Checking in
"Where are your masks, lads?"
"I'm exempt! I've got my driving licence here!"
"Aye, me too, 'cause if I wear one, pal, I get the fear"
" I cannae drink my beer"
"And that's why we're here, tae sink
A hundred pints a fucking night,
Alright? What kind o' shite
Is this anyway? I thought this was
An Easy fucking Hotel, no' the Georges Cinq
Ya wank."
"Just the one room then?"
"Aye, and hen
We arenae poofs
We're fae Falkirk."
Buskers
Standards in busking are really declining
I saw one in Sauchiehall Street who was miming
Admittedly Mario Lanza's dead
And I'd rather have had Joseph Locke instead
But pretending to warble an old Spotify track
Bluetoothed from your phone to a wee speaker stack
Doesn't seem fair to guitarists and singers
With sandpapered voices and frost shredded fingers
You won't believe this, but I swear it's true
That guy's taking contactless credit cards too
COP26 Conversation
“Did I tell you that
I'm renting out my flat?
Three weeks in a camper van
Shower at work, get
My clothes washed at the launderette
£400 quid a night, AirBnB
That's nearly six grand clear
They should save the planet
Every year...”
A Very Drunk Nationalist tries To Explain the Parallels Between Scotland's Relationship With England And That Of Catalonia With Spain. To Two Scared Women From Seville.
Catalonia! Ya Spanish bitches
Ye've stole all Barcelona's riches
Away hame tae Magaluf, Málaga
That San Miguel excuse for lager
That ruined ma Majorcan nights
And your flamenco is pure shite
Really, the Spanish are just the English
Oppressors of a race distinguished
By a desire for independence
I hope youse will show repentance
Fur aw yer sins; that's what I think
Senoritas! Gonnie buy us a drink?
(This really happened)
Biggars and Biggars
(A music shop; the Sauchiehall Street branch is a showroom but they still sell out of a unit in the Buchanan Galleries)
Biggars. I lusted for a 12 string there.
A Guild. Bought it on the never never. Huge interest rate
I didn't care
A Yamaha in Cuthbertsons.
And that precious Gibson in McCormacks
Traded for a Martin, long sold
What would I give to have it back?
Biggars. Founded in 1867
Still trading, it seems even today
I won't go in. Someone might remember
The instalments that I never paid
Easy, Easy
Six cops, sirens, blue lights, cars
To grab some lad whose scars have scars
His Abba t-shirt smeared with Nando's
A polis says "you're nicked, Fernando
"Now what's your address?"
He replies "in hell
"But I'm temporarily at
The Easy Hotel."
Baristaville
Great Western Road is seething
With baristas and their ilk
The gutters there are heaving
With streams of foaming milk
47 Coffee shops
From Byres Road to St George's Cross
But a flat White's not for me
All I want's a Yorkshire tea
A Marlboro red, a square slice roll
Crammed full of good cholesterol
Then beta blockers, half an aspirin
A great big Atorvastatin
Traditional is best
Give your cardiac a rest
Fleapit
Everybody loves
A film about a plague
Especially one
With Daniel Craig
The Bomb
How many GCHQ alerts
Have triggered Mi5
Sending armed anti-terrorists
To check who's still alive?
Texts and emails, WhatsApps, calls
Make spies lose their aplomb
Central Station. Under the clock.
The bomb. The bomb. The bomb.
Bedhopping At The Easy Hotel
They're putting in new mattresses today
And taking the old mattresses away
They've seen some action, work, rest and play
All those used divans
In a Dreamland van
Five years at most a hotel mattress lasts
I wonder at those mattresses' pasts
Joys and sorrows, the aspersions cast
Hearts healed and broken
Words screamed and spoken
In room 3.25 my bed's new made
(Not included in the price I paid)
And as I bounced on it like a gazelle
I was propelled
Into the ceiling, setting off the fire alarm as well
in the Easy Hotel
All pictures taken on a Xiaomi M2007J17G