deal, my girlfriend informed me that she was heading to the doctor’s anyway for a blood test that would confirm our fate. Meanwhile, I was left alone in the house to ponder my folly. The right thing to do would of course be to support my girlfriend through the pregnancy and welcome our latest progeny into the world when he/she/they arrived, then feed, clothe, shelter and nurture them for the next 18 years. But since when has life ever been about doing the right thing? In an ideal world, perhaps. In the real world however, it's all about doing the most practical thing, which in this case meant cutting my losses and bailing out. Where to exactly? Afghanistan; Iraq; Somalia - any country where the death rate outnumbered the birth rate was fine with me. George W. Bush was always banging on about resisting the urge to ‘cut and run’ from such war zones. Well now I was about to do the exact opposite; cut and run straight into enemy territory. The way I saw it, the worst that could happen had already happened; after having pregnancy sticks thrust in my face, it would be a relief to have dynamite sticks thrust in my face by deranged suicide bombers.
As I was weighing up the options, the fone rang. It was my girlfriend. ‘Let me guess…you’re still pregnant.’ ‘Well actually I’ve not been to the doctor’s yet’ she replied. ‘I was just in town so I went past Boots cos I wanted to check that the test was right. You see, I didn’t have the box for the testing kit in the house so I wanted to make sure I’d read the result correctly.’ ‘And had you?’ ‘No. I thought a horizontal blue line meant you were pregnant but it’s the other way round; a blue line means negative. Two blue lines means you’re pregnant.’ ‘So you’re definitely not pregnant then?’ ‘No.’ I should have felt relieved, but instead I felt like I’d been played. ‘You did this deliberately to test my commitment, didn’t you, to see if I would stand by you?’ The mum-to-be-or-not-to-be assured me that this wasn’t the case. Well fair enough, I reasoned, but seeing how she wasn’t pregnant after all, would it be OK to write about the incident in my weblog? ‘No’ came the curt reply.
I sat down on my half-packed suitcase and tore up the one-way ticket to Australia. Had she called ten minutes later, I’d have been gone for good. The fone rang again. It was my girlfriend. ‘Don’t tell me, this is you foning to say you were right the first time and you are pregnant?’ ‘Actually’ she replied ‘I was foning to say that you can write about it in your blog after all so long as you explain that I hadn’t used the testing kit in two years so I’m not a retard.’ True to my word, I sat down and penned a blog on the subject, making sure to point out that my girlfriend wasn’t a retard for fucking up a pregnancy kit so simple that even Torry mums could work it.
So just to clarify, my girlfriend’s not pregnant and I’m not going to be a daddy again but for the record, I’d like to stress that my balls are still enormous and my sperm virile and plentiful. Just because I couldn’t take the false news of her pregnancy like a real man doesn’t make me any less of one.

2007-01-11T00:29:00.000Z

Of the 780 blogs I have written since the inception of The Trash Whore Diaries, precisely 219 of them contain the word ‘shit’. In case you’re wondering where I plucked that fascinating statistic from, I didn’t have to read through five years worth of Trash Whore archives to obtain it; Blogger did all the number crunching for me. Given that almost a third of my blogs contain shit, and possibly even multiple shits, there are two possible inferences that can be drawn from this. Either I like to liberally apply the S-word as punctuation, emphasis and expletive or I just like writing about shit. A quick glance at the subject matter of some of the 219 blogs in question (make that 220 now) seems to suggest that the second diagnosis is correct, and I am indeed faecally fixated, for to date I have covered such diverse topics as ‘Are fat people’s faeces bigger than thin people’s faeces?’, ‘Why does shit continue to stink even after it’s been flushed down the toilet?’ And the ubiquitous ‘Why does shit contain sweet corn?’ (And if you’re wondering what the answer to that last one is, Elwood forwarded me the following text recently from AQA: ‘The ‘corn’ of sweetcorn does digest in the human body. The skin, however, is made of cellulose which is almost indigestible and is visible in faeces.’)
In case you haven’t guessed, today’s blog is also about shit. But this time, it’s about a type of shit I have yet to document - baby shit. That is to say, shit that was shat by a baby; it may not necessarily be baby in size. In my experience, from the 80 consecutive days in which I have been a proper, hands-on dad, baby shit can be positively monstrous. I wonder if babies have some sort of intestinal zip drive, capable of compressing their crap so that they can gobble down as much breast milk as possible without being torn away from the teat for a bum change. Upon being squeezed out - or rather unzipped - from their tiny bodies, the shit reinflates to full size again.
In the same way that a guy comes to instinctively know the days of the month when he is liable to receive cold shoulders and blue balls from his pre-menstrual bitch of a girlfriend, I know my daughter’s bowel movements inside out, quite literally. On a typical morning, she wakes me up by slapping me about the head and cackling manically until I drag myself out of bed. (My girlfriend, sensibly, retreats under the covers and puts a pillow over her head to protect herself from a similarly rude awakening.) My first job of the day is to change the nappy that the bairn has been wearing all nite. This is not as bad as it sounds, for usually it is filled with nothing more hazardous than pish-scented cows’ milk. It is the second nappy of the day that proves to be more disagreeable. Exhilarated at being liberated from a soggy nappy, the bairn typically makes a point of soiling her clean one within half an hour of it being fitted. For this reason, I let her run about in just her vest and nappy until she has unloaded El Gordo. Otherwise, I’ve got to waste half an hour dressing her up in tights, shoes and a skirt only to have to remove them again when push comes to shove. 80 days after my fumbling fingers changed their first nappy, I have the procedure down to a tee and am capable of changing even the dirtiest of diapers with an efficiency that would put a formula one pit crew to shame. You may think that changing a nappy is hardly rocket science and you’d be right, but that’s not to say it’s a piece of piss - or poo - either. Fuck it up and you’ll end up with you, the bairn and the whole room covered in shit, just like Renton’s infamous bed sheets scene in Trainspotting. Get it right and, well, you’ll receive no recognition whatsoever, but at least the smell of shit will dissipate.
For those of you who have always wondered how to change a nappy, be it in readiness for parenthood or simply to enact your sexual fantasy of mothering a shitting, pissing, nappy clad adult, the following section is for you: Before removing the bairn’s nappy, I always make sure to have the baby wipes laid out beside her, lid open, but not so close that she can grab them and stuff them in her mouth. Otherwise, if I were to open up a dirty nappy unprepared, while I was rummaging in the cupboard for baby wipes, the bairn would be reaching in and helping herself to second helpings of last nite’s supper. (As an aside, I have recently found myself wondering how parents ever survived before the invention of baby wipes. Although it’s not a phrase I use often - in fact make that ever - they really are a god-send. Not only are baby wipes great for wiping sick/shit/piss splattered babies with, but they’re also great for wiping your dick clean with after sex. Sex between two consenting adults, I hasten to add.) I also make sure that the clean nappy is nearby, fully opened and facing the right way up. Otherwise, in the time it takes me to remove the dirty nappy and unwrap a new one, the bairn will have pissed all over the carpet. After ensuring that baby wipes and a clean nappy are on standby, removing the bairn’s trousers and undoing the poppers on her vest, there comes what I refer to as The Moment Of Truth. At this moment, I already know that the nappy I am about to open is shitty - and not just pissy - because of the smell. What I don’t know is what type of shit it is - liquidy, peanut buttery or rabbit curranty - and where the shit is dispersed. Ideally, the deposit will be confined to one specific area of the nappy - the centre. In reality, with the bairn having shat herself and then continued to roll about until the stench was detected, the chances are that the whole nappy is covered in it, as are her genitals and thighs. Hence The Moment Of Truth. On a good day - i.e. a rabbit curranty one - I don’t complain upon unfastening the sticky tabs and being confronted by what lies within. On a bad day, I recoil in horror at the sight of the bairn’s last meal - still recognisable, right down to the last vegetable - artexed all over her nether regions.
This morning’s dirty nappy was neither good or bad, but only because for once the bairn deigned to produce one at her usual hour. As I was scheduled to spend the day in town with her this meant that at some point during our excursion she was bound to poop, leaving me with the fun job of locating a nappy changing facility in Aberdeen and going about my dirty work. When the shit finally happened, it happened in Revolution of all places, just as I was enjoying my first Stella of the day. One moment there was a faint scent of lager and leather seats; the next, the air was redolent of warm faeces. With Revolution being a pub, as opposed to a mother and toddlers group, there were of course no nappy changing facilities, and so I picked up the poop-laden bairn and trudged downstairs to the gents. The toilets were tiny, with only a cramped worktop between two sinks to operate on. I plonked the bairn down on the formica, her head resting against the taps and her feet dangling over the edge, and set to work. When The Moment of Truth arrived, I was relieved to discover that it was of the solid rather than the sloppy variety. I successfully removed the dirty nappy and set about wiping clean with some Starbucks napkins. (My shoulder bag wasn’t large enough to accommodate the luxury of a packet of baby wipes.) Everything was going well until, while attempting to fit the clean nappy, I knocked against the dirty one, spilling its contents over the edge and onto the floor below. I somehow managed to bend down and pick up the pieces (using a tissue) without letting go of the bairn. The offending nappy was then rolled up and taped shut, ready to be chucked in the bin. The only trouble was, the gents toilet didn’t have a bin. Instead, I left the ripe diaper sitting beside the sink while I went for a piss. While I stood at the urinal, my daughter stood by the sink and patiently waited for me. Or at the least that was the plan. Before I knew it, she had dashed over and grasped hold of the piss-spattered urinal. I grabbed her clean hand and held on to prevent further incursions into the urinal while with my other hand I finished what I had started and shook off. Then, in one fell swoop I grabbed the bairn, sat her beside the wash basin, washed her pishy hand under the tap, dried it under the hand drier, washed and dried my own hands, lifted her onto my shoulder, picked up the dirty nappy and walked out in search of a bin to deposit it in. I’ve done some pretty dirty things in public toilets in my time - wanked, shat, cottaged, fucked, puked and snorted coke - but without doubt, this was the clartiest of the lot.

