IT’S after midday and I am sitting here in my pants. I have just negotiated a deal with a TV executive and spoken to a glamorous actress about her next series. All in my pants.
The TV guy was in a suit on the fourth floor and the actress was wearing period costume on a busy set. I was in my own wee office. In just my pants.
Now I had better get down to writing this column. Hardly worth getting changed just to write, is it? I’ll do it in my pants.
Maybe I should flick through the newspapers again for ideas on what to write. But not yet. There’s no rush. Those guys in Aberdeen haven’t been shouting at me to hurry up. Yet. I’ll just go and look out the window and gaze at real Stornoway people. Because I can – unlike the people I have been speaking to this morning, who are not as comfortable in their tight-fitting corsets in their fancy offices in the big cities. Who can they see out of their windows? Other rats in a race, that’s who.
That’s the beauty of being not just self-employed but a regular homeworker. I can loll about without having to pretend to be busy. I can work hard when I want to or I can take it easy if I should so choose.
Like when the wife is out. Office workers tell me they are only really busy when the boss is around.
Look, there is John Norman. He owns that plumbing firm up there, you know. Off he goes up the hill with his faithful collie. I should go out and walk Hector, my schnauzer. But I can’t go out dressed like this.
Obviously. People here are so easily shocked. Except the ones who are shocking themselves.
See that woman in that car over there? She is up to something. Every few days, she sits there as if she is waiting for someone. Then she suddenly drives off.
Between you and me, last week I was round the corner and I’m sure I saw a man getting into her car. He was 20 years older than her if he was a day. This people-watching is great fun.
That’s whaddaya call him getting out of that wee car over there. The MSP fellow. You know. Alasdair thingummybob. Allan. Alasdair Allan, that’s it. He is looking very tweedy today. He clomps off down the hill in his sensible shoes, the stiff breeze making all his tweeds and important-looking papers flap about.
Now there’s a bigger wagon pulling up. A cool-looking dude in dark clothes alights. Hey, I know that face, too. That’s the MP. Angus MacNeil, for it is he, is not in tweeds but in a sharp suit. In his matching collar and tie, he could have just stepped out of Burton’s window, as my father used to say. Or John Lewis, maybe. Is that not where the MPs spend their big allowances? MacNeil also sprints off down the hill. They must be having a high-level meeting in the SNP office round the corner.
MacNeil is not carrying any papers, I notice. Is that the crucial difference between an MP and MSP? The one who sits in the big parliament is too important to be expected to carry anything. Poor Alasdair Allan. Maybe he is having to carry both their papers.
Maybe I’ll watch the Olympics for a bit. That’ll make a nice change from the usual daytime fare of wall-to-wall Jeremy Kyle.
Have you seen these saddos – I mean people with issues? You get, for example, a guy who says he suspects his partner is cheating. Then this shrieking banshee with tattoos and piercings through every sticky-out bit of her body explodes on to the stage. She’s got issues, all right. About 10 of them by the time she was 25.
Meanwhile, tonight I shall again embrace convention and climb into my clobber. It will be time to put the world to rights over a mound of satay or something with rice and peas with a fellow who has just jetted halfway round the world. He X-rays bits of oilrigs for a living in a place with an unpronounceable name in Malaysia.
I wonder if he does that in his pants. It is very hot there. I shall ask him. He is my brother, after all.
You have already worked out that I am just kidding, haven’t you? You don’t really think that I am still in my pants at this time of day.
Course not. I am just being discreet for the sake of all the ladies from the Free Church (Continuing) who say they read this avidly every week.
I am, of course, completely naked.
Published in the Press and Journal on August 13, 2008
