Flowers

Thursday 4:20 p.m.
Between the diggings and the bath. These were growing up beside the strawberries. Buggered if I know what they are, Jack. The sun disappeared just as I was about to take the photie as well. Any ideas?

9:00 p.m.
I'm going to get pissed, so if you'd like something intelligent or about buddhism or that, go elsewhere.

I'm not used to drinking wine. I had a duodenal ulcer for twenty years and didn't drink wine except on Christmas day. I have meditated for about six hours today, but I was feeling really tired and a bit crabbit ... blah, blah. So I've had a can of wifebeater and I bought a bottle of something called Camden Park, product of Argentina. It says: Pinot Grigio and weighs in at 13%. I've only had a glass of this and already I'd like to give yous a little song!

I've been struggling this year due to the lack of soapbar. The middle way for moi would be eating a bit of bob hope around eight. Meditate till around then and wait for the soapbar to come on, then flicky flicky across the useless telly channels. Unfortunately, the cannybliss is illegal and to get it I'd ... I don't think it would be easy to get it right now anyway. Basturns! What kind of country is this! The only drugs that have given me any trouble are nicotine and alcohol.

Hmmm? I've nothing to say. I might as well tell yous about my life story. I think I got up to going to the dancing ...

Some young people maybe have a problem deciding what they're going to be, like hetero or homo. I know Albert has struggled with this. I didn't have a choice. Suddenly, sometime it's in your face. It arises. Adolescence. You see femininity. You start going mad. You imagine raping and sexually assaulting folk when you don't even know what they've got under their clothes.

Not the same problem these days, Jack! Not with the computery thing in their bedrooms.

Thank godot that calmed down! By the time I was about sixteen, I reckoned I'd like to have girlfriend when I was about twenty one. When I was sixteen, eighteen year old girls looked absolutely wonderful. Kind of filled out and solid. One guy I knew from Viewpark went out with Jean Harlow when he was sixteen and that just seemed so fung weird and improbable!

Anyway, eighteen year old girls were an ambition when I was sixteen. But I didn't want a girlfriend.

I'd had a wonderful life up till then, Jack! Why would I want a girlfriend to complicate it? You should have become a monk, Hotboy. If the dharma was being taught in Chilly Jockoland around then, Jack, I should have become a monk, and I would have had amazingly wonderous sex with four armed, multiple breasted, red Indian goddesses! However, all I had was the kafflicks! Dearie me!

By the time I was almost eighteen, I had a girlfriend. Poverty did not save me. You had to pay to take out gurls then. I didn't have any money. I'd been on a blind date with my pal Tony and his new girlfriend. It was her family house in Renfrew. Her best pal and I were supposed to meet. Her parents let us have a back room to ourselves in the red brick detached. That was very understanding of them. So I snogged this very nice girl for about three hours. A couple of days later, I got a message that she would like to go out with me and I sent the message back saying thanks very much, but I can't afford to pay for you to go anywhere.

Wasn't it always thus, Jack? What is the matter with you, Hotboy?

I had a jobbie then on Saturdays in Galbraiths in Parkhead. After paying the bus fares, this gave me about 6/8, or two thirds of a pound these days. My sister worked in the County Buildings in Hamilton and she fiddled a bus pass for me to go to school. This would have cost a pound a week to the auld maw, so she gave me that as well. So my pocket money was about £1:66 these days. You could probably buy about eight pints of beer for a pound.

I got a message back from the girl saying she would like to go out with me and she would pay her own way. They came from Renfrew and we took them to the YMCA in Bellshill.

She was a very nice girl. I fell in love with her. This is what you are supposed to do. Later on, you might realise that you are supposed to fall in love with very nice girls for about three months. This is about how long it takes to make sure someone is pregnant. I think three months is about it. But in the days before you realised that this might be the way evolution had ordered events, before there was any cynicism, I just fell in love with her. And it was really very chaste.

I wrote something last week about falling in love with a donkey and how this was about projection. You project qualities onto people that they might not have.

I could go on about this, but my male friends who come to this bloggy have all been so damaged by the severity of the toilet training that they did not fall in love with girls and have the proper maturation to become blissheids. I'd like to tell yous that I believe in karma right now that I am a bit pissed. On the planet lived on before I came here I must have been a nice person and done some nice things because I fell in love with a very nice girl when I was a young man, and I was vivacious, and talkative, and dead interested, and had a three piece suit that my auld maw paid for that cost £17 at the time.

That was a week's wages if you were working in the steelworks when I was seventeen. It was probably two weeks wages to the auld maw who was living off a war pension. I understand these thing now, but not so much at the time. But I go and see her every week and I will go and see her tomorrow, so kindness is not wasted. I sprang from the loins of wonderful people!

So I used to meet her sometimes beside the shell in Central Station in Glasgow. That's where everybody met. Beside the shell. We double dated almost all the time. Best pals with best pals. We went to the Kenco Coffee Bar, but sometimes there were pictures, but usually it was dancing. There was a dancehall just off Sauciehall Street where you had to wear a suit. Sunday nights. Then we went to Joannas's in West Nile Street. On Sunday nights, they couldn't sell drink so we got in.

Everything was still quite dangerous. So you're going into Glasgow, the toon. So you went to Joanna's and did some dancing around. Then you sat out and snogged for the rest of the time. You're walking down West Nile Street at the end. You always know that it's alright if you're with a girl. That took you out and off bounds. There's a corner across the road and maybe about six guys standing there. They are very well dressed. I must say, Glaswegians do understand that kind of thing. I don't know how to describe the style. Maybe shiney brogues. Then one inch turnups on the trousers. Sharp creases. Nice coats, with about an inch or so of turned down collars.

You had to know all this stuff when you went to the tailors to buy the gear. I researched this before I got my three piece suit. How many buttons on the waistcoat, etc.

Anyway, if you were with a girl, you were supposed to be out of all that aggravation.

But you're watching it. This guy, very well dressed guy, peels off from the very well dressed guys on the corner about thirty yards down the road on the opposite side, and he's making a diagonal across the road, purposefully towards where I am walking down the pavement with my girlfriend. It was a purposeful walk. I start to think: Fung sake!

Then I see that the guy is not coming towards me and my girlfriend as it seemed, but is heading towards the two guys walking down the pavement in front of us. Just as he is hitting the pavement, he says in a loud, loud voice: Are you Maryhill Fleet? A nanosecond later, he takes what looks like a gleaming steakknife out of his inside pocket, brandishes it above his head, and shouts: Tongs, ya bass! Then he chases them down the street. Fung sake!

So I was a nice boy. I only understood the Glasgow I was in when I read Hugh Collins's Autobiography of a Murderer, which everyone should read. Because it is a wonderful, wonderful book!

I went out to Peckhams for another bottle of wine. It says: Meinklang. Gruener Veltliner 07. The Dom Bliss has just come in. We passed. We have just about passed. We are fortunate creatures. As I was saying....

I had a chance to fall in love with this very , very nice girl and that makes me very fortunate. We stood a lot in Clyde Street. We snogged and groped in quiet doorways. Batman. Gotham City. She packed me in. I knew when she said I should refrain from showing up in denims that the jig was up. We used to meet and say fond adieu in Clyde Street. When she packed me in, as the bus was moving away, I squeezed her, and said I love you, and when I sat on top of the 240 with my pal Tony, I'd never felt happier.

And as we fall through the times ... and await those little bits beyond our understanding ... I love you too, babes. I reallly do! So I do!