Quit yer moanin'

Enjoying a hand rolled cheroot outside the hotel my mildly lubricated equanimity was disturbed by a couple emerging from the front door having a full on domestic.

'Why the fuck did ye book us in for three nights if there wuz no spa treatments! There's fuck all to dae, and I'm bored trailing around after you and your swally ya bastud'

'You're startin' up aboot nothin you miserable coo, if I wasnae still workin' you'd be down the bingo. Quit yer moanin'.

Some folk are just plain miserable, and (although I hate to generalise) people from the east coast of Scotland have elevated gurning and general ignorant bastardness into an art form.

It's Perth, for fucks sake. It's elegant and prosperous and you're staying in an hotel when a lot of folk are getting their homes repossessed. Did you not notice the sprinkling of closed shops and the big farewell note slapped up in the Woolies window and signed by all the staff who are now scraping by on £60 a week Jobseekers Allowance?

Wankers.

Considering the Artichokes

Kebab fever overtook me the other day, but then I glanced at the Cypriot Turk's 'Munchie Box' selection and felt compelled to avert my gaze.

I want salad but somehow I can't warm to it; it's just a bit curly and frayed about the edges, the sad cherry tomato exiled in a sea of wilted lollo rosso, the desultory splash of North Sea vinaigrette, the lonesome sweetcorn kernel suffering a serious bout of ennui.

Salad fails to excite me. What I want is roasted flesh served on a V12 bed of turbine smooth excellence. Maserati would do, with a dose of Sophia Loren draped across the cylinder head. Failing that a reasonably intact Hermann Goering era Merc or a full on Mussolini fuck off Alfa would suffice.

Perhaps I'll settle for this:


Cool as fuck and on the hunt for Benzes and BMW's the Bristol is a gentleman's conveyance of inestimable elegance with a massive Chrevolet V8 engine and crafted English cow scrotum.

I want one.

Seaward the Great Ships

Glasgow is the only city on earth to have grown and prospered on a great river and then turned its back on it with a contemptuous shrug.

The great ships no longer loose their chains and birth themselves in the River Clyde, chapped hands no longer clap, the champagne remains in the icebox. True, the Govan Yard is recruiting apprentices and ther are faint stirrings, but a renaissance cannot be founded on defence contracts.

Belfast, with it's mighty cranes, restricts itself to its pathetic sectarian huddles and forgets that it once looked west.

Rivets are in our blood, even if they are obsolete. The tang of the salt air should resonate with steel crashing into the surf.

It's all we're skilled in.

Bob's yer uncle, unless he's called Paddy in which case he isn't.

The National Museum of Ireland.

"Is there anything interesting in here?"

"Yes, there's me, I'm interesting".


Anyhoo, I'm as pissed as a recalcitrant guttersnipe so here's Spike taking the piss out of the Oirish.