The Occasional Papers

Here’s Momus in Berlin, holding a copy of our book about him. Proud.

John Robinson is the author. I edited and saw to its publication.

Here’s where to buy it in print or as an ebook.

The cover design is by Nick Welch, the original designer of Zer0 Books (of which this is a pastiche). Marcus talked me through the typesetting. Grateful.

…at the National Library of Scotland.

Pics from my festival show. Thanks again to Alan.

I try not to be prejudiced against the posh, but there’s an article in Home & Garden magazine by someone called Tiggy Hatley-Dent.

Tiggy Hatley-Dent.

I mean, come on. It’s almost cruel.

“This emergency announcement is brought to you by… AirRaid.”

Happy Gray Day, one and all. To cocky chaps, wise old owls, urban foxes, queer fishes, merry devils, and back green puddocks.

Today’s the day chosen by Sorcha Dallas, his representative on Earth, to honour and remember the writer and artist Alasdair Gray.

Alasdair’s been gone five years now and I still miss him. I didn’t know him personally because I was too starstruck to introduce myself on any one of the countless times we passed on West End streets, but his physical presence was important to me. When I pass his old Hillhead flat, which I do all the time, I feel a sense of bereavement. I want to see his paint brushes on the windowsill, to know the wizard is in residence.

At 85 he was probably an old enough man to go: he’d had his fill of earthly pleasure despite being famously shy and he’d done more than his share of great work. But he gave to Glasgow an imaginary carapace, a glamour that lives on but, I fear, is dimming in his absence.

With Alasdair around, Glasgow didn’t look like a poorly-financed motorway city. It looked like this:

When his third-finest novel Poor Things was adapted for cinema by Yorgos Lanthimos and released early this year I was surprised to find myself frustrated that the London scenes in the film were not set in Glasgow as per the novel. I hadn’t expected to be troubled by this. Sorcha Dallas had written a generous statement about the film being something other than the book, that it could put forward its own vision of a world. I agreed. But as I sat in the Glasgow Film Theatre, supping from my plastic pint pot of Alloa ale, I changed my mind. Those scenes should have been set in Glasgow. For all intents and purposes, most of those scenes could have been Glasgow–Willem Dafoe had studied Gray’s accent and mannerisms after all and his housekeeper appeared to be Scottish too–but when Bella returns from her travels the word LONDON appears on the screen to make it good and clear. But why not elevate something (as Alasdair would have done, routinely positioning Glasgow as every bit as good as other European cities and his literary friends Agnes Owen and Edwin Morgan as equal to Jane Austen and Jonathan Swift) in your so-called art film instead of showing the usual images of a well-known capital now all but lost to oligarchs and Pret a Manger? Imagine how much more beautiful and intriguing those steampunkish rooftop vistas would have been had they consisted of the glotted spires, Grecian pillars, and Victorian mausolea of Glasgow instead of the usual metropolitan landmarks everyone’s seen a thousand times before. I think Alasdair would have preferred Poor Things to be set in Glasgow. But as I say, I never got to know him. I regret this.

Ah, never mind the film adaptations. His legacy is everywhere, in words and in pictures and in the deeds of the people he moved.

Here’s a reading I recorded for Sorcha a few years ago, on the first Gray Day. For my reading I chose a chapter of his undisputed best novel, Lanark.

My Glasgow show poster for Glasgow Comedy Festival is all over town and it looks great.

I especially like this one at the Super Barrio retrogaming joint in the City Centre. I’m squished in between posters for David Suchet and Jerry Sadowitz. What a lineup!

Meanwhile, in the venue itself (Drygate Brewery, East End) you can see my poster on this respectable notice board in the brasserie:

As well as upstairs by the bogs:

There’s a nice leaflet version here and there:

And this one is at the Sparkle Horse pub in the West End:

There’s also one in our kitchen, to scare myself when I’m getting a snack:

This photograph is from maybe 2018, sent to us just now by Alan.

Ever since mother snapped me from the side while horsing a Swiss roll, I’ve been a bit self-conscious of my nutcrackerish profile.

But look at it. Bottom right. I’m beautiful!

RIP, those glasses btw. The hat is Dimmick’s.

I called my parents on Christmas Day.

