Deep Fried Pizza

By Giulio Saggin

Steve Butcher is a tabloid photographer in Edinburgh, Scotland. He is young. He is Australian.
His life behind the lens is far from glamorous and he doesn’t spend his days photographing Page 3 girls and celebrities at movie premieres.
Instead, he sits outside people’s houses for hours on end waiting to ‘snatch’ them, gets into fights with petty criminals at bus stops while trying to photograph them, and endures 10,000 soccer fans singing: ‘You can shove that f***ing camera up your...’
Steve hates working for the tabloids – the tabs – and his morals and ethics are often compromised. The problem is, working for the tabs pays well and he often has to choose between his morals and the chance to make a quid. When pressed, he finds ways to justify his actions so that monetary gain wins out. It’s not something he is proud of, but he needs to pay the rent like everyone else.
Steve’s life away from the tabs revolves around the flat he shares with Frank and Malcy. Steve and Frank share a love of beer and football. Malcy is a financially challenged university student who gets drunk with monotonous regularity and shags anything with a pulse, even if it means faking his orgasm. Barry, the racist, lives upstairs. He is rumoured to be the head of the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. Olivia, the nurse, lives next door. Steve, Frank and Malcy all fancy her but are too scared to make a move in case it ruins a perfectly good friendship.
Set against the contrasting beauty of the seasons, Steve views his world through the eyes of an outsider. He discovers a country steeped in history, a city of intense beauty and a passionate people.
By the time Steve’s fourth Scottish winter – a particularly fierce one – arrives, he is over working for the tabs. When a nasty sniffle turns into an even nastier head cold and he is forced to spend hours at a time sitting in his car on a succession of dubious snatches, he is at his wits end...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Giulio Saggin
• Release date: Apr 28, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458110664

Giulio Saggin

I was born in Rome, Italy, in 1968 to Australian parents travelling through Europe doing the ’60s thing. We returned to Australia and Brisbane in 1974. My childhood and formative years were spent in Brisbane and, after graduating from high school in 1985, I spent the following year working an assortment of part-time jobs. It was during this year I started taking photos and spent 1987-88 studying photography at the Queensland College of Art. My career began as a cadet photographer on The Canberra Times newspaper in 1989, before moving back to Brisbane and The SUN in 1990. I began freelancing as a news photographer in 1991 and in 1992 moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, where I worked as a freelance news/tabloid photographer for more than five years. During this time I had work published in every major Scottish and London-based newspaper. In 1998 I left Scotland and hitchhiked all the way around Australia, photographing everyone who gave me a lift and writing about each hitch (...so I did, available through Smashwords - see below). I live in Brisbane and continue to work in the media.

Book preview

Deep-Fried Pizza

By

Giulio Saggin

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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Copyright 2011 by Giulio Saggin

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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The names of those involved have been changed to protect the guilty.

CHAPTER 1

July, 1996.

It was raining. Indecisive rain. It didn’t know whether to drizzle or pour. It was also cold; a three layer day. This was Edinburgh in summer.

Steve Butcher made his way up Chambers Street to the Sheriff Court in the steady rain, his big, black boots slapping down into each puddle and his camera gear bouncing up and down with each hurried stride.

‘Fucking scum,’ he cursed under his breath.

Twenty minutes earlier he had been sitting in the warm confines of his flat, watching a video he’d picked up the night before. The plot had just begun to unfold when his mobile phone burst into life.

‘I hope that’s not a job,’ he had muttered. It was.

This was how he came to find himself bounding up a rain-soaked footpath on his way to photograph a ‘fucking scum’ appearing in court on a grievous bodily harm charge.

The fucking scum in question, Ronny McNee, was a nobody. His fame arose out of the fact his ex-girlfriend, Daisy Laurie, had been a two-bit popstar from a shitty part of Edinburgh who dragged him along for the ride until she moved on to bigger and better things.

While some time had passed since Ronny and Daisy had parted ways, he had appeared in enough cheesy magazines during his time with her to warrant holding a tenuous link to his former meal ticket. Therefore, when he glassed a fellow drinker in a pub one night, he found himself in court and the subject of further media attention.

Despite the seriousness of the offence – Ronny had been held in custody overnight – it was expected he would be granted bail, and Steve needed to be there in case he ‘walked’.

