Like a bad penny or a bad curry, The Trash Whore Diaries are apt to disappearing from sight for a while before resurfacing when you expect them least, bursting onto your screen in a smorgasbord of reconstituted prose. A four-month hiatus has elapsed since time and technology last permitted me to inflict my thoughts upon that portion of the web that cared to entertain them. (Mostly bored housewives, bored students, bored oil execs and bored… well, you get the gist of the demographic.) Since last blogging about whatever it was I was blogging about at the time (I’m guessing boobs, but I could be wrong – perhaps it was vaginas), a lot has happened in my world. I’ve moved out of the parental abode for the second time in my life, I’ve managed to avoid arrest (or should that be resist arrest?) and have even secured a job at a company whose management have been good enough to overlook my previous foibles on the grounds that when I’m not getting up to no good, I’m actually pretty damn good at doing the things that normal people do in their workplace; write stuff, sell stuff and drink lots of tea. Not only can I do all of said things, but I can do them damn well; I make a killer cuppa in fact. So happy am I in my current job that I have vowed to be super well-behaved and ultra boring by not writing about my job at all. That way, I might just have a chance of retaining it beyond the three-month probationary period. (Remember what happened to my cleaning job at a certain prestigious girls’ school in Aberdeen? Look back through the Trash Whore archives, circa 2003, if you dare.) But today’s blog isn’t all about me for once. Neither is it all about trying to be funny, as you’ve probably gathered if you’ve persevered this far. No, the purpose of today’s blog is to pay tribute to a Trash Whore devotee who will be unfamiliar to you. In fact it’s less of a tribute and more of a eulogy I’m afraid to say. Let me try and explain…
Back in 2006, I was released from prison after serving 13 months for some offences, the exact nature of which I can no longer recall. (OK, so it was drug dealing and perjury, OK?) During that time, the prison blogs I had written from inside HMP Craiginches and posted online had built up quite a following. Friends, foes, judges, solicitors and prison staff; they’d all stumbled across The Trash Whore Diaries and gotten hooked on its methadone-esque properties. Unknown to me at the time, one such devotee was a man named Gordon Sutherland who worked at an oil company in Dyce. After discovering the TWDs and rapidly succumbing to their moreishness, Gordon alerted all the staff in his office, who also subsequently fell victim. Following my release from prison, the media got wind of the prison blogs and they appeared in the Press & Journal, News of The World and on STV’s North Tonight. Around that time, after lamenting in my blogs that no one would employ me now because of my criminal record, I received an email from the aforementioned Gordon that went as follows:
Kai,
I am a manager at a very large US based, Aberdeen company that could use an intelligent, articulate guy like you. What is it that you want to do? Do you just want to get a job, or does it have to be a particular job. Your requirements appear to be quite demanding. I could give you a job in a heartbeat, but it would might not be up to your exacting standards. I have read the TWDs for quite a while now, and realise that you are a fairly smart cookie, but am concerned that you would not stick anything I offer you for very long, due to lack of mental stimulation… I can try and sort you out with a job if you like. It is not going to task your literary skills, but it is at least a start....
You reckoned that nobody would cut you an even break.
I will.....
2 conditions.
1)No mention of the company in the WHDs, there are a lot of lunchtime internet fans...
2)Nae drugs Min.... This company tests regulary...
Intrigued – and pleasantly surprised – to learn that anyone would even consider taking on a liability such as myself, I began corresponding with the mysterious Gordon. For now, he was just a name attached to an email address, and for the next three years he would remain that way to me. Although flattered by Gordon’s offer of work, I informed him that after some consideration I had elected to start up a sandwich shop with a couple of mates. Gordon (or Big Gord as I then knew him) replied as follows:
Kai,
Excellent! Delighted to see that you are making some progress.
Tell, me where [the sandwich shop] is, I might be able to throw some hungry people your way. I know that you think that I might be some official or lowlife with ulterior motives, which I understand, but I would love to buy you a beer some day. I even nipped into the Bassment a couple of Saturdays ago in the hope that you were there. (No I'm not a stalker, I just wanted to by you a drink for keeping at least 8 people at my work entertained through their dreary days!)
