2007-05-22 - 2:41 a.m.

The trip was doomed from the moment I realised that I had forgotten my HIV token. The whole point of going to Edinburgh was to pick up ‘The Self Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior’ on DVD – a title that is missing from the Perth twig. I am becoming more unabashed as I get older but I still don’t have the cojones to march up to an assistant and demand that they order an Ultimate Warrior DVD for me. I live in fear of shop assistants. The disdainful glance I caught from an attractive checkout bint at Asda when I was buying a bottle of whisky, Anusol and a jar of pickles still haunts me. I really wish they’d picked a more discreet name than Anusol. ‘Private Piles’ would be my suggestion. Anyway, the bus is late getting in and I’ve forgotten my token so I look at the timetable and see that there’s another bus due in an hour, and moreover, it goes straight to the capital rather than trundling round some useless little one-horse towns where people still burn witches. So, I traipse back home, pick up the token and take the opportunity to wash my hair – I hadn’t been to bed the night before and it was already greased up. I made another error by deciding to keep my jacket on rather than ditching it and heading out in shirt sleeves. It was one of those headfuck spring days when there’s about 3 different weathers all going on at once and I didn’t want to get caught in a shower. Of course, it remained sunny so I was already sweating by the time I got back to the bus station. In my state of insomnia I hadn’t noticed that the next bus due was actually a Megabus, which you have to book in advance. I should really have heeded these grim omens and abandoned the trip altogether, but fuckit, I really wanted that DVD, so I decided that even though I’d already bought a bus ticket I’d go for the next train. After an extra £12 spent (for a single!) and a half-hour spent reading Freakonomics I was finally en route.

I was feeling shitty by this time. The coffee I’d been drinking all night was playing havoc with my heartbeat, and I was stuck behind a group of 4 female students, babbling on loudly and inanely about Runrig and Polish immigration. I now know the sort of people who voluntarily listen to Runrig: the witless and ugly. My misfortunes continued when the train finally docked at Haymarket. I was so desperate to escape their aural shit cannon that I got off there rather than at the more convenient Waverly two minutes down the line. I emerged to brilliant sunshine and immediately broke into a furious torrent of sweat, a real ballsoaker. I’m pretty sure staying up all night somehow fucks with my body temperature. I don’t know whether it’s nerves, booze, genetics or the wrong deodorant, but I sweat far more than most. Maybe I spend so much time on my arse that when I do venture outdoors my body goes into shock mode. Anyway, I strode forth and somehow managed to take a wrong turn in the city where I used to live, on the straight line I needed to walk down. I ended up walking in a big fucking circle just to get to the high street. By now I was tired, sodden and in serious need of urination. My torments were only just beginning.

My stomach had been gurgling away on the train so I decided my first port of call would be McDonalds. Advertising had worked its magic on me: I was curious to try their new McDelux or whatever the fuck it’s called. I thought I could take a piss there at least. This was all my own fault – I’m a budding food snob who has had enough shitty fast food to be put off for life. Glutton that I am, though, I ordered my foodstuff and forgot to ask for ketchup. I thought they had it next to the straws and napkins. They don’t; that’s Burger King. Fuck’s sake. I sweat my way upstairs and find a table that best limits my view of my fellow diners. What a horrible place McDonalds is. Bits of food everywhere, cardboard detritus and defeat puddled on the sticky floor, untucked staffbots pushing brooms into your feet. I peeked cautiously under the bun. What I saw horrified me. First of all the bun was supposed to be ciabatta. McDonalds seem to think that the impotent sponges I was served constitute the classic Italian loaf that I regularly enjoy with my penne arrabiata. Ironically, ciabatta is Italian for ‘carpet slipper’ and that’s exactly what the one bite I took of it tasted of. The filling was far more repulsive, though. The lettuce was wilted and brown at the edges, the cheese scorched to oblivion and the burger… well, let’s just say I’ve seen blades of grass which looked meatier. I threw the whole ‘meal’ in the Mcbin and stormed off, vowing never again to give these people my money. I felt so sickened by the place and the people in it that I couldn’t even bring myself to piss there. If that’s what the food looks like, the toilets must be unutterable.