Chambers Street was always busy and, just as he’d done on countless other occasions, Steve spent more time than he cared looking for a park. Then, when he finally did spot a car exiting a space, he had to fend off some stiff competition to win the battle for his tiny, temporary piece of prime Edinburgh real estate. Once parked, he then had to deal with the weather.

Steve had learnt to live with the rain and drizzle of Edinburgh since his arrival from what the locals called ‘the Antipodes’ three years earlier. It was such a part of life that walking through it was very much the norm and umbrellas and raincoats were only called into service on the direst of occasions. If the actions of some locals were any indication, this only meant when you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face for rain.

In this instance the rain, while constant, didn’t require any form of waterproofs. That would have been seen as succumbing to the bastard weather and there was no way any of the locals, not even a ring-in from the other side of the world, were going to give the weather the pleasure of any semblance of victory.

Steve charged up Chambers Street towards the courthouse, chanting ‘Court Three, Ronny McNee’ to himself under his breath. That has a nice ring to it, he thought, it’s a shame fucking scum doesn’t rhyme with anything in there.

He swung into the courtyard of the Sheriff’s Court and bustled through the front door. He dropped his camera gear off his shoulder and handed it to the morose looking security guard on duty, who took it without so much as a nod.

Steve stopped. He had performed this routine enough times for him to know most of the security guards and was used to a bit of banter. The guard on duty, while new, was one he had chatted to previously.

‘You alright?’ asked Steve.

The security guard didn’t say anything but the look he gave needed no comment. He didn’t want to be there.

Steve didn’t want to be there either but he smiled.

‘Cheer up Sunshine,’ he said, nodding towards the courtyard. ‘It’s summer out there. It’s the best time of year to be in Edinburgh.’

‘Get ti fook,’ said the guard, maintaining his sour demeanour.

Steve winked at him and wandered off in the direction of Court Three. He had no intention of being there any longer than it would take for him to positively identify his ‘victim’ and his eyes began scanning the courtroom as soon as he entered. He remained oblivious to most of the legal discussion until the name ‘Ronald George McNee’ was read aloud.

As it turned out, he didn’t have to look far. Hunched pathetically in the dock a matter of metres away, a weedy specimen of a human being slowly raised himself to his feet. Enter one Ronny McNee.

He was thin – more than likely undernourished – and his nose, large and bent, only enhanced his scrawny stature. From either side of his nose peered two beady eyes sunken in pock-marked skin coloured a sickly grey. When he stood the hunch remained and comparisons to a vulture-like creature seemed obvious.

Steve wondered what Daisy had seen in her former beau and wasn’t surprised she’d moved on. Love had obviously been in the eye of the beholder.

Ronny’s dress sense matched his extreme ugliness and he had chosen to dress for court in ankle high imitation leather cowboy boots, stone wash jeans tucked into said boots, and a cream-coloured silk shirt sporting a hideous dragon motif cascading down its back. This was no doubt the height of fashion in Ronny’s neck of the woods.

The vast majority of scum standing before judges in these courtrooms were from parts of town known simply as FSC – fucking scum central.

The numerous FSCs around Edinburgh were officially referred to as schemes. Ronny was from West Harmes, a scheme on the outskirts of Edinburgh and one that was, like its counterparts, condemned by vandalism, thuggery, domestic violence and a myriad of other social afflictions, hideous dragon motifs included.

When Steve first arrived in Edinburgh he had looked upon West Harmes as a bastion of human misery. Many of those living there were caught in a wretched cycle of welfare that had been passed down from generation to generation and one they were unlikely to escape from. He had initially felt a sense of helplessness and sympathy for the poor souls who called West Harmes home.

However, it didn’t take long for him to find out it was a place where ‘outsiders’ - distinguished by their car, clothes, walk, even their haircut - were viewed with suspicion. When the locals hurled abuse and threats at him for no reason other than he was an outsider with a camera, a ‘fookin pap-a-razzi’, he lost all regard for them. As hard as he tried to fathom what it must have been like to live in such a place, he soon came to view West Harmes and the other schemes as nothing more than hellholes.