Mum and I don’t celebrate Christmas but Dad does, so I wanted to wish a Merry Christmas to Dad. Besides, we spent twenty happy Christmases together before I moved out, so this is a time when, one would hope, we’re all thinking of each other.

My first mistake went like this: “Did Dad enjoy his Christmas dinner… um, lunch? No, sorry, dinner?”

Growing up in the Midlands, the midday meal was called “dinner” and the evening meal was called, inexplicably, “tea.” Now that I live in the world, I say “lunch” and “dinner” like everyone else. This seems to annoy my parents. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I think they think I’m being pretentious when I say “lunch” and “dinner” when really I just want to be understood by as many people as possible. It’s the same reason I use Greenwich Meantime and the Gregorian Calendar.

But out of respect for the house, I usually code-switch to the dinner/tea system when I talk to my folks. Only this time, I’d panicked and tripped over my own feet. I was like a cheating spouse who’d accidentally called his wife “Frank” and then tried to cover it up. It was a disaster.

“I don’t know why people make so much fuss over Christmas Dinner,” griped my mother.

“Well,” I said, “because it’s a special day, I suppose. People look forward to it.”

And here was my second mistake. I thought I was representing the views of “people” but she saw “representing the views of” to mean “siding with” and heard not the word “people” but the word “Dad” whose special meal she’d had to cook.

“So what did he have?” I asked, digging my grave ever deeper into cold winter soil.

“Pork, sprouts, potatoes, parsnips…”

“Parsnips!” I said. “Hah! Listen to this…”

And I told the story of my wife’s office party. There’d been a row, apparently, over the importance or otherwise of parsnips to Christmas Dinner.

“Isn’t that silly?” I said to Mum, “Who gets their knickers in a twist over parsnips? I’ve never heard of a Christmas parsnip.”

“Yes,” she said, “it’s like sprouts.”

“What? No,” I said, “It’s not like sprouts at all.”

“How is it not like sprouts?”

“Because brussels sprouts are a load-bearing Christmas tradition. Aren’t they? Everyone jokes about how nobody likes sprouts but you have to eat them because it’s Christmas. And then they eat curried turkey and turkey sandwiches and turkey crumble through to Easter.”

“Turkey’s not for Christmas Dinner,” said my mum, “that’s American. People only started going on about turkey twenty years ago. In England we have chicken.”

Office bods bickering about parsnips was nothing on this. I’d never heard such shit in all my life.

“I’ve never heard such shit in all my life,” I said.

“The English thing to have for Christmas,” she insisted, “is a roast chicken. A capon.”

“Maybe a duck?” I offered. “Or a goose?”

“A chicken!”

“Chicken,” I said, “is the most boring, everyday meat imaginable. Why would anyone have chicken on Christmas Day?”

“Because they like it,” she said firmly.

“Because they… because they like it?” I found myself stop-starting in the incredulous tone of Harold Steptoe. “Mum, Christmas isn’t about what you like. It’s about tradition. People like bubble gum but it’s not generally seen as essential to Christmas Dinner.”

“Move on,” my Dad was saying in the background, “Move on.” He had the tone of a level-headed Jerry Springer referee calmly positioning his body between warring whitetrash.

I’d been doing some simple observational comedy about taxonomies but Dad was right. It had become an argument. About Christmas Dinner. Between two vegetarian non-observers who neither eat it nor care about it.

How had we drifted into such a toboggan crash? Maybe it was the obvious wrongness of the chicken comment: my mother was essentially pointing to a cat and saying “dog” with complete confidence while simultaneously being allowed to vote in elections. But there was a body of dark matter in the conversation, which my telescopes could only detect the edges of, something that made me more uncomfortable and confused than a simple mistake should.

But of course, it was the “fuss.” We’d begun with Mum’s objection to the “fuss” of Christmas Dinner. But if a traditional Christmas Dinner, as she said, consists of a roast chicken with potatoes, parsnips and entirely optional brussels sprouts, it wouldn’t be a fuss at all. It would be one step up from a bag of chips.

So the conversation was complete gibberish, probably all because I’d clumsily barged into the room and used the word “dinner,” inadvertently exposing myself as a woke class traitor.

I excused myself because It’s a Wonderful Life was on, a film that probably strikes my mother as eccentric when, really, festive TV schedules should be largely devoted to Spring Watch.

I got the Muppet Show theme lyrics wrong towards the end of that little essay.

