Scots Taffer on 29/9/2006 at 04:21

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I'm fuming right now, so I'm going to have a rant. I'll warn most of you straight off the bat that it doesn't particularly go anywhere (LOL LIKE ALL MY POSTS RITE??!) or make any relevatory insights into the human condition but whatever the fuck, I need to vent: I'm angry.

Friday afternoon's office tradition: lunch at the bowls club for two hours or so.

It's a perfect day. Hits midday and the sun is lit up like a surly drunk, which is an appropriate metaphor considering as what happens next. A group of us head out to the bowls club - a brief aside: for those not familiar with the Australian bowls club, it's the combination of the place that all your retirees while away the hours throwing black balls after one poor white bastard in some reversal of a sick racial war and a workers club for those who labour thereabouts; it has cheap food, cheap drink, convivial atmosphere and that's all a man needs on a Firday afternoon. So we get there, we get our food and our drinks, the conversation is easy flowing and comfortable.

Then a man in his late 20's saunters over and asks if he can get a light for his cigarette. There's only one smoker at our table and he obliges, the man thanks him, lights up and wanders back to his table. I notice that he has a distinct wobble to his step, I also clocked the distinctive accent. A fellow Scotsman. A drunk fellow Scotsman. I should have perhaps given a brief disclaimer to everyone at the table before his next appearance.

Not too long after, he reappears and we assume it's for another loan of the lighter but no, he asks if he and his friend - curiously absent from the table at this point - can join us. As an amiable bunch of fellows, we say okay and he pulls over a chair and sits down.

Right away, he reaches over and plucks a fried chip from one of my colleague's plates without even asking. My teeth go on edge. What the fuck? Luckily, no one notices - or if they do, they're polite enough to think he's just being anarchic. We chat as normal and he interjects with slurred sentences and sloppy trail-offs, and then we chat about some movie about an Indian and a motorbike (come on, I work with gearheads for the most part) and how this true-life figure was on heart medication while performing his record breaking feats. I know of the movie, it has Anthony Hopkins in it.

The drunken man who hails from St Andrews bursts with enthusiasm at the topic of medication and starts babbling about Anna Nicole Smith's son, how he'd had this particular "depressant" drug (I assume he meant anti-depressant but the fuckwit probably couldn't see straight let alone make sense) and that he was also on this drug. He then went on a ten minute discourse of how overdoses are "fucked up" and "how can someone overdose", repeating himself several times, trailing off more than a dozen, and we all start to feel like we're part of some sketch show.

In the meantime, his friend returned from the bar (they hadn't drunk enough apparently) and looks utterly confused as to his friend's relocation, he makes no attempt to join him however and sits in the smoker's section, puffing away and looking anxious.

This is where I got angry. This guy is seriously rambling, making no fucking sense at all and to lighten the situation, one of the guys at the table makes a joke about the medication, like: "I hope you didn't take more than six of those before your beer!" (This magical number six was devised by this moron as he established what is a "fair do's" amount of this anti-depressant to take, he asserted six as he'd taken six at once before and it was "okay")

When the joke was made, there was some good-natured laughing around the table. I say good-natured because it was specifically that, it wasn't classroom sniggering and at it wasn't directed mocking laughter. We just laughed to alleviate the fact that we were all getting quite uncomfortable in the presence of this babbling buffoon, there was no malice in it at all.

This guy's face suddenly slackens and he looks from over his sunglasses in a decidedly hostile manner. He mutters: is that your little joke?

NO FUCKING SHIT, SHERLOCK. DO THEY NOT HAVE JOKES BACK IN SCOTLAND? NO, WAIT. I'M FROM THERE, SO LET ME HELP OUT OUR READERS NOW.

It's not Australian's fault that they are not raised in a society with a predeliction to drink almost constantly (okay, they may try on occasion and perhaps their occasional bouts of gluttenous drinking definitely trump most Scots I know but they certainly don't do it as often) to drown their insufferable depression at how fucking miserable life is in their grey-skied shithole of a country (you can logically extend this to all of Britain, in my opinion) and to take grievous offence at nearly any sideways glance, misspoken word and implied slur upon their person, almost always to culminate in violence of the fist to face or bottle over the head variety. This has happened to people I know, they have been completely blameless and this sort of barbaric shit has still happened to them.

Now let me put you ease (or into disappointment) now, no one gets into a fight and no one gets put in hospital and no one gets busted the fuck up, so all of you hoping for an action packed denouement to this story can pack your bags now and fuck off.

The guy who had made the joke repeats himself and at this point everyone is looking at the Scottish guy, I told them afterwards at this point that I was actually tensed and was ready to spring up if he made a move (LOL ACTION STRONTS FIGURE WITH MEAT THIGH POPPING ACTION). I didn't know if they'd expect the random violence and I knew there was a distinct possibility, luckily, the moment passed the guy sort of looked around the table and he sort of chuckled. I don't know if somewhere in his spastic mind he stumbled across the delerious fucking notion that perhaps hitting one guy with a group of four others who are mostly built like fucking tanks (myself not included) would not be the best idea in the world.

