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if the Polis hadn’t uncovered a network of Little League serial killer wannabes who were using STEAMING to rehearse next Saturday’s riot over on Easter Road: But that was the final nail in the coffin. All the suit-wearing world loves a geeky scapegoat, and you boys were going down in flames. So there was only one thing to do: fly out to Amsterdam and get absolutely steaming drunk for the weekend, not to mention so stoned you’re having auditory hallucinations to the sound of the tram bells.
    “Excuse me, sir, but you cannot sleep here.”
    You open your eyes. The auditory hallucination is peering at you through her surveillance goggles as if she’s never seen a stoned tourist before. She’s been so polite that for a moment you feel a flash of perverse gratitude until the weed clears enough for you to realize that she is a member of the Politie and quite capable of summoning a vanful of black-clad accomplices who will vanish you into some concrete custody cell faster than you can snap your fingers if she chooses officially to notice that you are not terribly conscious.
    You try to say, “Please don’t arrest me, I’m just a sleepy tourist, I won’t be any trouble,” but it all runs together at the back of your tongue and comes out as something like “nnnghk.” You tense your arms and prepare to lift yourself out of the armchair—standing up would seem like the right thing to do at that point—but that’s when you realize the armchair is situated adjacent to a street sign on a pole, to which your friends have kindly handcuffed your left wrist. And that goddamn ringing noise won’t stop—it’s not in your ears at all, is it?
    “Um?” you say, dully staring past the cop in the direction of the antique shop on the other side of the pavement. There’s something odd about the window, the pattern the lights make as they reflect off it—or don’t, as the case may be. Broken, you tell yourself sagely. Someone has broken the antique shop window and dragged this annoyingly gezellig armchair out onto the pavement for you to sit in. Talk about game scenarios gone wrong: It’s like something you might end up dumped into in STAG NIGHT: THE PURSUIT if you started griefing the bridesmaids.
    “Does this chair belong to you, sir?”
    Sometimes when you laugh you come out with a burbling, hiccuping sound, like a hyena that’s choking to death on its food. You can hear it right now, welling up out of your shirt pocket, tinny and repetitive. It’s the ultimate custom ring-tone, as annoying as a very annoying thing indeed, except this particular piece of intellectual property isn’t owned by a bunch of gouging cunts.
    “’Scushe me, tha’s my phone…” Your right hand is free, so you try and insert your fingers in your shirt pocket and play chase the mobie. Somehow in the past hour your hand has grown cold and numb, and your digits feel like frankfurters as the handset slips past them, giggling maniacally.
    “Pay attention, sir. Did you take that chair from the shop? Who handcuffed you to the NO PARKING sign? I think you’d better blow into this meter, sir.”
    She’s a sight easier to understand than the local Edinburgh Polis, which is no bad thing because the voice at the end of the line is anything but. “Jack? Hi, it’s Sophie! Are you alright? Are you busy right now?”
    “No, not now—”
    “Oh that’s a shame, I’m really sorry, but can you do me a favour? It’s Elsie’s birthday the Tuesday after next, and I was wondering—”
    You breathe on the end of the cop’s torch as she holds it under your mouth, then swallow. Your sister is tweeting on the end of the line, oblivious, and you really need to get her off the phone fast. You force unwilling lips to frame words in an alien language: “Email me. Later…”
    “But it’s important!” Sophie insists. “Are you alright Jack? Jack?” The plangent chords of her West Midlands accent form brassy patterns of light on the end of the torch,