"You tae alwiz like rat?" the girl said.

"Like what?" Jamie said, without, I thought, the correct amount of pre-emptive indignation.

"You up on his showders."

"Oh, no, that's just so I can see the band better."

"Thank Christ fur "at. Ah thought maybe ye went tae ra bog like rat."

"Oh, aye; we go into a cubicle and Frank goes in the bowl while I do it into the cistern."

"Yur kiddin'!"

"Aye," Jamie said in a voice distorted by a grin. I was walking along as best I could, listening to all this garbage. I was slightly annoyed at Jamie saying anything, even jokingly, about me going to the toilet; he knows how sensitive I am about it. Only once or twice has he taunted me with what sounds like the interesting sport of going into the gents in the Cauldhame Arms (or anywhere else, I suppose) and attacking the drowned fag-ends in the urinals with a stream of piss.

I admit I have watched Jamie doing this and been quite impressed. The Cauldhame Arms has excellent facilities for the sport, having a great long gutter-like urinal extending right along one wall and halfway down another, with only one drainhole. According to Jamie, the object of the game is to get a soggy fag-end from wherever it is in the channel along to and down the coverless hole, breaking it up as much as possible en route. You can score points for the number of ceramic divisions you can move the butt over (with extra for actually getting it down the hole and extra for doing it from the far end of the gutter from the hole), for the amount of destruction caused — apparently it's very hard to get the little black cone at the bummed end to disintegrate — and, over the course of the evening, the number of fag-ends so dispatched.

The game can be played in a more limited form in the little bowl-type individual urinals which are more fashionable these days, but Jamie has never tried this himself, being so short that if he is to use one of those he has to stand about a metre back from it and lob his waste water in.

Anyway, it sounds like something to make long pisses much more interesting, but it is not for me, thanks to cruel fate.

"Is he yur bruthur or sumhin?"

"Naw, he's ma friend."

"Zay olwiz get like iss?"

"Ay, usually, on a Saturday night."

This is a monstrous lie, of course. I am rarely so drunk that I can't talk or walk straight. I'd have told Jamie as much, too, if I'd been able to talk and hadn't been concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. I wasn't so sure I was going to throw up now, but that same irresponsible, destructive part of my brain — just a few neurons probably, but I suppose there are a few in every brain and it only takes a very small hooligan element to give the rest a bad name — kept thinking about those fried eggs and bacon on the cold plate, and each time I almost heaved. It took an act of will to think of cool winds on hilltops or the pattern of water-shadows over wave-carved sand — things which I have always thought epitomise clarity and freshness and helped to divert my brain from dwelling on the contents of my stomach.

However, I did need to have a piss even more desparately than before. Jamie and the girl were inches away from me, holding me by an arm each, being bumped into frequently, but my drunkenness had now got to such a state — as the last two quickly consumed pints and an accompanying whisky caught up with my racing bloodstream — that I might as well have been on another planet for all the hope I had of making them understand what I wanted. They walked on either side of me alld talked to each other, jabbering utter nonsense as though it was all so important, and I, with more brains than the two of them put together and information of the most vital nature, couldn't get a word out.

There had to be a way. I tried to shake my head clear and take some more deep breaths. I steadied my pace. I thought very carefully about words and how you made them. I checked my tongue and tested my throat. I had to pull myself together. I had to communicate. I looked round as we crossed a road; I saw the sign for Union Street where it was fixed to a low wall. I turned to Jamie and then the girl, cleared my throat and said quite clearly: "I didn't know if you two ever shared or, indeed, still do share, for that matter, for all that I know, at least mutually between yourselves but at any rate not including me — the misconception I once perchanced to place upon the words contained upon yonder sign, but it is a fact that I thought the 'union' referred to in said nomenclature delineated an association of working people, and it did seem to me at the time to be quite a socialist thing for the town fathers to call a street; it struck me that all was not yet lost as regards the prospects for a possible peace or at the very least a cease-fire in the class war if such acknowledgements of the worth of trade unions could find their way on to such a venerable and important thoroughfare's sign, but I must admit I was disabused of this sadly over-optimistic notion when my father — God rest his sense of humour — informed me that it was the then recently confirmed union of the English and Scottish parliaments the local worthies — in common with hundreds of other town councils throughout what had until that point been an independent realm — were celebrating with such solemnity and permanence, doubtless with a view to the opportunities for profit which this early form of takeover bid offered."

The girl looked at Jamie. "Dud he say sumhin er?"

"I thought he was just clearing his throat," said Jamie.

"Ah thought he said sumhin aboot bananas."

"Bananas?" Jamie said incredulously, looking at the girl.

"Naw," she said, looking at me and shaking her head. "Right enough."

So much for communication, I thought. Obviously both so drunk they didn't even understand correctly spoken English. I sighed heavily as I looked first at one and then at the other while we made our slow way down the main street, past Woolworth and the traffic lights. I looked ahead and tried to think what on earth I was going to do. They helped me over the next road, me nearly tripping as I crossed the far kerb. Suddenly I was very aware of the vulnerability of my nose and front teeth, should they happen to come into contact with the granite of Porteniel's pavements at any velocity above quite a small fraction of a metre per second.

"Aye, me and one of my mates have been going round the Forestry Commission tracks up in the hills, goin" round at fifty, skiddin" all over the place like a speedway."

"Za'afac'?"

My God, they were still talking about bikes.

"Where-ur we takin" hum own-yway?"

"Ma mum's. If she's still up, she'll make us some tea."

"Yer maw's?"

"Aye."

"Aw."

It came to me in a flash. It was so obvious I couldn't imagine why I hadn't seen it before. I knew there was no time to lose and no point in hesitating- I was going to explode soon — so I put my head down and broke free from Jamie and the girl, running off down the street. I'd escape; do an Eric so I could find somewhere nice and quiet for a piss.

"Frank!"

"Aw, fur fuck's sek, gie's a brek, whit's ay up tae noo?"

The pavement was still below my feet, which were moving more or less as they were supposed to. I could hear Jamie and the girl running after me shouting, but I was already past the old chip shop and the war memorial and picking up speed. My distended bladder wasn't helping matters, but it wasn't holding me back as much as I'd feared, either.

"Frank! Come back! Frank, stop! What's wrong? Frank, ya crazy bastard, you'll break your neck!"

"Aw, le'm gaw, zafiez hied."

"No! He's my friend! Frank!"

I turned the corner into Bank Street, pounded down it just missing two lamp-posts, took a sharp left into Adam Smith Street and came to McGarvie's garage. I skidded into the forecourt and ran behind a pump, gasping and belching and feeling my head pound. I dropped my cords and squatted down, leaning back against the five-star pump and breathing heavily as the pool of steaming piss collected on the bark-rough concrete of the fuel apron.