Daft Wee Stories Read online

  I’ve sometimes seen guys like that in changing rooms, back in school, and in gyms when I got older. They’re not stressing out trying to cover up their genitals with a towel, they know the sky won’t fall if somebody catches a glimpse. With them, it’s a towel between the legs, drying their no-man’s-land with a heave-ho, heave-ho, right in front of you, mid-conversation. And I know they wouldn’t mind if I did it as well. And why not? No formalities, no pretension, no lies, no borders, no barriers. Open.

  Stevie’s all right.

  He picks up the leaflet, puts it back and goes to stick my thing in the bag. But then has a look at it.

  ‘What is this anyway?’ he asks.

  ‘It’s like a media streamer thing,’ I say. ‘You can put all your music and films on it and watch it from anywhere in the house. Hopefully.’

  ‘Ah, right. I could do with something like that. I didn’t know we had it. I suppose I should, since I work here!’

  He has a wee laugh.

  I love this guy.

  It’s the way he just laughed at himself for not knowing what his shop sells, even though he should. It’s like he doesn’t care. Not in a bad way, not in a cocky or arrogant way, but in a way that helps me relax and makes me less uptight about how the world should be.

  Because there comes a point, I think, when you realise that the world isn’t as orderly and in control as you might like it to be, that it’s in fact held together with Blu-tack and Sellotape and the wheels are about to come off at any moment. It can be quite a scary realisation, that, enough to make most people panic. But here’s Stevie here, and he’s laughing.

  We need people like Stevie. We need him to laugh, so that we can laugh. If you’re ever stuck in a lift, or holed up in a loft to escape the zombie hordes, or looking through a telescope at the asteroid coming to wipe us out, you’re going to need somebody like Stevie. You’re going to need him to laugh. Because if Stevie can laugh, I can laugh. If Stevie doesn’t care, I don’t care. If Stevie can admit to a customer that he doesn’t know what his shop sells, despite knowing that it could lose him his job, his wages, his house, his girlfriend, well … fuck it. Fuck it. In the happiest way possible, I say fuck it all.

  Now Stevie’s asking me if I want to buy something, something that I don’t think I need, but I said yes. I don’t know what it was; I wasn’t really listening, I was smiling. Could have been batteries, even though the thing doesn’t take them. Could have been some insurance thing that sticks an extra hundred quid on the price, even though I’ve already got insurance. Could have been anything. Fuck knows.

  And fuck cares.

  Cos see Stevie?

  Stevie’s all right.

  THE FAKE

  I have these burglars. They burgle my house.

  Or so they think!

  It started a while back. I can’t remember the first time they did it, but they obviously enjoyed it so much that they decided to do it again, and again, and again. It must be like a pair of comfy old slippers. Each time they smash one of the windows and invite themselves in, well, it must be like a trip down memory lane for them. I can imagine them casting their minds back to that very first time, and all the times thereafter, reminiscing, telling stories, filling the house with laughter at my expense. Aye, I can just imagine them thinking about all those memories wrapped up in that very house.

  And they’d be wrong!

  See, I got myself an alarm. That’s how it began. I decided to get myself an alarm, just to give these chaps a subtle indication that I didn’t want them around, that I’d rather have the house to myself, thank you very much. But when I went to the shop and saw the prices of these things, these alarms? Jeezo! The guy said to me, ‘Well, you can’t put a price on peace of mind.’ But at that price? I think I’d rather be robbed! Then I said, ‘Here, hold on, what are those alarms over there? They’re not even half the price.’ The guy told me that’s because they were fake. Oh, I liked that. These burglars thinking my alarm was real when it wasn’t, I liked the idea of that very much. The guy recommended against it, he recommended getting the real deal, but no no no. A fake one, please. That would show them. I don’t like lying, but for breaking into my house, my private property, that’s what they get.

  Anyway, it didn’t work. They must have seen right through it, the way those experts on Antiques Roadshow can spot a phony from a hundred yards. That’s prisons for you: universities of crime, aren’t they?

