Assisted Dying in a cold country.

I’m older now than I was when I was younger and time has taken its toll. My brother has enough hair for both of us, about the same as Johnny Weismuller’s Tarzan after a crocodile attack, which makes nature seem rather cruel. We did a bit of catching up in the morning after the night before. He’d given me his house keys and I’d left his local, The Ship, early before shutting time. My best mate was with me, so he should have known not to follow me, because if you keep the canal on your left, how did it appear on our right? In the Bermuda Triangle only boats and planes went missing. I intended to write a best seller about The Forth and Clyde Canal appearing and disappearing. There was no answer. It was right up there with the cup of boiling water with no t-bag in it and, moments later, there were two.

Closer to home, or so it seemed, I had to approach people like a mugger and ask directions. Somehow we ended up in an industrial estate. I knew my brother didn’t stay in a yellow Portakabin, but didn’t want to admit defeat and flag down a taxi, because I was sure his flat was just around the next corner. My pal, however, was wheezing and slumped down as much as a thirty stone man can be, without lying down-relatively- flat, against a black metal fence.

By some strange quirk of fate I saw my brother trying to get into his house. He didn’t seem to realize he was locked out as I had his keys. He’d had a history of this kind of behaviour. The week before he’d spent twenty minutes trying to get the key into the door before realizing that the stairs weren’t an escalator and he stayed on the top floor landing. We made good our escape on this occasion and I shepherded us all, especially myself, into the close.

In the old days, of course, the inside was the outside and not to be used as a communal living room. Now each landing has a £500 mountain bike outside with the non working man’s cloth cap, a plastic bag, over the saddle, little understanding that it doesn’t rain inside; some Adidas football boots and trainers, which only cost a measly £80 each, rigger work boots that nobody would steal but me and someone laughing and watching a black and white Laurel and Hardy DVD, whilst playing with their IPod phone. Well, maybe, I made that last part up, or I might just have seen it in my head.

After a quiet night out the bathroom is the smallest and most important room in the house, and the golden rule is don’t fall asleep in there, because the rest of the house has flooring, some of it carpeted, for that very purpose.

In the morning, the bathroom is even more important than it was the night before. The cardinal rule is not, as everyone thinks, don’t use the last piece of toilet roll, but don’t use a corner of the carpet that has not been tacked down properly. This can cause poltergeist bumps and strange haunting smells to appear, even with the window open.

I’m not much of a clotheshorse, but there is only so much wandering around in your boxers that you can do without admitting you’d like to know where your clothes are. Logic dictates that if they are not in the bedroom they must be in the kitchen or living room. Check the communal space outside the front door among all the detritus in case logic hadn’t thought of that. They may be hanging on the handle bars of a mountain bike, that has never seen a mountain and is still stalled, waiting patiently, at the traffic lights of life, to make a right turn down the stairs. If your clothes aren’t in any of these places you’ll need to turn native, live off the land and get an Emergency Loan from The Social Fund. Don’t tell any lies when you fill in the forms, just tell it as it is here.

I need:

1)one crumpled shirt from Primark £5.
2) denims from Asda £4.99.
3) shoes that don’t really fit from Barnardo’s Charity Shop £3.50.
4) White Lightning (cider) 300 litres £263.47

Total: £276.76

In the anything else to add bit at the end of the form explain that White Lightning (cider) is guaranteed to give higher than normal salt levels, higher blood pressure and kill you within two years and, respectively, therefore, you’re just taking money from your future pension pot.

In the meantime it’s best to start the day with sweetened tea and white Sunblest bread toasted because it’s a bit blue. A good game to play at the kitchen table is ‘Dead or not dead?’

I’d say: ‘Sandy McQuillan’.

My brother would say, ‘he’s dead.’

Pat would say, ‘remember the time he stole his mum’s perm kit to do his hair like Charlie Nicholos?’

And we’d laugh, because it was as if he was sitting at the table with his slight moustache and fronds of hair splashed onto his forehead like a wild life film about ginger-permed foxes.

Pat would say, ‘his brother’s dead too.’

But we couldn’t give him a place at the table, because none of us could really picture him.

‘Callum Ballnatyne.’

We all knew he was dead. He’d have stabbed you for sixpence, but he wasn’t a bad guy, he would have given you the money back if he knew you.

‘Harry, his older brother.’

‘He’s not dead,’ my own brother said, ‘the last time I saw him his bird felt my balls under the table and said to Harry “are you goin’ to let him laugh at me like that?” But, she was a junkie, or just from Whitecrook,’ he explained. So Harry didn’t get a place at the table because we were scared of his bird.

‘Jim Gillespie.’

That was a hard one. There was always an element of disappointment that the person we'd nominated wasn't dead. We knew that Callum had stabbed him when they were best mates, but he’d survived that accident. My brother thought he was dead, but Pat thought he’d just moved away to England. There was something about Nottingham in the tea leaves, so he didn’t get a place at the table.

‘Uncle Gerald.’

That was a harder one than Harry's bird. He was my father’s brother. We thought he’d died years ago. But I’d checked it out. The registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages had no record of him. She knew who he was and thought he might have been in a home in Yoker. He hadn’t been able to roll his own fags any more and got punch drunk on his feet.

We gave him a place, but he grew cocky; younger than he was and tended to talk too much, especially when he’d had a few. Our dad would have been proud of us, taking him in like that, but it was Father’s Day and we’d need a little drink ourselves, to celebrate.