Exasperation

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The engine roars then fires a cannon blast. It shakes and shudders like a wagon on a washboard road, rattling brains, teeth, and all notions of order and propriety before melting into abject silence.  

Somewhat concussed, I hurl a very loud, very American:

“What the ..…..” 

…………….

In quick succession, 

Because this is ScotRail,

Everyone else blurts…

“Tae fook!” 

************************************

Ah. I love that expression, 

“Tae fook!”

though… 

I hate it when it’s sent my way. 

I’ve learned in the most shameful and embarrassing of ways, that the Irish also deploy this expression when exasperated. 

My sincerest apologies to that guy I leveled at the O’Connell GPO LUAS stop on the afternoon of May 21st, 2026. You have to understand,  I just could not contain my excitement about seeing the Liffey with my very own eyes for the very first time.

Oh shit! I exclaimed.

Tae Fook! he blurted. 

Sorry bud! I cried as I ran toward the welcoming arms of the Jim Larkin Monument. 

Ya know…..

I am not the most graceful person. 

I’d say I’m a bit of a spaz.

Ergo.

Tae Fook!

************************************

We’re just outside a tunnel entrance. From my vantage point in the fourth carriage back (that’s Carriage D for those of you who have squinted at ScotRail arrival boards trying to figure out which end is which). I can see the tunnel’s exhausted brick and stone curvature. When constructed, it was a starched British Khaki. But now, it’s slathered in a tattered coat of black and gray soot. Several bright green splotches of sea-blown algae add a bit of psychedelic pulse to the glum tableau. It looks like a 13th Floor Elevators concert could break out at any moment. 

************************************

Almost as quickly as they appeared, my shock and dismay dissipate into reverie.

Psychedelia. I miss Psychedelia. The original Psycheldelia from the 1960s and its brief revival in the mid-1980s.  

It’s 25 O’Clock. 

My Good Dukes. 

I think about the greatest rock album of all time, 

That’s the Nuggets compilation,

Full name: Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968. This album was compiled by rock historian Lenny Kaye and released to the world in 1972 when I was eight years old. I didn’t discover it until its 50th anniversary in 2022 when I was, uh… hmmm… uh… yeah..… 58. 

Better late than never… 

I guess. 

Anyways…. 

Reverie.. Reverie.. 

the Strawberry Alarm Clock, 

incense and peppermint, 

2-headed dog, 

Too much to dream last night, 

How can you not love a band called The Electric Prunes? 

Roky Erikson, 

and all that garage stuff from long long ago, 

longer than I’ve been alive, 

…. or ……..

thereabouts. 

Actually. I was born just before the Nuggets era of 1965-1968. I’m sure you math-heads have already surmised that. 

But… 

I grow old… I grow old.. 

As we all do. 

Finitude looks me straight in the face. I don’t have time to lose. 

None of us do. 

It’s why I’m on this train. 

Tae Fook!

************************************

But the tunnel.. This tunnel…. This old stone and brick tunnel.. The well worn festival tunnel.. reeling in the years… rock n rolling by the sea. The North Sea.. The deep blue sea. 

****************************

No. No. Not the snot green sea. 

That’s James Joyce. 

That’s Ulysses.
That’s Buck Mulligan.
Poor lost Stephen D.

Why didn’t you pray at your mother’s behest?  

and last 

but not least 

Ireland’s favorite,

and possibly the world’s

favorite fictional Jew,
Leo Bloom. 

Happy Bloom’s Day.. 

Oh the snot green sea. 

Not here. 

That’s Sandy Cove. 

That’s Dun Loaghaire.. 

My beautiful lovely Dun Laoghaire. 

But here. Here in Scotland…

The sun shines from clear blue skies.. Everything is blue. 

A deep blue sea. The North Sea.

The North Sea is cold. Even colder than Dublin Bay. The water at Dun Laoghaire this time of year (It’s mid-May by the way) is around 12.6 C / 55 F while the North Sea ‘round these here parts is 9 C / 48 F. It may not be a snot green sea, this North Sea, but it certainly is a scrotumtightening sea. 

You jump into the North Sea

right now

and you’ll howl: 

Tae Fook!

*****************************

I take a wild guess, and say, it’s been more than a hundred years since our dear tunnel’s last refurb. Maybe not. Maybe only fifty. Either way, even if it had only been ten years, it’s well overdue for a good sandblasting. 

But really?

I stop. 

Let’s stop. 

Let’s think about this.

Do we want to sanitize it? 

Do we really want to scrub this tunnel clean? 

Return its colonial khaki?

