from Slim Scotchboy, Hero

They went downstairs. Andrew was aware of something small and uncomfortable clinging to the side of his neck, like a nascent goitre; being an award winner (and what an award!), Andrew was deemed acceptable company. There was no way Slim would be mixing it with the haikuists and Top Tips contributors who formed the majority at the Writers’ Circle, no matter how many haiku and Top Tips they’d had published.  Just as they sat down at a corner table, Dug walked in. Andrew raised a hand. ‘Dug!’ he shouted. ‘Over here!’

Dug pulled his coat tighter and negotiated a path through the bodies. He looked upset. Of course he did. He thought he’d missed the show.

‘What’s your pleasure?’ said Andrew.

‘Pint of Guinness,’ said Dug, and squeezed in beside Slim.

‘You’re slightly late,’ said Andrew.

‘Don’t I know it,’ said Dug.

‘No problem,’ said Andrew, and went to the bar. He watched Dug sitting there, next to the stranger. Didn’t he recognise him? Surely he’d seen photographs? They weren’t even boring each other with small talk. Slim was scanning the bar for journalists in need of an interview while Dug stared angrily at the floor.  

Andrew laid the beer on the table. ‘You two seem to have hit it off,’ he said.

‘Cheers,’ said Dug, and lifted his drink.

Andrew arranged himself just-so in his chair. He was looking forward to the following exchange. ‘Dug,’ he said. ‘Meet Slim Scotchboy.’

Dug turned in his seat. His jaw actually dropped open.

‘Slim,’ said Andrew, ‘this is Dug Lloyd, Grangeburn’s burning white hot literary hope for the future.’

‘Awright there, Dug?’ said Slim.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ Dug managed. ‘You’re the reason I started writing!’

‘Oh, pleeeeeease!’ said Slim, and waved a skinny hand in the air as if he were autographing the boy’s oxygen supply.

Andrew couldn’t stop his teeth grinding slightly. ‘Yes, indeed,’ he said. ‘If you want to know the ins and outs of the Past Perfect, Dug’s your man.’

‘Aye?’ said Slim.

‘Eh, aye,’ said Dug. He was squirming around like a besotted teenage girl. ‘I’ve got a Preparatory Certificate in EFL. English as a Foreign Language.’

Slim whipped a notebook out of his donkey jacket and licked the end of a pencil that had been hiding behind his ear. ‘Good title for a Scotsman’s book,’ he said, and scrawled something on a clean page. When he was finished, he looked up. Then he looked back at the page and turned the notebook slightly so it was visible to one and all. He fashioned a large © at the end of the scribble. What an arse.

‘You reckon?’ said Dug, amazed that something that had come out of his mouth was deemed worthy of...

Christ, thought Andrew. Any more of this and I’m going to vomit.

‘Just make sure ye write as much as possible,’ said Slim. ‘That’s the only advice I can give ye.’

It was all Dug could do to stop himself etching the remark on a beermat and getting Slim to sign it; and getting Slim to sign it would have presented no problem, Andrew was sure. But this was exactly the kind of advice Andrew had been dishing out for months. Without the fawning response, he was rather put out to note.

‘Ye working?’ said Slim.

‘Aye,’ Dug trembled. ‘I’m teaching in a Primary School.’

‘So ye’ve been to Uni, then?’

Dug hesitated. How would the information about his halcyon University days sit with someone who had carved out a semi-autobiographical niche in tales of rock concert-goers and drug-taking tramps? ‘Aye,’ he said, eventually. ‘The University of Scotland. Philosophy.’

‘That right?’ said Slim. ‘I was there, too. Contemporary Scottish Literature.’ He sniffed. ‘First Class Honours, like.’

There was a crash as the barman fumbled a wet beer glass, though it could just as easily have been the sound of Dug’s illusion shattering. Andrew was surprised, too. And more than a little delighted.

‘What?’ said Slim. ‘D’ye no think that squares with yarns about sleeping rough?’

Dug picked up his glass. He didn’t drink anything. He laid it heavily on the table and stared at it.

