James Kelman - A Disaffection

but a problem was one of banality. Once you started in on the subject as a method of easing your mental condition, once you began looking at the situation; aye, it did seem so totally banal. In itself this was encouraging; it meant the problem was not specific, it was run-of-the-mill and not to be taken too seriously. And even aside from the sexual aspect it was better leaving Alison out of the question. What was the point in harbouring feelings as burdensome as he did? It was far better to seek out a proper object for his affections. It was just causing him fucking pain, to be honest about it. If he actually could be said to love her then it was just time to fucking not love her, or else to be doing it in a less pervasive manner.

He went down to the wee dairy at the corner of the street to buy a paper, also something to eat because he was fucking starving. One of these individual breakfast trays. Terrible efforts. A lump of square sausage and a lump of round black pudding. A wee dod of currant dumpling and a round slice of haggis haggi feminine. To be frank about the carry on, this was a breakfast he enjoyed tremendously, never mind about Alison and her fucking vegetarian hostelries. He was a heart-attack man and that was it finished. If she wanted to save him from himself then that was fucking her problem.

Once the frying pan was fairly hot Pat placed the pieces of food inside and waited. He could have counted three hundred and then turned them onto their other sides, a further three hundred and drop in the egg to fry with them. Yet okay, the thought of lettuce and cucumber and tomato, healthy portions of cheddar cheese; that had crossed his mind; he was thinking in these terms, maybe for tomorrow. I mean he wasni really that fucking interested in becoming a genuine vegetarian he just fancied getting fit. Not in a daft way. Pat had never really been that interested in going for the swimming, jogging, bicycling, running, hopping, skipping routine; but just to get reasonably fit and healthy! that would be good. Get a regular game of table tennis going with Gavin once again. That last time they played together he had been easing up and trying to let Gavin win and then suddenly he wasnt having any say on the matter, Gavin was fucking running him ragged. Of course he was an ordinary married man and therefore an active healthy male unlike Patrick who was a flabby eunuch. But big fucking brother also smoked a lot of cigarettes and could drink like a fish so fucking explain that one. Some things are fair and some things are not fair and this is a thing that is not fucking fair, and what more can be said except praise the lord if you’re a lucky bastard.

But just to be reasonably fit and healthy. Just to be in a sound condition. To maybe have a wee go on the pipes. To maybe have a big go on the pipes. A genuine go. That was something. To even just think about it was something: for it must be admitted that in the cold light of an early spring morning, the idea of the pipes as musical instruments and so on. Which made it the more crucial to contemplate.

Seeing the young woman in the dairy had something to do with it, when Patrick was down getting the grub. She had been standing chatting to the older woman behind the counter. She had a baby sitting on her hip. She had short blonde hair and lived three closes away. Pat saw her quite a lot, usually in the launderette on Sunday afternoons. The baby was aye with her, as if she didnt have a man about the place, whether deliberately so or not.

In juxtaposition to the pipes.

Being sentimental had nothing to do with it. It was just a matter of taking it all seriously. Because let us be frank about something: this is what it involved. It was the issue. He had to take it seriously. If he didni he was finished. And irony could have no part in it. Irony was death. And trying to work things out in advance, that was the last thing to do. He would just be there to do it, to accomplish it, what he was to do. Other folk could discuss the other things. Being a teacher caused people to spend their lives worrying out concepts, postulating this that and the next thing, all manner of hypothesising. The further from activity the better. Please allow us to conceptualise your problem, thus we can attain a sensation of nourishment ergo that your problem, though not yet solved, has been conceptualised, which is tantamount to a solution of course. That kind of shite. Challenges that must always remain academic. Causes you can throw yourself into. The efficacy or otherwise of reprinting the full unexpurgated twenty-four volume edition of Wilson’s TALES OF THE BORDERS. Tremendous. Earthshattering. Existencestopping. Lifebeginning. Getting a bunch of wee first yearers to think you’re the smartest guy in this here universe then off to the staffroom for a brief but earnest discussion with the peers. Great. And onto the local boozer for a quick bout of mutual backslapping and a vegetarian lunch. And a halfbottle of whisky when nobody’s looking. Aye, we’ve all done it. Smashing, great, fine, yes, and now go and enter the various nooks and crannies, take a look at your ceiling and then take another look at auld fucking Goya and relate that to your fucking life and the way you’re quite content to perform the fencing-in job for a society you purport to detest right to the very depth of your being. Sentimental keech, according to Desmond. The kind of comment that always comes from those whose true desire is steadfast inactivity, those whose one lust is for the absolute maintenance of the status quo, and their own wee remunerative numbers within it. They were probably laughing at him last night. He didni give a fuck anyway. But even Alison. When it comes down to it. And this is a fact he must admit of sooner or later, that the delectable Mirs Houston is aye prepared to sit in that company and to not go rushing off when Pat goes rushing off. She doesnt. She is happy to sit on chatting about fucking Xmas Pantomimes when he is not there, when the company comprises Desmond and Diana and fucking Mrs Bryson and the temporary English teacher. His presence is not at all necessary to her enjoyment of the socialising, amongst her cronies of the teaching racket. It is these types of facts that Patrick wishes to be capable of admitting. It is these types of facts he must be capable of admitting, if ever he is to achieve a genuine vision, a genuine honesty in his method of continuing. And let us further admit — and it is a corollary of last night — Patrick Doyle continues only insofar as he desires that he may continue. If he seeks to fucking die then he dies and that’s that. It is the easiest thing in the world to crash the fucking motor at seventy miles per hour. And dont think he doesnt know about that possibility because he does and he has — o christ since way back when he was doing his Christmas Postman as a student and earning the money for that selfsame damn bloody fucking licence. The incidents of last night relate directly to the moment. He was not in a state of befuddlement. He was not of a disorderly brain. A bit neurotic but nothing unusual in that and nothing for fuck sake in the slightest extraordinary about it. Most of yesterday evening could occur at any time of the day or night. And this is important to remember. And last night was a Friday night as well. Thus today being Saturday. Saturday.

Formerly the finest day of the week.

Saturday!

Hurrehh!!

Three cheers for Saturday!!

But not nowadays. Nowadays it is a day for recovery. Nowadays it is a day he could stay in bed and nobody would notice. A day when, if he felt like it,

And what did that Russian poet say about doing things as opposed to having them done to you? But what about Oblomov. Then that auld Cynic who wouldni get out his fucking bath! Quite right. Pat likes having baths as well. But it’s not to do with that. But there again, the whole world is obliged to rise from its place of repose. Patrick is no different. Except that he gets paid a better than average wage, et sumptu publico, which can be said to apply to everyone in one way or another. He has become scunnered by the carry on, that is all. The process has been gradual. Or has it? It hasni really. In some ways it seems to have in other ways no, in other ways it has crept up on him and then let fly with a crack on the fucking jaw.