The G8 summit, consisting of UK, USA, France, Russia, China and I dunno some other cunts like Japan or Germany or Tahiti had been meeting up in Glen Eagles. On the opening night of this summit I had watched, on the ginormous TV in the toatie wee village pub where I worked, some radge cunts dressed in black smashing up a Burger King, and then moving on to trashing cunts’ cars in the street. This was happening just up the road, and this being the out in the sticks, just up the road at this local vomit joint was in fact about 10 miles away.
Me and a couple of boys had been cheering them on, but then a few others in our group were calling them cunts, especially when it showed them smashing up some poor cunt’s car for no obvious reason. But myself and gal, respective barman and k.p. in the pub, immediately felt an aching desperation to get to this protest camp that had sprung up just at the edge of Stirling.
The next night I closed up the bar and grabbed my maw’s car, and headed to the encampment. There was myself, gal and our other pal, mo, checking out the scene, seeing what was going off. A bunch of tents were set up, mostly full of hippies. Some were playing music, others giving talks, playing videos or making food. However, there was one tent where there were just a few seats, and a few folk standing around, all dressed in black hoodies. These cunts were the ones I was looking for, the Black Bloc as the Daily Record or some other bog roll had been calling them: the anarchist rioters.
Nae cunt said anything in there. No smoking, drinking or doing nothing. Aw just sitting in silence. Ages ae it. I got it though. It said everything – it stood in to say – ‘dinnae say nothing aboot this’. Received and unnerstood. We hung around for a bit, then went and spraffed to cunts from all over; Scotland, England, Germany, Italy before heading back.
I’d been working on the nights after, purveying finest foam and pish to the jakeballs whose chat I had to suffer each midweek evening, but had been listening to gal’s tales of the protest camp and reading and re-reading articles on the BBC such as:
"At approximately 0300 BST on Wednesday a group of an estimated 300 people emerged from the eco-village in Stirling intent and began causing significant disruption in the area.
"They immediately attacked business premises in a retail park close to the site of the village before splitting into smaller groups of between 40 and 60 people each and embarking on major disorder in Stirling itself and Bannockburn and violently engaging with police."
Vehicles, banks and a Burger King restaurant on the Springkerse retail park in Stirling were attacked.
Road and rail services were also disrupted for a time with the M9 motorway and the rail line north of Dunblane blockaded.”
Despite the shitey editing in the article, I was like FUCKING YAAS, this is it, mass civil disobedience, the kind of thing that I’d heard about from old cunts, often miners, some of whom were now auld jakeys, others who’d become lecturers at Napier University. Any cunt around the time of the poll tax, the criminal justice bill, or the miners strikes.
I’d been too young to get wired in about either of those, but I was dying tae now, show these fucking world leader cunts that they cannae just swan around our neck of the woods spreading their fucking war mongering lies and consumerist filth, aw in the pockets ae any big corporation, lawyers, bankers, big tobacco and weapons salescunts. We had tae do something, say something to the cunts. Show some fucking fight, Jesus fuck.
We were sitting in the pub, as always, not even drinking just sitting about watching Sky Sports News and playing pool, when I rounded cunts up to go through to Edinburgh, for what was what’s billed as “A Carnival of Full Enjoyment”, two days after what was laughingly entitled (co-incidentally just like the folk who walked on it) a “Make Poverty History” march through that same town. I had no idea what to expect, but I knew gal would be involved, and we grabbed our pal buck and booted through to see mo and fruity, and whoever else might be about.
At the roundabout on the back road from Thornhill to Dunblane, there were 5 polis cars and paddy wagons, one at each exit. A couple more wagons flew past on the way towards the M9. This was absolutely unheard of for our wee back bog, I’d seen polis driving around Thornhill about 20 times, not more than that, definitely high ballpark figure of 20 separate occasions, in the 20 odd years I’d lived there. Two polis cars at once was utterly unheard of. Flying past them, blasting the prodigy and pendulum and punk tapes, we we’re already hyped, I felt just like I’d had a just bomb of base kick right in, the drip swallowed and then the whooooooooosht.
We drove directly to Haymarket station, and dingyied the car, in order to walk up Princess St. It was a fucking ghost town, I’d never seen it so quiet, not even 5am. All of the shops were boarded up, feart ae they wee black bloc cunts tanning their windaes. I was wearing a no-name black hoody, partly to try and find some of these black bloc cunts, but also trying to look like a wee hard cunt, despite the fact I’d pure shite it and run if the shit hit the fan against the polis.
