Low Life | 4 April 2009

On the Eastern Airways flight from Bristol to Aberdeen I spotted a shiny £2 coin lying in the aisle. The businessman in the seat opposite saw me lean down and retrieve it. ‘Toss you for it — heads,’ he said. It came down tails. I trousered the coin and returned triumphantly to the complimentary copy of the current Spectator I’d found in the seat pocket.

At Aberdeen airport I said to the taxi driver, ‘Rothes, please.’ I pronounced it to rhyme with clothes and I assumed the town was just around the corner. ‘Ya mean Roth-ess?’ he rasped. It was about 60 miles away. It was the longest and perhaps the most scenic taxi ride I’ve ever taken. As we passed between stark, smoothly curvaceous hills, the taxi driver reminisced about a particular brothel in Durban, South Africa, that he’d once lived next door to and patronised daily. He enjoyed going there so much, he said, he’d found it rather addictive.