‘Oh, here we go,’ said Slim. He yawned, and looked at his watch. ‘Ye know how many times I’ve had this conversation? It’s a pain in the slats. I’ll put it this way. There’s a grain of truth in the fiction, right? ‘Grain’ being a measure of something really small. And fiction being, well, fiction.’

‘I sense disappointment radiating in waves,’ said Andrew.

‘Anyway,’ said Slim, and slapped his palms on his knees. ‘That’s me. Got to get back up the road.’ Deirdre Boyce approached and handed him a wee brown envelope.

‘That’ll be your bus fare,’ Dug pouted.

‘Aye,’ said Slim. ‘Beats putting the bite on cunts outside supermarkets, eh? Nice meeting ye, Andrew. Come through the Third Eye next week, I’m doing a thing with Jimmy Kelman and Norman MacCaig. Should be good.’

‘I’ll check my diary,’ said Andrew.

Slim scouted the bar for autograph hunters. Someone at Deirdre’s table waved to him. He was there in a flash.

The Next Stop Is Croy and Drive! - free on Kindle

Both of these books are available free for a few days. Do take the chance to download them to your Kindle, PC, iPad, Android, etc.

The Next Stop Is Croy and other stories  - "An excellent introduction to the work of Andrew McCallum Crawford. These six short stories follow main character Alan from boyhood to manhood and from tender to tough. Not physically tough, but emotionally. Scottish fiction has a reputation for showing men as dour and emotionally repressed. Did that die with the death of heavy industry? This collection suggests not. Crawford's character experiences the widest possible emotional range in the course of these stories; his difficulty lies in being able to express it. That certainly can't be said for the author. A beautifully written portrayal of things felt but not said."

Drive!  - "...McCallum Crawford's debut novel is a Rabelaisian page-turner populated by the freakish, the devious, the deluded and the downright dirty...larger than life characters prey upon weakness; exploit, screw and maim each other with gleeful abandon....the author keeps us guessing, suspending motivation for reportage, laying hooks and 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."

Please remember that the books are available from all Amazon sites.

The Next Stop Is Croy and other stories

A series of six short stories about the complex relationship between a son and his father.
 
The stories in this collection (four published, two unpublished) were not written in the order in which they appear here; they certainly were not conceived as part of a continuous narrative. However, I have decided to bring them together because of the chronology and themes which, it turns out, run through them. Please bear in mind that this is in no way a novella or novelette. It is a collection of short stories, and each story stands or falls on its own, as short stories must.

"An excellent introduction to the work of Andrew McCallum Crawford. These six short stories follow main character Alan from boyhood to manhood and from tender to tough. Not physically tough, but emotionally. Scottish fiction has a reputation for showing men as dour and emotionally repressed. Did that die with the death of heavy industry? This collection suggests not. Crawford's character experiences the widest possible emotional range in the course of these stories; his difficulty lies in being able to express it. That certainly can't be said for the author. A beautifully written portrayal of things felt but not said."     Carol McKay

"Above all, I liked the subtlety of these. Nothing is too overt, nothing too explicit – yet everything is there, moving, and insightful and well crafted too. In fact, when I was rereading these, I was in the middle of writing crits for a short story competition, and I wanted to tell everybody to go away and read Golf Balls. Here the writer focuses on a life transforming event, seen from the point of view of a boy who will never feel quite the same way about all kinds of things again. Deceptively simple, but with vast implications over and beyond itself – in fact a textbook example of exactly how short stories should be – little cans of worms that once opened cannot be contained."     Catherine Czerkawska

"...when you start to look for outstanding Scottish short story collections there aren’t that many to pick from – Alasdair Gray’s Unlikely Stories, Mostly and AL Kennedy’s Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains jump out for me. While The Next Stop Is Croy and other stories is not substantial enough to knock these two and Kelman off their perches, it is well worth the read."     Jim Murdoch


The Next Stop Is Croy and other stories is available from Amazon co uk and Amazon com
 

from Campbell's Visitor

My heels echoed. The guard was in an office at the other end of the corridor. He was reclining in a swivel chair, his hands clasped behind his head as he looked at a television. The screen was divided into segments showing vistas of the car park. He stretched forwards and moved a lever. I watched my car grow larger in the top left hand corner.