2007-01-10T13:16:00.000Z

(19th November 2006)

One month into my new life of non-jail-dom, I finally managed to track down my worldly possessions. Upon checking into the Craigie Hilton last year, my assorted belongings had been hastily bagged up by whichever friends and hangers-on happened to be around to pick up the pieces of what remained of my former life. 14 months on and my former life is gone forever but my possessions are back - or at least some of them are. Picking through the boxes and bags that constituted ‘My Pitiful Existence: 2000-2005’, I pulled out a miscellany of junk, kitsch and gimcracks. While I was overjoyed to be reunited with such sorely missed artefacts as a box of half-melted Wham bars and a selection of out-of-date Kinder eggs, I was dismayed to discover that my MVPs (Most Valuable Possessions) had gone walkabout or, to translate the Aboriginal word literally, they had ‘fucked off for good’. The most notable absentees were my ceramic GHD straighteners (I wasn’t allowed them in the jail, which is a shame for they would have made a formidable weapon) and my peeping tom binoculars, supposedly The World’s Strongest. Although I can’t profess to have tried all the binoculars in the world, there was no disputing that these things were strong. They were so damn strong they shook like an autistic kid when viewed on full zoom unless mounted on a tripod. Although admittedly, the shaking usually had more to do with the fact that I was ogling the chick across the street getting undressed while wrestling with my own tripod in one hand and the binoculars in the other. Quite where my straighteners and binoculars went to I don’t know and frankly I don’t really care. Like women, possessions come and go. Although in my case they seem to mostly go. The possessions, that is; the women simply come and come.
Amongst the assorted candy bars and other useless tat that had survived my hiatus from reality, I discovered a selection of board games. The Simpsons chess set I was familiar with; a birthday present from my last girlfriend, it had hardly ever been used, not because I didn’t like it but because none of my acquaintances knew how to play the damn game. I tried playing chess with myself a few times but it wasn’t much fun; the match usually ended up a stalemate, and even when I did win, it also meant I’d lost. But Simpsons chess wasn’t the only game that I discovered amongst my possessions. At the bottom of one of the cardboard boxes, I found a red, rectangular object that also purported to be a board game. This one was less familiar, for although I had seen it before, I had never played it. Pass-Out was the name of the game, accompanied by the slogan ‘The world’s best selling adult drinking game’. This sounded interesting, so I blew the dust off the box and inspected it more closely. According to the blurb, Pass-Out was ‘The hilarious game where players travel around the board taking drinks, as and when instructed, while trying to collect 10 pink elephants! To win a pink elephant, players must recite a tongue twister… Get it wrong or round your tongue… take another drink!’ It sounded pretty fun in a stupid pointless kind of way until I read the disclaimer at the bottom. Printed in bold letters was the following message: ‘Minors are forbidden to play this game. Not intended for use with alcoholic beverages.’ So let’s get this straight: Pass-Out is the world’s best selling drinking game and yet it’s not to be used with drink? So how do the fun and games and general hilarity ensue; does everyone bring a non-alcoholic bottle and get together for a crazy nite of sobriety? Do the tongue twisters required to win a pink elephant get trickier after downing multiple glasses of fizzy lemonade? And if the game is not intended for use with alcoholic beverages, why are minors forbidden from playing it - is it in case they get a sugar rush from downing multiple shots of Pepsi?
I chucked the game back in the cardboard box whence it had came, to be confined to my attic forevermore, or at least until I returned to jail whereupon it could be placed into storage again with all my other remaining possessions. Pass-Out without the piss-up sounds about as fun as taking a blowjob from Shane McGowan. I’ll happily play Monopoly while sober, and Trivial Pursuit and Cluedo. Hell, I’ll even play chess with myself as a last resort, should I happen to be all out of alcohol and mates. But when it comes to Pass-Out, I think I’ll just pass.

2007-01-09T15:41:00.000Z

I was walking along King Street today when I passed the New Hope Charity Shop. In the window, beside a clothing display that had seen better days, the following notice was affixed: 'New Year, New You.' I wondered if Trading Standards were aware of the notice, for it was a blatant case of false advertising. Mind you, I couldn't blame the thrift shop for trying. 'New Year, New to You' just doesn't have the same ring to it.

2007-01-08T16:13:00.000Z

Way back in the good old days of The Trash Whore Diaries (and by ‘good’ I mean ‘more innocent’, not necessarily better; my weblog is gooder than it’s ever been I’ll have you know) I used to publish a weekly list of all the unusual search terms that had led visitors to my blog. These typically included such staples as ‘cum guzzling sluts’, ‘my grandmother is a whore’ and ‘tampon felching’. It wasn’t that I had written blogs on these specific topics, for even I draw the line at debating the merits of committing gerontophiliac incest. Rather, over the course of my potty-mouthed ramblings, the aforementioned phrases must have cropped up, resulting in over-excitable sickos clicking on my blog in the hope of being titivated by TIFs - and probably tits - but certainly not text. They were to be sadly disappointed, for no amount of textual stimulation - not even of the calibre provided by me - can compete with the visual smorgasbord that is a set of breasts clarted in cum so thick you could erect a flaccid penis in it.
Eventually I stopped publishing the weirdest weekly search terms, partly because Elwood copied the idea (just like he copied all my best ideas like, well….look, he just did, OK?) but also because once you’ve read one Google search for ‘eat my soiled panties’, you’ve read them all. Fun as the feature was in its heyday - and easy to compile to boot - the time eventually came for it to be retired and replaced by a younger, snazzier feature. The last thing I wanted was for The Trash Whore Diaries to get stale and even - god forbid - start rehashing the same old jokes. Fast forward a few years however and I found myself in the tail end of 2006, having just gotten out of jail and hooked up with the virtual world again. Upon reacquainting myself with the weblog I had written daily, yet not seen on screen in over a year, I discovered that there was a new batch of incongruous search terms freaks had been using to liase with my blog. Some of them were so comical, I decided I just had to wheel the weirdest weekly search terms feature out of retirement for one more update. I’ve omitted most of the rude ones this time, not out of prudishness, but because we’ve all been there, Googled that and bought the cum-splattered t-shirt. These latest search terms are different however. They’re new, they’re unique and they’re downright creepy.

‘How does internet get slow when my computer isn’t even a year old’
Gee, would it have anything to do with all the spyware-infected porn you’ve been downloading faster than your red raw rooster can process it?

‘Why won’t the trash take my green bottles’
If by trash you mean your white trash wife, I suggest you try getting her to take them thin end first. She might be a complete slut with a KFC sized bucket, but even she’s gonna struggle to fit a magnum of Bolinger up her cunt fat end first.

‘My puffy areola sticks through my bra its so big’
OK….and why exactly are you telling me this? I don’t want to hear about your big puffy areola that stick through your bra - I want to see them goddamit! Stop teasing me like this.