Anyway, after that tense moment, we started talking again like he wasn't there and after a few minutes of sullen silence he took the hint, got up and excused himself. As he walked away I said to the table: there's a fucking poor specimen of my country. I don't know if he heard me and I don't care, but here's the kicker - he had a fucking lighter in his pocket, as he lit his cigarette from it a moment later so the entire episode was completely unnecessary. WHAT?!?!

I don't get that country. I don't get the mindset. I fucking hate it. I really wish I didn't hate it so much and generalise so badly but jesus, it all it takes is one negative experience with the first Scottish person I've met since I moved here to reinforce and reaffirm that I made the right decision in leaving that shithole of a country.

I hate that we were having a perfectly cheerful lunch and he not only derailed it with his slurred babblings (and yes, you could say we're partly to blame for allowing him to sit but AGAIN, that's because we are relaxed people in a relaxed state and shit doesn't tend to go down that way!) but even created a moment of tension. Afterwards people were talking about him and the unpredictability they all felt from that moment onwards, only an idiot couldn't have pegged that he'd had a gutful from the get go, but I wasn't surprised to learn that most of them didn't expect the sudden hostility. I hate that there are people in this world who can't take a joke, that the world is their enemy, that they cannot approach the world with the sensibility and calm that some of us try to apply.

Urgh. Sorry for posting this, I just needed to get it out. So now I'll GET OUT. :(

Swiss Mercenary on 29/9/2006 at 04:32

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In before Scots_Taffer.

Ultraviolet on 29/9/2006 at 05:40

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Shit, I wish I could even get a one hour lunch on ANY fucking single day. Fuckin' 30 minutes bullshit...

Ultraviolet on 29/9/2006 at 07:16

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I just meant for getting past the less comfortable stage early in peristalsis where the eating so fucking fast causes pain, but yeah, I guess hard liquor would be a bit more satisfying.

Raven on 29/9/2006 at 09:50

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Scots - you have to take into account our national inferiority complex and the innate jealousy of everyone else and everything and rememeber this infliction is only hidden by the thin veneer of being temporary sober, outnumbered or sometimes in a good mood. We are also incredibly bloody racist too - we think we are better than the English and the English think they are better than everyone - hence we own the rights to the world, legislation and law just cover up what we are all thinking (ask anyone in a non-professional occupation in scotland, and that will unforuntately be the majority response). The world was invented by a Scot yeah? - (but the bloody english stole it from us, rite?)

The reasons for these less spoke of character flaws are many and complex - the most recent generation being caused by the government (both of them :P) trying to create a nation of Richard Bransons and believing that everyone CAN and SHOULD be Richard Branson (at least that is the message, it is obvious that they actually seek the diamond in the rough for it is worth more than the rest of the bunch put together, so they continue the search for the one). This has created the situation that failure is never an option and so we have no cooping mechanisms for failure, yet everyone is doomed to it because you CAN'T have a nation of Richard Bransons and people don't realise till about the age of 16+ that they have been lied to. Failure, and the anger caused by the inability to cope with it can relate to failure in ANY area of life social, romantic, business - fuck even spiritual and leisure.

I fear ANY time the tartan army are on the march... the only reason, and I mean ONLY reason that they are not renowned fuck heads anymore is that most effort is being put into making England look bad - if that wasn't there then we would resume our normal state of trying to achieve some impossible state of fulfilment and happiness through alcohol, failing miserably and blaming everyone else accept ourselves (football being only a minor distraction if we were any better at it then expectiations would be raised and things would be MUCH worse). Of course, not EVERY Scot is like that, and many are seemingly quite nice but seriously bud it is all fucking show, and cross me at the wrong moment and I'll fucking do yoo. This as Scots says this goes for; the wrong look, encroaching upon your girl friend (or even your friend who is a girl), knocking you, spilling a drink, looking better than you, looking more successful, or even daring to enjoy yourself more. That is a cold harsh truth of Scotland. It comes mainly from years of underinvestment in the PEOPLE of Scotland and broken promises, a defensive nature and attitude stretching right back to the days of highland clearances and probably before. I also believe it is a hidden beast in ALL of us (those raised in “normal culture” over here at least) - I like to think of myself as a pacifist, a calm, cool, collected and easy going guy - yet in my (thankfully infrequent) darker moments I have seen these frightening traits of this hidden typical Scottish nature creep up.

It is very depressing, but thankfully we (maybe most of us) are good at suppressing this angry Scots nature inside of us... but you have been warned. Those happy, harmless back packers or tourists, hill walkers, heck even those charity workers that you think are such a good laugh and good natured... catch them at the wrong time, in the wrong place, in the wrong bar, under the wrong cold grey sky, and they too may be fighting the instinct to put a bottle in your face - because you have your hair gelled over to the wrong side.