‘So you’re Campbell’s visitor?’ he said. ‘We don’t get many of them.’

‘No,’ I said.

He leaned on the armrest. ‘What?’ he said. ‘You’re not Campbell’s visitor?’

‘No, I am,’ I said. ‘I mean…’

He pushed his feet off the floor and glided across the room. He came to a halt next to a small table. The telephone sitting on it was antique. He lifted the handset and tapped the cradle.

I heard the faint tinkle of bells in the corridor.

‘Munro,’ he said. ‘Come here and see this.’ He stood up. ‘Munro will look after you.’

Footsteps. Heavy, Tick – Tock. Rhythmic. Munro was in no hurry. I could imagine his footwear. Highly polished army boots.

I wasn’t wrong.

‘Munro,’ said the guard. ‘This is Campbell’s visitor.’

Munro stared at me. He was about thirty with a shaved head; he didn’t like the look of me. I was right about the boots, but I would never have predicted the blue boiler suit. He had a thick leather belt round his waist. A set of keys and a truncheon were hanging from it.

‘Clothes maketh the man,’ I said.

‘I thought that was manners,’ said the guard.

‘Has he signed the book?’ said Munro.

‘Good point,’ said the guard. He opened a drawer and raked around. He eventually pulled out a ledger. ‘That military training of yours will be the saviour of us all.’

‘Have you got a pen?’ I said.

His hand disappeared into the drawer. ‘There should be…’ he said. ‘Here you are.’

I made my mark on the paper, at the top of a clean page. There was nothing written on it, nothing at all, not even the date.

Munro was away. Tick – Tock.

‘Aye,’ said the guard. ‘You’d better go.’

from Drive! - Terry's RAF Medical

Terry stood up. The back of the dressing gown was sticking to his cheeks like clingfilm. ‘Perhaps I should find another doctor,’ he said.

‘No, no,’ said Rimmer, and ground out his cigarette in a battered ashtray. ‘Unfortunately, I’m it.’

He pulled open a drawer. His leather vagina hit the desk with a thud.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to ask you to fill it.’

His arm disappeared into the drawer again, and he produced something metal and medical with a flourish. He huffed on the dull surface and rubbed it on his sleeve.

‘If you’ll, er, follow me over to the bed, as it were.’

Terry lifted a knee onto the frame, which elicited a quiet laugh from Rimmer.

‘No, Terry. Not yet. Just sit down.’

Terry perched himself on the edge of the mattress. It was made of rubber. The backs of his legs were already stuck to it.

‘If you’ll lean over,’ Rimmer whispered, ‘I’ll have a quick look at your membrane.’

Cold pressure as Rimmer pushed and struggled to get the probe into his ear.

‘Oooh, it won’t go in. First time, is it, Terry? Shall we try some Vaseline?’

Terry batted the instrument away and stood up, dragging half of the mattress off the bed. ‘Okay, that’s enough,’ he said.

‘But you have to do your medical, Terry. Having your eardrums explode at forty thousand feet might cause problems. You could easily swerve into the path of an airliner full of drunk tourists. Think how you’d spoil their holiday.’

Terry raised a finger.

‘And I have it from informed sources,’ Rimmer continued, ‘that Windolene and a duster are not standard issue for fighter pilots.’

Drive!, a novel about music and attempted patricide in 1980s Edinburgh, is available here.

from The Canny Cyclist

‘What’s this?’ she said. ‘I told you I wanted a steak pie.’

‘They didn’t have any,’ he said. ‘I thought you would want what I got.’

‘But I told you I don’t like sausage,’ she said.

‘Did you?’ he said.

‘Yes!’ she said. She pushed the sausage to the side and stabbed a chip with her fork.

‘Sorry,’ he said.

