Steamboats McMillan

June 29th:
Steamboats McMillan

Hugh "Shug" McMillan and I go back a while but have not been in touch for even longer.

That's not important though.

I have memories of the time I tried to assassinate him at a péage in Northern France or even when a lifetime ago, the two of us minced our way around the bars of Dumfries on a sunny Saturday afternoon, getting more and more pished and jabbering away with the usual shite that passed as banter between the two of us before fleecing the local bookie beside the New Bazaar and necking numerous pints of Old Jock.

Ahh, Maroof, 66-1, a real long shot, fit for the knackers yard before thon race was even off.

"Fancy a wee bet then Wattie" said Shug. "Aye" said I.

I put a couple of quid on the nose for Maroof to walk it. Shug wasn’t so sure but he felt my confidence flowing and slapped fifty pence on as a backup precaution to his cash on the favourite. Then with seconds to spare we leaned back against the wall to watch the race. She had to win as we didn’t have that much money left to pay for more beer. It didn’t start too well however, with Maroof slipping immediately to the back, I felt resigned to her ending up as a pot of glue for some airfix model, when suddenly, she started to come good.

Something within her must have said "fuck youse, ye load a donkeys, I’m Maroof, I used tae be somethin" because she went from a canter to maximum gallop on the final bend and won by a neck. We got some funny looks from the other punters but that was probably due to the fact we were jumping up and down, slapping each other on the back, shaking hands, hugging and generally finding it hard to contain our shrieks of delight.

Later, after many more pints, we sat opposite Rabbie Burns mausoleum, where we chanted pished poetry and tried to entice the great man to rise from the dead and share a tin of McEwen’s with us, but Rabbie thought better of it and left us ba-heids to get on with it. It ended up with a pogo to the Damned in Brooms Road, followed by a casual puke in the toilet, whilst some plastic posers talked about poetry and the importance of being a poet and ate their nibbles. Oh ma heid!

Check Shug’s work out, this man’s poetry is about him and what he encounters, he sees it and feels it and through his work conveys it, unlike the sad fuckers at that party who were stuck too far up their own arses to see daylight.

His new book of poems entitled "Strange Bamboo" is out now. Buy his book.

You all deserve it.


Strange Bamboo
ISBN-13 978 1 904886 51 8
£8.95 from Shoestring Press