Once, long time, ago, crawling through a window, I recalled a pleasant
recollection I’d once had some good few months previously. I’d been sitting
near a small hand-painted bucket at the time.
Of course, my solicitor was there, chaking curled fingers into my furred
depths, mutering as she did about colour, as if that was the crux of the
issue. For Jupiter!.and it was whilst recalling this and other true facts of
my very own life, that, and I remind you that this is whilst I was
recollecting, that I remembered a recent chance meeting with my dear old Mr.
Armitage Shanks.
“Er, note-eh ben-eh, lad.ready? The following if you please: Shanks comma
Armitage comma.pause.question mark new question (capital dee lad) do females
comma human comma know of said Shanks question mark. End.”
Well, tenderly I urged my own tongue into an almost inaccessible cavity of
my young lads self esteem as I cast my eyes over the note.

“Tut”

I said.

“Tut tut.”

Much later my legal paraphernaliant raised her skirts and gently tugged down
those sweet sails of England. Oh a hideous aroma did arise, like yeast with
dough only backwards and worse! I’d rather chuckle on my own moundings, or
steal eggs from the ravens! But before all of that.

“Tut!”

Then, through at last, I fell to the inside floor with the thump of parsnips
without the grace of the carrot. I was in! Old Armitage had been right.

To Be Continued.

Once, long time ago, puffing on a pipe and digging my fat toes into the shag, and supping on a thick rimmed glass of almost…but wait.
“More powder! All over my face! Into the crevices! Go on woman, scrub!”
So yes, Africa. Two tiny word-eels, hardly eels at all, were jumping and giggling, festering too. Foul things. And they lived in newspaper. Newspaper is a city, wet and stale with the juice from dogs, and it stuck to the wall in the wind. Now where to go next? You see up there? Out the window dear boy, look at those herons.
“You know they stand over their own nests? They hope to eat their falling young you know. Magnificent race. Splendid.”
I think its time to open my very own soap factory. (The boy trembles. Parts his limbs and his lips…delicate like when you break a wren’s wing and it doesn’t snap cleanly because there are sinews of marrow or something holding it).

You’ve not changed!!!
I mean what are folk like?
Don’t start me.
Obviously not everybody is, but…
It takes all kinds, it does, you don’t…
Well, you do, but you shouldn’t.
You try to tell yourself most folk’s attitude is it takes all kinds, live and let live, no skin off my nose, nine times out of ten course they’re curious, but, you’re right, they’re not actually…
One way or the other.

Course some are.
So cruel. Can be.
Straight out and bought this packet of fags. Came in here to the Ladies and first time in donkeys here’s me ripping off the cellophane… Says No Smoking right left and centre but I think we can take the so called ‘smoke detectors are fitted’ notice with a pinch of salt.
Not going to smoke it but. I’m not.
Who needs them?
Ach, you know you really don’t want it, so don’t, OK?

Michele Quigley!
I mean one minute I’m quite the thing swanning around Markses thinking I’ll treat myself to a new forty two B because they’ve got some really pretty stuff in since they’ve bounced back, even in the bigger sizes. Next thing I’m in the middle of Per Una in floods.
Because I coped at the time. Acquitted myself. You generally do, don’t you, but how I got myself down that escalator to ground God knows.
What the hell Michele Quigley had to be doing on the till at the lingerie…
Of all the gin thingwies…
As well it was empty! Not a soul but a wee wummin way over miles away rummaging about among the Secret Supports so she’ll have heard nothing.
Does Michele not just have to go and go: Michael! Michael Manson! My God, I’d have known you anywhere. You’ve not changed.
Felt like saying couldn’t say the same for you darling. Fifteen stone if she was an ounce. Twice the size. All that blubber and in there, underneath…the old Michele. I’d have known her anywhere anall.
Turns out she’s been here best part of twenty years. Came down with the ex when the weans were wee, not been back much and nothing to take her now her auld mother and faither are away. Goes: not lost the accent but! You can take the girl out of Glasgow but you can’t take the Glasgow out of the girl.