We walked like the heroes in the dawn of the day of the night of the living dead, eerie silence, nae cunts, nae cops, nae crowd at all, nuhin. We were chanting “Make Historians Poor” about mo, who had just got a job with the Historic Scotland, or, if you wanted to piss him off, at the National Trust. We walked with the castle on our right and an empty street in front, thinking that mo was obviously raking in far too much cash, the bas. Fuck making poverty history, we wanted to make these fuckin note-taking, diary-keeping, double-glazing preventing, time-team cunts poor.
We found the crowd, right in front of the mound, cunts dressed as clowns, sticking flooers on the polis shields and blowing them kisses and clowning, basically. Some ae them were a bit aggro though, calling the polis all sorts ae cunt under the sun, right up fir a ruckus. The big polis line moved back, and aw cunt cheers, two crusties standing on top of a bus stop, waving a sheet that had painted on it “drop beats not bombs”. I telt them ‘nice banner’ and they gave me a flyer for Pedigree Skum, a local rave crew who held free parties out at Blackford quarry, just at the edge ae town.
I gied them a thumbs up and we sauntered on up the street. Two boys in black hoodies came up behind us with a metal fencing like they have getting in to t in the park campsite at the gates. Not a huge bit, just a wire fence. They were like, ‘here mate gies a hand with this’. I helped them forward through the crowd, and just before the front line of polis could see what was happening, one boy launched it right in the middle of the ashen faced clockwork sodjers.
The polis didn’t do nuhin straight away but, just kind of fannied about looking at it, no one taking control of the situation. The two boys who’d dragged it up and threw it had melted, taps aff, nae two cunts in black hoodies any more, just two cunts in the crowd. The polis guy on filming duty was getting filmed himself by several cunts at once, all clicking their fingers at him and shouting ‘ho mate, ho mate, ho’, tryin to get the cunt’s attention. Then the polis all started shoutin instructions at each other and pushing forward. Some of the clown cunts got a bit enraged, and dragged away behind the lines where the paddy wagons were. We moved up a side street and saw we couldn’t get out, back onto Princess Street, and found the polis had pushed every cunt forward, then moved back a bit, consolidating their position.
I pulled my hood up and moved into the space left, squinting up at the sun, trying to see the polis helicopter who must have had cameras trained on the crowd. I walked into to the gap away from every cunt, just me, the line, the helicopter, the sun, a peace sign on my fingers as a test to these cunts. First to the helicopter and then to the fuckin thick blue line. Would they use unreasonable force against me? I had no idea.
They all pulled back an I laughed my tits off and went back to see buck and gal, who were calling me a stupid cunt and laughing as well. We tried to call mo, who was seemingly at Lothian road outside the Clydesdale bank. We left the nonsense to it; full on radge cunts had come through, daein this:
We got to Clydesdale bank on Lothian road, which was surrounded by the biggest polis presence I’d ever seen, but as already mentioned, seeing as I come fae the sticks, that’s no really saying much. But there were nae protestors, not one. We walked around a bit and found a kettle of the cunts in Canning St. They’d fucked it, they’d needed wide streets with escape routes, but hindsight is a cunt, of course.
We finally found mo, he was with another bunch of cunts, blasting tunes on their sounds systems, “ah goat soul but ahm no a sodjer”, before the Killers became hypershite, and were just semishite. As mo said, it should have been ‘I predict a riot’ by their indie cunt rivals the Kasier Chiefs. It was an era of K-bands, Kasabian could have sound tracked it an aw with ‘L.S.F.’
Ahhh, oh come on! We got our backs to the wall Ah! Get on! And watch out! Ah! Before you kill us all!
Mo was singing “What do we want?”
I shouted “Techno!”
he chanted “When do we want it?”
buck shouted “YAAASS”.
Our tunes were better.
We headed back to Princes St, troops reinforced, looking for fruity, I knew that cunt would be here somewhere. Had to be, he’d gave me the flyer for the Carnival of Full Enjoyment in the first place, though I’d telt him I was already on it as I’d been reading indymedia.com too.
When we got back there it was a full on rammy now, no cunt moving down the side streets, aw cunt penned in and pushed up against the fuckers, crowd pushed, polis pushed, polis fell back and further back, then somehow got hemmed round the back ae Jenners - just a wee side street with a half covering, almost a tunnel. They were blocked in somehow, a lorry and parked vans at the back of the street obstructing their exit.