We will meet at some point, and you will realise that I am genuine....
Gord
And so life went on, days passing into months, Gord getting on with whatever it was he did in his life while I got on with doing whatever it was I did in mine (selling sandwiches and weed mostly, but not at the same time). Then, in early 2009, disaster struck when I found myself back in Craiginches once more, this time for getting caught with a couple of kilos of weed. (I was also still selling sandwiches at that point, but for some reason the police didn’t seem as interested in those. Maybe if they had been doughnuts it would have been a different matter.) Sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, I served eight months before being released in late August on a tag. Upon my release, I set about publishing the blogs I had written during my second spell inside. Soon afterward, I received the following email:
Kai, I don't know if you remember me, I was the guy who you refused a hand up from last time you got out. What the hell has happened to you this time? Sadly, I'm no longer working for the same company, and presently unable to make a simillar offer, but any way I can, I will help. I can point you in the right direction, of people to speak to etc, and after 25 years in the Oil Ind. I kinda know my way around. Not to be condescending, but with your imagination and flair for writing, you would be an asset to any company......
Feel free to drop me a line, and like I said I will do anything I can to help.
Regards
Gord
The Trash Whore Diaries were back, and so was Gord, my faceless personal adviser whose advice to date I had lamentably elected not to heed. We began corresponding again, and this time got as far as exchanging fone numbers. Our slow-burning relationship was now starting to hot up. After reading my blog of February 25th 2009 (published on 27th September), Gordon emailed me the following message, starting with a quote from yours truly:
Never pick a fight with anyone uglier than you – they’ve got less to lose. Looking at the scarred and stitched up faces around me, that precludes pretty much everyone.
Kai, Absolute quality.....
I used to go to college in Glasgow, (Well Paisley actually, Glasgow without the nice bits) and the only time I got into a fight was on the underground, across the road from my flat in Cessnock. I grabbed a Stanley knife off a wee tit, and fired him out the doors just as they were closing. It wasn't until the guard came along to ask what happened that I looked at it to see that there were two blades in it, flat sides together, cutting edges apart.... Ehhh??
"It's so's (sic) they cannae stitch ye back up man, better geez it here....."
Loved the coincedence that whilst you were writing that, I was, on the same day;
A) Opening my Birthday cards,
B) Enjoying being told I was unemployed for the first time in over 20 years..
C) Having my first alchoholic drink in over a year....
D) Telling my wife about B) above......
These all happened over the course of less than an hour.... and it wasn't even 10 o'clock......
It was becoming evident that Gordon and I both had problems of our own to deal with, some of which were self-inflicted (prison; drinking), others less so, such as being unemployed and, well, being unemployed. A few days later, during one of our exchanges, Gordon opined the following:
Kai,
Having read the most recent two of your blogs.....
Can I just say.... YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT!!!
A very erudite, intelligent and articulate idiot, but an idiot none the less....
As someone who can no longer stand being stuck in a steel box for two weeks at a time, deprived of everything that I love, how could you possibly be so stupid as to find yourself locked up in that shithole again..... At least I could throw a sicky and get flown back to the beach.
Now I really want to meet you, if only to slap some sense into you, because I know that there is a very clever person inside there somewhere........ Deeply inside....
I'm hoping that the story of your most recent arrest is purely just good story telling, because, I just sat reading that shaking my head, and thinking, "why am I still communicating with this waste of a good skin?"
BTW.... The "Pigs - Bacon - Filth - " are only doing a job. Neither you nor I would do it for the same money... (And trust me, my run ins with Scotland's finest doughnut munchers have not been very pretty.....)
And like yourself, I deserved everything I got.
Kai,
Just read your latest, and as you suggested "last" ever episode of the TWDs]
There is just one thing I don't understand.
If you hate this way of life..... STOP FUCKING DOING IT.
Nice to talk to you on the phone today, hope I came across well, but you sounded like a startled schoolchild.
I just feel I should take you under my protective wing......
And beat the 17 colours of stupidity out of you. (And there are precisely 17, I Googled it)
You don't think that selling, or using controlled substances is bad......
I don't think that doing 130 MPH on a Honda Blackbird up the Blackburn straight is bad........ I could have gone another 50 faster.....
But sometimes you meet people who do...
(Driving a Volvo 440 with lights hidden behind the grill.......)
Who then ask the unanswerable question.
"Do you know how fast you were going?"
Yes.... "that's intentional then ........ "
No... "Ah... driving without due care..."
Kai, we know the rules and sometimes we choose to ignore them.....
But please don't be angry about being caught.
Thankfully, I have only ever spent one night in the Travel Lodgewalk with the glass brick windows, and that even was for something I didn't do....
My mate and I were in a bar in Windmill Brae, (Peaches I think it was called back then Bugsy's now) and went for a hit and a miss before the walk home.......
"What's that hole cut in the ceiling?"
Dont know, but I bet there's a camera behind it....
I pushed aside the mirror tile and sure enough there was a camera.....
Ripped it out, and left it hanging by the wire.....
Weirdos.... cameras above the urinals..... Tsk.
Got outside, and my pal remembered he'd left his fags and Zippo on the table.....
He came back out with a suspicious lump in his coat...
"What have you done?"
Nothin' don't worry about it....
We both went offshore the following morning, and two days after we got back died in a stupid parachute accident.... (Please don't ask, there was a Toyota Supra, a towbar towrope and an airport runway involved)
After his funeral, I went back to the place we last had a pint, to sort of do a kind of "Raise a glass mate" kind of thing.....
I should have suspected something was up when the barmanager said "nah, you're okay mate, you're getting this from me"
I turned round, and one of the shaved gorillas in a suit was standing by my left shoulder...
Fuck...............
I looked at the barmaid, and she just shook her head......
Even then I was impressed by how quickly two members of Grumpian's finest managed to get from all of 25 feet across the road....
"Come with us son, we've got a something to show you"
A video of my big face reaching up to the lens of a camera 2 seconds before the picture became white noise....
Bollocks....., here comes Miranda........
"You have the right to remain silent, but anything you do say will be taken down and may be used in evidence against you in a court of law"
Do you understand?
......yes.....
Bet you know that feeling!
Not long after, in October of last year, I finally met up with Gordon for the first – and alas only – time. I had caught the train into Aberdeen to go job hunting; he had driven in from Westhill to sign on. Having been seriously injured in a car accident a year earlier, Gordon was still requiring physio for his damaged back. He picked me up near the station in his 4x4 and drove me past his house in Westhill, where we stopped by his house to enable his over-zealous dog to greet me like a long lost bone. During the course of the couple of hours we spent together, I got to know a man who was as decent, kind and humorous as his emails had suggested. Gordon then drove me out to the nursery for me to pick up my daughter and we parted. Later that week, he emailed me:
T'was a pleasure meeting you the other day Kai, one of the most strange, interesting, bizarre, funny, mornings of my life.
You must be wondering what my motives for meeting you were, and to be honest, so am I, but basically boils down to two things. (I think)
1) Whether you were actually as smart as I thought you were;
or
2) You were a keyboard hero, who in fact, behind the online personna, and in real life, was a total hoser.
Can I just say you fell in to category 1
(But wash your fucking hair now and again, hippy!!!)
Thouroghly enjoyed the few hours, and hope we can do it again sometime......
(And having been to my home, in my wife's car, been raped by my dogs, I hope you feel a little less nervous of me now....)
A month or so later, I received another, more abrupt email from Gordon that read as follows:
Kai,
How are you getting on?
Hope it's better than me...
After months of asking, I've just been informed that I have a fracutered spine...
Life's great....
That was the last I ever heard from Gordon. Ten days ago, he died in his sleep at the age of 43.
Today I attended the funeral service of a man I only once met, and yet who it feel like I’ve always known. I know it’s only words on a page, but I figured a tribute to Big Gord was the least he deserved. After reading them for so long, it only seems right that his last role in the Trash Whore Diaries should be a starring one.
As I wind this rambling eulogy up, I find myself thinking back to the email I quoted earlier, in which Gordon recalled:
We both went offshore the following morning, and two days after we got back he died in a stupid parachute accident.... (Please don't ask, there was a Toyota Supra, a towbar towrope and an airport runway involved) After his funeral, I went back to the place we last had a pint, to sort of do a kind of "Raise a glass mate" kind of thing.....
I never did get the chance to have a first – or a last – pint with Gordon, so instead I’m going to the Justice Mill tomorrow, the pub we had initially planned to meet at, to raise a glass to Gordon’s memory. It's not much, but it's the best I can do.
RIP Gordon, you were one of a kind.
Back in 2006, I was released from prison after serving 13 months for some offences, the exact nature of which I can no longer recall. (OK, so it was drug dealing and perjury, OK?) During that time, the prison blogs I had written from inside HMP Craiginches and posted online had built up quite a following. Friends, foes, judges, solicitors and prison staff; they’d all stumbled across The Trash Whore Diaries and gotten hooked on its methadone-esque properties. Unknown to me at the time, one such devotee was a man named Gordon Sutherland who worked at an oil company in Dyce. After discovering the TWDs and rapidly succumbing to their moreishness, Gordon alerted all the staff in his office, who also subsequently fell victim. Following my release from prison, the media got wind of the prison blogs and they appeared in the Press & Journal, News of The World and on STV’s North Tonight. Around that time, after lamenting in my blogs that no one would employ me now because of my criminal record, I received an email from the aforementioned Gordon that went as follows:
Kai,
I am a manager at a very large US based, Aberdeen company that could use an intelligent, articulate guy like you. What is it that you want to do? Do you just want to get a job, or does it have to be a particular job. Your requirements appear to be quite demanding. I could give you a job in a heartbeat, but it would might not be up to your exacting standards. I have read the TWDs for quite a while now, and realise that you are a fairly smart cookie, but am concerned that you would not stick anything I offer you for very long, due to lack of mental stimulation… I can try and sort you out with a job if you like. It is not going to task your literary skills, but it is at least a start....
You reckoned that nobody would cut you an even break.
I will.....
2 conditions.
1)No mention of the company in the WHDs, there are a lot of lunchtime internet fans...
2)Nae drugs Min.... This company tests regulary...
Intrigued – and pleasantly surprised – to learn that anyone would even consider taking on a liability such as myself, I began corresponding with the mysterious Gordon. For now, he was just a name attached to an email address, and for the next three years he would remain that way to me. Although flattered by Gordon’s offer of work, I informed him that after some consideration I had elected to start up a sandwich shop with a couple of mates. Gordon (or Big Gord as I then knew him) replied as follows:
Kai,
Excellent! Delighted to see that you are making some progress.
Tell, me where [the sandwich shop] is, I might be able to throw some hungry people your way. I know that you think that I might be some official or lowlife with ulterior motives, which I understand, but I would love to buy you a beer some day. I even nipped into the Bassment a couple of Saturdays ago in the hope that you were there. (No I'm not a stalker, I just wanted to by you a drink for keeping at least 8 people at my work entertained through their dreary days!)
We will meet at some point, and you will realise that I am genuine....
Gord
And so life went on, days passing into months, Gord getting on with whatever it was he did in his life while I got on with doing whatever it was I did in mine (selling sandwiches and weed mostly, but not at the same time). Then, in early 2009, disaster struck when I found myself back in Craiginches once more, this time for getting caught with a couple of kilos of weed. (I was also still selling sandwiches at that point, but for some reason the police didn’t seem as interested in those. Maybe if they had been doughnuts it would have been a different matter.) Sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, I served eight months before being released in late August on a tag. Upon my release, I set about publishing the blogs I had written during my second spell inside. Soon afterward, I received the following email:
Kai, I don't know if you remember me, I was the guy who you refused a hand up from last time you got out. What the hell has happened to you this time? Sadly, I'm no longer working for the same company, and presently unable to make a simillar offer, but any way I can, I will help. I can point you in the right direction, of people to speak to etc, and after 25 years in the Oil Ind. I kinda know my way around. Not to be condescending, but with your imagination and flair for writing, you would be an asset to any company......
Feel free to drop me a line, and like I said I will do anything I can to help.
Regards
Gord
The Trash Whore Diaries were back, and so was Gord, my faceless personal adviser whose advice to date I had lamentably elected not to heed. We began corresponding again, and this time got as far as exchanging fone numbers. Our slow-burning relationship was now starting to hot up. After reading my blog of February 25th 2009 (published on 27th September), Gordon emailed me the following message, starting with a quote from yours truly:
Never pick a fight with anyone uglier than you – they’ve got less to lose. Looking at the scarred and stitched up faces around me, that precludes pretty much everyone.
Kai, Absolute quality.....
I used to go to college in Glasgow, (Well Paisley actually, Glasgow without the nice bits) and the only time I got into a fight was on the underground, across the road from my flat in Cessnock. I grabbed a Stanley knife off a wee tit, and fired him out the doors just as they were closing. It wasn't until the guard came along to ask what happened that I looked at it to see that there were two blades in it, flat sides together, cutting edges apart.... Ehhh??
"It's so's (sic) they cannae stitch ye back up man, better geez it here....."
Loved the coincedence that whilst you were writing that, I was, on the same day;
A) Opening my Birthday cards,
B) Enjoying being told I was unemployed for the first time in over 20 years..
C) Having my first alchoholic drink in over a year....
D) Telling my wife about B) above......
These all happened over the course of less than an hour.... and it wasn't even 10 o'clock......
It was becoming evident that Gordon and I both had problems of our own to deal with, some of which were self-inflicted (prison; drinking), others less so, such as being unemployed and, well, being unemployed. A few days later, during one of our exchanges, Gordon opined the following:
Kai,
Having read the most recent two of your blogs.....
Can I just say.... YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT!!!
A very erudite, intelligent and articulate idiot, but an idiot none the less....
As someone who can no longer stand being stuck in a steel box for two weeks at a time, deprived of everything that I love, how could you possibly be so stupid as to find yourself locked up in that shithole again..... At least I could throw a sicky and get flown back to the beach.
Now I really want to meet you, if only to slap some sense into you, because I know that there is a very clever person inside there somewhere........ Deeply inside....
I'm hoping that the story of your most recent arrest is purely just good story telling, because, I just sat reading that shaking my head, and thinking, "why am I still communicating with this waste of a good skin?"
BTW.... The "Pigs - Bacon - Filth - " are only doing a job. Neither you nor I would do it for the same money... (And trust me, my run ins with Scotland's finest doughnut munchers have not been very pretty.....)
And like yourself, I deserved everything I got.
Kai,
Just read your latest, and as you suggested "last" ever episode of the TWDs]
There is just one thing I don't understand.
If you hate this way of life..... STOP FUCKING DOING IT.
Nice to talk to you on the phone today, hope I came across well, but you sounded like a startled schoolchild.
I just feel I should take you under my protective wing......
And beat the 17 colours of stupidity out of you. (And there are precisely 17, I Googled it)
You don't think that selling, or using controlled substances is bad......
I don't think that doing 130 MPH on a Honda Blackbird up the Blackburn straight is bad........ I could have gone another 50 faster.....
But sometimes you meet people who do...
(Driving a Volvo 440 with lights hidden behind the grill.......)
Who then ask the unanswerable question.
"Do you know how fast you were going?"
Yes.... "that's intentional then ........ "
No... "Ah... driving without due care..."
Kai, we know the rules and sometimes we choose to ignore them.....
But please don't be angry about being caught.
Thankfully, I have only ever spent one night in the Travel Lodgewalk with the glass brick windows, and that even was for something I didn't do....
My mate and I were in a bar in Windmill Brae, (Peaches I think it was called back then Bugsy's now) and went for a hit and a miss before the walk home.......
"What's that hole cut in the ceiling?"
Dont know, but I bet there's a camera behind it....
I pushed aside the mirror tile and sure enough there was a camera.....
Ripped it out, and left it hanging by the wire.....
Weirdos.... cameras above the urinals..... Tsk.
Got outside, and my pal remembered he'd left his fags and Zippo on the table.....
He came back out with a suspicious lump in his coat...
"What have you done?"
Nothin' don't worry about it....
We both went offshore the following morning, and two days after we got back died in a stupid parachute accident.... (Please don't ask, there was a Toyota Supra, a towbar towrope and an airport runway involved)
After his funeral, I went back to the place we last had a pint, to sort of do a kind of "Raise a glass mate" kind of thing.....
I should have suspected something was up when the barmanager said "nah, you're okay mate, you're getting this from me"
I turned round, and one of the shaved gorillas in a suit was standing by my left shoulder...
Fuck...............
I looked at the barmaid, and she just shook her head......
Even then I was impressed by how quickly two members of Grumpian's finest managed to get from all of 25 feet across the road....
"Come with us son, we've got a something to show you"
A video of my big face reaching up to the lens of a camera 2 seconds before the picture became white noise....
Bollocks....., here comes Miranda........
"You have the right to remain silent, but anything you do say will be taken down and may be used in evidence against you in a court of law"
Do you understand?
......yes.....
Bet you know that feeling!
Not long after, in October of last year, I finally met up with Gordon for the first – and alas only – time. I had caught the train into Aberdeen to go job hunting; he had driven in from Westhill to sign on. Having been seriously injured in a car accident a year earlier, Gordon was still requiring physio for his damaged back. He picked me up near the station in his 4x4 and drove me past his house in Westhill, where we stopped by his house to enable his over-zealous dog to greet me like a long lost bone. During the course of the couple of hours we spent together, I got to know a man who was as decent, kind and humorous as his emails had suggested. Gordon then drove me out to the nursery for me to pick up my daughter and we parted. Later that week, he emailed me:
T'was a pleasure meeting you the other day Kai, one of the most strange, interesting, bizarre, funny, mornings of my life.
You must be wondering what my motives for meeting you were, and to be honest, so am I, but basically boils down to two things. (I think)
1) Whether you were actually as smart as I thought you were;
or
2) You were a keyboard hero, who in fact, behind the online personna, and in real life, was a total hoser.
Can I just say you fell in to category 1
(But wash your fucking hair now and again, hippy!!!)
Thouroghly enjoyed the few hours, and hope we can do it again sometime......
(And having been to my home, in my wife's car, been raped by my dogs, I hope you feel a little less nervous of me now....)
A month or so later, I received another, more abrupt email from Gordon that read as follows:
Kai,
How are you getting on?
Hope it's better than me...
After months of asking, I've just been informed that I have a fracutered spine...
Life's great....
That was the last I ever heard from Gordon. Ten days ago, he died in his sleep at the age of 43.
Today I attended the funeral service of a man I only once met, and yet who it feel like I’ve always known. I know it’s only words on a page, but I figured a tribute to Big Gord was the least he deserved. After reading them for so long, it only seems right that his last role in the Trash Whore Diaries should be a starring one.
As I wind this rambling eulogy up, I find myself thinking back to the email I quoted earlier, in which Gordon recalled:
We both went offshore the following morning, and two days after we got back he died in a stupid parachute accident.... (Please don't ask, there was a Toyota Supra, a towbar towrope and an airport runway involved) After his funeral, I went back to the place we last had a pint, to sort of do a kind of "Raise a glass mate" kind of thing.....
I never did get the chance to have a first – or a last – pint with Gordon, so instead I’m going to the Justice Mill tomorrow, the pub we had initially planned to meet at, to raise a glass to Gordon’s memory. It's not much, but it's the best I can do.
RIP Gordon, you were one of a kind.
2 comments:
Absolutely fantastic blog mate.. Gord's online epitaph as it may well be is a fitting send off and the story was touching on its own.
Lump in the throat, excellent eulogy Kai
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