This bloody fag. Och I shouldn’t. I mustn’t. I’m not going to.

Michele goes: Oh Michael.
I says it’s Michele Michele
She says No Michael I’m Michele.
I says: I’m Michele.
She goes no I’m Spartacus and starts laughing. She says no, no I’m sorry, it’s just what is it with yous..? You know, how come you don’t change your name totally, how come all the Johns become Jo-annes and the Matts Matilda and the Phils Phyllis? Why go to all that bother just for a little feminine appendage? How do you not go from like Boab Smith to… like… Lolita Angelica Lopez or something? How is it just goodbye Sam hello Samantha and the same old surname?
I says: I’M STILL THE SAME PERSON.
She says unless you called yourself after me?
Sorry. I’m like: Nope, it’s just my old name. In a feminine form. Simple as that.
She said: You’re not though.
I says: I’m not what?
She says: The same person.

And thing is that was where she was wrong. See, I could go out that door right now and look at myself in that mirror and know exactly who I see. Not everybody can do that. Can you?
Total self acceptance. I told her that was the reason I had to go to all this length to change everything.

I said do you know what I really miss? The fags. Because conditional on me getting the op, obviously, is going one full year fag-free. Surgeons insist on it. Anaesthetists.
That and living and dressing as a woman full time.

She says: and passing?

I says well Michele I can’t say I’ve never clocked the odd funny look in a too slow moving queue in the ladies (and aren’t they all, that has been a revelation) but, you know, short of me getting desperate hiking up ma skirt to ma neck and pishing in the sink people basically tend to be pretty polite and just zip their lips.

Because I do realise I’ll never be a pretty woman. I mean I look at someone like Michele and she’s been both. She’s been one of the young and very visible ones – a stoater – and now she’s one of the invisible ones and she sees me stepping — voluntarily — on to the moving wheel at this stage of the game, the downer, post-menopausal (not that that exactly applies to me, but…) and she just doesn’t get it. At all.

She said – bitterly – sounded so bitter so she did. Goes: You couldn’t get enough of my tits.
I said no Michele I couldn’t.

Telling you she was gorgeous. And now oh my god the arse on her. How are the mighty fallen…

Bitter but. That’s the bit I don’t get. When my wife can – twenty four year in! — find it in her heart to uproot, relocate down here, live with me as my sister and… ach… come out Mother of the Bride outfit shopping with me last week for something for me to put on at our son’s wedding — and Michele Quigley I went out with for about six weeks max in nineteen seventy nine couldn’t look at me? Couldn’t give me her blessing by getting her mouth around my name.
Not going to smoke it but. Yes, right in this bin, now, the whole packet. Great!
Who needs them?

Liz Lochhead, 2006

Not Changed began life as a dramatic monologue performed in a cubicle in the Ladies Toilets of the Arches Theatre as one of eight pieces commissioned by artistic director Andy Arnold for his one-to-one audience-and-actor project Spend A Penny in October 2006. It was performed by Grant Smeaton.

She sits there each evening rolling cigarettes and watching her friend or lover repeatedly selling his one copy of the Big Issue. She has a small shopping trolley, it is that sort of shopping trolley which they usually set aside for pensioners, a standard wire basket on wheeled stilts, and in it is sitting a car baby-seat and in the car baby-seat is sitting a baby. You never see any of them during the day, but you see them every night. The shopping trolley and the baby isn’t always there, but it is there more often than not. The baby never makes a sound, and is always either asleep or smiling. She’s rolling cigarettes and passing them when lit to her friend or lover, he selling his one copy of the Big Issue yet again. He has a badge. They sit and stand beside the cash machine, and smile gaps at people who worriedly glance their way as they enter their number, and glance for a second, or perhaps a third time, while they wait for their cash.

