The Occasional Life Of Frederick Characteractor: Pt1 - Trousers

“Lawson!!” I yelled, as I splayed my gangly frame out on the floor of the study. A pitiful looking figure appeared in the doorway and looked in askance at me. I ignored his insolence and enquired as to the whereabouts of my good trousers. “They’re still hanging from the barbed wire at the rec ground. I saw them this morning as I went for the papers.” The memories of my monstrous behaviour the previous night emerged all too quickly from the darker corners of my hung-over brain. The convoluted afternoon drinking games with Charlie and his mother in law at their flat in Hammersmith, the ‘Bachelorette Party’ we crashed in Chelsea, the stolen vintage champagne bottles used as tenpins in a quiet suburban street at 2am……………………….. The bit involving my trousers was a blank though. I half suspected Lawson was pulling my chain on this one, but I’d never known him to have a particularly waggish sense of humour, and I’d have been horrified to see him develop one at this late stage. I had consumed rather more than normal to be honest and it wouldn’t have surprised me at all if i’d staggered home in nothing but my grubby longjohns.

“Ok, what about my white tennis slacks?” Silence. Lawson was no longer in the doorway. Probably off dis-infecting the dis-infectant he dis-infected the toilet with only five minutes earlier. “Even those revolting chinos you bought me…..?” I called. Nothing. "Some manservant you turned out to be!" I hollered with mock indignance. I gave up, lay back and stared at the ceiling again, deciding it was best to think about things that made me happy. My cousin Emma popped into my head. “No Freddie!, bad boy…… I muttered to myself. Definitely out of bounds. Just because Charlie was doing a tad more than lodging with his mother in law, didn’t mean I had to go down a similar route myself. Lord No! She did make me happy though, such a delightful lass, short brown hair last I saw her, a wicked smile and that ‘I dare you’ look in her eyes. She also never had a good word to say for me, which just made me all the fonder of her. I thought of Fridays in the local boozer, suburban train rides on bright afternoons, playing chess with the cat, fishing on canal banks, washing in the park fountain last summer because one of Lawsons hideously prissy hag friends had decided to stay for a month and couldn’t stand to use the bath after I’d taken my weekly ’rinse’…………………. All these things made me feel a bit better about being hungover and ignored and trouserless and lying on a cold floor, staring at the cracks in the ceiling of a crumbling Edwardian semi in North London .

A Scotsman On A Horse!

Wednesday started with bright sunshine, a hopeful heart and a foot full of dog shite.... Cheers! People who let their dogs shit the pavements are, along with cyclists, creationists and people who think soap operas are real, my least favourite people in the world. Never mind rubbing Fido's nose in it, I'd say a face full of reeking dog muck might stop the fuckers being so careless in future. The result of said failure to 'hurdle the turd' was that I had to spend ten minutes in the gents at work scraping the......... (snip!) Yeah, I'll say no more.............. Let's just say that when I bought a much needed new pair of work shoes a few days back, I was looking for sturdiness over style. The downside of this is that the deep cut treads on the soles aren't terribly conducive to a quick wipe off on a patch of grass or in a puddle. This was 9.05am. It could only get fucking worse! It didn't really, but my glasses did break five minutes after I got in the door that night............. At work I have turned into a blank eyed hive of irritating ticks and twitches. It's partly a defense mechanism, designed to fend off the attentions of the people who sit around me, a bit like someone who bags a double or triple seat on a bus or plane for themselves by talking to themselves loudly and rubbing their crotch repeatedly. It's also a reaction to my working environment. Of course, the person next to me does it too from time to time, but she's just copying me. She thinks humming the tune from the Magic Roundabout is awful clever. I mutter to myself and hum bits of whatever is rolling around the empty corridors of my mind because I don't want her to talk to me and I'm bored out of my skull. She hums to herself because she wants everyone to notice her and remark upon how witty and amusing she is, and ask her what it is she's humming, at which point she'll bore them cockless until the end of time. There is an upside to all this brain-itching madness. I have become a bit good at the weekly football predictions. I look forward to relieving my colleagues of their readies for quite some time to come. Maybe it's the cabin fever talking, but I aim to hoover up as much cash as possible between now and next May. Who knows, it may help keep me solvent long enough to survive the financial meltdown. Hell, I could even fire it into an Irish fucking bank account in the laughably mistaken belief that it'll be safe there............... Anyway, all charmless grousing aside, I'd like to give a little punt the Glasgow Guerrilla Gardening blog, curated by Clairwil. It's in it's infancy just now, but as the seasons tick past and we grow in number as well as new sites to cultivate and beautify, so shall the blog become more rounded. Found this over at The Quiet Road. It made me smile.............

