Sandy Mcnair - Carspotting

Sincere thank yous are due to several good people who contributed towards the publication of this book.

The staff at Black & White Publishing and Campbell Brown in particular offered invaluable support and good advice and without their input this book would have been unlikely to see the light of day. Dealing with someone who is a self-confessed technological numpty of monumental proportions cannot have been easy for them or others who assisted in converting numerous pages of handwritten scrawl into the finished article. So, thanks here are mainly due to David Todd, whose endless patience extended to taking frantic phone calls in the early hours of the morning after I actually acquired a laptop (Help! What button do I press? The text has vanished!), with general good humour. Before that, Jeni Jones, Stu Jones, Hannah Blackshaw and Kim Livingstone all aided and abetted in helping me avoid the horrors of modern technology one way or another. Take a bow, folks. A tip of my trilby is also due to Ted Brack, who also offered encouragement and helpful advice from an early stage. Ta, Ted.

Last and not least I must thank the subject himself Irvine Welsh. Many people might have baulked at having their dodgy escapades from the past dragged into the cruel, harsh daylight many years later but he was happy to pass the content of this book virtually unaltered. So cheers to you too, old pal!

Sandy Macnair

Please note the symbols displayed on the opening pages of each chapter. These indicate how many pints you may drink before finishing the book, at the rate of one pint per chapter.

In accordance with Government guidelines, we recommend the following timescale:

Heavy drinkers take 24 days

Moderate drinkers take 57 days

Light drinkers up to a fortnight

Teetotallers put this book back on the shelf right now!

It aint for you!

WARNING

It is dangerous to exceed the recommended dose

It was the Best of times, it was the cursed of times. George of that ilk was strutting his stuff at Easter Road but Hibs were still heading for relegation. As the 1970s drew to a close, Irvine Welsh and I were there on the terraces, thinking about quitting our terrible jobs in the Civil Service. We had no discernible ambitions of any sort apart from an over-riding ambition to escape from the stultifying confines of the General Register Office. Well, thats not quite true

When Irvines boss found him bleary-eyed, unshaven and smelling of drink at his desk one morning, he rounded on him despairingly. Irvine! Have you no ambitions whatsoever?

Yes, replied Welsh in all seriousness. I want to be a messenger.

A messenger? barked the boss. What kind of an ambition is that? So you want to end up as a walking vegetable, do you?

Well, it beats ending up as a desk-bound vegetable, retorted Irv.

Oh yes? Really? So youd rather be on your feet all day? I dont think so! replied his Executive Officer sarcastically.

Irvine duly stood up and proceeded to spend the rest of the day on his feet, albeit still behind his desk, sulkily going about his paperwork. The boss-man just retreated in abject defeat.

So, Irvines back might have been killing him but he had proved his point. But what was the point exactly? There was no point in anything as far as we could see but so what? At least back in those far-off, pre-Thatcher days, you could simply jack in any job you didnt like because you could always get another one. That happy situation would soon change irrevocably, however.

Finally, we did quit our jobs and went looking for what? Excitement? We werent gonna find that watching this Hibs team, sadly. The world was our oyster but so too was the West End Oyster Bar. That notwithstanding, the book you are now holding in your hot little hands documents where it all began if it refers to a thirty-year-long insane odyssey involving ugly confrontations with Hearts supporters, jellied eels, motorcycle gangs, deranged Buddhists, smacked-out hookers, oddly coloured sheep, ginsoaked lesbians and police officers. Loads and loadsy polis, likesay.

I hope you find the following story as gruelling to read as I did actually living it. Do enjoy!

Sandy Macnair

Spectral horses, azure sheep

The Filth and the fury

Vertigo terror in York

Strange blobs in the sky

I stumbled along the Portobello foreshore in the savage early morning light, explosions reverberating around my aching skull. The monotonous rumble of traffic sounded more like heavy bombers inside my head. Shuddering and shaking, I picked my way gingerly through Musselburgh, towards the roundabout at the east side of the town where I was due to meet Welsh. I bitterly regretted it now, of course, but it was too late. Sinister jolts of reality from the previous evenings events began to crackle through my brain, as I beheld my compatriot up ahead. Holy Christ! I stopped abruptly, as I suddenly also saw myself, being deposited at my front door by the occupants of a panda car I shut my eyes tightly but the unwelcome images continued to flow. Vomit, shattered bus shelters, police officers

Irvine, for once fairly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at such an hour, looked at me disapprovingly. It was obvious from my general demeanour that all was not well.

Well?

Did he mean as in not ill or as in what the fuck happened to you last night? I wondered. A bit of both perhaps.

I I got arrested in Oxgangs I explained rather uncertainly.

What?

I repeated the known facts; namely that an arrest had occurred in the Oxgangs area of the city of Edinburgh sometime between the hours of 12 midnight and 4 a.m., but what exactly for, I could not say. Although by this time Id actually remembered why theyd driven me home. A police officer had angrily yelled that he wasnt going to dirty his nice clean cells by placing me in them, but I decided not to mention this. Irvine shook his head sadly at the irresponsible folly of his old acquaintance. I thought his scandalised reaction was a bit rich but his manner changed noticeably when I, in turn, demanded an explanation. Where, I wanted to know, were we going and why?

Grantham, he said decisively.

Where the hell is that?

Dunno really. About 300 miles south somewhere I think.

Why? was the next obvious question.

He looked at me awkwardly for a moment, before allowing his gaze to drift off towards the horizon.

Ive got to make a court appearance there, he admitted.

Heartfelt regret at my foolishness in agreeing to accompany him increased rapidly as the morning wore on. But why had I agreed to it? Like most things, you could put it down to drink. That warm glow of friendship that permeates your whole being after about the sixth pint of an evening, when your so-called friend casually mentions his yearning for a travelling companion on a journey he is due to take. Ill be there for you, good buddy! you respond loyally if you ever knew the reason for the trip in the first place, youve certainly forgotten it after the eighth pint.

After two hours of fruitless thumb flapping, we caught a bus as far as Dunbar to spur us on our way, and the heat on that hellish vehicle only intensified my condition of extreme dehydration and general ill-health. Medicine in the form of two full sized bottles of Irn Bru failed to do the trick. Its manufacturers boast of it being Made In Scotland From Girders. That may well be true but I just felt as if the girders in question were slowly being applied with increasing pressure to each side of my broiling brain. Pins and needles ran up and down my body as the sweat lashed down my chalk-white face. Of course, this display of abject misery cheered Irvine up no end. He flung his head back and laughed delightedly at each tremor that galvanised my dilapidated carcass.