There’s Yer Dinner!

Would you like me to tell you a wee story?

NO?!
– Well I’m going to tell you anyway.

The year was approximately 1989…

…and in 1989 my Mum was a barmaid.
When my Dad wasn’t working day shifts, he was working night shifts and so quite often, my folks were left with only 3 options:
1. Leave me home alone.
2. Pay some babysitter to be terrorised by me.
3. Take me to work with them.
So, more often than not, I’d get to go to the bar with my Mum to watch her work. It was brilliant!

I’d get to sit on a barstool which I had to jump up onto and drunks would pay me to draw pictures of them. They weren’t all drunks but they mostly were. Old guys with rambling stories and lived in faces. Deep lined faces. Interesting faces. Drawing-wise, it was a real school for me.

There was this particular guy. A horrible guy. An old miserable bastard of a man. Every day he would sit hunched over whatever the hell it was he used to drink pints of and mutter swear words away to himself until he was too drunk to talk.

I loved Elvis at the time (Still do!) and I remember this old git who we’ll call…Auld Norrie, telling me that…
(a) Elvis couldn’t play guitar.
(b) People who play the guitar are idiots.
(c) Elvis never wrote his own songs.
(d) People who wrote songs were poofs.
(e) Elvis dyed his blonde hair black.
(f) Elvis was a Mummy’s Boy.
(g) Elvis was probably a poof.

As you can imagine, Auld Norrie was a delight.

He used to steal loo roll from the bathroom, Auld Norrie. His pockets would be stuffed with it.

I never saw him ever talk to anyone in the bar. I never saw him with anyone. His skin was yellow and he was dirty and greasy. I remember thinking to myself that he probably had no one in his life. But I was wrong.

Because one day, the doors of the bar flew open and a woman marched in! A woman in her 50’s who was quite made-up, but you could tell that the make-up was having a tough time trying to conceal the obvious years of misery she’d put up with.

She was carrying something shiny and silver. She had bags with her…

She marched over to Auld Norrie and banged this silver thing down in front of him and said…“THAT’S THE LAST SUNDAY DINNER YOU’LL EVER GET OFF ME!” and then stormed out without looking back.

There was stone silence in the place and I was fixated on this old git. Everybody was.

He peeked under the silver foil and seeing that indeed, there was a full Sunday roast dinner on a plate, he took the foil off and I’ll never forget what he did next.

Very slowly, he opened his manky jacket and put his hand carefully in his inside pocket and pulled out…

A KNIFE AND FORK!

And then he wolfed the whole dinner down! Scranned the entire lot in about 2 minutes flat!

Then after that, he just went right back to being hunched over and drinking and muttering away to himself about “fucking bitches”.

I was about 8 or 9. It was amazing!

He’s dead now, Auld Norrie.
He lay dead for about 10 days at the bottom of his stairs before anybody noticed.

You May Also Be Interested In…
* “Hey Buddy, Did You Just See A Real Bright Light?”
* “New York City: A True 8th Avenue Tale” By Bob Heaney
* A Sinister Tennant

New York Diary: Part II.

New York Diary: Part II.
When In New York.

I feel pretty good today even although I only had about 4 hours sleep.
We all did a power of walking yesterday and today, like tomorrow, will be the same.

New York street traffic is pretty ruthless.
Everyone knows exactly where they’re going and they are in a hurry.
That suits me fine.
Like I said, this is my 3rd time in this City and I know my way around better than I know my way around back home in Glasgow!
Matter of fact, we’d constantly get asked for directions and we got pretty good at pointing people the right way.

Ever stood at the foot of the Rockefeller building and looked up?
You can’t see the top of it for clouds sometimes!

It’s dizzying and for some reason unknown to me, we all thought that it would be a pretty good idea to pay 80 bucks and go up onto the roof and look at the city.
I don’t usually have much of a problem with great heights but tonight I do.
Hayley does too.

We’re up on the roof of the Rockefeller building.
They call it “Top Of The Rock” and frankly, It’s fucking terrifying!
At the top of The Empire State building, there is a big wall and big iron railings on account of all the folk who used to go up there and jump off it.
These days, you feel pretty safe and secure up on top of the Empire State.
I wish I was up there right now because the Rockefeller is a sheer drop only surrounded by one thin looking layer of clear plexi-glass.

It’s real windy up here tonight and Hayley and I feel the building sway.
Its better that a building this tall sways a lot rather than not at all.
But still.

