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studentland.
    — If you say that, Lauren’s retorting testily, though relieved that Rab’s affectionate display has gone no further, — that means you agree with that whole Thatcherite paradigm of running down the arts and just making everything vocational. If you kill off the idea of knowledge for its own sake, then that just kills off any critical analysis of what’s happening in soci . . .
    — Naw . . . naw . . . Rab protests, — what I mean is . . .
    And so they go on, battling away like this, sparring and telling themselves that they don’t fundamentally disagree when there’s a chasm between their positions, or alternatively, arguing savagely over minor, pedantic differences in emphasis. In other words, they’re being total fucking students.
    I hate those kind of arguments, especially between a man and woman, particularly when one of them has just upped the stakes in that way. I feel like screaming in their faces: STOP LOOKING FOR REASONS NOT TO FUCK EACH OTHER.
    The bar starts to become that more acceptable soft-focus way after a few drinks, where things seem to slow down and people are happy enough just to be in each other’s company and it’s good to talk shit. And now I decide that I quite fancy Rab. It’s not been an instant thing, it’s been a kind of slow build-up. There’s something clean and Caledonian about him, noble and Celtic. An almost puritanical stoicism that you don’t really find with men his age in England, certainly not in Reading. But they do go on, those Scots: arguing, discussing and debating in a way that only the leisured and metropolitan media classes in England tend to do. — Fuck all these silly arguments, I tell them grandly. — I told you both a naughty secret earlier. Don’t you have any naughty secrets, Lauren?
    — No, she says, her face colouring again, her head bowing. And I see Rab raise his eyebrows as if urging me to leave it and it’s like he has some kind of empathy with Lauren’s pain which I wish I had.
    — What about you then, Rab?
    He grins and shakes his head. You see mischief in his eyes for the first time. — Naw, my mate Terry, he’s the man for them.
    — Terry, eh. I’d like to meet him. Have you met him, Lauren?
    — No, she says curtly, still tense but thawing a little.
    Rab raises his eyebrows again, as if to suggest that it might not be a good idea, which sort of intrigues me a little bit. Yes, I think it might be nice to meet this Terry and I like the way that Rab thinks that it might not. — So what does he get up to? I quiz.
    — Well, Rab begins cautiously, — he’s got this shag club. They make stag videos and all that kind of thing. I mean, it’s no my scene, but that’s Terry.
    — Tell me more!
    — Well, Terry used to go back tae this pub for a lock-in. There would be some lassies he knew and maybe a tourist or two. One night they all got a wee bit drunk and frisky and started going for it, you know. It became a regular thing. One time it got recorded on the security camera, he said it was an accident, Rab spins his eyes doubtfully, — but it got them started in the amateur-video thing. They make their fuck films and show clips of them on the Net, then send them off on mail order or swap them with other people who do the same. They put on a show, usually for the old boys in the pub for a fiver a head. Eh . . . every Thursday night.
    Lauren’s looking pretty disgusted with this, and you can tell Rab is going down in her estimation, which is something he’s very much aware of. However, I’m finding it all very inspiring. And it’s Thursday tomorrow. — Will they be screening tomorrow? I enquire.
    — Aye, probably.
    — Can we come along?
    Rab isn’t too sure about this. — Well, eh . . . I’d have to vouch for youse. It’s a private sort ay do. Terry’s eh . . . he might try tae get yis tae take part, so if we do go, just ignore everything he says. He’s full of shite.
    I sweep my hair back,