The couple had a fight once, she shouted “fuck off”, he glared, people noticed. It was over as she put a skinny cigarette out on the inside of her arm, the cold white smooth skin near the crook of the elbow quickly swallowed the tiny ember, no-one noticed. They did not have a private life, but they had an inner life, they did not hide anything, but still they were hidden. As people come out of the shop they either stop them, or they don’t stop them.

They stop the man in a suit carrying the Guardian, they do not stop the man in a suit carrying the Times, they do not stop the student with naan bread and brussels paté, they stop the students carrying crates of beer, they stop the man with a wrapped bottle of gin and tonic water in a plastic bag, they don’t stop the skinny girl with tins of soup, they don’t stop the bearded man with a bottle of whisky, they stop the kids with bags of sweets, they stop the shop staff coming out unwrapping cigarettes, they stop the laughing couples, they do not stop the quiet couples, they stop girls in trainers, they stop more people when it is cold and dry, they stop less people when it is warm and wet. The woman sits on the wall, and the man stands by the curb half into the road, as you approach you watch people mirror you in a slalom from the opposite direction. You notice the friend or lover selling his big issue, so does those approaching from the other direction and, sidestepping they nearly collide with the mother and child, and swerve again. The couple swerve, bouncing off the boundaries of their route, whenever they leave.

There was once a creature of immense distaste, he was made of lace.

Although he led a catholic and virtuous life, his penchant for wallowing was regarded in certain circles as one to disregard or to raise ones eyebrow.

This creature as such played in eddies of social awareness for many months, one month neatly sliding on top of the next month.

With mottled and distended skin, he occasionally climbed apple trees and chewed the bark. He did this one time too many:

“Bubble up in oil, oh my various pierced genitalia, for I am the never-do-well, the misbegot!”

And so, with heavy heart, our hero slumps himself downwards, frostily opens this door, sinks into heavy armchairs.

As the smoke starts to rise, like smoke would rise on occasion, an irksome thought would wallow and upset the grey lines of guilt.

What if all the colours were one colour?

(That little telltale tooth that bares, thinning rips coiling into a smirk)

What if!

With a vile and characteristic gream of zealously protected charm he fingered up to a run and clamped down upon every shade that so rebelled with his sentiments. It was an uncomfortable time, yes, but a delicate charm frothed over the surface.

Back up in his fruit-bearing cross lies fate, and out creature hastens a hasty meat.

Slowly and surely we tighten the gate, our little creature all made out of lace.

With its long metal legs, bolted to original 50s Formica, it stands, hands on hips, waiting for the next person to stub their toe. The cream plastic top is faded from the kitchen windows and yellowed from hot kettles and glazed bricks heated on the old gas cooker. Countless morning headlines from newspapers have lain at one end whilst countless culinary delicacies have been made at the other.

The plastic there has been worn away with her strong arms rolling pastry for dough. It’s been worn away by top and tailing runner beans fresh from the garden, it’s been worn away by bums leaning and sitting. By my grandmother discussing, arguing, gesticulating, swinging in time to her favourite piece of classical music. It echoes loudly still around the house.

All over, the table is deeply and lightly scarred for life with tiny cuts into its skin. Pommes de terre boulangère, bœuf bourguignon avec petits oignons, chipes faites maison – faites gros à la main, salades fraîches aux légumes du jardin cueillies que ce matin, artichauts à la vapeur avec une sauce vinaigrette à nous faire saliver - saliver - saliver à toute allure.

Look closely and it is possible to make out where the surface has been rubbed away by our hands resting with knives and forks drawn in anticipation. Forced to sit there on summer holidays, my father’s knees knocked cutlery which rattled beneath in a drawer as deep as the table is wide.

Pass la pelle à tarte and you pull and pull the drawer handle as you would your hair whilst explaining to your grandmother why swapping the greens on your plate for the tart she made would be such a good idea. Sometimes, in the corner of my eye, I see it, still, sitting there hot out of the oven, that strawberry tart. Turn to look and it is gone.