For the past few weeks I have been attempting to stick to a vegetarian diet. The roots of this were planted long ago when I decided to take more interest in where my meat came from and how it was raised. I stopped buying cheap meat in the supermarket and treated it like a luxury, buying only from sources that could assure me of their ethical farming methods. It’s a great deal more expensive, but was nicer and seemed considerably less like eating victims of torture. Out went the bargain bacon, the Pepperamis, the sausage rolls, the service station pork pies, and all the other convenient meat products. The fact is that no one, not even the producers of such products, can accurately inform you of what’s in them. You’re probably eating hooves, offal, gristle and bone most of the time, and I decided that wasn’t for me. So I stuck to the odd duck breast or steak from the farmers’ market, some good mince from the local butcher, things like that. Read more »
Aidan Moffat’s underlying health problems
I felt a bit rough last Thursday night but put it down to the incredibly long day spent exclusively with my son, which would be enough to wear out the toughest of tough guys. Probably just tired, I thought, and went to bed at about 1 AM – an early night for me – thinking I’d be fine come the morning. I woke up two and a half hours later, dripping in sweat and unable to breathe. Read more »
Litter rage
It’s such a simple little action, clearly of little significance to the man who performs the deed as I watch him from the flat window. He’s obviously done it before, so I think it’s safe to say that it’s habitual by now. He doesn’t mark the occasion in any celebratory way, doesn’t draw any kind of attention to it. It’s a fluid, organic movement. It’s second nature. He takes a stick of chewing gum from his coat pocket with his right hand, unwraps it with both, shoves it in his mouth with his left, then drops the paper foil onto the road with his right. He doesn’t throw it or make any sort of big deal about it, just lets it free of his fingers as the hand returns to his side. Read more »
Shit, I’m living next to a brothel
I’m not entirely certain what made me suspect our new neighbours were prostitutes. My experience of the oldest profession is limited to a stroll through Amsterdam’s red light district, having a sneaky peak at the variety of gruesome wenches from the safety of the street, so it wasn’t exactly an informed guess. I suppose it was the stereotypically whorish way they dressed, the tawdry jewellery and heavy make-up, and the way they seemed to silently sneak in and out of the flat next door. I saw them very rarely and presumed they were quiet types, maybe students, but I soon began to notice a lot of nervous, ugly men of varying generations shuffle suspiciously up and down the close stairs. At first I tried to console myself by believing that the women at 4 / 2 were incredibly sociable and hosted parties every night of the week, but if they did they were the quietest parties I’d ever (not) heard. I desperately grasped at other unlikely possibilities – a book club maybe, a big family – but I knew it was hopeless. The flat next door was a brothel. Read more »
For those about to suck (we salute you)
The first thing I want when I arrive at Glasgow’s Hampden Park on a warm summer’s night is a cold beer. This isn’t easy though. First you have to buy a drink token, which takes around twenty minutes, and then you have to wait in the queue at the bar, which I was reliably informed would take another forty-five. We get the tokens but decide to try and find another bar, walking down to the standing area in front of the massive stage on which AC/DC will perform in an hour’s time. At this point, though, the stage is occupied by something called The Subways, and the best thing I can say about them is that at least I now know to avoid them at all costs in the future. Looking at our surroundings for the first time, my immediate reaction is simple: too many people. Read more »
A Good Thing to Lose: The French horror movie, Martyrs
At some point in the past year or so, I have become what we in Scotland would refer to as a “Big Jessie”, and I am almost certain that this is a natural psychological side effect of fatherhood. You often hear about new parents softening as their children grow, but I seem to have avoided such a clichéd personality change in all facets of life except one: I now have little threshold to endure painful suffering in movies, especially when it comes to children. I loved Slumdog Millionaire, either in spite of or because I spent the majority of the first hour with tears in my eyes, as our prepubescent hero seems to encounter violence and abuse at regular, relentless fifteen-minute intervals. Read more »
My boy Batman
Choosing a name for our son proved very difficult for my girlfriend and I. We had many gorgeous, exotic and exciting options for a girl, but all the boys’ names in the many books we bought or borrowed left us uninspired. There was one other name that I had been thinking about since the beginning. It started out as a funny idea but gained momentum as the birth grew nearer, until I was finally adamant that it would be perfect for my firstborn. Just about all of my friends and all of my friends’ children agreed that it was an incredibly cool middle name, though it took a while to convince my girlfriend. I did my best to explain that it wasn’t a novelty or a joke, that it truly meant something to me, that it was a name that still stirred the deepest passion in me almost to the point of obsession, a word that inspires and excites and ignites the imagination. She eventually agreed, but only on the condition that someday I explain to him why it means so much to me. And so, as we celebrate our son’s first birthday, here’s why his middle name is Batman. Read more »
Scotland: there’s an ugliness at its very root. I should have stayed in Japan.
