The chill is on, friends. The “holiday season”, AKA the fourth quarter, i.e. Rip-Off Central, nee. Christmas, or alternately “winter in New England”. Call it what yer want, it’s wank and the snow is on its way. There’s a cornfield opposite our house, blanched and lifeless like English food. The farmer is fucking dead. I may have mentioned him, takes a bath in an oil drum, etc. Popped his clogs this summer, poor old geezer. Farmers; they’re worse than fairground wallahs for disrespecting machinery and circus wallahs for disrespecting animals. The earth is turning away from the mammalian warmth of that dirty big fire in the sky. Hopefully some nice presents will come our way from Fergie’s Grotto this Christmas.
I live 5 hours behind most people reading this article due to the curvature of the planet. Your lunchtime is my brekky. So when you’re scoffing boiled potatoes and offal, I’m tucking into layered black truffles, pancetta, mozzarella, and a quail’s egg…the ultimate McBreakfast. Food is very important abroad, Tatlock. Not just ‘cos you die without it, but on a creative level I mean. We Brits lack imagination when it comes to nosebag, but I’ve been lying for years about how great British delicacies are; steak pies, Maltesers, black puddings, Warburton’s loaves, Breakaways. A pile of processed cack that kills you. And the “real” gear isn’t much better. It’s pretty embarrassing when yanks ask me, “Do English people really BOIL their food?” so I usually deny it. “Oh, heh, heh, of course not! It’s just a stereotype, a cliché.” But deep down it hurts. Memories of storming half-cut into our kitchen after an all-dayer and being confronted by you know what: Saucepans of horror, on a stove of blandness. Boiled fucking spuds! I can still hear Mother, running in from the living room to prevent me launching the lot up the garden. “Wait! I’m gonna mash them!” she would shout, knowing I was a sucker for stodge. If you’ve ever lifted the lid and beheld several bone-white ovals half-suspended in water, you know the script. All the HP sauce in the world can’t blot out the stomach-jolting alarm of a not-properly-cooked-all-the-way-through boiled potato on a plate. It’s what they eat in Hell. And Hell is a city. Only joking, Tatlock. Calm down.
Why all the grub-talk, you might ask? Well, this week is Thanksgiving here in the Land of the Freaks. And boy do they know how to welly the scran. Don’t get me wrong; me mam can rustle up a decent dinner with the best of ‘em, but these lot really push the boat out 24/7, and Thanksgiving is best of all. My in-laws’ Italian heritage means that, along with traditional fare, there will be antipasto, lasagne, meatballs and more. This Thanksgiving nonsense started when some Pilgrim cunts got kicked out of England a million years ago. They stupidly sailed to New England on the Mayflower in wintertime. They even more stupidly decided to make landfall there in a howling blizzard. Some Indians taught them how to survive, so they took all that knowledge then killed the Indians and stole their land. Thanksgiving celebrates a turkey dinner they shared with the redskins before all the unpleasantness started. The Pilgrims originated in a place full of weird, suspicious people called East Anglia. Their descendants now number in the millions and place great value on tricking other people into giving away their prized resources. Cheerful shit, eh? But ignore me. I’m just bitter, despite having a cracking place to call my own, with a satellite dish and football on tap. Just watched Ajax vs. Real Madrid tonight; Spanish players deliberately getting themselves sent off. Too clever for their own good and the referee urgently in need of a Glasgow kiss for letting it happen. Referees are shit-scared of retribution in that quarter at the moment, as you probably know. Tomorrow night we travel to that fair city to face Rangers; godless vomit-streaked madmen with murder in their eyes. Chichen Itza has been warned not to do his Aztec prayer on the centre spot, lest the pagans of Caledonia become enraged. The munkies have themselves been asked not to sing sectarian songs, for whose benefit I’m not sure. Surely not little Chichen. Itza a mystery. Heh, heh, see what I did there, Tatlock? Never mind. People with murder in their eyes are no stranger to those of us living this side of the pond. Mexico in particular has been plagued by more than referee lynch mobs recently. Try full-on warfare between drug cartel guerrillas and the military for size. Puts a ref getting shouted at by some freckled ginger into perspective, doesn’t it? I’m sure Little Pea won’t even start, so none of it will matter. Murder. Drugs. Death. Handguns. Mayhem. North America. Lovely weather, though. I remember my own stepwise baptism into the blood-curdled waters of this bloody continent. Back in ’94, working with a coke-crazed contractor called Joe Hoyle. A Vietnam