Alasdair Gray - Ten Tales Tall and True

“I am a Partick Thistle supporter,” I told him, “and I believe in Virtual Reality.”

Do you know about Partick Thistle? It is a non-sectarian Glasgow football club. Rangers FC is overwhelmingly managed and supported by Protestant zealots, Celtic FC by Catholics, but the Partick Thistle supporters anthem goes like this:

We hate Roman Catholics ,

We hate Protestants too ,

We hate Jews and Muslims ,

Partick Thistle we love you …

My friend Miss Mackenzie is looking distinctly disapproving. I suspect that Miss Mackenzie dislikes my singing voice. Or maybe she’s religious. Are you religious Miss Mackenzie? No answer. She’s religious.

Fine. Rinse your mouth. Second filling coming up and I insist on giving you a wee jag, but you won’t feel it. Did you feel it? Of course not.

My wife disagrees with me. She’s a Scottish Nationalist and a Socialist. Can you imagine a more ridiculous combination? She’s a worrier, that woman. She’s worried about over-population, industrial pollution, nuclear waste, rising unemployment, homelessness, drug abuse, crime, the sea level, the hole in the ozone layer.

“Only a democratic government responsive to the will of the majority can tackle these problems,” she says.

“How will it do that?” say I.

“By seizing the big companies who are polluting and impoverishing and unemploying us,” says she, “and using the profits on public work, education and health care.”

“You’ll never get that,” I tell her, “because prosperous people don’t want it and poor people can’t imagine it. Only a few in-betweeners like you believe in such nonsense.” (You have probably guessed she is a school teacher.) “By the year 2000,” I tell her, “these problems will have been solved by the right kind of head gear. Even a modern hat of the broad-brimmed sort worn by Australians and Texans and Mexicans will protect you from skin cancer. Hatters should advertise them on television. TO HELL WITH THE OZONE LAYER — WEAR A HAT!”

Hats, Mrs Chigwell, hats. At the start of this century everybody wore them: toppers for upper-class and professional men, bowlers for the middling people, cloth caps for the workers. Bare headed folk were almost thought as shocking as nudists because their place in the social scale was not immediately obvious. I suspect that hats became unfashionable because we passed through a liberty, equality and fraternity phase — or imagined we were in one. But we’re coming out of it again, and by the end of the century everybody will have head gear. Their sanity will depend on if. Am I boring you? Shall I change the subject? Would you like to suggest another topic of conversation? No? Rinse your mouth out all the same.

The hat of the future — in my opinion — will be a broad-brimmed safety helmet with hinged ear-flaps and a mouth-piece which can be folded down to work as a mobile telephone. It will also have a visor like old suits of armour or modern welders have, but when pulled down over your face the inside works as a telly screen. The energy needed to drive these sets could be tapped straight from the action of the viewer’s heart — it would use up less energy than walking down a flight of stairs. The difference between one hat and another will be the number of channels you can afford. The wealthy will have no limit to them, but the homeless and unemployed will benefit too. I am not one of these heartless people who despise the unemployed for watching television all day. Without some entertainment they would turn to drugs, crime and suicide even more than they’re doing already, but these video helmets will provide richer entertainment than we get nowadays from these old-fashioned box TVs which to my eyes already look prehistoric — relics of the wood and glass age — BVR — Before Virtual Reality. You’ve heard about virtual reality? Yes? No? It’s a helmet of the sort I’ve just described. You wear it with a kind of overall suit equipped with electronic pressure pads so that you not only see and hear, but feel you’re inside the television world you are watching. Miss Mackenzie is pulling faces at me because she knows what I am going to say and thinks it may shock you since it refers to sex. But I promise that not one bad word will pass my lips. These helmet suits not only give sensations of life and movement in beautiful exciting surroundings. They also, if you desire it, give the visual and sensual experience of an amorous encounter with the partner of your choice. Perhaps Clint Eastwood in your case, Mrs Chigwell. Anna Magnani in mine, although it shows how old I am. Any professional person who remembers Anna Magnani in Bitter Rice is obviously on the verge of retirement. Or senility. And so, I am afraid, is she. Not that I ever saw her in Bitter Rice — a film for Adults Only. I only encountered the first love of my life through her posters and publicity photos. I wonder what Anna Magnani looks like nowadays?

Excuse me while I wash my hands. We are on the verge of completion. You’re still quite comfortable? Good. Here we go again and remember I am talking nonsense, nothing but nonsense.

The hat of tomorrow — an audio-visual helmet with or without the suit — will not only release you into an exciting world of your own choice; it will shut out the dirty, unpleasant future my wife keeps worrying about. It will give marijuana or heavy drug sensations without damaging the health. Of course intelligent people like you and I, Mrs Chigwell, will use it for more than escapist entertainment. We will use it to talk to friends, and educate ourselves. Children of four will be fitted with helmets giving them the experience of a spacious, friendly classroom where beautiful, wise, playful adults teach them everything their parents want them to know. Schools will become things of the past and teachers too since a few hundred well scripted actors will be able to educate the entire planet. And think of the saving in transport! When the lesson stopped they could take the helmet off and bingo — they’re home again. Unless the parents switch them onto a babysitter channel.

“All right!” says my wife after hearing me thus far, “What about homelessness? Your helmets can’t shut out foul weather and poisoned air.”

“They can if combined with the right overalls,” I tell her. “In tropical countries, like India, homeless people live and sleep quite comfortably in the streets. Now, it is a widely known fact that our armed forces have warehouses stacked with suits and respirators designed to help them survive on planet Earth after the last great nuclear war has made everybody homeless. But the last great nuclear war has been indefinitely postponed. Why not add Virtual Reality visors and pressure pads to these suits and give them to our paupers? Tune them into a channel of a warm Samoan beach under the stars with the partner of their choice and they’ll happily pass a rainy night in the rubble of a burnt-out housing scheme and please rinse your mouth out. Don’t chew anything hard for another couple of hours. The chair — is now restoring you — to a less prone position.

Bye-bye, Mrs Chigwell. The receptionist will give you the bill, and it might be wise to arrange an appointment in — perhaps six months from now.

Whatever the future of the human race it is not likely to dispense with dentists.

I discovered an odd thing about my left foot when about to pull on a sock this morning. In the groove between the second and third toe, reckoning from the big toe, is a small grey pellet of chewing-gum. I do not chew gum, or know or remember meeting anyone who does. I sometimes patter about this room in my dressing-gown and bare feet, but I never go out of it, and nobody comes here nowadays except the one who cares for me, who is Zoë I believe. And hope. Zoë would never play such a sly wee disturbing trick as putting a sticky sweet between the toes of a sleeping man. Her tricks were all bonny and lavish. I once came home to find that a friend had given her back money we had lent him, money we had stopped expecting to get back, though we needed it for food and rent. Zoë had spent half of it on food all right — we had food enough to last a fortnight. She had spent the rest on flowers. The bedroom floor was covered with vases, jugs, bowls, pans, basins, kettles so full of irises, lilacs and carnations that the bed seemed afloat in a small Loch Lomond of blue, purple and crimson petals. The scent nearly knocked me out. I had to be angry. I saw the loving goodness in that gesture, but had I encouraged lavishness we would have ended up homeless. She knew it, too. Once when I chose to be lavish she grew thoughtful, worried, then angry. She wanted me to be careful and mean so that she could be lavish, which does not explain how this chewing-gum arrived between my toes.