"Let them eat iCake"

We can't always see things as they are.

But we can see them for what they might be.

And so it was that I started this most ordinary of days many years ago as a strapping young man (failing to conceal a stomach paunch with tight trousers) dressed in the full décor of a touring Scottish psychic tarot reader. Imagine me not as the Lawrie Brewster of a three piece suit but instead as a younger man wearing a Hawaiian shirt of elderly design that showcased a gang of vigorous sea-gulls sexually assaulting a collection of angelic looking pink acorns.

Some may have called the shirt distracting.

Yet there was more.

My hair was in full voluminous plume, my neck adorned with a paisley tie (that included the entire UV spectrum) while a giant banner advertised me as “Larry Page Psychic Tarot Consultant!” As a slightly heterosexual looking man challenging the stereotype that only gypsy caravans could provide psychic insight, I considered myself a sort of freedom fighter too

A rebel who also loved cakes.

Which explained why, at the Glasgow Psychic fair, a huge gathering of my most formidable New Age rivals, I still spent most of my time poring over the canteen with its latest acquisitions of organic carrot cake and ginger beer. The Famous Five would have been proud (but upset too as I would always be first in queue.) Not to mention the old lady serving always short changed due to her supposedly bad eye (her counting of mini-cookies was suspiciously perfect however.)

I needed as many mini-cookies as I could get.

Why? Because life to this point, in the hall amongst the dream catchers, Native American posters and haunting Tibetan chanting, was actually quite miserable. Larry Page, only weeks before, was my dazzling alter-ego who had allowed me to become a successful touring psychic, much to the chagrin of the fifty-something, QVC-shopping, sausage-fingered ladies with rings aplenty and pink candy floss hair.

Their wrinkled brows would furrow in frustration as I laughed outrageously like some 17^th century fop dandy before my young lady clients. Larry Page was a force to be reckoned with in the erotic arena of the new age play pen; or at least would have been were he not anchored by the romantic and frustratingly gentlemanly boundaries of his master Lawrie Brewster.

What if for just once... Larry Page could be unleashed!

That would require a great dose of irresponsibility and ego fulfilment – under what circumstances could such an event occur?

I got dumped!

Just two weeks prior to my grand première at the Glasgow Concert Hall, the most vaunted, the most competitive, the grandest foray into any psychic fair in all of Scotland, my heart was truly and thoroughly snapped. Like Edvard Munch's 'The Scream' I sat behind my desk and my crumpled banner in an ode to self sympathy.

Miserable.

The background romance to the day we shall return to can be surmised as thus. As a naïve youth (which we always remain) I had within the most naïve perspectives of adolescent spirituality and romantic fulfilment a desire to meet quite immediately a lady pertaining to be a soul-mate. Patience has its rewards I am glad to learn but at the time I was quite convinced that I already had. Yet after a few years, supposedly in the midst of love, already engaged and just a week from moving in to our new home together I got a text after a peculiar absence of communication.

'Sorry I can't see you anymore.'

No contact followed except for her father who phoned to arrange a date to collect some of her items from the new house including her pet rat.

Bones the rat.

I believe somehow my ex had actually forewarned Bones the Rat of her intention because for the last few days before that text, I can still remember him striving to keep me awake, his snowy white self pressed against the bars of his cage, his grey claws wriggling menacingly towards me, his pink eyes squinting. Within those eyes I could hear just one sound.

'muhahahahahha'

So the 17^th century fop was now a sunken wreck at the Glasgow fair. Even the 50 year old QVC-shopping, sausage-fingered ladies now looked at me with a pity normally expressed from the wrinkles of Mother Theresa to her patients.

But I was dying!

Well metaphorically – which, until you experience the real death of loved ones, is to that point at least the very worst death of all! With the possible exception of perhaps dying in the very last level of Chucky Egg or Pacman in a busy arcade.

But then I saw her.

Sat on my neon coloured plastic chair, eyes cast to my down-turned Tarot cards (atop a pretty patterned table blanket borrowed from my mother), a beautiful girl, of mixed Caucasian/Mediterranean blood, a princess with fairy like clothes, (size 10, boys – chesty too) that appeared delicate, red tinted hair (sensitive, and pretty eyes too, girls.) I was wowed by her, and then a miracle occurred.

She stopped and looked at me.

Me!