‘Cum in your sneakers’
Thanks all the same, but I’d prefer it if you didn’t. How’d you like it if I came round to your house and jizzed in your trainers? Actually you’d probably enjoy that you dirty bastard, whoever you are.

‘what are the chances of getting caught lying on a job application about having been convicted of a crime’
How should I know? As previously explained in The Jobby Project, I intend to be completely frank about my criminal record when completing job applications. As a convicted perjurer, lying is anathema to me.

‘can you pop 2 ecstasy pills at once?’
You mad crazy party animal! Can you pop two ecstasy pills at once? I can. Can you? Why not suck ‘em and see!

‘ovulating pussy seeks sperm’
Now that’s the sort of ad I’d like to find in the Evening Express personals section.

‘will weed set off my ankle bracelet?’
Not unless you weed on it, no.

2007-01-05T19:21:00.000Z

Does anyone remember the South Park episode in which the whole school was in raptures watching a TV programme that consisted of wide angle shots of dogs wearing novelty hats? ‘Cute!’ ‘Super cute!’ the kids exclaimed every time another adorable doggie stuck its nose into the wide angle lens and nodded its head gormlessly until its hat threatened to fall off. Stan, Kyle and Cartman couldn’t understand why their classmates were so enthralled by this mindless pap until, after investigating the matter, they discovered that all the pupils at South Park Elementary were high on cough medicine. It turns out that puppies wearing novelty hats viewed through a wide angle lens look super cute when you’re high on Benolin. But what has all that got to do with today’s blog? Well, it just so happens that I’ve got some adorable doggie pictures to share with you because I know that’s the sort of thing that will appeal to my target readership. To appreciate them in all their glory however, I must first ask that you go to the bathroom, open the medicine cabinet and take a good swig of cough medicine. The stuff might taste sickly but trust me, you’ll need it, for it isn’t half as sickly as the ‘Cute!’ and ‘Super cute!’ puppy pix you’re about to see. May I present to you my favourite entry from my favourite new weblog - Glenn Anderson.
If you’re reading this paragraph, I take it you’ve already downed your cough medicine, clicked on the above link and savoured it in all its maudlin glory? If you haven’t, please do so now. For the rest of you, what can I say? I’m somewhat lost for words, so overcome am I with the desire to projectile vomit all over my computer screen. While I attempt to swallow my lunch for the second time, I’ll cut and paste what the man himself, Glenn Anderson, had to say about Miss Gertrude’s Pictorial: 'I know..Those of you without pets are looking and saying, "OK, that's just wrong". Hopefully the rest of you will realize what we've known all along. Our pug Miss Gertrude is a natural. She poses as if to say "I belong in movies"…'
Now speaking personally, as a pet-owner (albeit of nothing fluffier than a snake), I find that very wrong. Not from the poor dog’s point of view - hell, they can dress it in barbed wire and nipple clamps for all I care - but from the point of being just plain fucking retarded. I mean, just to clarify, this guy has paid a professional fotographer to snap his pooch in a variety of ‘provocative’ poses and then mailed it out to his friends as Christmas cards and calendars. Now, I like bestiality as much as the next twisted guy, but that’s not to say I’m the sort of sick freak who gets off on dressing dogs up in swimwear before smearing peanut butter across my genitals and letting nature take its course. Like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, those fotos are wrong on so many levels. Or is it just me who is un-wowed by their super cutesy-ness? Perhaps I’m just looking at them in the wrong state of mind. I’ll try viewing them again later, once my gag reflex has subsided, but before then, do me a favour will you? Pass the cough medicine.

2007-01-04T13:38:00.000Z

(November 28th 2006)

‘I’m just going for a shower, OK?’ Judging by the pained expression on my girlfriend’s face, you’d think I’d just asked permission to defecate in her mouth. ‘Do you have to?’ she groans. ‘Well…yeah, I do actually. If that’s OK with you.’ She sighs. ‘I suppose. It’s just that the bath’s clean just now. If you take a shower I’ll have to clean it again.’ ‘It’s cool, I can rinse the shower down once I’ve finished’ I shrug. ‘No, it needs to be done properly’ she insists.
In the four weeks I have been at home for, I haven’t cleaned the shower ‘properly’ once. Not because I am unwilling but because my girlfriend always showers straight after me in the morning and then spends the remainder of the morning scrubbing the spotless shower clean. Now I am about to learn her trade secrets, so that I too can leave the shower so shiny it can only be viewed through a pair of Men In Black shades. ‘It needs to be done properly’ lectures the Grand Master of Flash Shower Shine. ‘But it only takes five minutes’ she adds helpfully. ‘Five minutes?’ I repeat incredulously. ‘That’s longer than my shower!’ ‘Look - just have your shower and leave the mess’ replies my girlfriend, vexed at the frivolity with which I am treating the serious matter of bathroom cleanliness. ‘I’ll clean it myself during the ad break for Ghost Whisperer.’ ‘You know, I’m not a retard - show me how you would like your shower to be cleaned and I’ll clean it.’ ‘OK’ replies my girlfriend and before I can utter another word, I have been whisked through to the bathroom and inducted into the ways of the Shaolin Shower Shiners.
‘It’s simple’, she begins, ‘you take the blue cloth, wring it out in warmish water and wipe the outside of the screen door so that there are no water droplets left and the glass is spotless before repeating the same on the inside of the door. Then wipe down the metal hinges, rub the taps clean so they shine and do the same with the shower head and flex. Next you need to lift up these shampoo bottles sitting on the corner of the bath and dry underneath them. Clean and dry all along the edge of the bath and also along the front of it so that it’s immaculate. Then lift up the toiletries holder and dry all along there, clean all around the inside of the bath, clean the cloth, wring it out and hang it on the edge of the bath. And finally, push the shower door in so that it’s hanging in line with the shower and everything looks nice and neat.’
I stare at her, agape, trying to take in everything that I have just been told. There’s no way in hell I’m going through that rigmarole after taking a shower. I'll rinse the bath out when I'm done, but that's as good as she's gonna get. I walk through to the bathroom and take my shower, as planned. And then do you know what I do next? That’s right, I squeeze out a huge steaming turd into the bath and proceed to smear it all over the walls before summoning my girlfriend through and screaming ‘Clean that, bitch!’ Actually, that’s not quite how it happens. I do take my shower, as planned, but then a strange thing happens: upon stepping out of the bath, I find myself reaching for the blue cloth. And then, even more strangely, I find myself wringing it out in warmish water. Before I know it, I’ve wiped the outside of the screen door so that there are no water droplets left and the glass is spotless, I’ve repeated the same on the inside of the door, I’ve wiped down the metal hinges, rubbed the taps clean so they shine and done the same with the shower head and flex, I’ve lifted up the shampoo bottles sitting on the corner of the bath and dried underneath them, I’ve cleaned and dried all along the edge of the bath and also along the front of it so that it’s immaculate, I’ve lifted up the toiletries holder and dried all along there, cleaned all around the inside of the bath, cleaned the cloth, wrung it out and hung it on the edge of the bath. And finally, I’ve pushed the shower door in so that it’s hanging in line with the shower and everything looks nice and neat.
Why did I do it? I’m not sure. Maybe I thought that by keeping in my girlfriend’s good books I’d have a better chance of getting my dick sucked later. Or maybe I was just scared to disobey the imperious house matron’s orders. Whatever my reasons for shower shining like I’ve never shone before, I know one thing for sure: this house husband isn't pussy whipped - he's pussy flogged.