  So I went back to the shop and complained. The guy said, well, he did recommend getting the real deal, and that it would have saved me money in the long run – a right smart arse. He tried to punt it to me again, the alarm, the real one, but this time he also advised me to get some cameras, all that CCTV carry-on. My God, if I thought the price of the alarm was bad, the cameras? He was obviously trying to get me while I was down, it was worse than being mugged at knifepoint. Then I said, ‘Here, wait a minute, what are those cameras over there? Why are they so cheap?’ And he told me it was because those were fake, just like the fake alarm. Oh, I liked that. He advised against it, but then again, he would: commission. No, I’ll just have the fake one, if you please. I couldn’t wait to get it home. I just imagined the burglars seeing the flashing red light and running for the hills. I just pictured them watching Crimewatch that night, biting their nails down to the knuckles, waiting for their faces to appear. But their faces wouldn’t appear, because it was a trick! And it would serve them bloody right.

  Anyway, it didn’t work. I don’t have a clue how they saw past that one. They must have gadgets to work it all out. Or maybe they’ve got somebody on the inside, in these shops, telling them how it all works in exchange for a share of the loot. However they did it, it was putting these burglars one step ahead, that was for sure. Always one step ahead.

  But not any more!

  No, I didn’t buy a real alarm or a real camera, I told you how much that cost. But neither did I buy fake ones. I didn’t buy a thing from that shop; no way I was going back there. So I built it myself.

  I built a fake house!

  I tore down the old one and built a new one right on top. You’d never know the difference. From the paintwork to the plumbing, the same in every way, inside and out. Except I don’t live there.

  I live in a tent!

  And I watch them. I watch them burgle my house. Or so they think.

  They take my telly, they take my computer, they lift out the furniture, my piano; anything that isn’t nailed down, they take. And all that’s real, that stuff is real, it’s important that they don’t suspect a thing. And so far, they haven’t. Three times they’ve burgled my house, except they’ve not. Because it isn’t my house.

  I live in a tent.

  It’s cost me just over quarter of a million so far, I think. Maybe double, I’m not sure. But who’s counting? Not me.

  Because it’s like the guy said.

  You can’t put a price on peace of mind!

  VEGETARIANS

  This was a nice wee restaurant, thought Doug. A nice place, with nice people. The staff seemed nice and so did the customers; they looked gentle. He looked at the menu, and a few words jumped out at him that explained the niceness, words like ‘tofu’, ‘soya milk’ and ‘bean burger’. That’s right, the place was vegetarian. ‘Ah fuck,’ whispered Doug to himself. He wasn’t a vegetarian himself, and he fancied something with a bit of substance, something with a bit of meat, like pasta with some chicken, or maybe a steak pie. He knew it wasn’t right to think like that. At least, it didn’t feel right in here.

  He always felt a bit guilty in places like this, and no wonder. He paid people to put animals in machines that tore them to pieces, and these good folk in the restaurant didn’t. He could almost feel the guilt ooze out his pores like B.O. He looked around at them all, wondering if anybody had noticed his disappointment at the menu or heard him saying ‘Ah fuck’, but nobody had. He knew really that none of them would care anyway, he knew nobody really objected to being in the company
of a meat eater – except for Morrissey or whoever – but he wouldn’t blame them if they did. After all, how was it acceptable for him to cut a slice of flesh off an animal’s arse and shove it in his mouth? How could he do such a thing? He loved animals, yet he had them killed, that was a bit Jekyll and Hyde, was it not? It didn’t make sense, and it was probably the conclusion these folk around him came to a long time ago, when they decided to become vegetarians. It was such a logical, enlightened and kind-hearted decision. The decision to never kill again. The decision to love all living things, and therefore not to kill any living thing.

  Except for lettuce, of course, haha.