Take away its personality, 

its life, 

its joie de vivre? 

Its atmosphere? 

Its psychedelic pulse?

——-

I say

AND…. 

Sir Paul says….  

Let it be. Let it be.. 

Let it be. Oh. Let it be.. 

I sing.. 

and it devolves 

into a new song that I sing to that very same tune.

It goes like this….

Aberdeen!

Aberdeen!

Aberdeen! Oh Aberdeen!

You’re right there on the north sea.

Aberdeen!

Ewwwwhhh!

************************************

The first carriage of the train is actually in the tunnel. 

That’s kinda sexy. MeThinx. 

Or is that a full-on tease? 

I can’t say. 

I like the idea of trains and tunnels as the ultimate metaphor for full-on coitus. I loved the last shot in North by Northwest, 

which reminds me, 

I need to watch it again. 

Of course, I could have fun with the director’s name and all its Freudian pun potential, but I’ll spare you. You’ll have to do it on your own. 

Good luck. 

************************************

But this train. This train. This ScotRail train. Have you finally forsaken me dear Scotrail? My ScotRail? My hallowed bedazzling ScotRail? I rend my garments and gnash my teeth. 

This beautiful blue and white Saltire-bedecked train had been chugging along just fine in a northeasterly direction from Falkirk for more than an hour and a half, 

until now…

but now, 

but now,

we are stopped. 

And 

we are stopped. 

Suddenly. 

Tae Fook! 

And,

For no good reason I can surmise. 

We move no more. 

But why? 

************************************

Mais Pourquoi? 

as the French say. 

But .. now that I think about it…who really gives a shit what the French say, do, think, or whatever. They’re French. I still haven’t forgiven them for Martial Petain and the Vichy government. I never will. 

I’m an American (but I’m really first and foremost, A TEXAN). The French like to give me shit for being American. 

They say “You Americans are crass consumerist dullards who care not one stray molecule about the soul, humanity, morality, the Enlightenment, goodness, and everything that makes humans so glorious, beautiful, and frustrating. All you Americans care about is money, cheap chinese stuff from Wal-Mart, status, and more money. Ach!!! I spit on your shallow soul in your shallow grave!! 

In response, I simply tell them, 

“Sans les États-Unis, vous parleriez allemand.” 

Translation: Without the United States, you’d be speaking German. 

Le Fin d’Histoire. 

End of story. 

Full stop. 

You cheese-eating surrender monkeys. 

************************************

But ah.. Dearest ScotRail.. 

We are ..

or were…

getting close to our destination, 

our glorious destination..

that beautiful city, 

• I have woefully sung about already —

that bustling metropolis of commerce and culture, 

that trade center of black gold and Texas Tea once referred to in more prosperous times as 

“Houston on the North Sea”, 

that gem of granite and blustery, 

often brutal, 

sea breezes,

That city. 

That town. 

That berg. 

That thriving Mecca 

that exhilarating Alexandria, 

that cantankerous Constantinople, 

that salty center of the universe more commonly known as ….

……  Aberdeen. 

************************************

We just passed Arbroath. I stare at the North Sea on the right. There are no more than forty miles to go.

Yet. 

We are stopped. 

What is going on?

Tae Fook!

Are we waiting for another train to come out of the tunnel?

And if so, why?

There are two parallel tracks and plenty of room between each. Plus part of our train is already in the tunnel! 

Sexy. Sexy. 

I do not like this.

We sit.

We sit some more.

Finally. An Announcement..

“We’re having trouble with the engine. The train has lost power. We are in contact with maintenance and I think we can restart the engine without a ‘call out’.” 

Whatever “a call out” means. 

“We’ll know in thirty minutes.” 

************************************

Thirty minutes later. 

“We’re still in contact with maintenance. We’ll be restarting the engine soon, and on our way.”

Cool. Let’s get going. I think. 

************************************

Thirty minutes later. 

“We’ll be restarting the engine now, and we’ll be on our way.”

Nice. Cool. I think. 

But…

Nothing. 

************************************

Thirty minutes later. 

“We’ve completely lost power. The engines will not restart. Maintenance and technical crew are on the way.”

************************************

An hour later. 

“Another train is coming to push the train back to Arbroath.”

************************************

An hour later. 

“We cannot find an engine big enough to push the train back to Arbroath.”
************************************
I sigh.
I whence. 

I hear the scattered cries of: 

Tae Fook!

************************************

I’m sweating. I want to open the window. Other passengers succeed in doing so. It’s maybe 60 degrees Fahrenheit (15.5 degrees Celsius). It shouldn’t feel uncomfortable to a Texan. But being cooped up in a train full of humans changes everything. Windows open. Doors open. Cool air flows through the carriage. Relief. 

