Ugly Puggly 56

I went semi-regularly to AA meetings. There were all over the town and cities. In church halls and social clubs. There was even one in the backroom of a library. And you got your membership card stamped and wee tasters, coinage of being one day sober, one week sober. Some of the members had been sober longer than they’d been alcoholics. They made me wonder if they were real alcoholics. Not just your average weekend drunk. Part of my thinking was as tenacious as bindweed. I could be just like that. Have a few pints at the weekend and enjoy myself.

The Fellowship was a gathering of mental cripples. I felt different, but the same as them. Ugly Puggly had reminded me of the rule of three. A third would make it. A third wouldn’t. And a third would flit between the two groups. And it was my choice what group I wanted to belong to. He reminded me, whatever group I was in—I’d still be an arsehole. The Fellowship reminded me it wasn’t just about me, but everyone else I made suffer because of my addiction. The day I offered to sell my soul to the devil for a good bottle of whisky, but when he wouldn’t deal  offered to fling in my wife and children’s too. That kind of overt religiosity put me off, but I needed something to cling to.

I wasn’t looking for a cure, but a day off from the cure. Half the time, I was knackered. Taking Ugly Puggly up to see the Professor at Glasgow Uni started off as a holiday for me. Little more than a taxi job. Four miles and worry about the parking when we got there. We’d get there early to get the feel of the place. But we got there late, and I had to park illegally on Gibson Street.

We walked side by side in the drizzling rain. I’d on my work jacket and pulled up the hood. Ugly Puggly had on a denim jacket and carried his notes in a plastic bag. We had to ask direction. A young woman with an English accent said she didn’t know and hurried on. We doubled back and a young guy begging at the subway station put us right. He’d a cap with a few quid in it. I thought I’d probably see him at the next AA meeting. I dropped a quid into it, but I’d more time I’d have sat beside him and we could have split the money and the bottle fifty-fifty.

Professor Forster’s office was in a listed-building. The University owned lots of property in the West End. Western and Gartnavel Hospitals were on University land. His office was up steep stairs which took us off the road. Light-filled rooms with high ceilings, sandy-brown paint, wood panelling and solid wood furniture including a vintage desk which he sat behind.

We sat on armchairs facing him. Professor Forster square-framed glasses slid down his nose and had a head of greying hair. He wore a shirt and dark tie, but there was something monkish and coal-tar soap about him. ‘Would you like tea?’ he asked.

I was going to pipe up we would and maybe a Digestive too.

But Ugly Puggly beat me to it. ‘Nah,’ he said. His movements were jerky and uneven as he fished in his plastic bag and brought out his notes. He stood in front of the desk, pink as a sausage, his eyes downcast, and handed him the notes as if waiting for a decision from a judge he knew was going to convict. He shuffled back to his seat and waited.

Professor Forster’s brow furrowed. His mouth was slack, but his eyes came alive. He sped read through them. Night after night of Ugly Puggly’s work digested in about ten minutes. And I knew we were in trouble. I could feel Ugly Puggly’s anxiety and it made me nervous too.

He bundled up Ugly Puggly’s notes and knocked them together like playing cards and put them in a neat bundle on the desk. He spoke calmly. ‘It’s very impressive work in some ways. But I don’t think we can take it any further.’

I expected Ugly Puggly to tell him about the importance of solar panels. The future being already here with horns on it.  He’d even rehearsed a speech in the van, which he’d tried out on me. Heat cells having an elaborate network of veins and arches. How virtual engineering would help create them and how using the same techniques could form bigger and better structures. It would mean a revolution in building materials. He mentioned stuff for making the tiles. High numbers in the periodic table. Elements I couldn’t remember, but sounded like something Scotty would say in Star Trek, and was made from the earth’s crust when talking about the ship breaking up before warp speed.

‘Thanks very much for yer time.’ Ugly Puggly turned and skedaddled from the room.

‘Fuck,’ I said. It just slipped out. ‘Sorry,’ I apologised and picked up Ugly Puggly’s notes as best I could and hurried after him.

He waited for me at the bottom of the stairs outside, his hands jammed deep into his pocket.

‘Whit was that aw about?’ I asked him.

‘I knew it was aw rubbish.’

‘It wisane rubbish.’ I jammed the notes in my hand in between oxter and bent arm. ‘You didnae put up an argument. Yeh jist need tae see somebody else. Somebody better.’

He opened his arm and let the papers fall at our feet. Blown by the wind, a few sheets drifted under a parked car. Other sheets were getting smudged by rain.

‘Yeh jist gieing up then?’ I said. ‘That bastard wisnae even lookin at yer calculations. He was lookin at you. He saw right away yeh were a loser. Ready tae kow-tow and bow before his opinion. Natural selection of the middle-classes. See the fear and weigh the man by his accent and deference, no his ability. He could huv asked yeh tae shine his shoes and you’d huv used yer tongue.’

I kicked his notes into the gutter. ‘That’s aw they’re good for? That’s aw yer good for.’ Hunching my shoulders, I strode away from him, leaving him standing.