Hogmanay

Dawn comes round,

and there you are,

still wearing the suit

 

George Chalmers

Hogmanay – a time for jolly japes; time to assist a friend, deep in his cups, onto the last train to anywhere when he should be heading for Edinburgh. Funnier still, forget to phone the pal's wife to mark her card. A wrong time to exit bleary from a station into an alien ice world having left an overcoat on the train. Snowflakes the size of shortbread triangles coalesced into razor-tumbleweed.
     'Edinburgh’s quiet this year', I thought. Alcohol wearing off meant half realities creeping in, unfamiliar buildings swirled as pavements loomed at shifting angles. A lone taxi idled at traffic lights. I approached the driver's window. (The whole sorry tale is not something I've been permitted to forget, so this is it, in a nutcase).
     'Aye son?' asked the man, looking at the two-tone Oxfords. (It was the 80s).
     'Where am ah pal?'
     He laughed a long rush of smoke and coughed a while.
     'Ah've got 70 quid here – get me tae Edinburgh before the Bells an' it's yours.'
     I climbed in the back. The taxi wrapped me in nicotine-stained leatherette – it felt good. It didn't move.
     'This is Inverness laddie and almost 10.30 – pm – nothing moves here for days'.
     That's why the ticket guy asked for money, I recalled, before a far off land called 'Inverness' registered. 'Inver -fuckin'-ness!' I moaned and sank onto the cool windowsill of self-pity.
     'You're not supposed to be here – in Inverness – you want to be – in Edinburgh – perhaps.' A slow delivery that translates as, 'You're chust a daft, lowlander wearing inappropriate footwear'.
     He told me he'd finished for the evening but would take me to a 'hesitant' B&B – '£15 a night, clean, fried breakfast'. I opened the back door to be very, very ill. 'Everyone's a critic,' he quipped, like a stable Travis Bickle. 'You need a bed son – I'll take you round'.
     Snow enveloped the cab like steam from a vent. We crossed a bridge, turned a street or two and pulled up outside a villa that could've been out on bail, windows glowing warm like a womb with a bar.
     The driver spoke to a man who ducked to look in the taxi. 'Help me', said my face. He guided me to a small back room with a tennis racquet propped in one corner. Moments later he brought a jug of water – I drained it straight off and gave him 50 quid.
     He fetched another jug and a cup of sweet tea and placed two gelatine-coated capsules on a chair beside a bed. 'Take one with yir cup o' tea, the other one when you wake up with a bit of a head.' Ignoring his advice I swallowed both and came to shivering on the 2nd of January, still wearing the suit. The tennis racquet was a stringless banjo.

 

 

Ten years or so later, on the eve of '91, me and a co-accused are secreted in greenery at the back of an asylum. Dungavel prison, at that time, was a semi-open nick and felons nearing the end of a long-term sentence could wander (for 30 minutes) around the inner perimeter. On the free side, stretching as far as a bat could see was an area termed a 'Nature Trail'. During our wait, I spied a greater crested grebe or maybe a drookit doo – hard to tell when you’re inside a bush.
     The plan was simple; a con allowed outdoors on a placement in the community would collect a cargo stashed earlier by friends. Then, on a signal from us, he would creep close to the fence and throw the bottles over. We would smuggle them past Slow Boab (the security screw that night) and into the dorm in time for lock-up.
     At the sound of the secret whistle (from 'The Vikings' movie) a Visigoth smeared in woad charged from the undergrowth. He tossed three bottles of spirits over the fence that smashed on the gymnasium roof – then galloped back into the bushes. All was quiet, except for a grebe laughing in the dark.
     'Is there anythin' left ya headcase?' asked my buddy. Sounds of carrier bags being searched carry on the still air.
     'There's a sliced loaf and a bottle o' Buckie,' whispered the pagan con. 'Jist bring the loaf or you'll get done for rustlin', sighed my pal, 'we'll toast the Bells in'.
     At the death we paid 20 quid, on tick, for a bottle of vodka swung on a line from another dorm. In fact, outside or inside, that was one of the best New Year's parties ever.
     Mostly, for long-term prisoners, you're in a single cell, perhaps out of your nut, banging the door with a shoe for five minutes at Big Ben's first bong. It's traditional. Although, by the seventh Hogmanay you just want the banging to stop.
     In many ways I blame The Broons and their ilk for perpetuating an idealised notion of a Scottish Hogmanay. Table laden with shortbread, black bun (still don't know what that is) and 'Mad IRA cake', as granny named it. Tidy and still sober, upright Maws and Paws raising a sensible measure to the future.      Was New Year really like that – or did Oor Wullie spike the cordial?
Hogmanay's a pure get-up. 'Next year must be better' – and all that nonsense. Propping ourselves up for the next sucker punch. It's like the last night in prison waiting for liberation; the only time you're actually free. Dawn comes round and there you are – still wearing the suit.

 

George Chalmers is a writer and community worker