First impressions on return to Scotland after a 23-hour journey home from Japan via Paris and Amsterdam aren’t good. A mother swears loudly and aggressively at her toddler for dragging his heels slightly as one of the passengers walks through Passport Control and straight into the long arms of the law. Read more »
Aidan Moffat is away
Aidan Moffat’s in Japan on holiday. Fortunately, he has left the tour diary from his last days with his band, Arab Strap, behind. It’s a typical tour: old groupies, having all your stuff nicked, and putting your erection in a false vagina purchased in a German service station. He also got his friend Jenny Soep to give us some illustrations she did of the band.
Arab Strap Farewell Tour Diary 2006
by Aidan Moffat
Aidan Moffat’s written a song for you
Smash The Mystic Industry - by Aidan Moffat
My favourite book as a boy was The Hamlyn Book Of Ghosts, an anthology of eerie stories and convincing (to a child) snapshots of apparitions, and I studied every page. There was a chapter on Harry Price, the famous paranormal investigator and ghost-hunter, and I dreamed of growing up to be a Ghostbuster long before Bill Murray convinced me it would be the best job in the world. Like most young boys, I was obsessed by monsters and ghouls and I insisted that I be allowed to watch horror films at a very young age, becoming far too familiar with Hammer Horror before my tenth birthday – Peter Cushing was an early hero. Then there was my love of The Omen and its two sequels and, of course, John Carpenter’s Halloween, which I first saw as an eight-year-old and still remains one of my all-time favourites. Read more »
A Good Thing To Lose #9: Speaking to the dead
I miss my grandfather. We were extremely close when I was young, and I spent just about every weekend with him and Grandma. He’d let me stay up late and watch The Hammer House of Horror and The Wicker Man when I was clearly far too young, and take me for walks round Falkirk’s fields and along the Union Canal even though his replacement hip hindered him with a characteristic, cane-assisted limp. Read more »
Aidan Moffat’s still thinking about Jade Goody
The death of Jade Goody has had no impact on my life, nor would I expect it to have any on yours, unless you happen to be a friend or a member of the Goody family. It’s tragic to see any young mother die before she reaches her thirties, of course, and her loved ones have my sympathy. But I didn’t know Jade, we’d never met; what little relationship we had ended the night she was evicted from the Big Brother house, when – like all the contestants on the show – she ceased to be of any use to me. And while I didn’t keep up to speed with her post-BB life, it was impossible to ignore her recent, Max Clifford-publicised death. Read more »
What’s shittier, online gambling or pulling tips from some kid without pubes?
A Good Thing To Lose #7: Online Gambling & Dating Advice from a child
by Aidan Moffat
I intended to spend a tenner on my first attempt at cyber-gambling, but the rules at the William Hill Online Casino state that a minimum of three and a half times my planned budget is required. Fuck it, I thought, I’m feeling lucky so I might as well go for it. Needless to say, I am now thirty-five pounds poorer.
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