2007-01-02T21:28:00.001Z

With the dawn of a new year there comes the usual dearth of news stories. As always, this is due to a combination of there being no news worth documenting at present and news reporters being too hungover to get off their arses and research proper stories. If it wasn’t for Saddam Hussein’s final moments being YouTubed, the media would have had to resort to inventing stories to fill news slots and column inches. That might not present a problem to The Sun’s journalists, who are accustomed to whopping out whoppers on a regular basis. To journalists who adhere to their profession’s code of conduct however, the truth must still out, even if it does mean gouging holes in barrel bottoms. As a result, we, the newspaper-buying public, are treated instead to dazzling exclusives such as this one from today’s Press & Journal:
‘Bundles of the Press and Journal have been plundered from newsagents in a north-east town. Three shops in Banff were targeted in the early hours of Friday morning. Police said large quantities of newspapers were taken from outside Costcutters in Boyndie Street West, Morning Noon and Night in Lusylaw Road and the Co-operative store in the High Street between 2.45am and 8am. Julie Cartwright, manager of the Morning Noon and Night store, said up to 60 copies of the Press and Journal were stolen. “It was very upsetting for our elderly customers. We had one man in three times looking for a paper,” she said. Police described the theft as “uncommon.” “The number of newspapers taken would have weighed a fair weight and whoever stole them must have had transport and perhaps more importantly a method to dispose of them,” said Constable Neil Shand. “I would like to hear from anyone who saw someone interfering with the newspapers at the shops listed on the morning of the 29th and from anyone who may have been aware of persons selling large quantities of newspapers in the Banff area, who would not normally be doing so.”’
I can just picture the scene in the dingy toilets of a Banff niteclub (OK, so Banff probably doesn’t have toilets, let alone a niteclub, but indulge me on this one)... A punter is zipping up his fly and turning away from the urinal when a dodgy-looking geezer in a trenchcoat shuffles up to him and whispers in his ear ‘Scuse me mate, looking for any cheap papers?’ Glancing around cautiously to check that no one else is present, the punter nervously replies ‘Depends…what have you got?’ Opening up his trenchcoat, the geezer pulls out a bundle of newspapers, still wrapped in packing tape. ‘What do ya want?’ he growls. ‘I got The Sun, The Mirror and the Press & Journal. All mint condition, never been read.’ ‘How much do you want for them?’ asks the punter, never one to pass up a bargain. ‘Ten pence each or a fiver the lot’ replies the geezer. The punter rummages in his pocket for before pulling out a 20 pence. ‘I tell you what, I’ll take a Sun and a P & J’ he says. ‘Nice choice’ says the geezer, pocketing the change. He hands over the papers, which the punter promptly stashes down the front of his trousers. ‘Nice doing business’ he says and turns to leave. As he reaches for the door leading back into the niteclub, the geezer shouts after him ‘By the way mate, a word of advice - them P & Js are fucking dynamite. If I were you, I’d only read half at a time.’ The punter nods and walks out, patting his pocket as he goes to ensure that his illicit cargo is still there. The door slams shut behind him, leaving the dodgy geezer alone in the toilets. The geezer removes his newly-acquired 20 pence from his pocket, flips it in the air and cackles evilly. He winks at his doppelganger in the mirror and cackles. 'Sorted.'

2007-01-01T13:10:00.000Z

I turned on the television the other day, as you do, when to my surprise I saw that there was a Gaelic programme showing on BBC2. That in itself was not surprising, for the BBC are prone to promoting Gaelic and other such indecipherable pap during prime time, presumably to emphasise their cultural diversity and save on having to invest in costlier programmes that people might actually want to watch. No, what was surprising about this Gaelic programme was the name of it. Unless the people who programme the Sky TV viewing guide were having a laugh, then the gobbledygook I was watching was called Cunntas. That’s right, Cunntas. Although something of a neophyte when it comes to the Gaelic language, I would hazard a guess that it is pronounced exactly as it written - 'cunt-ass'. Get your tongue around that one.

2006-12-31T23:00:00.001Z

So, it’s the end of another year and time to reflect upon everything that has happened over the past 12 months. I wonder how many million weblogs have opened with that trite platitude today? Well, mine might be the million-and-oneth but I’m not about to join them in retrospectively summarising the best and worst of everything that has gone before. I spent most of 2006 in jail, and if you want to know how it went you can trawl through the ten months worth of prison blogs and decide for yourself. Right now, I’m only interested in the precise moment I’m living through, and when that moment’s passed, the moment after that and so on until eventually I grow old and succumb to Alzheimer’s and wind up unwittingly experiencing the same moment on repeat till death do me and my muddled mind apart. So what can I say about this particular moment that I’m caught up in? Well, not very much to be honest. Or at least not very much of interest. Given my propensity for verboseness, I’m sure I could write a 10,000-word dissertation on the subject of this very second, but I have a feeling I might lose you after the first paragraph, much as I am with the first paragraph of this blog. Grant me a stay of execution for a few more lines if you will, however, and allow me to briefly set the scene. That way you’ll be able to understand just why there isn’t much to write home about right now.
It’s 9:45 on the evening of December 31st 2006 which, by my reckoning, makes it a little over two hours until New Year. It is a time when even the nerdiest of bloggers should be out living the moment, not blogging it. Unfortunately, there is the small matter of the electronic tag around my ankle, preventing me from venturing out and fucking whores, stabbing junkies and, oh yes…celebrating the New Year. Of course, just because I’m stuck indoors doesn’t mean I can’t still party like it’s almost 2007. Indeed, as I type these words, there is a veritable party nestling in my right trouser pocket, containing enough magic beans to shoot me skywards and leave enough left over to land me another spell in jail should the drugs squad pay an unexpected visit. Frankly though the goodness contained therein is no fun when ingested in its current state, for in order for the magic to take effect, there needs to be one special ingredient added to the mix - company. As it stands however, I’m all out of companions. My girlfriend is at work, my daughter is asleep in the next room and thus the only company I have is the television, and the last time I checked, the TV didn’t do Class A’s. (Although given the amount of Columbia’s finest that has been snorted off its glass cabinet over the years, it may well have passively absorbed some and unwittingly acquired a raging coke habit.) You could be forgiven for thinking that I must be a right Johnny No-Mates to be unable to muster a solitary drinking buddy to see me through the New Year, and in some ways you’d be right. In mitigation however, I’d like to point out that as I stay several miles out of Aberdeen, even if said mates were to make it out here, they would be effectively stuck in Nowheresville until the 2nd of January when public transport resumes, or until they staggered back into town, which could take even longer. So all in all, it’s not shaping up to be the most bacchanalian of Hogmanays. In fairness however, I hadn’t originally anticipated being at large at all right now, having been scheduled to spend all of 2006 and the first quarter of 2007 in jail, so to even be able to sip black coffee at the kitchen table and type up this blog is a bonus, even if it doesn’t feel like it right now.
Aside from summating the previous 12 months with the aid of bullet points and themed lists, the other hot topic that bloggers the world over are no doubt pontificating on right now is that of New Year’s resolutions. Once again I must dissent, partly because I’m not like them (my blog is unique, didn’t you know?) and also because I have no resolutions to pass. The way I see it, I spent most of 2006 in jail, so even if I spend the whole of 2007 masturbating and eating Twinkies, it’s got to be an improvement. Short of splitting up with my girlfriend, being diagnosed with syphilis (the precipitate, presumably, for being dumped by the missus) and going back to jail - all of which are within the bounds of possibility - 2007’s guaranteed to be a good one. There are a few things I’d like to get done this coming year, including such lofty goals as keeping The Trash Whore Diaries regularly updated, but that hardly constitutes a resolution; more of an aspiration. Incidentally, if you’re wondering why updates have been somewhat sporadic ever since my liberation from that building with bars on all the windows, my excuse is thus: every day, upon being awoken by my daughter, who has been unfruitful in her attempts to rouse her mother, I am assigned, by default, the morning shift. This means that until my girlfriend awakens, I am left in charge of a 15-month-old tearaway. Fun as that is, in a hectic, not-a-moment’s-peace-to-myself kind of way, it is hardly conducive to blogging or indeed doing anything that requires sustained concentration. As it is, I struggle to manage a five-minute shave without my daughter lobbing my face wash down the toilet bowl, unwinding all the toilet roll, chewing the string off her mum’s tampons and throwing everything else that isn’t nailed down into the bath. By the time my girlfriend arises, it is usually time for her to go to work meaning that, once again, I am left holding the baby. And once again, I am not complaining, for it certainly beats a nine to five, or indeed a 24/7 in the jail. To get a moment’s peace in order to compose something blog-worthy I must first make the little one her lunch, then clean and change her, dress her in her outdoor clothes, put her into the buggy and set off on a trek around the village. By the time I have reached the other side, with a bit of luck she has fallen asleep, whereupon I can promptly nip into the local coffee shop, whip out my laptop and type frantically until the bairn wakes up demanding to be fed/changed/amused. And that is the longwinded excuse for my updates being slower than Saddam's heartbeat. In theory I could use the time when the wean finally goes to bed at nite to type, but frankly after running around after her all day, retrieving toiletries from toilet bowls and toilet bowl contents from nappies, I am too exhausted to type so much as a syllable.
According to the countdown timer on MTV2, there’s only one hour and two minutes until New Year so I guess I’d better sign off and post this blog, as I’ve still got to wash my hair and maybe - if I’m feeling really extravagant - roll myself a grass joint for the big moment. Well, it does only come around once a year, so why not indulge myself? I’m sure I’ll regret it in the cold light of the morning after, but as I said at the outset, I’m only concerned with the moment I’m living through right now, and right now I’ve got an urge to be reckless. Oh, and excuse me for being slightly premature, as is my wont, but Happy New Year my little Trash Whores. By the time you read this, 2007 will no doubt be in full swing so allow me to also impart the cheery message that I hope the comedown from your excesses was a bitch. Jealous? Moi? Not at all. Anyway, the bells are almost upon me and I must sign off so I can prepare to give myself a celebratory snog. I may be all alone at New Year but at least I’m getting to spend it with someone I love. Here’s to you, Kai. Happy New Year, gorgeous.

