Not wearing any pants...

My ability to scare people away is becoming legendary. Seriously. I was down at the Douglas Library in Dundee last week, inflicting my first event of the year on anyone daft enough to turn up, and I have to admit that it didn't get off to the most auspicious of starts.

Given the kind of book I write, and the kind of people who populate the kind of books I write, when I do a reading it tends to include adult themes and swearwords of a sexual nature. And some that have nothing to do with sex. Unless you're very, very wrong in the head. Anyway, I always start by asking if anyone in the audience has problems with 'The Fruitier Words In The English Language'.

What usually happens is that everyone goes, "No," and we get on with proceedings. But at the Douglas, when I stood up and said, "Does anyone have a problem with the fruitier parts of the English language?" one woman in the back row looked confused. Frowned a bit. Then said, "What?"
Aha, thinks I, we've got a live one here. "Do you have a problem with fruity language?"
"Fruity...?"
"Language. Fruity Language. Can I talk dirty to you, you saucy minx?"
At which point she got up from her seat, mumbled, "I think I've come to the wrong place." and left.

Not forty seconds into the event and already I've managed to piss someone off enough that they felt the need to bugger off out of it. Ah, be still my rampaging ego... Oh dear hairy Jesus... But the consummate professional that I am *ahem* I made light of this terrible setback and embarked upon the next hour and a half of rambling nonsense.

And I was extremely surprised and chuffed when someone in the audience announced they were from DC Thomson - a fine organisation what does (amongst other things) comics! She Who Must Be Mentioned Frequently On The Blog As She Feels All Left Out Otherwise had three separate interviews with DC Thomson*, and they passed on the opportunity of a lifetime by failing to offer me lots of money to draw dinosaurs and people with handlebar moustaches. Bah... Anyway, I was giving this guy, Scott, a hard time for these terrible corporate indiscretions when he dug from his bag five mint copies of Commando.

It turned out that Scott's the Chief Sub editor of Commando! How cool is that? My brothers and I used to read it when we was little. Stopping off at the Four Mile Garage on the way out to Westhill, we'd be treated to an issue of that (or it's sister publication Starburst) and a bag of boiled sweeties. The garage had an entire wall devoted to glass and plastic jars of jewel-like sweets. The sharp-edged yellow of Cola and Pineaple Cubes; the glorious ruby and yellow striped 'Rhubarb and Custard'; the strangely chemical reek of Pear Drops; silky smooth Sugared Almonds; green and red Granny Sookers; tart little Soor Plooms...** Sherbet Lemons were always my favourite, even though they'd cut the roof of my mouth to ribbons after seven or eight of the glassy little ovals.

OK, so I digress. The point is that Commando magazine was very much part of my childhood, and being given five pristine copies by a bloke who actually works there was pretty damn cool. Especially as he'd brought them along as an early birthday present.

And the joy was not to end there, after we'd finished, Elaine, another of the attendees had brought along packets of Tomato Sauce flavour crisps for me too! As I was always mentioning them in the pub scenes in the book. How great is that?

All this birthday-related generosity was gradually overcoming the crushing blow of being walked out on in the first forty five seconds by the not saucy minx in the back row. And then someone told me that she'd actually been looking for the French class upstairs.

Bonjour mon nom Stuart, peut-il moi est-il vous parler sale?

* But didn't give her the job. Obviously their interviewing procedures are more rigorous than mine own...
** It's arguable that this was the point in my life that gave birth to DI Insch's obsessive consumption of retro confectionery.

My arm hurts

I think I can safely say that I've not really been having a good week. Seriously. The highlight so far has to be a trip to the local tip on Tuesday that ended up with a trip to the doctor.

For lo, Stuart didst look upon the communal skip and fling in a big pile of crap what He did findst in the garage, left behind by the Godless Heathens who used to owneth the house. He didst then step back and make many of the 'ouchie' noises. For lo (again), there was an great big rusty screw sticking through the sole of His shoe and into his foot. Great was His suffering, but surprisingly light was the swearing.

So I called the doc's and asked if they knew when my last tetanus shot was. They did! 1984. Which is like, you know, totally ages ago. So I had to go in for an emergency booster before infection set in, locking my jaw tight and making me look like Desperate Dan on a bad day. And what would the cat do without my incisive and wry commentary on daily life? Probably find somewhere comfy and warm to sleep. You just can't get the staff.

Anyway, the injection itself was a doddle, but as the doctor man was jabbing me with his medicinal pointy thing* he said these fateful words. "Now some people have a bad reaction to the jab: swelling and discomfort, but don't worry it's very rare..."

Ah, the delicious irony of hindsight. By eleven o'clock that night it looked like I'd Sellotaped a ruby grapefruit to my upper arm. A ruby grapefruit that'd been in the microwave for about an hour. Ooh, burny hot.

The swelling's gone down and so has the heat, so now it just feels like someone's constantly giving me a dead arm. Bang, bang, bang. Poopy hindsight.