The doorbell. Sean sat up straight in the chair. Her parents? But surely they would have keys?

Whispering in the hallway and a thin young man appeared in the kitchen. He was dressed like something out of the Tour de France, the zipper T-shirt, the lycra shorts, the whole bit. He was a skinny guy, but his thighs were like balloons.

‘I hope you’ve got a bicycle outside,’ said Sean.

‘Aye,’ said the young man. ‘A Peugeot Super Sport.’

Sean was getting stared at as if he’d committed a crime. Perhaps the whispering had been Rose giving the short version of the chip shop debacle. He knew it wasn’t that. He wasn’t stupid. ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘A ten-speed racer. I had one of those when I was a paperboy. You’re not a paperboy, are you?’

‘Sean,’ said Rose, ‘this is Kevin. Kevin, Sean.’

‘Fancy a sausage?’ said Sean. ‘There’s plenty.’

Kevin looked at Rose, who looked at the floor. ‘I’m not hungry,’ he said. ‘I’m on a diet, anyway. A few mo’ moonths trainin’ an’ ah’ll be a champion cyclist.’ His accent couldn’t have been any thicker. He was hamming it up to emphasise his local credentials. There was no need. It was obvious who the foreigner in the room was.

‘You’re right,’ said Sean. ‘It’s the kind of thing budding medallists should avoid.’

‘Aye,’ said Kevin.

‘Although I’m quite partial to it,’ said Sean. ‘Not just sausage, you underst...’

‘Can I see you for a minute?’ said Kevin. He shuffled out into the hallway. Thighs like balloons and a fat arse. He didn’t say goodbye. Rose was right behind him. She closed the door. They didn’t try to keep it quiet. Sean couldn’t make out the conversation, but he could hear the words thudding. Staccato with pauses. Something about Eleanor, whoever she was. Maybe it was the boy’s pet name for his bike.

Then a longer silence.

If...

He would wring the bastard’s neck.

No, he wouldn’t. He knew he wouldn’t. It wasn’t in him.

The front door banged shut.

Rose looked worried.

‘One of your old boyfriends?’ said Sean. He’d played scenes like this before, more often than he wanted to think about.

‘He’s an old friend,’ said Rose. ‘We were at school together. He’s a bit clingy.’ She examined her nails. ‘But he’s been...never mind. He’s not important.’ She smiled, but he could see it was forced. ‘You’re not jealous, are you?’

Words, and how they deceive. All you could do was listen to them. ‘Should I be?’ he said.

from Gentlemen, We Have A Winner

Applause. John left the stage and was immediately cornered by a short man in an expensive suit. His hair couldn't have been dyed any blacker. 'Oh, excellent story,' he said, and offered a hand.

John didn't take it. 'Thank you,' he said.

'Dickson Wordsworth,' said the man. 'If I may be so bold - who, er, represents you?'

John laughed quietly. He'd been through this before. 'I represent myself,' he said. 'Very successfully, as it turns out.' He looked up and had to catch his breath. She was there after all, on the other side of the room, looking at him, a glass of wine at her lips. His Muse.

'...my card, if you'd like to...'

'No, thank you,' said John.

The man touched him. '...pop into the office for a cup of tea...'

John leaned in. 'Fuck off, you leech,' he whispered. 'I'm busy.'

'Well, really, there's no need...'

John moved across the floor, he didn't know how, he couldn't feel his legs.

'Hi,' he said.

'Hi,' she said. Christ, she was beautiful. 'I liked your story.'

You didn't hear all of it, he thought.

'Did you drive down?' he said.

'No, I got the train.' She looked at her watch. 'I can't stay long, the last one leaves...'

'I don't want you to leave,' he said.

'No, I have to get back...'

'I want you to spend the night with me,' he said.

Her silence was encouraging.

'Stay with me,' he said.

'But...'

'Tell him you missed the train. I have to be with you.'

from a work in progress...

The mist is getting thicker. It confines us. It is inside us, making it hard to breathe. Our voices. We sound like people who are drowning.