2006-12-25T12:35:00.000Z

To those of you who celebrate the birth of our Savior, may I wish you a Merry Christmas. And as for the rest of you heathens, I hope you have a shit Winter's Holiday.
The Trash Whore Diaries will be up to full speed again in the coming days. Who knows, if I get really stuck in they might even be up to date by next Christmas. I would thank you for loyally reading my blog over the past year, but frankly the pleasure was all yours so by rights it ought to be you thanking me. If you wish to show a token of your appreciation, I accept PayPal, cash and used panties.

I you promise to keep reading, I promise to keep writing and we can continue to mutually satisfy each other throughout 2007.

Kai.x.

2006-11-15T22:14:00.000Z

If you just can't get enough of my wonderful words, pick up a copy of The Red Final next time you're in town. Issue 76 is now on sale in One-Up Records. Skip to the last page and you'll find a big bunch of prose on the subject of goal scoring celebrations. Honestly, it's more scintillating than you'd think, but then I would say that, for like the proud parents who give their progeny's Crayola scribbles pride of place on the mantelpiece, I am unashamedly biased.

2006-11-15T13:44:00.000Z

Having been out - and managed to stay out - of prison for a few weeks now, I feel the time is right for a blogged appraisal of my reintegration into mainstream society. ‘The real world’, as I used to refer to it while in jail, seems like a wondrous and mysterious place when you can only watch it from afar. Up close however, a less glamorous picture emerges. The granite buildings that sparkled in the sunlight when viewed from my cell window are in fact caked with carbon and guano, while the tiny specks I took to be people have turned out to be corpulent monstrosities, two pies and a heart attack away from being cremated into tiny specks once again. The city of Aberdeen is still laced with wonder and mystery if you know where to look, but for the most part it is clogged with the mundane and the banal, the humdrum and the pedestrian. The snatched glimpses of real people going about their business in the real world used to fascinate me, but now that I am a part of it and one of them, the novelty has worn off. That’s not to say the ennui has set in however, for I love life in the free world, even when it invariably fails to match my expectations. Admittedly, I sometimes wonder what I see in it, but like living with an abusive, philandering spouse, I try to focus on the good times, for I recognise that I am stuck with it for now. I had anticipated that rudimentary skills such as texting, driving and handling money would take some getting used to, but as it transpired, they presented no such problems. Indeed, on the day of my liberation, it felt as if it were only yesterday and not 13 months ago that I had last engaged in such tasks. Perhaps I wasn’t locked up for long enough to forget - and then rediscover - such things. I should imagine a five-year sentence would probably do the trick. Next time I get caught, I’ll make sure it’s for importing handguns. That way, when I finally emerge into the real world as a neophyte to everything and everyone, I’ll be armed to the teeth once again, only this time with nothing more lethal than a batch of bloggable topics. I just hope you’ll be able to forgive the five years of tedious prison blogs that must precede that happy day.
Upon traversing the centre of Aberdeen shortly after getting out, I found that nothing and no one had changed. A few shop frontages might have been updated (Manhattan Bagel Co, lamentably replaced by the naffly-titled The Buttery) and a few faces accrued extra chins (Scott from One-Up), but by and large everything was in its right place, just as I had left it. The only thing that seemed to have really changed in my absence was the flange-o-rama, as Christy would put it. It appeared as if Aberdeen had been overrun by an array of hot MILFs, yummy mummies and their even yummier Gordons’ daughters. However, I put this perceived smorgasbord of female flesh down to the fact that I hadn’t seen girls in so long, and concluded that the pussy quota was in fact the same as ever. One thing that did surprise me was the price of a pint of Tennant’s - £2.30 in Triple Kirk’s. Sorry for sounding like an old fogey, but I’m sure it didn’t cost anywhere near that amount back when I were an unconvicted lad. Mind you, I was so opulent back then I didn’t usually bother to collect my change, let alone inspect it, so it may be the case that Tennant’s has always cost £2.30. I am proud to report that I managed to last three days in the real world before succumbing to the lure of a cold beer. While I would be swift to cite this as proof that I don’t have an alcohol problem, in reality it was probably more a case of needing 72 hours to get all the sex out of my system before replenishing it with beer. In saying that, three weeks on and I have yet to get properly drunk. This may, however, have something to do with my curfew and the exorbitant price of alcohol.
There has only been one occasion on which I found myself overwhelmed by my new environment, and that was in the hairdressers, on the very same morning as my beer induction. The last time I had walked into Angels, my regular salon, it was to request that my straightened and sculpted locks be replaced by a skinhead in anticipation of my imminent incarceration. This time around, the experience was equally daunting, but not on account of what lay in wait across the River Dee. Rather, I was more concerned with the scene that met my eyes as I stepped into the salon. I had been expecting to be greeted by my regular stylist and offered a seat and a cold beer while I waited for my colour to take. Instead, I stepped straight into a bustling stock exchange trading floor, if Wall Street were run by bleach blonde dolly birds. The normally sedate salon was in pandemonium; inside a space just four times the size of the prison cell I had recently vacated I counted 36 women and one token gay, clustered around every available chair, basin and mirror. The smell of hair spray and perfume combined with enough peroxide to blow up 1,000 airliners was overpowering. As I surveyed the seething throng, the coat rack, protesting under the weight of its excess baggage, suddenly collapsed, tearing its fittings out of the wall and landing on the floor in a cloud of plaster dust. As I sat down and tried to take in the frantic scene unfolding around me (not least the 36 sets of breasts bobbing up and down as the girls went about their work), I recalled how women who share the same environment often end up ovulating at the same time because their bodies synchronise their menstruation cycles. If that were true, and the gaggle of hairdressers assembled before me were all currently on the rag, this room was bloodier than an abattoir. As these random thoughts criss-crossed through my head, I caught one of the junior stylists staring at me. I looked away, not wanting to embarrass her, but upon returning my gaze, she was still staring. It was clear that she wanted to fuck me. That in itself was not a problem, for many people desire to have their wicked way with me, and I with them, and yet we manage to go our separate ways without transgressing and interlocking. On this occasion however I had no desire to reciprocate the girl’s knowing glances, not because she was un-doable or because my girlfriend would chop my balls off, but because if she was on the rag, my dip-stick would end up stained with red diesel. Although no stranger to the sight of blood, having witnessed plenty of it spilt while in jail, I have never been fond of the menstrual variety. This may have more to do with the irrational mood swings and subsequent blue-ballings that accompany its appearance however.

Overcrowded hairdressers and overpriced beer aside, these last few weeks have passed smoothly. Apart from a couple of minor tag breaches, I have faced only one real crisis since getting home. Because my girlfriend favours sleeping late, to atone for having worked/drank late the nite before, I have found myself allocated the morning shift. Every day, I get up - or rather the bairn gets me up - and I set about changing, dressing and feeding her before taking her out in the pram to the shops and recycling facility. With my girlfriend otherwise indisposed, I have been left to my own devices when it comes to preparing the wean’s breakfast. I thought I had been doing a pretty good job of preparing and feeding her cereal to her, but I thought wrong. A couple of days ago, my girlfriend rose uncharacteristically early and walked through to the kitchen just in time to catch me making a potentially fatal mistake. Unaware of the danger I had been exposing our daughter to, I had been feeding her Oatibix instead of her prescribed organic baby Weetabix. The two cereals may look and taste the same, but apparently they’re not. After much frantic dialling of NHS 24, we were relieved to discover that the child should make a full recovery from the trauma of ingesting un-organic cereal that may have contained microscopic traces of pesticides that may in theory have caused damage if ingested neat and in large quantities. It was an easy mistake for a new father, only just released from prison and adjusting to his new life and responsibilities, to make. Nevertheless, had the error gone uncorrected and the bairn continued to eat unwholesome Oatibix, I dread to think what might have happened five years down the line. It was a sobering reminder that in spite of all the wonder and glamour, the real world can still be a real dangerous place sometimes.