The crowd had changed, it was all embra radges now singing shit like 'who’s streets our streets', the gadgees taking it further, winding up the crowd, launching bottles, then anything that wasn’t fixed down, street signs, traffic cones, benches. I was pure right at the front again, only a couple of numpties ahead of me when I saw a cone crack off some clown cunts’ cranium just in front of me. I went to help the poor cunt, when I realise that it was fruity.
‘Haha you daft cunt, are you ok?’ I asked him, and he replied that I should watch myself, wearing a black hoody like that, and I telt him that obviously I was para as fuck but the give-away is the disguise, that’s its beauty. It marks you out and hides you at the same time. And anyway, had he taken a fucking look at his self recently? Mud, ruined ripped jeans, a tutu, bovver boots, the fucking works. I pulled him back a bit and half-heartedly launched the bottle in my hand at the seemingly trapped polis cunts, and felt guilty for a millisecond before the primal, spittle flecked hatred and rage all flooded back.
Behind us there was another few polis, but they were distracted by some tramp taking a pish onto the entrance of the McDonalds, to the cheers of the crowd, who started bottling the restaurant. I turned around again and the other polis cunts started banging on their shields, louder, louder, then fucking cherged right intae the crowd, gadgies, neds, clowns, hoodies, students, hippies the lot go fucking flying, bashed up in the air or cowering onto the ground. I got shoodir charged into the wall of Jenners, then smacked in the pus by the padded shoodir ae the storm trooper, gutted that I can’t even check out the clothes cos the windaes are aw boarded up! Then get barged again, and smack my face into the stone wall. I turned and fucking bolt, no idea where any of my mates were, or even which way I was going, and found myself back on Princes St.
I got talking to some cunt who gied me his card for being a lawyer, and telt me to call him if I got lifted. I found gal and buck and fruity, and we finally found mo, who whilst trying to climb over the fence into Princes Street Gardens, contrived to stick one of the spikes through his foot. We got over the fence, laughing, spitting blood, mo holding his foot, sitting looking across Princes St Gardens, when we see a line of Stormtroopers filtering into the south side of the gardens, over the pedestrian railway bridge. They fanned out and we gaped, the blood from my nose dripping into my mouth.
Behind us, more and more folk were getting penned into the gardens, scrambling over the spiked fences, a lot of cunts not out to cause trouble, just having a wee nosy, seeing what was going on. These cunts well-spoken tones were becoming more screechy as they protested, behind them on Princes St, the remaining radge were bolting in every direction, and as the polis squeezed us from all sides the air was starting to get panicky.
The BBC cameras were trained on us, and buck sneaked himself on national TV, giein a wave for his undoubtedly proud maw. We told each other no to get lost, to keep an eye on every cunt at all times, as it felt that it was about to get out of hand, somecunt was about to get seriously hurt. Benches and bins were getting launched at the piggies, rambunctiousness abounded.
Then suddenly it seemed like there were far more punters than polis, and a handful of the labdicks were penned in. With the militia encircled, folk just started picking the flooirs oot ae the beds, and throwing at them. In seconds it went from radgely fearsome to faintly ridiculous. Some cunt handed me a joint, and the scene became far too Dadaist, like we’d walked into a Banksy painting!
We collapsed in giggles and started to head back to the West End, where we had abandoned the car just a few hours earlier. Astoundingly, an old traffic warden was out doing his job. I gave him a sob story, telt him that we were stuck on the other side of town by the polis and couldn’t get back to the car in time, and he actually was sympathetic and dingyied the ticket. We asked him if he knew what was going on two streets away, and he telt us that he wasn’t fussed for parties and that he just wanted to do his job and go home to his family. It was by far the most incredible event that had happened all day, we were stunned into slack-jawed silence.
Until the drive home when we agreed it was the best fucking day out on Princes Street ever, ah could do that every weekend. Absolutely barry! Fucking magic! Sure, it was only a few hours of filling the stygian pit in my chest, containing my reductionist lack of any sense of free will; my foreboding for the decisively dystopian future; my disrespect for the encyclopaedic volumes of reactionary laws; my hatred for the impunity of the militia maintained by the state as part of the bullshit social fucking cuntract.
But it was good enough till next time.
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