Sometimes people ask me what I do for a living. It's not always been an easy question to answer. If my work involved stuffing people's recently deceased domestic animals to enable a lifelike keepsake of a loved companion I could readily and rightly describe myself as a pet taxidermist.
Alas for me, no such straightforward description is possible. In recent years I have taken to describing myself as a storyteller. Plain and simple. I grew up surrounded by great storytellers. My mum's one for the craic, and both my brothers are highl
y entertaining when it comes to relating jokes, events or stories. Ironically, it's my elder brother, the career policeman, who is possibly the best storyteller in our family. And if I wasn't being regaled at home with stories of a glass-eyed Thai lady-of-the-night or men entering licensed premises with a cat and a flamingo, I was being entertained by some anonymous drunk in a pub down Byres Road.
Glaswegians are renowned for their eloquence, their garrulousness and their recall (even when paralytically drunk) of the apposite story or bon mot. We have given the world some of the best storytellers. Billy Connolly, Frankie Boyle, Chic Murray, Rikki Fulton. All greats when it comes to the art of the raconteur.
And I think that through some osmosis this love of storytelling has rubbed off onto me. So it was with great delight I accepted an invitation from The Scottish Book Trust to take part in a new storytelling initiative called Days Like These. The project is aimed at encouraging the folk of Scotland to put pen to paper, or cursor to screen, and write a short story that spans the length of a single day in their life. It's a brilliant idea and I have already submitted my own short story, entitled AJ and Pickle, loosely based on my first day at school at Hillhead Primary.
When I was at university everyone seemed to have a half-started or a half-finished novel propping up a mattress or lining the bottom of a wardrobe. Those that weren't slaves to prose were crafting beautiful poetry. I could be wrong but these days it seems less folk are taking the time to do this.
What I love about writing and storytelling is that it has absolutely nothing to do with class, education or (perceived) intelligence. To entertain people with stories you don't need a degree in English, you don't need to know how to spell every word properly, you don't need to be fully punctuated. You just need to be able to communicate an idea, a thought.
Some of the very best patter merchants I have ever heard are regular people with no fancy background.
And some of the most crushing bores are the most qualified 'writers' you could ever meet. And the best thing about this project is that I'm sure out there somewhere is a brilliant new storyteller just waiting to be discovered.
I'm coming out of the capsule closetI've spent the past few weeks wearing about half a dozen items of clothing, no more, no less. Living out of a holdall while working away from home, my ability to rotate and interchange two pairs of jeans, three T-shirts and a hoodie is a marvel of maths. Where normally I would never wear the same article of clothing two days in a row, now I revel in my continual abuse of jeanswear and a T-shirt with a photograph of a 1978 Ford Capri on it. There's something liberating about not worrying about clothes. Since the bulk of my wardrobe is in London, it's pointless to worry. Instead I have embraced the situation. Perhaps next week I'll strip my capsule collection down further still to a pair of boxer shorts and a hoodie.
Euro bores know the score for thrilling football I know we're not there (and some of us seek solace in the fact that our English cousins are similarly absent) but it has been a thrilling and breathtaking festival of football over in Europe's two least exciting countries.
Perhaps the fact that Uefa chose to give the Euro 2008 championship to the most charisma-free nations on the continent is an unintended advantage. There is no great Austro-Swiss culture to get in the way of the football, which has been top class. (I know many of you will be thinking that the Belgians still wear the crown for being dull – but at least Belgium has the pissing-boy and mayonnaise.) The Turkish comeback against the technically astute Czechs was possibly the most remarkable game of international football I have ever witnessed. The competition is wide open, with all to play for. It's just a shame that England aren't there: we don't have their early return home to enjoy.
Pies the limit for when it comes to carb comfort food Last Wednesday was a special day for me. Having been home in Glasgow for three weeks I had been making a concerted effort to regulate my daily intake of carbohydrates. It's the easiest thing in the world to throw myself into the loving bosom of stodgy comfort food.
Up until Wednesday I had held pretty firm. A porridge-based breakfast enhanced with berry fruits; smoothies through the morning, followed by a protein-rich lunch with plenty of salad. The evenings were a little more relaxed but nonetheless strictly monitored.
Then Wednesday came along and with it a car-crash of carbohydrates. All was going well until I got to the canteen at work. And there she was, beckoning my name in silky soft tones. Pie, beans and chips. Oh my God. What a beautiful thing. I had to have it. And I did. It was like being back at school. I spent the afternoon chastising myself for allowing my guard to drop. I reminded myself of the temple-like status of my body.
With newly restored resolve I returned to the canteen the following lunchtime to be hideously undone by that most Glaswegian of carb delights: macaroni cheese and chips. Nowhere else in the world do so many carbohydrates party together on the same plate. Nowhere. I was powerless. I succumbed. And it was delicious.
Tomorrow I intend to have haggis, tatties, chips and a baked potato. I have the taste back and I'm unwilling to let go.
The full article contains 1077 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