Hopefully it's going to leave off in time for tomorrow's foray into the land they call DUNDEE! Where I shall be subjecting the population of the Douglas Community and Library Centre to my usual combination of rambling non sequiturs, off-colour impersonations, and fart jokes. 14:00-sh on the clock, if you're seriously stuck for anything else to do.

And no, you still can't ask how the writing's going.

* Please, no making up your own filthy jokes.

In which our bearded protagonist reveals that he is not like other men

Believe it or not, I have friends. Not many, it must be said, but enough that I could field a rather sickly-looking five-aside football team if my life depended on it. Though quite what fiendish scenario would require a five-aside football match to determine my fate, I'm not altogether sure. Probably something involving occult terrorists with something strange and squid-like in a jar of formalin. But even if this bizarre necronomiconistical football match was required, my team would probably get it's backside kicked up and down the pitch.

That, dear readers, is because most of my friends are geeks*, grossly unfit**, or a combination of the two.

What they do have though is top-notch hand/eye coordination. That's because they all own at least one computer games console. Ah yes, ask them to chase about after a football and they'll fold like a prostitute's duvet, but if you need someone to drive really fast around a pretend racecourse, or save the world from aliens, they're your guys.

But I'm not. Not content with being crap at football, I'm also crap at computer games. I'm one of the few men in my peer group*** who doesn't actually own an X-Box, or a Nintendo Wii, or a PlayStation. Well, OK, so technically I do own a PlayStation -- it was my leaving present from the ISP I used to work for nine years ago -- but it doesn't work. When moved into the current Casa MacBride, lots of our stuff was piled up in boxes on the top landing. The PlayStation was on top of one of the piles. Until a certain cat who shall remain nameless decided it would look better on the ground floor and bounced it about fifteen feet down the stairs. It still looks like a PlayStation, but it sounds like a maraca.

I suppose it wasn't a huge loss. Yes, it did have sentimental value, but in all the years I owned it I only ever had one game for the thing. And I didn't play that very much. I've just never been a computer gamey kind of person.

Of course, now that I'm getting on a bit (and yes, before you ask, it is my birthday next week), I'm beginning to wonder if that means there's something wrong with me. Other than the usual stuff, I mean.

Take my friend Alex, for example: he has a VAST array of computers, game consoles, and games. The best of which has to be ROCK BAND, where you and your mates get to pretend to be a sweaty rock group (complete with plastic guitars and drum kit), without all that messy business of having to learn a musical instrument first. And it's completely addictive.

The only trouble is that everyone else in my group is getting very good at the game, while I remain craptastic. I blame a complete lack of talent on my part, coupled with no opportunity to practice. Now there is an obvious way round this: go buy the game and practice. Only to do that I'd first have to get something to play it on.

And if I buy a games console, I'm going to have to get more games to go on it. After all, how sad would it be to buy a new PS3 just to play at being a drummer in a rock band?**** On the other hand, it would give me something else to do instead of working all the time.

Then again, I'd probably just get bored of it after a couple of weeks and the next thing you know it'll be back in its box at the top of the stairs, waiting for Grendel to make another maraca.

* This is, of course, a sweeping generalisation, some of them aren't geeks at all. Some are nerds.
** Like me.
*** Which is a polite way of saying 'gentlemen of a certain age and waist measurement'.
**** Though I suppose as mid-life crises go there are worse things in this world. Like ponytails, motorbikes, and mistresses. Well, maybe not mistresses, but they can be expensive, especially if your wife finds out.

Twice Shy

She Who Must Be Spoiled On Far Too Many Occasions Than Can Be Safely Counted On The Fingers Of An Arabian Shoplifter and I decided years ago that going out for a romantic meal on Valentine's day was a bit like sticking your personal parts in a hornets nest, then acting all surprised when you get stung. All the restaurants are crammed solid, all the staff are stressed, and all the food is suspect. Not to mention that you get to spend your evening rubbing shoulders - literally - with the other poor sods who've been shoehorned into for their special meal like old fashioned veal calves... And this would be romantic how?

So instead we stayed home last night with a big box of king crab (cue Homer Simpson style drooling noises) and a bottle of bubbly. Or two. And then some chocolates in the shape of racing cars.

The only thing that cast a pall on the evening was She Who Must Need Her Head Examined's less than enthusiastic response to the lovely valentine's card I made, specially for her.

After a period of looking at it with forehead creased and one eyebrow doing the 'up and down' thing, she said, "It's very ... colourful?"

When did women stop finding gestures of affection like this appealing? Surely nothing says 'Happy Valentine's Day' better than someone who's come back from the dead with a worm in his head? See - it even rhymes. No, I think she was just overwhelmed by how lovely it was. That's it. Yes. Overwhelmed by the loveliness.

I'm going to call Hallmark. If they hurry there'll be a range of Zombie-themed greeting cards in the shops in time for Mother's Day! And I'll be a Millionaire!

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

And no, you can't ask how the writing is going.

In which our bearded protagonist makes a startling discovery...