************************************

An hour later. “Still looking for a solution.”

************************************

An hour later. “Another train is passing by on its way to Arbroath. We are going to transfer everyone onto that train and return you to Arbroath.” 

************************************

Deep breath. 

ah..

sigh.. 

Tae fook!

************************************

And so they do…

after fetching the most wobbly and decrepit wooden ladders that likely had not seen the light of day since 1962. 

There are splinters on the rungs. 

Glad I wore my hiking boots. 

But my hands.

My poor hands. 

Glad I brought my tweezers on this trip. 

As always, I take my small 20 litre bag and huge 100 litre bag. The rail personnel tie those decrepit ladders with nylon rope to the hand rails along the train doors. 

I hand off my bags to the assembled crew. 

Down I go to the track. 

Wobble, wobble, goes the ladder. 

I hoist (re-hoist my bags – and around the other train I march in a line with all the other passengers like wee ducklings following their mum. 

To the opposite side of the other train we go where another decrepit ladder in even worse shape, with even more splinters awaits us. 

Damn. Where did I put those tweezers? 

Is this gonna hold me? I think. 

This wobbly-legged rat of a ladder? I’m not a dainty wee person. But up I go as it sways side to side, taking some splinters to the fingers and palms. Ouch.

Up go my bags from the Scotrail maintenance. 

“Tae fook is in this?” cries a crew member as he hands up my 100 litre bag.

“Six weeks of camping gear,” I tell him.

“Aye!” he says. 

Little did I know that gear would give me a wh

inging case of sciatica in the coming weeks. 

And thus, myself and the bags camp out in the aisle with all the other Aberdeen-bound passengers. 

All the seated Edinburgh passengers heading south stare at us with impatient resignation. 

None of us can do anything about it. 

Shit happens. 

Trains break down. 

We’ll all die one day so.. 

go with it. 

If you cannot bring yourself to outright enjoy it, 

then, tolerate it. 

Shut your eyes and breathe. Breathe deep. That’s what I do as I stand in the aisle for the ten mile journey back to Arbroath. 

With my original train stuck on the tracks, another train to Aberdeen is not an option. 

At the start of engine debacle I struck up a rapport with Trevor from Belfast, NI.. who’s carrying a suitcase of whisky and other party essentials for an extended dance mix bank holiday weekend, and a young south african woman who now lives and teaches wee schoolchildren in Linlithgow.. 

Trevor …suggests that we three split a cab fare from Arbroath to Aberdeen. 

We are all game to do so.. 

But.. 

Best intentions. 

Best laid plans… 

Unfortunately, no such transit is to be found in the town where Robert the Bruce, and a few others, signed that famous declaration some 700 years ago. 

“As long as a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be subjected to the lordship of the English. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself”.

Those words can send shivers up and down the spine of every Scot.

They send shivers up and down mine. 

But for now. 

There is certainly no glory. 

No riches.

And definitely no Honours.

Only the sad truth of our sullen situation, the mundane mucking about of mass man trapped in his dependence upon machine modernity, a machine modernity that has hiccupped, spat, vomited, and failed us all. 

Tae Fook!

We are adrift. Our sails are limp. 

But alas poor Ulysses.
But alas gloomy Odysseus. 

But alas! Do you hear? Do you hear it? 

That Sirens’ call from across the street! ? !

We can always take a bus.. I say. Where? My two new companions ask. I point across the street to a blue sign pointing the way to “Bus Station.” 

We follow the seductive call of the wheels on the bus going round and round. 

We wait.

We board.

The driver takes pity on our poor castaway souls. We ride to Aberdeen for free. 

There are no available seats on this double decker bus, so I ascend the stairs and stand the whole way like a surfing cowboy through the wind and the rain of towns like

Montrose,

Kinnebar

Inverbervie

Stonehaven

Dunnotar

Cammachmore

in order 

to get to the ‘Deen, DonLand, 

The city of the River Don

and the River Dee. 

Houston on the North Sea,

where I alight the bus

and

those blustery North Sea Breezes just about rip my face off and blow it all the way to Garlogie. 

And 

as I stand in that howling 

salt and dead fish wind,

windows on all the surrounding buildings

tremble like scared rats;

Spikes of rain strafe upon the wind,

Piercing my face.. 

hammering my nose..

Pounding my head. 

Soaking every thread 

that I wear.. 

I look up at the granite sky

that matches the buildings 

AND

all I can say is:

Tae Fook!