Free Paying For It by Tony Black Page B

yet!’

WAS IT WORTH the trouble?
    ‘I mean what have you got?’ I asked myself. Knew the answer – zip. I’d been flailing about, sticking my nose in, but had nothing to give Col. Except maybe, another funeral invitation. Real soon.
    I turned into a newsagent’s, bought up some smokes: Camels, the strong ones. Taste of them greeted me like a blessing. Truth be told, I felt ready for a bevvy, at least one or ten. But something, maybe Mac’s warning, kept me walking.
    My mind felt numb. I’d flitted between mental fireworks and virtual catatonia for so long that I wondered, ‘Was I manic?’ Sorry, that’s bi-polar now, isn’t it? I don’t know … didn’t even know how to pronounce Adidas these days.
    ‘It’s a kick up the arse you need!’ The indistinct voice of Scots wisdom hit in.
    The Scots don’t do self-pity. Morbidity, yes. Drunken insensate, to block it all out, yes. But never self-pity. I put it down to the utter blackness of Scottish history. The struggle to get by. The sheer suffering. I mean, how else do you convince a poor nation like this to drag itself up? The myth of dignity in suffering. Shovelling shite, filling your lungs with coal dust, good for your soul? Bollocks. Good for the plutocrats’ bank balances more like.
    Jumped the number 26 bus to the Wall.
    I saw all the regulars propped up inside, got a few nods from the most familiar faces. The one I expected to greet me most enthusiastically, though, was goggle-eyed, staring at the telly.
    ‘Col, how goes it?’
    ‘Shush shush,’ he said, the back of his hand flapping at me.
    ‘Must be good, what’s it, Debbie Does Dallas?’
    Killer look fired on me. Frowns, the works.
    I slunk back, settled myself at the bar. Col turned up the news bulletin, Scotland Today .
    The outside broadcast came from the new parliament building. I shook my head. ‘Bloody waste of money!’
    Chorus of, ‘Aye. Aye. Aye,’ echoed round the bar.
    ‘Did you hear this, mate?’ Some gadgie I’d never seen in my puff approached me, his face a riot of red patches, a drinker’s blue nose. ‘They cannae even heat the thing, bloody spewing oot heat it is! See, they put one of them heat guns on it. Saw the pictures in the paper, what a bloody money pit!’
    ‘Look, can you keep the noise down, please ,’ snapped Col.
    I raised my eyebrows to the gadgie. He slumped off, old nineties tracksuit dragging off him, pint spilling in his trembling hand. Acrylic and alcohol – a bad combination – he put himself in danger of going up like the Hindenburg with his next fag.
    I turned back to the telly. The reporter looked about seventeen. How do they do it? In my day, the telly was a big gig. Went to the best hacks. Trained ones. Not some schoolie that looks like she’d been at her mum’s dressing-up box.
    ‘The protest started outside the parliament with people waving placards …’ she announced.
    Incisive stuff. Top-notch journalism. ‘Oh, bring back John Craven, please. It’s Newsround , surely.’
    The wind picked up at the reporter’s back, I expected to hear a quick, ‘and now back to the studio’ to let in her make-up team. She went on: ‘The protesters are asylum seekers, their families and supporters, who are opposed to the Scottish Executive’s policies …’
    They played some footage, the kind I knew would have news editors salivating. Early-morning raids with police battering down flats in Wester Hailes, the city’s dumping ground for the dispossessed. They planned to turf out the illegals, quick smart.
    They pixelated all the faces of the people being rounded up by plod. My mind played a trick on me, filled in the blanks with the faces I’d seen huddled in misery at Fallingdoon House.
    ‘Joining us now is Minister for Immigration, Alisdair Cardownie, MSP,’ said the reporter.
    ‘Turn this up some more, Col,’ I said.
    ‘Good evening, Polly,’ said Cardownie.
    ‘ Wanker !’ I shouted at the screen.
    ‘Minister, judging by the number