Arthur's Seat

The ascent
to the summit
was steep.

Twice I offered you my hand
and twice you gripped my sleeve.

Falling
down those rocks
wasn't your only fear.

Greek Easter, 2012

There isn't much narrative in this video, but there sure are lots of bangers.

from South Shore Road

Elbow room, the lack of it; crammed into the corner of this bar. The atmosphere was raucous, but not rowdy. Not yet. That would come later. He was on non-alcoholic beer. It had nothing to do with his health. He'd been plastered every night since he got back. The house had been doing his head in. Too much silence, not even a radio to switch on, never mind a television. But there was something he had to do, and he wanted to be sober.

It was his old man's local. They used to come here whenever John was back. He glanced over at the seat in the corner. It was empty. He tried not to read too much into it. The space would be getting filled soon enough. He twisted round and looked at his watch. It would take half an hour to get to where he was going. More than enough time for another bottle of fizz.

He ordered a double whisky.

The man standing next to him nodded. 'I've been trying to place you since you walked in,' he said. 'Do you live in the town?'

'No,' said John. 'I'm just passing through. I grew up here, though.'

'Aye?' said the man. 'Where about?'

'Round the back of the shops,' said John.

Oh,' said the man. 'Bandit country. This place has gone to the dogs. I mind when...'

John paid for the whisky. He let the man talk. It was like listening to his father. Except it wasn't his father. His father knew how to tell a story, even if it was a gripe about how the good old days had turned into nowadays. Mind you, the guy had a point. The town, this part of it, was a dump. Fifteen-year-olds hanging out of windows drinking Buckie while their wee sisters tried to batter a new doorway in Wong's with a shopping trolley. Feral - you couldn't say anything. If you looked at them the wrong way you'd get your windows panned in then the police would be chapping your door asking what the hell you were playing at. He'd told his dad to move out years ago, but he'd been there too long. He was there till the end.

from Bang, You're Dead

I was almost finished packing. I laid my bag on the bed. The house was empty. The kids were at school, my wife was at work. So was Harry. Maria was in the kitchen, I could hear her footsteps through the ceiling.

She was standing at the sink, doing something with the syringes. The baby was in its cot, under the window, wrapped in a blanket. It was sleeping.

‘Maria,’ I said. ‘We need to talk.’

‘Oh?’ she said.

‘It’s about the baby,’ I said.

‘What about it?’ she said. She looked at the cot. The blanket didn’t move.

I took a deep breath and held it. The yard was silent. It was just the two of us. And the baby. The three of us. ‘Is it mine?’ I said.

Her eyes narrowed. She crossed the floor and clicked the door shut behind me. I don’t know why she did that. Then she resumed her position next to the drying board, leaning on it. There was a damp patch on her blouse, at the bottom of her left breast. She folded her arms. ‘Are you stupid?’ she said. ‘We agreed never to mention…’

‘I know,’ I said, ‘but…’

‘What do you mean, is it yours?’ she said.

‘You know…’ I said.

Something was playing around the corners of her eyes. The beginnings of a smile. ‘But you’re…you can’t…how could it be yours?’ she said.

‘Yes, okay,’ I said, ‘but the dates…’

She laughed in my face. ‘It’s not yours,’ she said. ‘I only let you do it because you’re…’

The baby screamed in its sleep.

Drive! - free on Kindle

My first novel, Drive!, is available as a free download on Amazon for a few days. Do take advantage of the offer - you're more than welcome!

From the reviews:

'McCallum Crawford's debut novel is a Rabelaisian page-turner populated by the freakish, the devious, the deluded and the downright dirty...plot twists that make for a thrilling roller-coaster ride as our Hero works through his issues with the help of a rock band and some explosives.'

 '...a nostalgic read for those of us of a certain age - the 80s wonderfully evoked, with story and dialogue somewhere between David Lodge and Irvine Welsh but a style and wit all of his own. Brash, flash and thoroughly entertaining. Recommended!'

