A essay in rhyme and pictures

Checking in

“Where are your masks, lads?”

“I’m exempt! I’ve got my driving licence here!”

“Aye, me too, ’cause if I wear one, pal, I get the fear”

” I cannae drink my beer”

“And that’s why we’re here, tae sink

A hundred pints a fucking night,

Alright? What kind o’ shite

Is this anyway? I thought this was

An Easy fucking Hotel, no’ the Georges Cinq

Ya wank.”

“Just the one room then?”

“Aye, and hen

We arenae poofs

We’re fae Falkirk.”

Buskers

Standards in busking are really declining

I saw one in Sauchiehall Street who was miming

Admittedly Mario Lanza’s dead

And I’d rather have had Joseph Locke instead

But pretending to warble an old Spotify track

Bluetoothed from your phone to a wee speaker stack

Doesn’t seem fair to guitarists and singers

With sandpapered voices and frost shredded fingers

You won’t believe this, but I swear it’s true

That guy’s taking contactless credit cards too

COP26 Conversation

???Did I tell you that

I’m renting out my flat?

Three weeks in a camper van

Shower at work, get

My clothes washed at the launderette

??400 quid a night, AirBnB

That’s nearly six grand clear

They should save the planet

Every year…???

A Very Drunk Nationalist tries To Explain the Parallels Between Scotland’s Relationship With England And That Of Catalonia With Spain. To Two Scared Women From Seville.

Catalonia! Ya Spanish bitches

Ye’ve stole all Barcelona’s riches

Away hame tae Magaluf, M??laga

That San Miguel excuse for lager

That ruined ma Majorcan nights

And your flamenco is pure shite

Really, the Spanish are just the English

Oppressors of a race distinguished

By a desire for independence

I hope youse will show repentance

Fur aw yer sins; that’s what I think

Senoritas! Gonnie buy us a drink?

(This really happened)

Biggars and Biggars

(A music shop; the Sauchiehall Street branch is a showroom but they still sell out of a unit in the Buchanan Galleries)

Biggars. I lusted for a 12 string there.
A Guild. Bought it on the never never. Huge interest rate
I didn’t care
A Yamaha in Cuthbertsons.
And that precious Gibson in McCormacks
Traded for a Martin, long sold
What would I give to have it back?
Biggars. Founded in 1867
Still trading, it seems even today
I won’t go in. Someone might remember
The instalments that I never paid

Easy, Easy

Six cops, sirens, blue lights, cars

To grab some lad whose scars have scars

His Abba t-shirt smeared with Nando’s

A polis says “you’re nicked, Fernando

“Now what’s your address?”

He replies “in hell

“But I’m temporarily at

The Easy Hotel.”

Baristaville

Great Western Road is seething

With baristas and their ilk

The gutters there are heaving

With streams of foaming milk

47 Coffee shops

From Byres Road to St George’s Cross

But a flat White’s not for me

All I want’s a Yorkshire tea

A Marlboro red, a square slice roll

Crammed full of good cholesterol

Then beta blockers, half an aspirin

A great big Atorvastatin

Traditional is best

Give your cardiac a rest

Fleapit

Everybody loves

A film about a plague

Especially one

With Daniel Craig

The Bomb

How many GCHQ alerts

Have triggered Mi5

Sending armed anti-terrorists

To check who’s still alive?

Texts and emails, WhatsApps, calls

Make spies lose their aplomb

Central Station. Under the clock.

The bomb. The bomb. The bomb.

Bedhopping At The Easy Hotel

They’re putting in new mattresses today

And taking the old mattresses away

They’ve seen some action, work, rest and play

All those used divans

In a Dreamland van

Five years at most a hotel mattress lasts

I wonder at those mattresses’ pasts

Joys and sorrows, the aspersions cast

Hearts healed and broken

Words screamed and spoken

In room 3.25 my bed’s new made

(Not included in the price I paid)

And as I bounced on it like a gazelle

I was propelled

Into the ceiling, setting off the fire alarm as well

in the Easy Hotel

All pictures taken on a Xiaomi M2007J17G