2006-11-14T14:19:00.000Z

My fledgling writing career took another faltering step forward today when I had a poem accepted for a forthcoming anthology. Added to my articles that have appeared in The Red Final and a couple of letters that made it into New Statesman this year, it all starts to sound pretty impressive. If I keep adding to my oeuvre at this rate, I reckon I’ll have my own Evening Express column by 2050. An illustrious literary career is but a Halley’s Comet sighting away.
Until the letter arrived this morning, I had forgotten all about my poetic submission. Like all my best opuses, it was written in the jail when time was plentiful and female distractions were scarce. When I opened my mail, expecting to be swamped by fiscal demands from Inland Revenue, there was instead a chirpy letter informing me that my ‘poem “What Lies Above” has been selected to be included in the book The Creative Touch which can be ordered from all good bookshops worldwide.’ And some crap ones too I should imagine. If their preamble was true, my poem was both the sperm that fertilised the egg and the pussy that got the cock cream, fighting off competition from ‘thousands of entries from some really excellent poets.’ And, once again, some crap ones too. Nevertheless, that wasn’t to detract any from my achievement. The letter effectively stated ‘You rule!’, and who was I to question the judgement of a publishing house that had never even met me? My excitement was tempered somewhat, however, when I saw the enclosed jacket cover. To illustrate the evocative imagery that poetry can summon, the publishers had opted for a seascape. And not just any old seascape, but a dreary low-res, pixellated seascape that looked like it had been shot using a disposable camera that came free with a Christmas cracker. It reminded me of the sort of maudlin holiday snap that can be found churning out of Kodak kiosks and clogging up web servers the world over. The front cover was all waves crashing evocatively on the rocks, while on the reverse, the blurb - framed by more evocative waves, naturally - proclaimed ‘Creativity is a wonderful thing and one of the most rewarding endeavours.’ Utter bullshit; no one endeavours to be creative. Creativity is only a means to an end, it’s not some pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Unabashed, it continued ‘In this anthology we are offered a glimpse of the way in which not just one poet writes - but a whole plethora of them.’ My goodness - a plethora of poets all banded together in one volume? Can you handle the combined weight of their iambic pentameter? The blurb concluded ‘This book is a unique compilation of unique poetry by unique individuals and in these pages they have all been able to express their art, thus displaying The Creative Touch which drives their imaginations.’ Er, no. Just no. The only things my imagination contemplates creatively touching are lesbians and vulpine phalluses. (Yes, that’s right, I have a fetish for fox cocks. Is that a problem?) And ace as my poem undoubtedly is, let’s not get too pretentious here and call it ‘art’. It’s some words I scribbled on a piece of paper because I was bored in jail, OK? I would rather have taken heroin but I didn’t have any so I wrote a poem instead. And what’s more, I didn’t even write it for The Creative Touch - I wrote it for the prison magazine. Unbeknown to the publishers, my poem has already appeared in print in the Craigie Crack. In spite of being by all accounts a magnificent piece of prose, my ode failed to impress the harshest critics of all - my fellow convicts. Admittedly this may have had something to do with that they were all illiterate. Still, talk about pearls before swine.
As well as a proof of my poem to be checked over and returned, there was also a personal profile sheet enclosed to enable putative readers of The Creative Touch to learn a little more about me, the artist, who had made their uncultured life that little bit more refined by graciously permitting them to savour my magnum opus. As an example, it gave the following profile: ‘Joanne Cooper, author of “Pride Comes Tomorrow” has been writing verse for six years and is strongly influenced by her work in a nursing home in her home town of Epsom. “I love working with the elderly and their stories often inspire me to take out my notebook and start scribbling” she explained. “I want to leave something of myself behind and poetry is the perfect way to get my message across.”’ No, if you really want to leave something of yourself behind, I suggest you ask to be cremated and for your ashes to be used to mulch the nursing home rose beds. Her pretentious profile concluded: ‘She and her husband Ronald enjoy reading, walking and regular holidays in the Canaries.’ Based on this example, there followed a series of questions to complete in order to create my personal profile. Compare Joanne’s answers to mine, as listed below, and you’ll see that the two of us are kindred spirits, bound by our love of poetry and our desire to spread our art to the ignorant masses.
Hobbies: Smoking weed, downloading hardcore pornography.
Profession: Drug dealer.
Ambition: To control the weed trade in the Grampian region, and ultimately the whole of Scotland.
When did you start writing and why: I started writing when I was in prison serving time for drug dealing and perjury.
How would you describe your style? Spiky with blonde highlights.
How would you like to be remembered? Give me a break! I’m only 26, I’m not an intravenous drug user and I eat my five fruit and veg a day. I’d like to be remembered as a going concern.
Who would you like to be for a day? Scarlet Johannson. So I could stand in front of a full-length mirror and frig myself from dawn till dusk.
Have you written anything else? Yes, lots of things.
What? Well let’s see, I wrote my name on the side of a bus shelter this morning. And then there was that letter I wrote to Lily Allen professing my undying love for her and threatening to stalk her if she didn’t reciprocate.
What is your biggest fantasy? No, I’m not making this up; this was a genuine question. I don’t even know where to start with a poser like this. Let’s just say that Joanne Cooper would be horrified to discover that her poem had been published in the same volume as such a filthy pervert. God forbid some of his lascivious proclivities might rub off on her by proxy of the printed page.
What is your worst nightmare? Midgets, it's got to be midgets. And Pete Burns’ lips. In fact midgets with Pete Burns’ lips. That would be pretty scary.

Well, I hope that reading the above profile has enabled you to come to a better understanding of the genius behind ‘What Lies Above’. Hang on, you’ve not even read the poem yet, have you? Well I suppose I could reproduce it here so you can marvel at its awesomeness, but that would be selling it short. To be frank, it’s too classy for a smutty weblog like this. If you want to read my poem, you’ll have to buy the anthology when it comes out, just like all the other cool kids. Although if you’re too embarrassed to walk into your local ‘good bookshop’ and ask for The Creative Touch, I suggest you inveigle a friend into doing the honours for you. And ask him to pick up some KY jelly and a box of extra small condoms too while he’s in town. Then you really will be able to enjoy the creative touch.

2006-11-13T21:44:00.000Z

I was walking through town today when I saw a grimy white van with the following message finger written onto its rear window: ‘Busier than Santa - HO HO HO’. As I drew level with the vehicle, I noticed that the official sign writing on the side read ‘J.Mutch, Cleaning & Hygiene Supplies.’ Mr Mutch is too busy outdoing Santa, it would seem, to supply his own van with a spot of cleaning and hygiene. Unless he wants all his customers to go elsewhere, I suggest he seeks out a decent Cleaning & Hygiene Supplier to spruce up his van.

2006-11-12T16:01:00.000Z

I awoke this morning to the sound of the doorbell. Struggling to pull my jeans up over my protruding boner, I staggered into the hallway, flattened down the bulge and blearily opened the door. Standing on the front step was a young mother from the village with her two year-old daughter in tow. Had I been more cognizant, I would have flexed my abdominal muscles to bestow the woman with a mental picture off my ripped six-pack. That way, the next time she was enduring another soulless rutting from her boyfriend, she could recall my toned torso and beat him to orgasm for once. As it was, sex was the last thing on my mind, in spite of any indications my wayward boner might have been giving to the contrary. I soon learned that the mother had not turned up in order to fuel my Adonis complex but to deposit her daughter before going to work. For the rest of the day - or until my girlfriend woke up at least - the bairn would be my responsibility; the playing, the feeding, the toileting, the placating - the works. How had this come about? In just two weeks I had gone from zero dependants to having two toddlers to look after. Only a handful of marsupials (the American opossum, the rare water opossum and the eastern native cat of Australia) had a gestation period that short. What had I done to warrant a clutch of illegitimate brats in such a narrow interstice? I knew my tadpoles were virile, but this was beyond a joke. At this rate, I’d be a father-of-fifteen by the age of 30, pilloried in the press for receiving £30,000 a year in benefits. The next time I got laid - if my newly-acquired progeny would permit me a moment of peace in which to get laid - I vowed to double-bag and pull out early to be triply sure. It just wasn’t worth the risk of winding up with yet another kicking, screaming sprog. And yet, as I set about playing with the juvenile duo, the scariest thing of all was that I found myself actually enjoying being daddy. It was frightening to face up to, but beneath the drug-dealing, perjuring, lubricious, trash-talking exterior, there was a devoted father, only too happy to change dirty nappies and mollify toddler tantrums.
Later on, when my girlfriend had awoken and absolved me of my lone-parent duties, we put the bairns into their prams and took a walk through the village. As I trudged through the drizzling rain with my girlfriend, pushing our matching pink buggies, the bottom of each one filled with empties to take to the bottle bank, it dawned on me that to any onlookers we must have resembled the perfect dysfunctional ASBO family. Wine bottles? Check. Multiple children from different fathers? Check. Electronic tag? Check. The only thing we were missing was a pit-bull on a piece of string. Still, who knows what tomorrow might bring when the doorbell rings? The road to perdition is an insidious one. Long before I arrive in hell, I hope to nurture my girlfriend and miscellaneous dependants into The Family From Hell. That way, at least we have the spectacle of an ITV documentary to look forward to before our inevitable eviction and transfer downstairs to take up permanent residence with the patron saint of ASBO families - Auld Nick himself.

