– Sound … ah said. It wisnae really sound. Ah would rather have stayed with Fiona and Grace than listened to Vaughan’s shite. – … eh, but maybe I’ll jist chill here for a bit.

– Lloyd, I’ve got loads to do. I don’t want you under my feet, one bairn’s enough, she smirked.

– Thanks a lot, ah laughed, pretending at being hurt. We continued with this ritual. It was pathetic and dull, but it often gave me a strange, queasy feeling of exhilaration to talk bland shite with people and not worry about being a smart cunt simply because you were linked in some way to each other. It was a wild trip.

Too much ay this shite can fuck a cunt’s heid but, and after a while ah decided ah’d better go and see Vaughan.

IT WAS A pretty glorious summer’s evening when ah got out in the street. Ah found myself with a strange spring in my step. Of course, it was Thursday. Last weekend’s drugs had been well and truly processed by now, the toxins discharged: sweated, shat and pished out; the hangover finito; the psychological self-loathing waning as the chemistry of the brain de-fucked itself and the fatigue sinking into the past as the old adrenalin pump starts slowly getting back into gear in preparation for the next round ay abuse. This feeling, when you’ve cracked the depressive hangover and the body and mind is starting to fire up again, is second only to coming up on a good E.

AT THE CLUB, Vaughan’s playing bools with this old cunt. He nods at me, and the auld cunt looks up with a slightly tetchy stare and ah realise that I’ve broken his concentration by casting my shadow over his line of vision. Steeling himself, the auld codger lets the bool roll, roll, roll and I’m thinking he’s gone too far out, but naw, the wily auld cunt kens the score because the bool does a Brazilian spin, that’s what it does, a fuckin Brazilian spin, and it comes back like a fuckin boomerang and slips like a surreptitious queue-jumper in behind Vaughan’s massed lines of defence, rolling up to the jack and sneaking it away.

Ah cheer the auld gadge for that shot. Vaughan has his last one but ah decide no tae watch it but to go in and get some drinks. Ah discover I’ve a wrap of speed in my pocket, left over from fuck knows when. Ah take it to the bog, and chop it out into some lines on the cistern. If I’m gaunny have to talk bools ah might as well fuckin go for it in a big way … Ah come out, charged up to fuck. Ah remember this gear, dabbing away at it the other week. It’s much better to snort though, this stuff.