They're Perfectly Safe.........Provided Of Course That You Believe In Them!

Reading the coverage of the current economic flap and the absurd manner in which the money markets work, put me in mind of the 'El Mystico & Janet' sketch from Monty Python (above).

Anyway, I'm off to bed now. I've got a rotter of a cold coming on, it's been following me about like nobodies business for about a fortnight, and now it seems about ready to give it to me with both barrels. It also seems like my pc is on it's last legs. It's taken me about half an hour to typeabout thirty words. Can't be arsed fighting with it, fuck the spelling mistakes and typos.......

My Frame Of Mind At This Particular Juncture

Friday Night Miscellany

Have you ever wondered what Brian Wilson's Pet Sounds might sound like if a bunch of bedroom electro-geeks got their hands on it? Wonder no more..............

For anyone planning on getting all apoplectic, I wouldn't bother. They don't mean no harm..............

The power went out tonight, just as I was walking up the road to the house. The big giveaway was seeing the lights in Iceland and Lidl go out simultaneously. Some bloke in an Iron Maiden T-shirt came breenging towards me further up the road and informed me that "the whole area is out", as if all contact with the outside world had been lost. The poor sod is probably still hiding in the bushes outside the Firhill Complex, waiting for law and order to be restored.................

I wasn't long in when the lady from upstairs, along with her daughter, came down and asked about the power failure. I let slip that my phone was working, so she asked to come in and use mine to contact her husband. I suspect hers probably was working, it's just that she maybe thought it wouldn't be due to the outage. Anyway, there's me handing over my pre-historic handset, worrying about the mess my house was in, feeling awkward...........

The phone rang out on the number they had called, but about ten minutes later, I was fielding a call from the husband, explaining what had happened. All too eventful if you ask me..............

It was all a bit of a fucker to be honest, I couldn't wash the dishes or wash any clothing, so I decided to lie on the couch and wait for them to switch the power back on. Seemed to be the thing to do.............

I ought to do it more often........................

FUCK!

Beaten by the Huns again

If you saw it on the telly tonight, you may be able to give me a rundown on what should or shouldn't have gone our way at the hands of the masonic bastard referee. I was too busy laughing at Nacho Novo and Kirk Clubfoot, between roaring through choruses of 'King Billy Was A Poof' and 'Mary Fae Maryhill'

Our time is coming, believe it!!

Rule Britannia my fucking arse!

Big Breests Are Great!

...........Or so proclaimeth the legend scrawled upon the inside of the door to a refuse container situated outside a refurbished pub on North Street. This area is now officially 'Bukowski Alley', what with Chinaski's bar, and then 'The Ritz' slowly transforming into 'Black Sparrow' (Bukowski's publisher). Now, as far as I can tell from his books and poetry, Bukowski was a leg man, but nonetheless, it's all a bit spooky. Looks like the work of a denizen of the east, someone from the land of saltnsauce if I'm not mistaken....................

Whatever, it needed saying and I'm eternally grateful for it's presence.

Glasgow Diamonds American Football team make a video in which they prove for once and all that white men can rap (but they sure as hell can't fucking dance, not these ones anyway....) I know we don't get much sunshine up here in Glasgow, but surely they could have waited for a slightly brighter day to shoot this......No? The tash on the singer is a thing of great beauty and wonder though. I shall grow one just like it!