New York twinkles from up there and it feels good to be young and alive etc…

All the same, I’m glad when we finally get back down to the street.
Fuck doing that again anytime soon.

My folks and Hayley planned their trip out.
They had designs on shopping like mad people possessed and that is what they did.
They shopped like Paris Hilton on cocaine!
I can’t stand shopping.
I hate it.
I don’t care about what’s in or out.
I don’t care whether it’s designer or vintage.
If it’s black and I need it then I’ll buy it but even then, I don’t care.
I only buy clothes and shoes when my existing ones fall apart so I left them to it and off I went again.

I hadn’t even thought about what I was gonna do in this city.
I don’t tend to plan anything out because I like not knowing what will happen every day.

I pounded the streets again tonight and ended up outside of Madison Square Garden.
Elton John’s playing tonight and you can’t move for people trying to sell fake tickets at 20 bucks apiece.

Over I go to Hell’s Kitchen which is maybe my favourite part of the city.
It’s laid back. Not as laid back as the village but just enough.
The village doesn’t really have the edge that Hell’s Kitchen has.
I wrote down a list of locations where notorious mobsters were murdered but I’ve forgotten to bring it.
You can meet a lot of interesting characters walking around Hell’s Kitchen if you’re not careful.
In 2002 I quickly learned that if someone comes up to you and starts telling jokes then walk away because he’s gonna demand money when he’s done.

If someone comes out of the blue at you and says “Sir, do you mind if I ask you a question?” then walk away because that question won’t be a question.
It’ll be “Gimmie money!”
If you get involved in any sort of conversation with anyone in any street then be prepared to be asked for money.
These days, I find myself in-step with most other New Yorkers;
On my way to somewhere in a hurry with no time for anyone who tries to stop me.
Walk fast enough and you probably won’t even be approached but stop for a second to light a cigarette or tie your shoelace and you can forget it because there will be 3 people standing around you wanting a piece of you.

Tonight was the night I got lucky and found The Tempest.
The Tempest is a bar on 8th Avenue.
It’s right beside this big Post Office:

It’s not hard to find nice bars in New York but it can be really difficult to find the kind of dives that I like.
The Tempest doesn’t look like my kind of place from the outside.

You could easily mistake it for some touristy Irish themed bar which inside, it definitely ain’t.
It’s a dark, Rock & Roll dive.

I ended up getting pretty friendly with quite a few people in The Tempest.
The sound of Dr. John singing “Such A Night” led me to this bar.
In here you can hear The Flaming Lips, Radiohead, Little Richard, Bob Dylan, Black Sabbath & Sinatra records and like I say, it’s pitch black inside.

I ended up going to The Tempest when I couldn’t sleep at night because it stayed open to 4am and when it closed I’d get invited to hang around inside which was great.
After hours, Chris the bartender and Bob the bouncer would tell me where to go to find the best live music in the city.
They’d also point out characters on the street and tell me which ones were okay and which ones I should avoid.
In fact,
Chris and Bob pretty much clued me right in about New York and it made my stay a helluva lot more interesting.

For instance,
I got introduced to a guy who managed a recording studio across the street and one night at 4am about 5 of us all got invited over for a couple of drinks.
I sat down and played a black Baby Grand piano!
I’m not a very good piano player at all but who cares.
When in New York!

Too much wild turkey later and I went back to the hotel in the drizzling rain for my 3 to 4 hours sleep.
That particular part of town was deserted on that night and I decided there and then that I was gonna do this again on my last night with the soundtrack to “Taxi Driver” in my ears.
I knew it was a good idea to put it on my mp3 player!

I’m Gonna Miss That Crazy, Talented Maniac.

Dennis Hopper (1936-2010).

Arthur Rackham: “The Sleeping Beauty”.

Hi folks,

I don’t think I’m gonna be around much on here for a while.
I might!
But I might not.

In the meantime,
Here are some of my favourite Arthur Rackham illustrations.

These are from “The Sleeping Beauty” by C. S. Evans and I think they date from around 1920:

Andy Warhol’s “Little Red Hen”.

If the text wasn’t there to tell me,
I don’t think I would recognise the illustration artwork of the late great Andy Warhol…

Those illustrations are for the children’s story “The Little Ren Hen” and are pretty much the exact opposite of everything Andy Warhol was known for.

Warhol was a book illustrator from 1957-1961 and what can I say?
These drawings just don’t do anything for me.

But,
A children’s tale illustrated by Andy Warhol?

That’s a rare thing.