  That was funny. It was funny in that it was interesting. Doug paused for thought. He looked at the guy eating salad at the table nearby, a salad containing lettuce and tomatoes and other vegetables that used to be alive but now weren’t. That was funny, now that he thought about it, because it’s not as if vegetarians don’t kill anything. They do kill, they just don’t kill animals. But they kill plants. And that’s all right, somehow. It’s because plants are alive, but they’re not alive like animals. Animals can think, they can feel, and that’s what makes it wrong to kill them. Wrong in the eyes of vegetarians, that is. That’s why the animals get to live and the plants have to die.

  Doug wondered if things would be different if vegetables could think and feel. Like, imagine if scientists worked out that tomatoes could count to ten. Or imagine if when a potato gets peeled, it hurts like fuck. It was a gruesome thought, but it made Doug smile. However, his smile drifted off when he wondered if vegetarians applied the same thinking to people. Specifically, if vegetarians are all right with killing something that doesn’t think and feel, what about if that thing that doesn’t think or feel is a person? You get people like that. And Doug couldn’t think of why those unthinking and unfeeling people would be exempt from judgement. After all, is vegetarianism not based in some way on the belief that human life is no more important than any other kind of life? If so, then why should human life be exempt from death, the same kind of death that befell every tomato, cucumber and carrot being scoffed by that guy at the next table?

  Doug’s smile had turned into a full-blown scowl.

  He turned his head slowly and looked at the guy once more. Looked him up and down. Looked at his ThunderCats T-shirt, his crossed legs, his book. Such a harmless little man. Perfectly harmless. Unless, of course, you fell beneath the required level of intelligence one must demonstrate in order to not be put to death. And who decides upon that level? The vegetarians, of course. It could be a minimum IQ they have in mind. It could be the size or shape of your head. It could maybe depend upon the book you’re reading (there’s a thought). Or maybe you were walking down the street as a slate fell off a wonky roof above and right into your skull, putting you in an apparently unthinking, unfeeling state of being. Maybe you were born like that. Maybe to the outside world you are a motionless mute, but on the inside you have a vibrant, imaginative world, where you live in your own unique way. Well, I’ve got bad news for you: here come the vegetarians, and I’m afraid you don’t matter a fuck.

  Doug stood up, nudging his seat back behind him until it tipped over and onto the floor. He didn’t bother picking it up, he just headed for the door. He couldn’t bear another minute breathing the same air as these people.

  And as he walked out, he remembered a wee fact he once heard.

  Hitler was a vegetarian.

  As he glanced back at them all, as he saw them all sitting at their tables – their desks – deciding which lives should live and which should end, that fact didn’t surprise him.

  No. It didn’t surprise him at all.

  NOTHING HAPPENS

  Johnny and Paula were lying on the couch, watching the telly. Coronation Street. Johnny wasn’t into it. He usually was, but something tuned him out, something had crossed his mind. He looked at himself, then Paula. He looked at the pair of them lying on the couch doing nothing. Then he looked at their empty dinner plates on the table. Then he looked at the wallpaper. Then he looked back to the telly.

  ‘I’ve just noticed something,’ said Johnny.

  ‘What?’ asked Paula.

  ‘Something about this,’ he said, pointing at the screen.

  ‘Something about what? Coronation Street?’

  ‘No,’ said Johnny. ‘Well, aye, but not just Coronation Street. All these things. Soap operas. Well, not just soap operas, programmes in general. Programmes with stories, I mean, not things like the news and the weather and that, I mean stuff like Coronation Street.’

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ asked Paula, not really interested in finding out. But he told her anyway.

  He noticed that in all these programmes, soap operas, dramas, films, anything with a story, something always happens. You never get nothing happening. You never get an episode where nothing happens. Even when nothing appears to be happening, it isn’t really. It isn’t really nothing. There’s always something to it, it’s always interesting in some sort of way, or it’s to tell you something about somebody, or it leads to something that’ll happen later.

