Like it was Nothing

The scene is a bar busy with young people and there’s the sound of chatter beneath loud music.  Dillon sits with his elbows leaning on his lap and his fist supports his chin.  There is a girl sitting beside him and she’s poking the ice cubes in her drink with her straw.  The silence is broken.

Dillon

Yup!  I definitely think he is a keeper.

Gloria

What do you mean?

She looks at him and smiles.  Dillon says nothing.  Gloria puts her drink down.

I don’t know what you mean, Dillon.

Dillon

Aw, just this new boy: he has potential.

Gloria

Are you talking about...

Cut to the bar where a tall young man with dark hair is talking to someone, leaning nonchalantly, smiling and nodding.  He looks directly at the camera: he knows Gloria is looking at him, his smile widens.  Cut to Gloria who is flushed and produces an embarrassed smile.

Dillon

Yes.  Him.

Gloria

I think he’s a nice guy.

Dillon

He could be a suitor for you at long last, Gloria.

Gloria

My goodness, Dillon, you are obsessed.  You say that about every guy that holds a door for me.

Dillon

But this guy (he laughs slightly) this guy I’ve known a year from the team, right! - listen Gloria, and he’s never been as, hmm... How should I say – as lively!  as when he’s with you.

Gloria

Complete bullshit.

Gloria grabs her purse and began rummaging through it and pulled out a small make-up mirror and scrutinised her face.  The silence resumes.

Dillon

You had your chance.

Gloria

What?

Dillon

I said you had your chance with me and you let it go like it was nothing.

Gloria

Aw thank you, Zak.

Cut to the guy from the bar putting drinks on the table.

Zak

Sorry ladies and gents, met a girl I know at the bar, couldn’t get away – typical!

Dillon takes a sip of his new drink, Gloria glances at him nervously. 

Dillon

(To Himself.) Like it was nothing.

Whispers in the Library

The quiet is
punctured
by whispering.

My concentration:
thrown to the waves;
to the bird-breath
of hushed tones.

Not even music
will ease the
shrill,
gas-leak
language
of the whisperers. 

London 2013

People I know always talk about escaping; as if they’re trapped in the streets and walls of the place they were born - condemned to suffer there forever.  I don’t understand these people and I usually don’t associate myself with them.  How could you not love your home: it’s your city and everything in it; and it’s your people and all your memories.  When I walk these streets I feel a connection – a sense of ownership.  It’s not arrogance, it’s pride.  I love where I live.      

I dozed on the bus with surreal images rising and falling in my mind of where I’d come from and what I did there.  I get homesick very easily, I miss Glasgow even if I’m gone but a day.  Ten hours in the same seat with the same people takes its toll but at least now the sun was coming up and the surrounding fields and rivers were illuminated yellow.  Summer was latent and it was beginning in the south as it always did.   

But suddenly, the passing world begins to change and morph: green becomes grey, starlets became pigeons, and fields became industry.  I didn’t quite believe what was happening as the Megabus took the city in the early May-day sun.  Recovering from my slumber, I yawn and try to gather my bearings.  It started with blocks of concrete towers and I knew this was London.  This nuance of the city was the grit and graffiti staircase I see on the TV.  It was riotous back then, but everything was still in the morning light. 

Now, on the motorway, we’re floating as a humanist’s master plan unfolds in spires, square rooms and the halo of the Wembley stadium.  London was resolute: it was history and geography and politics sprawled out in square miles.  I remember Glasgow, my favourite scene: the Kingston Bridge by night where the city spreads its wings to carry you over the Clyde; the buildings glow purple, blue, neon green and you could be anywhere in the world.  I used to wait a little at the end of the day so I could get the express bus home and I could live this moment on the bridge.  In April, rays of the evening sun would light up the hills somewhere in the distance.      

The streets seem quaint as the city wakes up.  The shopkeepers are unfolding the shutters; cyclists and runners seem to be the city’s only population.  Through the trees I catch a glimpse of horses galloping in one of the city’s parks – I don’t know which one but I’m trying to guess; I’m trying to guess street names and recognise Underground stations I’d seen on the news or a film. 

Turning a corner, I know this place.  Westminster – it looks like it’s made of crackers and bread sticks.  I’d seen it before, but never like this; on the news it seems so remote – it’s incredulous that I’m here.  I want off this bus.  I want to move in this city - to feel the pulse of its racing heart.  I want to live: experience the grandeur of London’s institutions; the buzz in its core; the breathlessness when you look up from the foot of a sky scraper and you see the pinnacle of human endeavour.  

Impatient and slightly nervous, I finally alight at Victoria bus station.  It’s funny how all bus and train stations look the same in every city like it’s trying to tell you once you’ve arrived that it doesn’t matter where you’ve been because the journey hasn’t even begun yet.

When I’m on the streets they’re golden in the sun.  It’s 6am and I’m shivering.  I think that in Glasgow it’ll most likely be raining now.  I long for home.  There’s people shouting and police are putting up barriers for a protest later on that day.  I’m surprised at how pristine everything looks.  It’s funny how the buses are actually red.  I know there’s so much more to come from the city at the centre of the world.  London has so much more to show me and as I branch out I feel like I can make it work.    

Into Edinburgh

It was pouring of rain, my shirt was too small, and I was very sweaty as I hurried through Edinburgh.  It was July so it was warm in a thick, consuming way; it was Scotland so it was raining. 

I was lost, and I hated Edinburgh.

The city was to me a town on steroids.  It was quaint, but never having the buzz of a poper city – not like my city, Glasgow.  Like when I begin to drink cider, I immediately long for lager; in Edinburgh, I wish I was pursuing the streets of Glasgow.

Although, there is something very profound about Edinburgh, something almost oppressive.  It sinks in the middle and its concrete buildings rise and encompass you; the hills over here and over there and somewhere, the sea, out of sight but always there, a tangible chill in the air. 

You can feel the heavy weight of Scottish history burdening like a school bag as you emerge from Waverly station.  Trudging up the Royal Mile – dare I risk the labyrinth, the staircase, the alley; the throughways and the by-ways and the people going this way and that ways?  The open spaces green where no river runs.  I can’t float, only hurry.