vet. Used to force me and another lad to sleep at his house, “to keep watch” over him. One night, a policeman tried to arrest him for possession of cocaine. Hoyle Kung-Fu’d the hapless Dibble and clapped his own handcuffs on him. Threw his police-issue pistol into the harbour. Bragged about it for months. Then one day he didn’t turn up for work. They found him in his bathtub; wearing full Marine regalia, his brains blown all over the tiles. Another fool I worked with, Mike Murphy, just done ten years in clink. He was my age, give or take: 30 summers. Got drunk and killed someone behind the wheel down in New York. Vehicular homicide. Mike’s brother did the bathtub trick with a shotgun, same as Joe. Just months apart. Another was dreadlocked Erin from French Guiana. Papillon country, wrong side of the Panama Canal. Running a half-arsed head shop. We got ripped off by some shyster mate of his for a paint job we did; snide hundred dollar bills he swore came from a bank. Not long after, Erin got arrested. Charged with possession of cocaine and a .357 Magnum, attempted murder and other misdemeanours. And he seemed such a nice lad. Then there was Boston Johnny; smuggled coke onto Martha’s Vineyard in coffee, packed in foil, in tins. Disappeared when he went to meet a new connection from Colombia. The bikers I worked with in Western Mass liked to shoot Smith and Wesson and ride Harleys. I told them I preferred Berreta and Norton. It sounded good and they believed it. I managed to keep it all at arm’s length for a long time, but keeping it in the family is a different trip altogether. In the summer of ’95 my wife’s granddad died from a single gunshot to the back of his shaven head. He was a short but brawny man, his thick arms covered in homemade military tattoos. First time we met he looked up and said from behind the ever-present shades he wore, “Jeez, you’re a big one, best not mess with you!” Oh, the irony. His wake was like something out of the Sopranos, several years before that fictional series was screened; short, stocky men, all with that same olive complexion and razor-sharp gleaming suits. Dropping to one knee and crossing themselves a respectable distance from the open casket. Most dramatic. There were even more of them at the funeral the following day. The cortege passed right through the centre of Worcester, Massachusetts in the middle of the afternoon, numerous motorcycle cops directing operations. I was to learn many more dark secrets in the years to come; the family insults answered with bullets, the high-flyer whose college career was financed by a bent horse race, plus other stuff that won’t be discussed here or anywhere else. I introduced them to Salford culture at drunken family reunions. It was a clownish distraction from the deathly underbelly of the American Dream.
One such reunion will occur in a couple of days. Thanksgiving’s at New York this year, not Boston, and I’m looking forward to it. A million dollar house, where food of the Gods will be served. A far cry from the Wilton Arms in Prestwich Village. No bland potatoes there, you can be assured of that. I just wish my mother was here for it. I could apologise for all the trouble I caused over those boiled bastards. But anyway, Glasgow Rangers, tonight’s the night. I’ve a suspicion this “flu” I have will worsen and I’ll be forced to leave work at lunchtime, i.e. your evening…nudge, nudge…
The Rangers free-for-all has just ended and I am surprised at the hatred I feel for the ugly pasty-faced cunts. At least Rooney put that penalty away well. With luck, he’ll find his form again, until he leaves in the summer. I hope Ibrox disappears down a fucking big sinkhole, taking all that bigotry and ignorance with it. Their faces looked like boiled spuds, boiled spuds with acne. That wannabe Cockney douchetard in the Union Jack jacket, what exactly was he trying to say? And those preposterous giant slabs of steel they use to fill in the Subbuteo corners of their pathetic little Queen-loving queerbox? But enough of that silliness. Celtic are only marginally better, though nowhere near as horribly chinless. Or are they? When you create an artificial genetic divide in any environment, effectively cutting down one’s reproductive options by 50%, ugly thick cunts are inevitable on both sides. Nah, only joking, Tam O’ Shatlock. Chin up. Now where was I? Oh, yeah, I was talking about Thanksgiving…it’s tomorrow, and the missus has put the blocks on us going to NYC; she wants a quiet one, just us here in the Little House on the Prairie. No million dollar gaff, no lasagne…and she’s ordered me to do five hours hard labour in the effing back garden. On a pissing holiday! I just hope Rooney’s gonna give us some value now he’s on 200K per week. That’s some coin. Well beyond Cadillac Pussy. We’re talking Rolls Royce Fanny Bulge, or Lamborghini Cunt Lump here, and nowt less will do. So think on…