We had something of a sock-related disaster at Casa MacBride last week. Not the usual type of sock-related disaster, not an 'Oh my God, I've run out of socks!' thing at all. Quite the reverse. I have more socks than I know what to do with*, it is a sock-plague of Biblical proportions!

The Lord our God didst look down upon the plight of Moses, and being sore vexed did smite the Egyptians with locusts, frogs, and when that didn't work: socks!

I counted - I've got three thousand pairs of the damn things**. Oodles and oodles of socks. My house is Socktopia. I am the Major of Socktown. King of Sockland!

And they're all black***. Well, they all started off black, but over the years some of them have faded away to an insipid shade of mealy grey. Plus, with the weather being a bit craptastic of late, a lot of them have been dried indoors and so have all the cushiony softness of a stale Ryvita.

The trouble is that I never throw socks away, unless they've become kinky peekaboo style socks. The kind of sinful libidinous socks one would find in an Anne Summers catalogue. Socks, where no matter how often you wash them, they'll always be DIRTY.

Holes in the heel are OK, it's holes in the toe that inflame the ardour and must be humanely disposed of. Otherwise they're safe to wear until they fall apart.

Which is why I now have enough socks to coat the bedroom floor to a depth of about two feet. They not only fill my bedside cabinet****, like terry-towling cockroaches, they fill another one out in the hall too. The damn things are everywhere. We don't need a guard dog, anyone breaking into my house is going to be smothered in an avalanche of socks.

There you go - don't say I never tell you personal stuff. Now, what kind of underwear are YOU wearing?

* Yes, technically there's only one thing you're supposed to do with socks - put them on your feet - but the Red Hot Chilli Peppers showed us all that socks aren't just to cover up the sinful parts below the ankle. And I know some of you keep your money in them, tied tightly to your genitals to keep them safe from theft. And I suppose I could also put a half brick in one and beat the living crap out of Farmer F-wit who lives up the road. Though I suppose I could use a bar of soap instead of a brick if I didn't want to kill him... Nah, I've got a half brick ready to go, and it'd be a shame to let it go to waste. So there are quite a few things I could do with my mountain of socks, but that would lead to very long, very rambling footnotes, and we don't want that, do we?
** This, of course, is a lie.
*** A small exaggeration, I have exactly four pairs of socks amongst the teeming multitude that aren't the regulation uniform black: one pair of kilt socks (white), and three pairs of beige - brown ones to go with my linen suit. Other than that, I practice strict sock apartheid.
**** This is the disaster to which I referred in the header - She Who Must Occasionally Be Trusted On Sock Duty tried to stuff three hundred pairs of socks into a drawer designed for about twelve. An explosion of black sports socks ensued. She's had to get therapy for Post Traumatic Sock Disorder.

An wee snippet of criminality

I was going to point towards this earlier, but I've been battling the old wordcount monster. And losing. But the less said about that the better - after all, there's a perfectly good reason ostriches bury their heads in the sand.

But the think I'm pointing at is BBC Radio Scotland's Write Here Right Now thing. It's basically NaNoWriMo done up in a fetching tartan cape, and this year they're encouraging people to try their hand at writing a crime novel: 1,000 words every day. And in order to encourage people they've got a bunch of crime writers to pen some pearls of wisdom that are emailed out every day (but only one at the weekends, because we don't want to be greedy, do we?)

My email went out for this weekend, but not content with having produced writerly waffle on the joys of setting a crime novel on your home turf (they chose the subject), I've also signed up for the emails myself. Because I'm nosy and I want to know how other people do their funky thang.

Apparently you don't have to be Scottish to sign up, nor will anyone come round your house and break your knees if you don't actually play along. Or at least, that's what they want you to believe...

Bloodshed

She Who Must and I went to the cinema this week for the first time in ages. Well, our nearest one is a long, long way away and normally we can't be arsed making the trip for whatever tripe's being churned out. But we decided to make an exception for Sweeney Tod: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Probably not the best of things to put on your shop frontage I would have thought; likely to put the punters off a bit. Would you go get your shampoo and set from someone advertising themselves as a 'the Demon Barber of Fleet Street'?

No, you'd go to 'the Nicest Barber in the World - free cup of tea with every short back and sides'. Even then, I bet all the magazines will be well past their sell-by date. Free cups of tea will only get you so far you know.

I have to admit that I was a little apprehensive about hearing the Boy Depp get up and sing, especially after the opening number, but he grew on me - like a hairy fungus - over the course of the film. Of course, by the time we were heading home, neither I nor She Who Must Be Consulted On Most Things Musical could remember a single song from the thing. Not a great recommendation for a musical I suppose.

Over all we enjoyed it, especially all the blood (and there's buckets and buckets of it), Helena Bonham Carter looks suitably Burtonesque (like something straight out of Corpse Bride to be honest). Timothy Spall can't carry a tune in a bucket, and Alan Rickman does what Alan Rickman always does, only slightly more sleazy this time.

An no, this isn't just a pitiful excuse for a blog post. I have opinions you know! Lots of hairy opinions... They're just busy right now.