I said, “It’s time to put on makeup, it’s time to light the lights!”

But the actual lyrics are:

It’s time to play the music, it’s time to light the lights.

and later:

It’s time to put on makeup, it’s time to dress up right.

So I conflated two verses.

I should correct it but I don’t wanna. The conflation suits my purposes.

What is the point in writing light or funny stuff when the world is so darn horrid? And not just funny stuff, why write anything? Or create anything? Or do anything not germane to The Struggle.

Well, here’s the thing. There’s always a struggle. We have two major wars raging right now, affecting everyone’s mood and sanity and the lives and deaths of thousands. We have the climate crisis. We have a cost of living crisis. We have a totalitarian attack on trans people and other increasingly at-threat minorities, the fallout of which impacts every last one of us, not merely the targets of the fascists’ ire. We have deep attacks on quality of life. Already the media eye has glumly moved on from the crises of Brexit and the Trump years, few of which are satisfactorily resolved and remain smouldering like that Springfield tyre fire. Permacrisis Naomi Klein and others have called it since last year. Or to quote what Stewart Lee believes is the first joke, “the poor will always be with us.” Jesus, the lad himself, was ordering one last fling to celebrate his pending crucifixion when a do-gooder apostle suggested they donate the shindig money instead to the poor. “The poor,” Jesus quipped, “will always be with us.” As well as being an early joke, it’s an early identification of permacrisis.

The trouble, as the King of Kings apparently had the foresight to know, of acting against permacrisis is that you’re always on the back foot. I salute the work of those in Greenpeace who go out in dinghies to jimmy the system. I applaud the work of angels who, also afloat, pluck refugees from the soup. I’m grateful for those in Israel who devote their privilege to the tireless campaign for peace and an end to the madness. They’re doing what they have to do and they’re doing the right thing. They’re heroes. But they’re also in a state of unending triage. They’re a kind of casualty themselves. Imagine what those people could do if there was no malevolent pollutant to protest, no desperate to save, no bombs and rape in the war zone. Imagine what could be done with that energy and goodwill and brainpower in a time of lasting peace. Imagine what could be done if, instead of having to take out the Space Invaders one by one, we could find a space behind one of those oh-so-fragile little bunkers to create. Imagine what we could do if those noble jimmiers and campaigners and rescuers could afford to be on the front foot instead of the back. Think of the pleasures they could enjoy for themselves and create for others. Think of what they might build.

“But I get tremendous satisfaction from my job as a nurse,” you might protest. Yes, yes. And I’m grateful. Thank you, thank you, thank you. But I don’t think you’re saying that viruses and injury and abuse and infirmity are good things because they allow you to Do Good. Are you? Of course you’re not. I’m just asking that we don’t stop thinking of a world beyond chaos and death and hunger. And that we–some of us, those who are free and able to do so–get on with making that world.

When I see injustice, I’m always tempted to write about it. That’s honestly my first instinct. I want to write a column, fire off a tweet, write a letter to my MP. The idea is to appeal for sanity in the world, to join the chorus instead of vanish into silence, to help prevent further mistakes, to draw attention to systemic injustice instead of personal vendetta. Sometimes the lure is so hard to resist that I actually do these things. But imagine if I didn’t have to. Imagine if I could put that mental energy and time and finger wrigglings into writing a novel instead or a funny column or a sitcom or a film. Something of less consequence. Something about nothing. That’s what we should all be free to do. The world would be better off for it, not in the “we stopped a bad thing” way but in a “we created a good thing” way. The real victory in Europe wasn’t in wrestling Germany to its knees but in creating the post-War welfare state and the wave of midcentury art that would result from it all. This should be the aim of any socialism: not to pick up after totalitarianism or capitalism or even to stop them per se, but to create and live out the alternatives in real time. It should also be the aim of any society: not to wage exhausting battle with our idiot governments but to build the alternatives, right now, in the streets, in the fields, in workshops, in homes, in art, in people.

