Low life | 1 February 2018

At three o’clock I took half a bottle of Glenmorangie with me to Jimmy’s. That it was Burns Night, and Jimmy happens to be a proud Scot, was mere coincidence. When I walked in, Jimmy was putting finishing surgical touches to the back of a bullet-head. ‘Do you drink whisky, Jimmy?’ I said. ‘Oh aye,’ he said sadly, snipping at a single hair. But before I could take my coat off, he ordered me out again to the corner shop to buy lager to go with it. ‘What sort of lager?’ I said. He said: ‘You know that new lager called 13? Brewed by Guinness?’ ‘Never heard of it,’ I said. Jimmy looked at me pensively for a second or two before deciding that ignorance on that scale had to be disregarded. ‘Get half a dozen,’ he said.

When I came back, the bullet-head was gone. Jimmy dispensed whisky into two absurd little green glass Art Deco teacups, prised off two beer caps with a dessert spoon, and whacked up the volume of the CD player.