'... a veritable cornucopia of action, humour and some great observational passages. This isn't just black humour, it is black hole humour; but you will laugh as oblivion beckons!'

 The book can be downloaded on Amazon co uk and Amazon com.

The Next Stop Is Croy - free on Kindle

My collection, The Next Stop Is Croy and other stories, is available as a free download until Saturday. Do click on the link and have a look.

You can find more reviews of the book on Jim Murdoch's blog, The Truth About Lies, and in the Baltimore literary magazine, JMWW.

Kindle - Free Scottish Short Stories

Get yourselves over to Amazon - for a limited period, the eBook edition of The McCollection is available as a free download. 20 short stories from 20 Scottish writers.

 

Available on Amazon co uk and Amazon com

from Bang, You're Dead

It was the day before I left. I was sitting in the yard. There was nothing else to do. It was a big house. The whole family shared it. My brother-in-law’s children were running around, out of control. He shouted at them as he cleaned his shotgun. He was a hunter. He had all the kit, the camouflage gear, the cartridge belt, the boots, everything. He hated me. It wasn’t just that I was foreign, or that I wrote books. His big problem was that I couldn’t give his sister a kid. I wasn’t a man, in his eyes. Not just in his. People talk. They were talking so much I had started to believe them.

He pulled a brush through the barrel and looked at me, a sneer dancing along the ridges of his teeth. ‘Have you seen my gun?’ he said.

I looked dumbly at the thing propped on his knee.

‘Not this one,’ he said. ‘The other one.’

The basement smelled damp. No one went down there. He made a path through the junk and managed to open the rickety wardrobe in the corner. It was full of old blankets, which he pushed aside. He removed a green box. It was an ammunition case, even I could see that, like something out of Action Man, but full-size, metal. He pulled back the hasp and levered the lid open.

‘What do you make of this?’ he said, and came towards me with something wrapped in an oily rag. I don’t know much about guns. I don’t like being around them because I know what they are for. It was a revolver. He draped the rag over his shoulder and started tossing the gun from hand to hand. Then he did something with his thumb and the cylinder flipped out. It was full of bullets. ‘Here,’ he said.

‘No, you’re okay,’ I said. He wanted me to be impressed like a real man would. I wasn’t. I was wary of leaving fingerprints.

He sliced the cylinder with the side of his hand, making it spin. ‘I brought it back from Tirana when I finished a job there,’ he said. With a flick of his wrist the gun clicked shut. He raised it and pointed it at me. ‘They’re not blanks. You know all about them, eh?’

It wasn’t a toy.

He closed an eye. ‘Bang, you’re dead,’ he said.

My knees felt strange.

Hysterical yelps. He looked at the door. His children, in the house, coming down the stairs. He moved back to the corner.

‘Keep this to yourself,’ he said. ‘If you know what’s good for you.’

The Skelf by Andrew McCallum Crawford

I was sitting having a pint with the brother. The pair of us were knackered, another ten-hour shift, then the hour’s drive back here. The Guinness was sliding down. No need to talk. That wee junkie walked in. The Skelf, they called him. I never gave him the time of day. Why would I? He headed straight for the toilet, in and out in a flash. He must have missed his appointment. The place was getting used as a shooting gallery. Nobody was doing anything about it. Christine was paid to pull pints, she wasn’t a bouncer. As for the regulars, all they were interested in was beer and television. They were oblivious to anything else...

The Skelf has just been published on McStorytellers  To read the entire story, click here.

Facebook down, 7th March, 2012

I haven't been able to access Facebook here in Greece since early this morning. It seems that it's not just Greece - it could be all Europe, it could be global. Looking at the tweets on the 'facebook down' sites is interesting. Most are humorous ('more time for coffee'/maybe we'll get some work done'/'the end of the world is nigh!'), but some people are beginning to voice concerns that this might have been caused by hackers.