Breakfast

We were playing a bar, the name of which has now been lost in the hazy, whisky-soaked memories of the Scottish tours. We'd learned a few things on our various jaunts to the highlands, one of which was that the first person to offer to buy the band a drink was always the craziest person in the room, and to be avoided at all costs. 

We were greeted in the afternoon by a giant of a man in a Rangers shirt. As soon as he saw the guitars on our backs he immediately went to the bar and returned with a whisky each. Well, it'd have been rude not to, so we downed them in as short a time as we could, not wanting to appear impolite. When we started setting kit up, he disappeared. 

By the time we went on, the bar was absolutely rammed and the stage felt unstable, but as usual in those days, we were too far into the whisky to care. We were loving it, and the audience were doing that sort of dancing that borders on unarmed combat. The bar staff looked very young, lots of those pubs are staffed by backpackers who've run out of money and taken a job for a couple of months before moving on. That's when our mate reappeared. He'd clearly not wasted any drinking time in the interim, and started shouting requests.

"Play The Sash!"

"Do The Orange Flute!"

I looked at my mate who was playing bass, a little unsure of what I'd heard. 

"Is he asking for sectarian songs?"

Nod. 

I developed selective hearing immediately, and he got bored after about fifteen minutes. The next I knew of him he was being chucked out by a lad about quarter of his size. He immediately came back in and was served by a different member of staff. Like I say, memory is hazy, but I'm fairly sure I saw him thrown out five times, each time returning to a different barperson and being served again. Apart from from the scary bloke, the gig was massive fun and we finally gave in about 2:30am. The accommodation was appalling, pretty standard for those tours. We certainly didn't care by the time we crawled into bunks. If I recall correctly, one of us was sleeping on the windowsill. 

In the morning we blearily stumbled into a café in a converted church and ordered the biggest cooked breakfast in Scotland. The café had a gift shop with all the usual stuff, tartan bits and pieces and miniatures of the local dram. As we tucked in, half awake, we heard a voice. 

"Gimme four miniatures"

It was him. Still in the Rangers shirt, presumably with a banging head and no patience. The bloke who ran the café was English, and firmly refused, it being about 9am. This provoked a torrent of racist abuse and threats. We stared at each other, then at our plates, hoping to God he didn't recognise us. The argument went on for about five minutes during which we all found sausage and eggs intensely interesting. When he eventually gave up and stormed off, giving his forthright opinion on the café owner, his mother and the English people in general, we told the owner the story from the night before. 

"Oh yeah, he does that nearly every day. He just wants some whisky before he goes to work"

We wondered what this upstanding member of the community did for a living. 

"He drives the bin lorry"