At the risk of sounding paranoid, I suspect (though I do not know) that our leaders are aware of this. While we’re picking up after their corrupt and incompetent mess making, we’re not doing anything outrageous that might lead to–or, better, is an example of–true emancipation. When we’re not making art–a good thing to do inherently but also in terms of exponential increase of joy it can bring in the long term–we’re not a problem to them. It’s better in their view to keep us struggling, better to keep us grappling with impossible paperwork and asking for medicine for a third time and demanding that the libraries we paid for aren’t shuttered and closed. While we’re talking about Brexit, we’re not campaigning for socialism. (Brexit killed Corbyn. Admittedly, it killed a bunch of their guys too, but they have veritable factories devoted to the production their guys while we only had the ball for a brief and shining moment.) And we’re not beautifying our world instead of working for them.

So that’s what permacrisis is. Or at least what it has done. Whether by design or by happenstance, it has gubbed up the channels. It has a way of making sure We The People never accomplish anything worthwhile. It’s all about the back foot.

The only way to combat this–in my opinion and don’t mind me–is to stay on the front foot for as long as you can. Instead of despairing and reducing your lot in life to picking up after the malevolent cretins in industry and in our governments (now practically one and the same) by dwelling on what seems immediately “relevant,” create art. Create, if you must, through despair and guilt and shellshock, art that strikes at the heart of these crises. But the greatest thing to do (IMHO!) is to create art that is nothing to do with crisis at all.

Create witty, funny, joyful, pretty, beautiful, happy art. Instead of reacting eternally to the Bad, push onwards into the Good. So few people are doing it, fewer still with the knowledge of its importance. Push on, on, on. Wear bright colours in times of darkness. Make sweet music, paint the ceiling. Truly, it’s time to put on makeup, it’s time to light the lights. To create something other than a response to crisis is not to support crisis or to ignore it. There’s no contradiction in hating the Bad while putting your energy into creating the Good. Why piss around with pawns and defence when you can get your bishops and knights out into the endgame? The endgame, it’s easy to forget, is a world of peace and freedom and flourishing. Make it.

Coming home from a trip to the impossibly well-organised and lovely Netherlands, I’m immediately irritated by everything I see in the UK.

Seeking out the correct bus stop at the airport, a man in a high-vis gilet is standing in front of the time tables. “Can I help you sir?”

“Home to Glasgow,” I say, “I just want to know the time.”

He checks his watch and tells me the time.

“No,” I say, “the time the bus arrives.”

He moves aside and jabs at a filthy laminated notice. “55 and 25 past the hour.”

“Thanks,” I say, though all he’d done was get in the way of this information.

There’s ten minutes to wait, so I nip into the M&S for a sandwich. There are no self-service machines so I stand behind an older woman talking to the only server. She’s taking ages because buying a sandwich with a contactless card in an airport terminal requires plenty of chat. Another server walks purposely to a second cash desk, looks directly at me and nods. I go up to her and she says “I can’t serve you at this one because blah-blah-bloopty-bloop” so I turn on my heels and rejoin the “queue,” mindful of the time. She eventually calls me to a third cash desk. She can tell I’m irritated and we conduct the transaction in silence until I break it with a “thank you” she doesn’t respond to.

I eat my sandwich while waiting for the bus but have to leave the queue to bin the packaging. Why is there no bin near to the stance?

A sign at the stance says almost boastfully that the journey will cost £13, which seems expensive. For £24 this week, I travelled by rail for six hours and crossed three international borders from Rotterdam to Luxembourg.

I board, pay, sit and watch the other passengers, many of them tourists or new arrivals, boarding. A young Black guy comes along with his small wheeled case and his phone out.

“Come forward with the bag sir,” says the gilet officiously, indicating the luggage hold. “Put the phone down and bring the luggage forward.”

Put the phone down? I’d have shoved it up his arse. Gammon fuck.

The passenger politely asks about the ticket on his phone. “Ask the driver,” says the gilet, hefting the luggage into the hold even though the passenger doesn’t yet know if his ticket’s good for this bus.

The next passenger is a white Scottish woman who has a ticket, she says, for the Megabus (which isn’t this service and could have cost as little as £4) and the driver lets her board.

A digital screen in front of me reads “please take care on the stairs.” But anyone who can read the message has already passed the stairs.

I glance at the receipt the driver gave me and it says “£14.80,” even more than advertised.

We cruise home through the rain, the driver simultaneously playing loud local pop radio and whistling. Not to the melody but to the lyrics.

Anyone got an EU residency permit they’re not using?

I’m doing some filming on the weekend for a documentary and I’m trying to decide what to wear.

I want to look good for it but it’s important not to steal the scene. Here’s some inspiration: