Isambard De Silva surveyed the tawdry neon sign that hung above the palace of broken dreams, or The Arches as it was still known. The club’s owner had changed many times but the name had somehow clung on, like an ageing relative whose family felt too guilty to put them in a nursing home. Long gone were the glorious days when the laughter of Glasgow’s glitterati echoed round its cavernous interiors.
Isambard closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, his nostrils flaring at first, then twitching in olfactory disapproval. 'Chips'... ‘Chips!’ he bellowed. That smell brought his world crashing down. Born the illegitimate offspring from an encounter between a chip shop manager and his employee, it was chips that brought them together; but it was chips that tore him apart. To him chips represented taking the humble innocent potato and smashing it to pieces, an irony that was not lost on him.
Addressing himself in the third person, he was firmly told to pull his socks up, that people were depending on him, and that he could not shirk his responsibilities. Three deep breaths and erecting himself into the perfect angle befitting his pompous demeanour (back arched at 10 degrees, head thrown back and nose pulled up in an expression of permanent disgust). ‘That’s more like it’, he said in his reassuring Sergeant Major tone. He then thanked himself for always giving such sound advice while bowing deeply and removing his hat in a theatrical sweep. ‘FORWARD!’ he barked at himself from the corner of his mouth. Dutifully, his browbeaten spindly legs propelled his plump torso toward the entrance before stopping abruptly in front of the two doormen that now barred his way. ‘Sorry, not tonight son’ said the first doorman. Isambard’s face began to swell in fury like a ripe berry. ‘Son...SON!..What are you insinuating?’ scoffed Isambard in spluttering indignation, ‘You impertinent buffoon!’ he continued. Fortunately before the doorman could respond in his rustic vocabulary of violence, Isambard’s legs had received orders to retreat.
In the confusion, the confident leg made a rush between the doorman, while the frightened nervous leg panicked and tried to flee. Isambard could only look on in disbelief as his genitals connected with the sweet ground beneath him. His disbelief turned to astonishment as he writhed in all his undignified glory in front of a throng of laughing spectators. When it seemed all was lost, fortune smiled, as his pomposity swooped from the heavens to save his greatness from the clutches of humiliation. Springing up onto his impossibly dainty legs he met the gaze of those that watched with a barely contained venom. ‘Shame on you! I fought in a war so that you ungrateful flotilla of mutton daggers could keep French Fancies Brit...’ His words were caught short as he found his own hands clutching his own thick neck. A titanic struggle ensued as civil war erupted within his own body, wrestling himself to the ground and emitting a series of accusations and apologies, peppered with a barrage of insults. The assault on himself came to an abrupt halt when a piercing howl came from the shadow of a nearby arch. 'Isambard!' Petrified under threat from a foe even more formidable than himself, he quickly leapt on his now trembling legs and his purple complexion draining to a pallid green. His tongue dried to a stick and he felt the warm delta of urine spread across his velvet knee-breeches. Father had returned.
