Smoky Bacon Crisps: Finding the Edge of Life

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SMOKY BACON CRISPS: FINDING THE EDGE OF LIFE

In middle age Roy, Henry and Donnie have drifted into comfortable ways of being until a shared tragic event leads them to consider their existence and they each realise that their comfortable space is also a prison. They start opening up their lives to new experiences and begin to find the edge of life. The book is set in Glasgow, but it could be anywhere in the western world. It shows the city at its best, but Britain at its worst, as the three gentlemen find that the country has become gripped by ideologies more in keeping with the tabloid press than with any valuing of humanity. We should not give away the plot of the book and the events that challenge the social order of the nation, leading to The Pensioners March on Glasgow, but we can mention some of the characters in the book. As well as Roy the retired factory worker, Henry a defected member of the landed class now professional gambler, and Donnie who is ex-army and clouded in mystery, there is Maureen, the bar manager and Rosie, her assistant and adopted ‘sister’. The sisters have both become strong in the face of men but to each other they can share the love of women. There is also ‘Finn’, a gangster known for his work with a filleting knife; ‘Adonis’, Finn’s bodyguard, whose body inspires Rosie but whose mind does not; the lawyer, Mr Findlay Macsween still sharp at eighty years of age; Donnie’s estranged son Donald, a property developer in Buenos Aires; Amjad and Mohsin the computer whiz kids; Nadira Khan, Professor at Oxford University and a Master of the Bench of Middle Temple; Chief Superintendent Roger Dingwall, unaffectionately referred to by his colleagues as ‘Dingaling’; the very smooth Chief Inspector Aldo Perretti, an expert in interrogating terrorists; the local journalist Sam Hunt who made a fortune and gave it away; ‘The Beast’, not someone with whom to spend time in a prison toilet cubicle; the Gaelic speaking Jock and Duncan in Lochinver; not to mention the mystical Aonghas of Assynt. Oh, and the First Minister of Scotland.