2006-11-11T00:24:00.000Z

After conducting intensive research, I have come to the conclusion that electronic tags were not designed for running in. Sweatbands, yes. Plastic ankle bands, no. I first put the tag through its paces a few days ago when I took it out for a canter. Or rather it took me out, for where it led, the rest of my body followed. Together, we fled suburbia and ran free across the fields and dunes. When my calves began to tire on the absorbent surface, I made my way down to the water’s edge and followed the shore line, my trainers leaving fleeting impressions in the wet sand. After a year cooped up in the jail, it felt good to be in motion. In fact it felt better than good - it felt exhilarating. As I coursed across the undulating dunes, I knew how Forest Gump felt the moment he realised he didn’t need his leg braces. In my case however, the leg constraint was still in place. At first, it didn’t register. Caught up in the elation of being at liberty to flit along the shoreline, I didn’t spare a thought for the dull grey device attached to my ankle. The waves looked spectacular as they crashed upon the beach, inches away from me. I’m pretty sure they sounded spectacular too but I was inured to their aural charms, my eardrums too preoccupied with the cacophony of nine angry men expressing their frustration at being cooped up in my i-Pod. In some ways it felt sacrilegious to pollute such an idyllic landscape with the foul onslaught of Slipknot, but I found their down-tuned angst was conducive to running faster than the aforementioned Forest. Panpipe music might have been more appropriate to the littoral ambience but it wasn’t going to make my little legs pump up and down like pistons. And with an electronic tag weighing me down, I needed all the encouragement I could get.
When the tag was first fitted, it had been left slightly loose so that I could fit a sock underneath. Up until now, the arrangement had worked perfectly; with a sock padding it out, I was hardly aware that the thing was on. Now however, the loose tag became a millstone around my ankle, weighing me down, slowing me down and sliding up and down my leg like a stripper gyrating against a pole. Half an hour into the run, my lungs were holding up fine but my right ankle was ready to admit defeat. By the time I reached my street, removed my headfones and returned the nine angry men to the white box whence they had came, I was virtually limping. Upon closer inspection, a bruise was clearly visible forming above my ankle bone. Next time I went running, I vowed to tape the tag to my leg. That next time arrived today but unfortunately I found myself sans sellotape, having not anticipated that I would be breaking a sweat. As it transpired, I had cause to run through town thrice, and on each occasion I found myself cursing the tag.
After meeting Christy for a pre-match pint in The Illicit Still, I was leaving it late to get to the game. A rapid shuffle along King Street soon atoned for lost time however and I found myself outside Pittodrie with five minutes to spare. Easy, even if it wasn’t so easy on my long-suffering ankle. After the match (a 2-0 raping - or molestation at least - of St Mirren) I found myself running again. Once again it was through necessity rather than the sake of my heart, in this case the need to maximise my drinking time before my curfew kicked in. Weaving through the departing crowds, I hotfooted it along King Street and onto Union Street, whereupon I was obliged to undertake further weaving to navigate the thronged Christmas shoppers. 15 ankle-bashing minutes after the final whistle had sounded, I found myself in The Bassment, supping a Long Island Iced Tea. By the time the alcohol had begun to work its magic, my ankle had forgotten all about the battering it had taken. Unfortunately, a reminder wasn’t far away.
After spending the next hour quaffing cocktails and solving brainteasers that were for some reason presented to me on the back of a napkin by an androgynous goth who was seemingly after stimulating more than just my brain cells, I was joined by an accomplice. Craig showed up at the bar straight from work and began demolishing a pint to my JD and coke while we waited for his food to arrive. The plan was to leave The Bassment at 6.45, walk briskly to Froghall where his car was parked and then - assuming the vehicle hadn’t been relieved of its wheels by the natives - motor out to my village in time for the 7.15pm curfew. It didn’t quite work out that way however, and by the time Craig’s grilled chicken sandwich had been demolished, it was ten to seven. We speed-walked to Schoolhill and then, upon realising that we still had to travel seven miles in 20 minutes, began to leg it along George Street. Breathless, we arrived at the Froghall favela just after seven and jumped into Craig’s motor. The engine roared into life as Davey Havok roared death from the stereo and we sped out of the ghetto with tyres squealing like joyriders. For the remainder of the journey, Craig broke all speed records - or at least all those along the route - in the quest to get me home on time. In reality, the tagging company probably wouldn’t have objected if I had been a couple of minutes late, but I didn’t want to chance my luck after breaching my tag on the first nite. Besides, it was quite exciting to have a race against time; at any moment I expected the grey tag around my ankle to spring open and a countdown timer to begin. Failure to reach my front door in time would result in the tag detonating and blowing my leg off. At ten past seven we were still in Aberdeen, stuck in traffic, and it looked certain that I would be Heather Mills'd for my tardiness. As soon as we hit the dual carriageway however, precious seconds were regained in a blur of asphalt and cats’ eyes and when Craig pulled up outside my house, there was still a minute to spare. If I’d known it was going to be that easy, we could have stayed for a shot in The Bassment.
I have come to the conclusion that the electronic tag is deliberately designed to inflict as much pain as possible when running to prevent reprobates from legging it from the cops. Over 50 metres, it’s no bother at all; running out of your house in the event of a fire shouldn’t be a problem. Any further than that though and the pain starts to gain. After two blocks with the cops hot on your heels, the ankle tag’s perforated the skin and is rubbing against bone. And two blocks after that, it’s snapped your Achilles and you’re writhing about on the ground in agony while PC Plod administers a few kicks to your remaining good ankle with his steel toecaps. When it comes to evading the law, tagged offenders can hide but they sure as hell can’t run.

2006-11-10T21:04:00.000Z

Spotted on the BBC News website today, the following headline: ‘My Bionic Foot - so advanced even amputee soldiers may go back into battle’. I can just picture the scene in the military hospital...
‘Private, do you want to lie in bed all day feeling sorry for yourself or do you want to walk again like a goddamn man?’
‘Sir, I want to walk again sir!’
‘Well Private, in that case I’ve got some good news for you - we’re gonna fit you up with a bionic foot to replace the one you lost in Iraq. This thing’s so damn good, we’ll be able to send you back into battle with it on.’
‘Sir, you mean to say you would send me back to Basra? In that case, request permission to stay in bed feeling sorry for myself sir!’