I leapt from my chair so quickly I almost knocked the table over. I gasped a greeting to her as she laughed warmly and enquired why I looked so sad. A state of despair so rapidly uplifting (as it does for even the most morose of boys in the presence of a flirting beauty) that I deigned not to look too smitten as best I could!

No more than a minute had passed and she was now sat opposite me receiving a complimentary reading. From afar, my mother shook her head affectionately, while further still I spotted my stepfather (an orange-faced half mouri) whispering with silent grandeur 'you lucky baaaasstard', an ancient expression of that celebrated native race of New Zealand.

We chatted gaily, as she flashed those dark eyes at me, smiling deliciously, making coy little movements, flicking her hair, all designed to inspire the most awkward erections of male interest. It truly felt that this grand hall was occupied by only me, her and...

A little pink bag.

At first it played no role with the interference of my attention but, slowly but surely, this pink pouch with tethered strings and feathers began to distract. What was in this little bag of tricks?

I asked, to which she curtly replied 'should the famous psychic Larry Page not already guess'. In fairness, my special powers were already spent mentally undressing her.

The contents of the bag were soon unleashed across the table.

Not wishing to make too great a point of my enquiry, I raced onto small talk (such as when we could meet outside this market arena for coffee), yet, in the moments between my words, I stole glances at the items - there were beads, buttons, all of them the typical physical itinerary of the new age fairy.

I also lapsed into an old habit of mine, which is to play with things. On the end of some pink string I twirled and played with some object. If I were your classmate at school, your stationery and pens would have become victims of my chewing. Yet, when I did so with the thing I twirled, her expression snapped into a look of shock.

I stopped.

What was it? At this point our story takes a darker turn, friends, so brace yourselves.

It was a human finger.

Dried from a year of rotting, like hardened wood, yellow nailed et all, though decorated cutely with disarming pink string, I now held in my hand a chopped digit.

Her voice took on a sense of quiet urgency as she explained that the finger I now held belonged to none other than her...

Satanic black-magic-obsessed violent self-digit-chopping boyfriend called... Ben.

Well that's okay because Bens are really always nice. Shire horses are called Ben – gentle giants bless them. Apparently 'Ben' in the form of some dark magic spell had chopped off his finger to ensure that she would remain forever faithful. Yet, as she explained her doubts about his sanity I felt a growing sense of moral responsibility and duty to try and break this terrible warlock's curse.

The chivalry, the romance of it, her boobs - all compelled me to act. There were many competing rationales and while the responsible Lawrie Brewster would have run a mile from a situation like this, Larry Page would not.

Cock-sure with forward thrust, I soon found myself exchanging numerous phone calls with our siren, and within a few weeks we were back together in Glasgow.

Within minutes of meeting, we were kissing in a tightened and passionate embrace (which was a little awkward for the customers in the café queue behind us).

To give you a better idea of this lady, she was one of those girls who prided herself in being a free spirit, a wanderer in life. Their very nature is beguiling and seductive but their affections are always fleeting, lads, and ladies too must beware for such qualities reveal themselves in male form too. Sweetest tongue has sharpest tooth.

In the busy, cold streets of Glasgow, she could dance about quite publically, or sit on the pavement outside a shop with little regard, coolly smoking a cigarette and talking about poetry while I would stand awkwardly nearby like her appointed social worker in a suit and tie. (Dressed as I was, I might have at least been the 'cool looking one' in a teachers staff room – I had the wacky tie to boot.)

As success would have it we soon found ourselves in her halls of residence, a dormitory for university students consisting of shared flats. In her small room she keenly explained the foibles of her exes and Ben, how they were all so judgemental of her voracious sexual appetites and desire to explore kinky photography. I sat opposite, empathising with a look so sage that it might be Gandalf lending comfort to Frodo. (Like in book two when Gandalf comforts Frodo over Sam's rejection of eleven woodwind instruments in bed.)

Yet, at this time in life and still, I was and am a passionate romantic sort, chivalric in my idea of things, (yet peculiarly libertine and open minded in others!) I had hoped perhaps for something more beautiful and noble to transpire within intimate conversation rather than what her favourite sex toy was and whether I liked pasta.

Everyone loves pasta!

So we ate pasta in the kitchen (with her bewildered looking flatmates, their names lost now to the mists of time), most of them wondering who the hell I was and yet, in their eyes was a strange fear and sympathy... a fear for whether I might survive the night, like the more sympathetic captors of a prisoner who wishes they could be freed. Yet, I too was curious – would I be allowed to stay the night?