  ‘Well, of course something happens,’ said Paula. ‘Something has to happen or nobody would watch it. Who’d want to watch something where nothing happens?’ But that wasn’t his point.

  His point was that it was unrealistic. These programmes try to be realistic, things like Coronation Street or EastEnders, they try to be real, but they’re not. He wasn’t saying they were utterly unrealistic, they didn’t have aliens or laser cannons or anything like that, but they just weren’t like real life. Not really. In real life, not a lot happens. Or, at least, when interesting things do happen, they don’t happen every single day. You get the odd interesting day, then you don’t, sometimes for a good while. Sometimes fuck all happens for days on end. There had been times in his life when fuck all happened for weeks.

  ‘What’s your point?’ said Paula.

  He just thought it would be funny, and more realistic, if they had an episode of Coronation Street or EastEnders where fuck all happened. Fuck all interesting. Just nothing notable at all. Like, imagine if they had a few minutes of somebody putting their clothes in the washing machine. They don’t accidentally put a red sock in with the whites or wash something that’s dry clean only, they just put their clothes in the washing machine for however long that takes. Then imagine it cut to another character in a shop, thinking of what to get for dinner, picking tins of stuff off the shelves, having a wee look at the label, then putting them back. And it’s not like you get to see what they’re reading on the labels, it’s not like they’re reading the nutritional information and you see that the thing is high in sugar then that thing is given to a diabetic then there’s a mad rush to the hospital. In fact, maybe you just see them go into a shop, but you don’t get to go inside and watch, the camera just waits outside, like a dog, until the person comes out ten minutes later. Or maybe—

  ‘Johnny, see seriously, gonnae fucking shut up?’ said Paula, shaking her head. The shite he talked.

  Johnny laughed, then shut up.

  For a minute.

  ‘Like, imagine something like this,’ he said, looking at the two of them on the couch.

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Paula. ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like this,’ he said. ‘Like us.’

  Johnny pointed out that this was real life, this right here, what they were doing right now. Johnny and Paula, right there on the couch, doing nothing, watching the telly, not saying a word to each other for almost half an hour, then having a wee argument. This was real life, this was realistic. Johnny thought somebody should write something like this, and stick it in on the telly, or in a film. Or in a book.

  ‘Who’d want to read this?’ laughed Paula, flicking through the channels to see what else was on.

  ‘I would,’ said Johnny. ‘A story about nothing. I really like the sound of that.’

  Paula said it sounded shite. Johnny said it di
dn’t. He’d love to read something like that, a wee story about nothing. Somebody should do that, he said. Paula said nobody would do that because nobody would buy it. Something would have to happen otherwise they wouldn’t even print the thing, they wouldn’t make it. Try asking a bookshop to put your book on the shelves after telling them nothing happens in it, nothing interesting, like, seriously, nothing at all.

  Johnny hoped that somebody would do it, somebody would write it. They’d probably get told by the publisher to put some big ending at the end to make all the nothingness worthwhile, but he hoped they’d stick to their guns and have the courage of their convictions and say, ‘No, this is what happens. This is reality. This is real life.’

  Paula had had quite enough of his pish for one night. She stood up, told him to remember to switch off the lights, then off she went to her bed. Johnny switched off the telly, but lay on the couch for a bit, still thinking about that book, that story. He wondered if anybody would ever write something like that, maybe about a guy just lying on the couch after his girlfriend has gone to bed. Lying there, doing nothing, not even watching the telly. Just lying there. Doing nothing. Nothing at all.

  He waited until he heard Paula leave the toilet, then he stood up, switched off all the lights, then headed into the toilet himself. He picked up the tube of toothpaste and squeezed some toothpaste onto the toothbrush, then began brushing his teeth. That’s the sort of thing he was talking about. Would anybody write something like that? Would anybody write about him brushing his teeth? Would they even go into detail about how he firstly picked up the tube of toothpaste and then squeezed some toothpaste onto the toothbrush?