Nobody who frequents Drumfeld High St can be oblivious to the impending third anniversary of Lochside Crystals. Illegally posted fliers anticipating the event have defaced the town sonce January. "Three years?" scoffed Spencer who has whole-heartedly detested the store's proprietor, Malcolm Cooper, since he publicly corrected his pronunciation of 'Brion Gysin'. "Mackenzie and Whyte have been there since 1860 and they're not making a song and dance about it." While it's true that Cooper has rarely been reticent about trumpeting the most meagre of accomplishments, it could be argued that convincing the lonely and unfulfilled of Central Scotland that salvation might lie in the worship of brightly coloured stones is an achievement in itself. "Mackenzie and Whyte might have dressed the gentry;" I reminded Spencer, "But Cooper has persuaded a generation to invest its faith in chuckies." Since the store's recent extension, clients whose problems have proven resistant to the contemplation of crystals can be ritually thrashed with rattan canes or isolated within slime filled tubs. Spencer was particularly irritated by the Examiner's uncritical assessment of Lochside Crystals new facilities. "That's just wrong," he spluttered, prodding Cooper's photograph with a saffron stained forefinger. "I'm glad I broke his nose!" (This isn't actually true. Spencer often inflicts retrospective wounds on those who have somehow offended him. Their brief, undignified altercation didn't so much bring to mind Hearns vs Hagler as two discarded bags being tossed about a gusty lane. The wistful smile that accompanied his false recollection convinced me against correcting his version of events.)
Rather than be rebuked for tormenting the desolate with false encouragement, Cooper was recently nominated for Drumfeld's Man of the Year award and invited to address pupils of Drumfeld High School on the subject of 'responsible entrepreneurism'. This, it should be noted, is the same 'responsible entrepreneur' whose previous ventures include Highland Fling, a service for 'swingers'* that resulted in public indecency charges and the ill-fated Great Beast Way, a fat-headed tribute to Aleister Crowley, more of which shortly. I'm frankly dismayed by the prospect of him being presented to the youth of Drumfeld as anything other than an example of gormlessness and preening self-regard.
I've not spoken to Cooper since I caught him in the act of chalking the words 'Acid is Groovy' onto my bedroom door (his parents' indifference, incidentally, to the revelation that their son was a vandal and a drug abuser augured ill for his future.) Weeks later, he'd committed the Gysin gaffe and been banished from the House of Coe. By the time of the Great Beast debacle, several years later, my investigations revealed him to be an aspiring magician, albeit one lacking the focus or primal energy required to operate successfully. His technique was largely limited to absorbing subliminal messages from cassettes and saying 'thee' instead of 'you' when attempting to attract sexual partners by the application of magic(k). When he somehow acquired a hunting lodge near Loch Ness (where, incidentally, Crowley is still remembered without affection for strutting around, brandishing his swagger stick at locals and threatening to turn tradesmen into camels) he immediately embarked upon the scheme which the most generous assessment might describe as 'hare brained'. Despite objections from local councillors, he established a series of walking trails around the Loch's southern shores, each route identified by markers bearing Crowley's malign silhouette. Within months the area had been deluged by unsavoury ramblers, some of whom caused disruption by experimentally summoning entities. "Do what thou wilt," is all very well until we encounter someone who does. Copperthwaite became a victim of his own stupidity when an ill-judged piece of sexual magic(k) caused his dreadlocks to fall out.
* Swinger: a euphemism for individuals who indulge in a succession of unsatisfactory sexual escapades, occasionally disrupted by the encroachment of dog walkers.
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