This particular hellhole had done little to ingratiate itself by interrupting his video that morning and causing him to spend far too long looking for a park, not to mention the fact it was also somehow responsible for the cold and rain of what was meant to be a summer’s day. West Harmes and its counterparts were definitely FSC and, in his present mood, Steve didn’t have much pity for anyone living there.

As his dislike for West Harmes festered, Steve turned his attention to the individual standing before him. Ronny looked across the courtroom at one of his dip-shit friends sitting in front of Steve and a sly smile crept across his rat-like face. His friend returned the favour with a none-too-subtle thumbs-up.

Steve looked on, disgusted, before directing his gaze at Ronny. For a fleeting moment their eyes met. Ronny’s expression remained blank and he turned to face the court. Having seen enough, Steve stood, bowed to the Court and made his exit.

Even though he wasn’t certain Ronny would be granted bail, Steve’s heart pounded in his chest as he walked to the security desk. He hated the possibility of confrontation and, even though he had never been beaten up in the line of duty, every court job brought with it the unease that a clobbering might be just around the corner. Court jobs weren’t so bad if other media was there. This brought with it the element of safety in numbers. Flying solo, as he was on this occasion, made him nervous.

He retrieved his camera gear and headed for the front gates. In the several seconds it took for him to walk across the courtyard the rain stopped, the clouds parted and the sun beamed as if it had been doing so all day. The clouds in Scotland galloped across the sky and the weather changed at a rate of knots, so he didn’t get his hopes up too high. He knew that the suddenness with which the sun appeared only meant that it could disappear just as quickly and once again be replaced by shitty weather.

Scum were easy to spot. They dressed the same, spoke the same and walked the same. More often than not, they even had the same haircut. Away from their hellholes they were the ‘outsiders’ and Steve watched a constant stream of scum, male and female alike, enter and leave the court building while he waited for Ronny to appear. Several sneered at him. It was their attempt to assert some authority in a world that otherwise held little regard for them. Steve never made eye contact with scum. Such a rebuttal, he felt, was his assertion of authority.

One group of lads, who looked old enough to have only recently graduated from Juvenile Court to the real thing, marched straight at Steve. He knew what they were playing at and stared over them to the court entrance, standing his ground. At the last possible moment they split ranks, flicking out their elbows as they hurried past in an attempt to knock him off balance. One spat on the ground next to him. Another pronounced loudly ‘fookin’ paparazzi’. Steve had seen and heard it all before and it only acted to further cement his view of fucking scum.

Finally, after 20 minutes and several false alarms, a pair of stone wash jeans and imitation silk shirt appeared. Ronny had been granted bail. Steve’s eyes met those of his quarry and the look of recognition on Ronny’s face indicated the momentary connection in the courtroom had, indeed, registered.

Then, in a ritual familiar to all fucking scum when leaving Court, Ronny turned to the same dip-shit mate that had been seated in front of Steve, grabbed a jumper and placed it over his head in order to obscure his identity.

‘Righto,’ muttered Steve, ‘I’m going to fuck you over for that.’

Steve carried two camera bodies with him at all times – one with a telephoto lens and on the other a wide angle lens. He raised the camera with the telephoto lens, focused, and started firing.

Ronny and dip-shit saw what was happening and gave him the finger as they swaggered across the courtyard to the front gate. The whole time dip-shit sported a smug grin.

Steve could just barely live with the smug grin from dip-shit, but the barefaced insolence of Ronny ‘fucking scum’ McNee giving him the finger while hiding under a jumper only acted like a red rag to a bull.

‘You fucking little piece of shit,’ he hissed from behind the camera, as Ronny and dip-shit strolled out the gates and past him. He switched cameras and began back-peddling down the street, photographing Ronny the whole time in the hope he might peer out from beneath the jumper.

‘Fookin’ pap-a-ra-zzi bustard,’ snarled dip-shit in a thick, guttural accent.

Steve followed them to the end of Chambers Street, constantly firing off frames. When it became apparent Ronny wasn’t going to give him the photo he wanted, he stopped the chase.

Ronny and dip-shit sensed this and dip-shit couldn’t help himself.

‘Fook yew,’ he shouted over his shoulder, as he and Ronny, still with the jumper draped over his head, crossed the street.

Steve watched them make their way down the opposite pavement. He was seething after dip-shit’s comment.