2006-11-09T13:42:00.000Z

Having been modelling my state-supplied ankle bracelet for the past fortnight now, I feel a blog is in order to extol its aesthetic and ergonomic virtues. I used to think that nothing screamed ‘Dealer!’ like a neck laden with enough gold and platinum to give Mr T a hernia, but I can see now that such trappings were ostentatious overkill. In reality, only one piece of jewellery is required to be demarcated as a dealer: a dull, grey chunk of plastic attached to an equally dull, grey strap, the sort of gimcrack you couldn’t give away, even if you were able to slip it off your ankle. Even the most desperate of muggers would draw the line at denuding a man of his government-owned ankle jewellery. Although never much of a pugilist, I always figured that if truculent troublemakers came calling, the best way to face them down would be to insouciantly sling my jacket to a bystander, roll up my sleeves and feign chewing on gum like the mean motherfucker that I so evidently was. And if that didn’t work, well I could always just run like hell and hope that they would be placated by my sacrificial jacket. Should troublemakers rear their ugly heads these days however I need only roll up one sleeve - that of my right trouser leg - to achieve the desired effect. One look at the monstrosity attached to my ankle and they would flee in abject terror, wondering what this fearsome gangster had done to his last victim to merit such a tag. I probably wouldn’t even need to deploy my opening salvo, which I have drawn up especially for such scenarios: ‘If I get into a fight with this thing on, I’m going back to jail. Seeing how I’ve got nothing to lose then, I guess I might as well kill you .’ To which the faltering reply (which I have also drawn up in my head) will come: ‘It’s cool mate, I’m sorry for knocking your drink over, I da’ want nae trouble. I’ll get you a double.’
While in jail, I derided those who were fitted out with electronic tags only to breach them within days of getting home and wind up back inside again. Little did I realise that I too would breach my curfew within hours of being tagged, and come perilously close to revisiting Craiginches. On the day of my liberation, the authorities left me to my own devices for a few hours, begrudgingly accepting that I’d earned the right to reacquaint myself with the inner workings of my girlfriend. The only stricture was that I be at home from 4pm in order for a Serco official to fit my tag. This didn’t present a problem for, having arrived home at 1pm, formalities such as sex had long since been dealt with. When the knock at the door came shortly after four o’clock, I opened it expecting to be greeted by a gruff, officious Serco employee, shaped from the same mould as the gruff, officious prison officers I had only just gained respite from. To my surprise, I opened the door to instead be confronted by a young, voluptuous college girl, the sort that in different circumstances would be the one getting fitted with jewellery by me…in the form of a pearl necklace. If the penalty for violating your tagging conditions was a home visit from this cum canvas, no wonder so many offenders were breaching their curfews. The muckle-pappet quine (as my mate Christy would surely have designated her) instructed me to walk around the perimeter of the house holding the tag while she calibrated the box to make sure that there were no ‘black spots’ in the building. It wouldn’t do to have a Serco official calling round every time I stepped into the shower just because I was out of signal range. Well, it would do just fine if it was this particular Serco official inspecting my bathing arrangements, but I had a feeling not all of their staff were as pleasing to the third eye.
I had been expecting to be fitted with a state-of-the-art bijou tracking device; instead I got a protuberance that resembled the sort of cheap, tacky, Casio sports watch you might pick up at a car boot sale, only cheaper, tackier and bulkier. It struck me that I could probably do a roaring trade in the Aberdeen Market selling tag accessories to the tagged-up reprobates who slink through there on a regular basis, wearing their tags over their socks, which are worn over their trackie B’s. My stall - Blingtagstic - would sell customised Burberry decals, Rangers and Celtic badges and offer a personalised tag engraving service as the perfect gift for the electronically tagged one you love. In keeping with the low-tech theme, I was supplied with an unprepossessing electronic box to be plugged into the fone line. An aerial protruded from the top to wirelessly liase with the tag, provided, that is, that all my other wireless devices - mobile fone, laptop, TV and stereo remotes and Sky secondary TV router - didn’t interfere with it. I elected for the tag to be fitted to my right ankle so that, in the event of me getting into a fight, I could kung-fu kick my opponent with my favoured left without smashing his brains out on the edge of the tag or - worse still - breaking the device and winding up back inside. The tag was fitted loosely enough for me to cushion it by slipping a sock underneath, but not loosely enough, unfortunately, to be able to slip it off and head for the red light district. I stood up to try it on for size, in the same way that one would try on a pair of shoes, and took a few steps. The tag felt cumbersome, but not as cumbersome, it must be said, as prison. On the plus side, I now had an excuse for leaving my socks on during sex; it wouldn’t do to have the tag slapping against my ankle, chafing skin and drowning out the delectable sound of my balls slapping against my girlfriend’s pert ass. As I Inspected my new bionic implant, I wondered to myself how many other reprobates had worn it before me. Long before it clung to my leg, a prestigious array of bank robbers, sex offenders and murders had most likely sweated on it, bled on it and came on it. And in the case of the sex offenders and murderers, it wasn’t necessarily their own bodily fluids leaching into it.
By the time the Serco representative had finished calibrating the tag, fitting it and showcasing her delectable bosoms, it was only half past four, meaning I had almost three hours of freedom before my curfew kicked in. I decided to make a trip to the supermarket and stock up on all the essentials that had been taunting me in the food commercials throughout my incarceration; decent coffee, a large Toblerone and a bottle of malt whisky. When I returned home from the shop, the fone was ringing. I picked it up to be greeted by a disgruntled sounding Glaswegian. Upon confirming my identity, he introduced himself as an employee of Serco and asked if I had just been out of the house. I informed him that I had indeed, having just gotten back from the shops, and was there a problem? It was, after all, still only half past six. To my astonishment, I was informed that I wasn’t permitted to leave the house at all on my first day of being tagged and that I had therefore breached my curfew already. I apologised profusely, only too aware that Serco must have immediately marked me down as being a complete dodger, liable to fuck them about at every available opportunity. Even my former fellow convicts I had mocked for breaching their tags hadn’t managed to fuck theirs up this quickly. I explained to the official that I had no recollection of the woman telling me I couldn’t leave the house for the rest of the day, although it may well have been the case that I was so busy staring holes in her sweater I simply didn’t hear her. I was informed in no uncertain terms that this caveat was written in the contract I had received upon leaving the jail. I looked it out and sure enough, there it was in small print at the bottom: ‘Following installation, you must not leave this address before 07.15 on 26/10/2006.’ It was an inauspicious start to my tagging phase to say the least. Although I didn’t think Serco would be so unreasonable as to send me back to jail for the occasional hiccup, I had no desire to use up all my lifelines on the first nite. There would be plenty of other occasions in the coming months (like New Year for instance), when excuses may have to be made for going AWOL. I imagined the tagging control room at Serco headquarters to resemble the battle station on a military submarine, with buzzers sounding and warning lights flashing across the board as the ten-man crew frantically tried to keep tabs on the 1,000-odd degenerates running amok across the land.
For my first week of electronic tag-dom, I made sure to be home in ample time for the 7.15pm curfew and there were no further repeats of the first nite’s teething problems. Then, three days ago, I found myself facing the wrath of Serco once again. During the evening, there was a knock at the door. I opened it to be greeted by a Serco official (not the same one who had fitted my tag unfortunately), who announced that he was here to perform a routine spot-check. I invited the guy in, whereupon he proceeded to inspect my hardware before asking if I’d had any problems with it. I informed him that no, everything had been fine since the slight misunderstanding on the first day. The man informed me that the real reason for his visit was because Serco suspected that I might have tried to interfere with the tagging box, not sexually but in order to sabotage it. Apparently, the box had an inbuilt motion sensor that could detect if someone was trying to fiddle with it. If the box was shaken or stirred more than five times in a week, Serco come calling. Had I had cause to move the box that day, the man wondered? I thought for a moment. ‘Well yeah, I was dusting it a bit’ I shrugged. This explanation seemed to satisfy the man, who advised me that in future I should leave the box in situ when dusting it in order to prevent further unnecessary call-outs. What I didn’t tell him was that I knew only too well why the box had been moved that day, and it had nothing to do with dusting. Earlier, a press fotographer had called round to take some pictures for one of the Trash Wore Diaries features that has subsequently appeared in the local and national press. Like all good - and bad - fotographers, he was keen to incorporate a prop that would illustrate my new life at home as a tagged-up convict. Could I remove the electronic box from the shelf, he wondered, and place it on my lap? Provided it remained plugged into the fone socket, I didn’t see this presenting a problem and so I complied. I hadn’t reckoned on this low-tech piece of kit having a host of high-tech sensors contained within to stop me from using and abusing it. I didn’t fancy telling the Serco official that I had been manoeuvring his piece of kit about for foto opportunities, but thankfully he seemed to buy the dusting explanation. Before heading off, the man left me with a parting gift: after pressing a few buttons on the box, the display burst into glorious luminescent light to reveal a digital clock. I realised then that many families must be sad to see their delinquent progeny’s tagging period draw to a close, bringing with it the removal of box and tag, for it was probably the first time they’d been able to enjoy the luxury of a working clock in their house.
Barring a return to jail, the tag will accompany me everywhere I go for the next four months. I may not like it but I must abide with it for now, for like some cancerous growth, it has become a part of me. Right now, all I can do I is learn to live with it and pray for the day when it can finally be surgically removed. Only then will I be given a clean bill of health...until the evening at least, when I can slink down to the docks and get ball-deep into some crab-riddled slut. Still, it's a small price to pay for freedom.