A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
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EADIE-COE, HAZEL (1964 - ) Stalker. Despite my efforts to quash them, rumours persist to the effect that I'm married. The source of this misinformation is Hazel Eadie (or Hazel Eadie-Coe, as she calls herself) the woman who claims to be my wife.
I'm not the first person on whom Ms Eadie has fixated. Prior to meeting me she formed a similarly deluded attachment to Peter Sloss, the B.B.C. Scotland weather man. She first met me, in fact, while discussing the torment of sexual obsession on the Rob McCaskill radio show. Mistaking my solicitude for romantic interest, she immediately announced an amicable separation from Sloss and commenced upon a hare-brained pursuit of Coe that she's sporadically continued to this day.
While persistently disabusing Ms Eadie of the notion that we are involved in an intimate relationship of any kind, I've endeavoured to be compassionate toward her. It would obviously be folly to allow her into the house, but I've often instructed Gayle, my house-keeper, to take to coffee and sandwiches to the bus shelter immediately opposite my house where Ms Eadie sits, often for hours at a time.
Matters were complicated when Ms Eadie and Spencer enjoyed a brief, drunken liaison in the car-park of the Red Lion. This was appalling behaviour even by Spencer's standards and he was aptly rewarded weeks later when Ms Eadie telephoned claiming to be pregnant. This was almost certainly not the case: while both parties were too drunk to recall exactly what transpired, my surveillance operation revealed a sluggish fumble without any effective conclusion. Under the circumstances, though, I thought it judicious to let my brother sweat. He was sufficiently panicked to offer Ms Eadie £200 to terminate the pregnancy. She accepted the bribe and subsequently disappeared, presumably embarrassed to have broken her imaginary vows in such a horrible fashion.
Hazel Eadie in bus shelter.
EARS, SPENCER'S – My brother's humourlessness precluded him from bonding with our Grandfather Sneddon. While Spencer enjoyed tormenting other children with jibes and fiendish contraptions, he bridled when the tables were turned. As a child, for example, he had disproportionately sized ears, something that became less pronounced as he grew older. Grandpa would gently tease him about this attribute. “You could save money on electricity and let Spencer listen to next door's radio”, he might say, or “why do you need a kite when you can just put some string round Spencer's ankle?” It wasn't as if Spencer was singled out as the butt of the joke. When Christine entered adolescence and erupted in spots, Grandpa referred to her as Madame Vesuvius, while the standard joke for me was I was an escapee from Easter Island, this being on account of my large head. Admittedly, there were occasions, particularly as Grandpa grew deafer and started to shout, when Christine failed to get the joke and either started to cry or stormed up the stairs to her room. I had no such problems and, consequently have always been able to laugh at myself. If someone wants to crack a gag about the size of my head, I'll immediately confound him with three more, all recalled from Grandpa's repertoire. The very mention of large ears, however, is still sufficient to cause my brother to bare his teeth.
EASTON, PETER (1965 - ) Disc Jockey. Supercilious twerp who offered Spencer false encouragement by playing tracks from his 'demos' on the Beat Patrol, the Radio Scotland show dedicated to the inane musings of the emotionally fragile and incompetent. The reader can judge for himself by listening to Spencer's session from 2000.
ELLIS, MARGARET (1950 - ) Neighbour from Hell. Few of the individuals found on these pages would be considered ideal neighbours, Ellis, however, made bad neighbourliness her raison d'etre. Her ten year vendetta against the Robson family was precipitated by a polite request that she refrain from playing Neil Diamond records at full volume after ten p.m.. When Ellis refused to desist, the Robsons were forced to seek help from Stirling council from whom Ellis rented her house. Ellis retaliated with a series of ridiculous complaints against the Robsons: they stole her washing, stared at her and followed her to the shops. Recruiting members of her family, most of whom, being unemployable, had time on their hands for the purpose of mischief, she ensured that menacing loiterers were rarely absent from the vicinity of the Robson house. Their presence, she insisted, was essential to her own safety.