‘Yeah? Well, fuck you back, mate!’ he shouted after them.

The longer he dwelled on what had happened the more his blood boiled and within seconds he was on the move again.

He crossed the street behind them and embarked on a game of cat and mouse, using doorways, alleyways and cars as hiding places so they wouldn’t see him.

It was a fruitless exercise and Ronny and dip-shit continued on their merry way. Occasionally dip-shit looked back to see if they were being followed but Ronny, who had loosened his grip on the jumper so that it was still draped over his head but he could see where he was going, kept looking straight ahead.

Steve allowed the game to continue for several minutes and halted the chase once more. He was all set to watch Ronny and dip-shit walk out of his life forever, when they did the unexpected. They stopped, exchanged words, ran across the street and continued running in the direction of the courthouse.

Steve had no idea what was going on and wasn’t bothered by what he saw. Aided by the fact Ronny had tightened the jumper around his head again so he could barely be seen, Steve was over the whole thing. He had no idea what they were doing and couldn’t be bothered chasing after them.

Instead, he casually strolled back to the courthouse and waited outside the gates for a further ten minutes, before convincing himself he would have to do with the meaningless frames he’d taken.

Steve knew he would get no grief from the picture desk. Court jobs were hit-and-miss at the best of times and this wasn’t the first time fucking scum had concealed their identity. While the urge to nail Ronny remained, Steve was also happy to spend the afternoon watching the rest of his video so he could get it back to the store by 6pm. The last thing he wanted was to get slugged with an overdue fine courtesy of Ronny McNee and his dip-shit mate.

Steve took one last look at the courthouse doors before wandering down Chambers Street toward his car. The further he walked the more his mind turned to revenge and by the time he drew level with his car he was fired up again. He wanted to screw Ronny McNee something bad.

He turned and began striding back towards the courthouse with ever-increasing purpose. No sooner had he gone half-a-dozen paces than he looked up to see Ronny and dip-shit turn out of the court precinct and make their way up the street away from him.

Crouched down, commando-style, he began running behind the row of cars parked in the centre of the street. He was scared Ronny and dip-shit would disappear, so he made sure he didn’t lose sight of them. He needn’t have worried and they entered a phone box not far from the courthouse.

Steve kept running, making sure he kept the cars between himself and his quarry, and only slowed as he approached a point adjacent to the phone box. From where he was he had a clear line of sight and could see both Ronny and dip-shit squeezed inside the phone box. Dip-shit stood guard next to the door, with his back to Steve, while Ronny spoke on the phone.

Steve eased himself out from behind the car and, still crouching, raised his camera to his face. Ronny’s head filled the frame. Even though he was in profile, he fired off a frame in case this was going to be as good as it got.

‘Turn around,’ he whispered, hoping Ronny might hear. ‘Turn around, you little fucker. Just once.’

Ronny sported a smarmy grin and began laughing into the mouthpiece. Steve imagined him telling whoever it was on the other end of the line how he’d just outwitted the ‘fookin’ pap-a-ra-zzi’.

He waited…and then a most beautiful thing happened. Ronny, still smiling, turned in the direction of Steve, whose eyes lit up behind the camera. Ronny continued turning until his gaze trained straight down the barrel of the lens. Steve pressed hard on the shutter button and the camera’s motor drive leapt into action. Simultaneously, Ronny’s eyes became the size of dinner plates and his expression turned from unrequited joy to abject horror. Instantaneously, he launched himself behind dip-shit.

However, it was too late and the whole sequence had been captured on film; the smarmy grin, the dinner-plate eyes and, finally, the reaction. What a pity the tabloids – the tabs – didn’t have the space to run such a delightful series of photos.

Not many people enjoy the moment when they realise they’ve been fucked over and Ronny and dip-shit were no exception. In attempting to squeeze two people out of one phone box in a matter of seconds, they only succeeded in making a balls-up of the situation and resorted to banging on the inside of the perspex like the pair of angry dickheads they were, shouting all the obscenities they could muster at such short notice.

Steve stood and mimicked the same smarmy smile he’d seen through his lens moments before. He gave the two angry dickheads a fond wave goodbye and kicked his way through the puddles on the way back to his car. He was no longer concerned about his video. He couldn’t have cared less if rain again tumbled from the heavens. Without realising it, Ronny ‘fucking scum’ McNee had just made Steve Butcher the most contented man in Edinburgh.