I’m still sweating like a rapist on E but having nowhere near as much fun. I storm into HIV and take the escalator up to the DVD floor. I flail around wildly, trying to find the wrestling section. Eventually I spot it, only for some fag in bad shoes to pip me to the post. He remains there for some time while I seethe in the background, seriously considering a killing spree. When my nemesis has finally fucked off, I stagger forward and start flipping through the unarranged titles like a maniac, looking for the Warrior. It’s the only one they don’t have. They’ve got fucking Finnish bi-curious mud wrestling, but not the one I want, the one dedicated to one of the biggest names of the 80s, back when wrestling was real. I run my handkerchief over my cascading forehead and storm out, taking a perverse delight in all the shitty luck I’m having. ‘Come on, God!’ I scream, 'what’s next? Anal gang rape?! Bring it on!' I get a few funny looks. My straining t-shirt clings to my flabby body, my nipples clearly visible. I remember that there’s another HIV about a mile ahead.

My bladder is about to explode, though. I have by this point sweated through my shoes, so I can pick up a bit of speed by sort of gliding on my own excretion, slug-like. I’m racking my brains for public toilets when I happen upon Jenners, the fur-coat-and-no-knickers department store that sells wigs and shortbread to the elderly, the stupid and the foreign. I push the doorman out the way and begin a frantic search amid the kafkaesque layout. I’m a manic, sweaty zombie at this point, confused, angry and crippled. The sign says the bogs are on the third floor, but how to get there? Where’s the fucking lift? Maybe if I just keep walking upstairs…. There’s more flights of stairs than floors. You go up one and you’re still stuck in the tweed department. For one ghastly moment I almost wander into the lingerie department, but given my wild-eyed sweaty state, I don’t dare risk it. I double back, bumping into the young woman behind me. She must have thought, ‘ He’s too embarrassed to go into the lingerie section – what a wimp!’ I can’t take much more humiliation. I somehow blunder my way to a lift and frantically jab the button. While I’m dancing around on the spot waiting for the fucker to come down, a female member of staff with a European accent sashays imperceptibly over to me and asks if I want to be perfumed. I screamed that I just wanted to micturate and die, and she backed away. The toilets were on a winding route through the lighting department, various arches, corridors and booby traps. I saw several other befuddled parties and felt marginally better that I wasn’t the only victim of this sinister whimsy.
I finally managed to escape Jenners, by this time running on whatever spirit I hadn’t yet sweated out. By this stage I’m all set to do a Steve Martin by walking into the nearest shop – Marks and Spencer - and growling, ‘I want a fucking Ultimate Warrior DVD right fucking now…’ Amazingly, I get to the other HIV and find an Ultimate Warrior DVD on the shelf, sparing any unpleasantness. I buy it and feel instantly rejuvenated. Consumerism is the best drug there is. There isn’t long until my bus is due, though, so I race around looking for a bank machine, going round and round like a spastic in a magnet factory. I find one much further away than I thought it was and take out £10. I lurch into Fopp and manage to find what was on my mental shopping list: Rainbow Rising by Rainbow, The Devil and Daniel Johnston DVD, Silverfish Trivia by Robert Pollard, and Post-TLC Reformation by The Fall. It’s not that easy, though. It turns out that in my haste to get some cashola, I discover that I have miscalculated and didn’t take out quite enough money, so I put my purchases-to-be next to the Fall section so I can find them again easily, then dart out back to the bank machine, a sweat slick spilling out behind me. I might look ridiculous, but I’m determined to have the last laugh over cunty old God. I get back to Fopp and suavely pick up my items where I’d left them without even looking, attracting admiring glances from my fellow customers. It is only when I get home that I discover that I picked up the wrong Fall album – I got ‘Live at the Garage 2002’ instead of ‘Reformation’. The joke’s on God, though, cos it’s great and has a blistering version of The Joke. Ha!

Just before I head for a much needed pint before I get the bus home, I realise with a jolt that I forgot to buy the Hold Steady album. I think, ‘hang the pint’ and swiftly head for the record shops on Cockburn street. I find it for £7.99 in Avalanche. Deal. The guy that sells it to me is a total dick. He doesn’t say a word and looks like he’s fucked off that I should dare to trouble him with my business. The UK has a lot to learn from America in this respect. I blame Kevin Smith – every asshole who works in a shop now tries to act like Randall Graves. Yeah, well, at least I don’t earn a pittance standing behind a cash register, you fucking faggot. When he handed me my change I didn’t say thanks, I said ‘dick’ and hurriedly walked out without looking back. I took an added delight thinking about him mopping up the pool of sweat I’d left on the floor. When I got to the bus I was ready to collapse. I poured myself into the tiny seating space and waited. To my complete lack of surprise, the last person to get on took the seat next to me. Now we were wedged together for the next hour and 15 in this pathetically inadequate space. She was a custardy girl who yammered into her mobile in a becoming English accent. I tried not to flick too much sweat on her.

I’m never going out again.

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