Back in the kinky prison cell, she became more distant as conversation dried over sex toys, exes and my self indulgent moaning about life. Then Eastenders came on.

Eastenders was even more depressing than my attempts at conversation, (an east end set London soap opera about middle aged women getting ill and men dying in pub brawls.)

It actually cheered her up!

But, what to pass away the time now that the show was over? That was the sparkling moment of revelation when I suddenly spotted, beside a row of poorly concealed dildos, a trophy for 'Scotland Draughts (Checkers) Champion'.

We were soon playing Checkers, except with a new variant of the game rules, every time we lost a piece we had to down a vodka shot placed on top. I am now, as I was then, a complete lightweight for alcohol and it did not take long playing against a former national champion to get quite drunk.

As the twilight hours came and went it was clear that it was now too late for me to really go home. As I fought to sit straight and sound sober, I honestly had little idea what to expect next. As the board was packed, a serious look returned to her face. There was a strangeness there too, more of that special quality that had originally attracted me to her back at the psychic fair.

Still sitting, she stood and switched off the lights, there illuminated only by streetlights peering between the window blinds, she undressed. She stood there before me, completely nude, intoxicating and enticing in equal measure, I was stunned.

She climbed into bed and didn't say a word.

Me sitting there on the floor I proceeded to join her and you can imagine the physical pontifications, the screaming and shrieking (basically me – as she had long nails.) However we'll move onto a post exertion moment where, as she lay asleep, I suddenly invented a wonderful and hilarious scheme – at least it seemed so while still drunk.

A rubber finger.

I had forgotten to give it to her earlier, but, from a joke shop, I had purchased a rubber hand, cut off the finger and decided that I would give it to her as a kind of hilarious sign of affection.

Except now, drunk and irresponsible, I looked upon the pouch next to the bed and thought how much funnier I could be if I 'swapped' the real finger for the rubber one. I imagined as only a drunk adolescent or married man can how much the lady in question will laugh uproariously over a poorly thought out, crude gesture.

Swap completed, I fell promptly asleep.

Early the next morning I found myself on the bus back home (an epic few hours journey) feeling quite sick and a little awkward from the events the night before. Regardless of the sex it had not been a particular success in terms of a hoped for personal connection.

As I reached into my pocket to collect my phone, I pulled out, to my horror (and especially to the dismay of the old lady sitting next to me.)

THE FINGER!

Why the hell had I brought back the real finger! For what insane drunken reason did I suppose that the real finger should return back home! What was I going to do with a human finger? I thrust it back into my pocket as the perturbed old lady lunged towards a nearby empty seat.

When I finally found my phone I could see it had collected a nightmarish array of missed calls, first from her, then from a more disturbing and mysterious 'unknown number.'

BEN!

I listened to the answering messages too and there was the voice of Ben. Squeaky and malicious, he threatened to destroy me, to hunt me down, to kill me and demanded that I return the 'sacred artefact' ie. the finger with pink string – immediately.

Back home in the flat with my modest and timidly bespectacled flatmate, we anxiously stared at the phone as it proceeded to ring every thirty minutes.

Finally, after eating enough chocolate, I garnered the courage to acquiesce the buzzing instrument of terror and answered the call.

Ben rambled furiously before I finally interrupted with a booming voice of full theatricality that the finger now belonged to me. I explained that if he wanted to 'reignite' his relationship with his ladyfriend that it should be done without chopped digits and dark magic. He was lucky because at least this girl was giving him a second chance, I had been dumped after years of relationship by a text with no follow up! He paused for a moment, probably confused, and was about to rant on before I delivered the final blow to this acrimonious warlock. I told him that the next morning, the finger would be receiving a proper Christian burial.

The phone almost shook with a tremble one might describe as ancient and arcane as a scream bellowed into eternity.

“Nooooo”

I can only imagine Ben collapsing onto his knees at that point in a fine yet faux audition for any role concerning the lord of flies in any future Mel Gibson movie.

And so it was that in a local park, myself and my nervous, bespectacled flatmate stared at a small burial mound, sucking on our twisty lemon and lime ice lollies, waiting for their completed consumption to provide us with two modest wooden stakes to tie and plant into the ground as a Christian Cross,

marking the spot of the buried finger.