Every Christmas Ellis, with the sentimental instinct common to sociopaths, was in the habit of festooning the exterior of her property with decorations. On the first of December following the instigation of her feud with the Robsons, she not only covered her walls with lights but placed figures representing Father Christmas and the three wise men on the roof. Appearing in the local paper, she affiliated herself with a local children's charity to which she promised to forward donations from anyone eager to photograph her hideously disfigured house. Dismayed by the stream of gawkers, the Robsons again contacted the council. Ellis was ordered to remove sixty per cent of the exterior decoration: she refused, claiming the order violated her right to religious expression. As is often the case, the council, confronted by a lunatic, chose to disengage. For the next five years, Ellis did as she pleased. Her many anti-social acts included training pigeons to attack the Robsons and their visitors, a daily hazard which caused Mrs Robson to become a recluse.
Invited by a local community to group to mediate between the factions, my efforts were confounded by Ellis's obvious sociopathic tendencies. Paranoid and self-righteous, she constantly referred to the unhappiness she endured during her childhood, much of which she appeared to have spent confined to a garden shed. Our interview was terminated when my rejection of her argument merely provoked threats and, regrettably, a projection of spittle.
Ellis's reign of unpleasantness was eventually ended, not by reason but violence when members of the community action group resorted to vigilante-ism, presenting local children with a terrifying scenario one would subsequently recall as "the destruction of Christmas."
Margaret Ellis protests her innocence
EMPLOYMENT SEMINARS - My employment seminars were initially established with the intention of helping Christine's depressives, most of whom struggle to give a good impression of themselves, find worthwhile employment. Few people appreciate how drastically they can alter the way they're perceived simply by altering their body language. A man who slouches, rolls his eyes or scowls in the course of an interview, for example, is unlikely to be considered for any position. By remaining upright, making constant eye contact and smiling, though, his chances of success will be drastically enhanced. While the sensible reader might consider this advice obvious to the extent of being fat-headed, many of my original clients routinely botched interviews by lighting cigarettes or embarking upon tearful digressions about their personal problems. Under my guidance, the same hopeless candidates were offered positions for which they would never previously have been considered. Unfortunately, as it transpired, there was good reason for this. Not one of Christine's depressives was capable of remaining in a job for longer than a month. The slightest criticism was sufficient for them to quit, leaving co-workers with an additional burden and employers with the responsibility of finding a replacement.
Chastened by the realisation that I had enabled unworthy candidates to dupe their way into positions for which they were tempermentally ill-equipped, I offered my services to local employers. My seminars will alert interviewers to the warning signs that he's dealing with an unsuitable applicant: excessive eye contact, for example, and repeated use of the intervier's name. Adopting beard and padding, I've even sat in at interviews in the guise of Harvey Kitson, troubleshooter and scourge of the bluffer.
EVERETT, STEPHEN (1958 - ) Museum Assistant, Oaf. Until the drab new age of 'relevance' was heralded by LIZ BISHOP, I enjoyed a long and happy association with Drumfeld Museum. As a child, I was intrigued by its dusty rooms and gloomy corridors, the very aspects of the building so repugnant to Bishop and her cohorts, but particularly evocative to anyone of genuine sensitivity.
When my mother retired, she took a voluntary position in the museum's shop and later arranged for Billy to help as a guide while he recovered from one of his emotional collapses, a position he retains to this day. Around this time I renewed my own acquaintance with the building, keeping tabs on Billy's progress and helping to supervise the Hamilton Coe exhibition in the unused Scott room. With Everett's arrival, however, our sanctuary was spontaneously transformed into the set of some hideous 'sitcom'. An afficionado of practical jokes and sexual innuendo, Everett, impervious to the irritation behind the strained smiles elicited by his antics, gradually overwhelmed his colleagues. "He's quite a character," became the consensus, 'character' now being a routine defence of anti-social personality traits.
My letter to Everett's employers at Stirlingshire council's department of culture, however, explaining his unsuitability to the position, resulted in my being deemed an unauthorised person. For three months, in fact, until I was cleared by the officious nincompoops at Disclosure Scotland, I was barred from the building. By the time I returned, Everett had insinuated himself to the extent that I was made to feel like the outsider. Incredibly, I was refused access to the staffroom, an insult compounded by Margaret Semple's murmured comment that "he steals our biscuits."
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