CHAPTER 2

Steve arrived in Edinburgh after losing a coin toss.

Three years earlier he'd been sitting in a pub with a mate and fellow photographer, Dave ‘Davo’ Fenwick, drinking like there was tomorrow. After their third beer they agreed that, as twenty year olds, they’d outgrown Brisbane and they needed to get out of Australia and see the world.

When next they swigged, their eyes met across the tops of their beers. They knew what the other was thinking – London. It was an obvious choice that they should follow in the footsteps of those who had made the pilgrimage before them. It was a right of passage. They’d work for the papers, or become paparazzi – do whatever it took to stake their claim in the world.

It mattered little that they had no money. They didn’t give a shit. They were young, the world was their oyster and their future looked better with each beer.

Despite the beer, they still had enough sense to realise their combined lack of funds might be a stumbling block. This didn't deter them and they drank some more and discussed their options.

Less than one beer later London began losing its appeal. They’d heard the stories about photographers having to wait weeks, even months, before finding work. This wasn’t remotely possible for them. They were going to need income fast if they were to pull this off.

In their ever-increasing drunken stupor they decided to head for Scotland. After all, Billy Connolly was Scottish and he was funny, so the rest of them must be okay. That was as good a reason as any to go there. It was a logic born out of beer. Beer was good like that.

Having settled on a plan, they spent three more beers working out the fine detail. Glasgow would be their home. Using Billy Connolly as a benchmark once more, they deduced that because he was from Glasgow it must be a great place. They charged their glasses.

But then, through the alcohol fog, Steve wondered if two-into-one worked. Davo didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about, so Steve leant forward and nearly fell off his stool.

Two photographers, no money, one city, he explained, was not a good equation. They should split up.

Once again, they pondered their options.

How about Edinburgh?

Why not? They’d seen the Edinburgh military tattoo on the tele and agreed the castle looked ‘fucking cool’.

But which one of them would go where?

‘Toss a coin,’ suggested Steve, grasping one from their beer kitty sitting on the bar in front of them.

He placed it gingerly on his thumb and forefinger.

‘Call it,’ he said, teetering dangerously on his stool as he flinged it skywards.

‘Fuck me,’ said Davo, watching the coin flip through the air.

‘Call the fucking thing,’ said Steve, slapping the coin onto the back of his hand after nearly dropping it in his beer.

‘Tails,’ said Davo.

Steve lifted his hand.

‘Fuckwit,’ he cursed.

‘Good,’ said Davo, ‘You’re going to Edinburgh.’

*

Steve arrived in Edinburgh one Monday morning. He’d just survived the overnight ‘red-eye’ express bus service from London.

Sat next to him had been the cliché of any sane person’s bus trip nightmare: obese, overactive sweat glands and bodily functions. The ‘fat one’ had also been female and Steve wasn’t even afforded the luxury of fantasising about his neighbour. Some lust, even if imaginary, would have been welcome in helping him survive the nine hours between London and Edinburgh.

Steve had travelled on many long haul bus journeys across the expanses of Australia and never came across any gorgeous girls, let alone sat next to one. He’d only encountered oddballs and weirdos and had decided that long haul bus travel was the transport of choice for freaks.

He’d wondered if these freaks, snubbed by everyone they met in daily life, had figured out that bus travel gave them a captive audience for several hours. If only for this reason, long haul bus travel and goddess-like girls weren’t conducive to one another. Goddesses surely wouldn’t tolerate such behaviour.

His homespun theory of beauty and bus travel dissipated in an instant when, just before everyone boarded the bus, a taxi pulled up and a girl, with flowing blonde hair, cut off shorts and a body to die for, alighted. She was, indeed, a goddess.

Steve hoped…prayed…that on at least this one occasion the goddess would find her seat was next to his and his imagination could run wild. While his arrival in Edinburgh might have been like that of a rampant bull, he preferred relying on what came naturally – his hormones – to get him through the night rather than something manmade like a sleeping pill.

Steve made sure he was one of the first on the bus so he could watch the arrival – he was sure it would be splendid – of the goddess.

As intended, ‘she’ appeared and made her way slowly, almost seductively,