"Salvatore syndrome": I'm booking it now.

Perhaps it's a way of avoiding study for my impending German exam (30th. September) but Anne and I are planning a holiday for the first week in October. Rome is our dream destination.


We went for an Italian meal on our wedding anniversary and I found myself wanting to study the language. I'm very suggestible that way, almost to the point where I think I may have a mild form of mental illness. Well at least an aberration. Every year at this time I get strange impulses to study foreign languages. Inevitably, I usually end up dabbling after signing up for Open University courses. There's usually a strong start followed by a limp across the finishing line 11 months later. So far I've completed the basic units for French, Spanish and (soon) German. Each supplies enough vocabulary and practice to hold a basic conversation and the content and presentation are uniformly excellent. Armed with these linguistic weapons I should at least be able to talk about the weather, discuss illnesses and injuries and give basic directions to strangers.


I'm always surprised when tourists visit Scotland in the Summer months. July and August are always months that test the saturation point of the peat fields and fill our rivers to the brim. Every day I make my way to work across George Square in the centre of the city feeling guilty as I see tour coaches discharge stunned looking Spaniards, Italians, Germans and French mesdames and messieurs into the torrents of Summer.


There was one high point when the pipe band championships were being held in town on their customary waterlogged date near the start of August. Pipers abounded in the city centre emitting weird high- pitched noises and waterspouts from their chanters and pibrochs. Even liberal-minded Continentals must have been slightly shocked at first glance. Do these strange, bearded, cross-dressing men always make love to calimari so publicly ?



Anyway,I've come to both dread and relish the challenge of being asked for directions by visitors to the city. I tell myself that, "This time I'll get it right!".
Invariably I start quite well but if the stranger becomes heartened by encountering a Brit who speaks their language ( no matter how badly) and throws more complex constructions into the mix, then I'm lost. Even if I get the gist of what they're saying my meagre ration of words never seems adequate for a reply. My strategy then becomes a frenzy of hand gestures, fractured French, shredded Spanish or garbled German intermixed with English words to fill the (many) gaps; a wattle and daub approach to communication. As if in a recurring nightmare I suddenly realise that my Open University units are balanced on top of a pile of linguistic scraps. German exclamations culled from "Commando" comics protrude from a litter of Spanish dialogue discarded by the Mexican bandits in the "Magnificent Seven".Snippets from the "Pink Panther" films occasionally skitter into the mix when my supply of French is exhausted and Franglais is my only alternative.


I can't lay claim to being the only polyglot (failed) who tackles communication this way.
If you've ever read Umberto Eco's "The name of the Rose" you may remember a character called Salvatore (played by Ron Perlman in the film version of the book). His approach is disturbingly similar, with segments of Italian, Latin and Greek added to my own basic stock of Northern European tongues. I'm sure that there must be other sufferers out there.


If this condition ever gains medical recognition I want it to be called"Salvatore syndrome".

With medical conditions it's always best to make early claims on any new phenomenon.
Many years ago, when I was studying Medicine (not very well) my class had a lecture on Korsakoff's psychosis, a set of debilitating symptoms caused by alcoholism. Korsakoff was a Polish physician who practised medicine in Austria. His classic case, used to define the disorder named after him, was based on the example of a Scottish music teacher who had been living in Vienna for many years. This teacher drank huge amounts of alcohol, 2 or 3 bottles of schnapps per day .He eventually developed memory loss, nerve damage and a coping mechanism of "confabulation". This allowed him to try to cover the gaps in his memory by making up stories.
One of my fellow students summed up the injustice of medical nomenclature: "Isn't that just typical? A Scotsman does all the hard work and some bloody foreigner takes all the credit!"

Say "Hello" to the Bad Guys.

Back in the 1980s there was a gang of down-and-outs in Glasgow which carried out a number of vicious but rather unprofitable robberies, against individuals rather than big organisations. The main purpose of these crimes was to get money for booze. Cops tasked with tracking the group down came up with a name that illustrates the dark humour shared by so many policemen : the "Hole-in-the-head gang".

At the moment a new gang war seems to have flared up. Proceedings apparently kicked off in January when Kevin ("the Gerbil") Carroll was, as the Sopranos might say, "whacked" in a supermarket car park in Robroyston. Within the last 10 days two twin brothers, "associates" of Carroll, have been badly injured in separate attacks. Both were assaulted by gangsters with chisels, hammers and power drills. I wonder if the detectives investigating these incidents were looking for an outfit called "the Carpenters".

Gangsters have always been part of the Glasgow crime scene. I can remember a couple of would-be hard cases turning up at the gates of my school looking for one of my fellow pupils. Apparently he had transgressed some unwritten law and pissed these guys off. The taller of the two was the one who did the mouthing off while his wee pal carried a holdall which he would occasionally hold open to give us a glimpse of a collection of knives, cleavers, hammers and other pieces of hardware. I hadn't realised that gangsters needed caddies.

I can just imagine their conversation if they had caught the guy they were looking for:

"I say , Shuggie, this chap is more portly than I foresaw. Which implement would you suggest I use ?"

"That would depend on whether one wished to rip, slash or plunge him, sir."

"I would think that a good ripping would be in order and display my irritation quite sufficiently".

"In that case may I suggest the straight razor rather than the sharpened screwdriver ?"

The caddy would definitely have been the subservient type. Every real gangster always has a toady to accompany him. This is the type of little turd who didn't have the guts to steal your sweeties but gets his mates to do it for him. They aren't confined to straightforward gangsterism. Igor in the Frankenstein films is a good example. In politics Michael Forsyth, the Scottish Tory MP, always struck me as a prime example too.

When it comes to the gangster in crime novels I must admit that there are few examples that give me any great pleasure. I love the Godfather films and I've always felt that they improve greatly on the book . The exceptions are a series of crime novels written by Loren D. Estleman and set in Detroit starting with "Whiskey River".

Sadly, real-life gangsters are far removed from the Hollywood glamour that descends in a line from "Little Caesar" and Rocky Sullivan through to the Corleones and Tony Montana. Most don't have any class....... however, in among the "Tongs" and the "Drummy" my favourite Glaswegian gang name originates from a particular street in Bridgeton: the "Baltic Fleet". I don't know if the nod to the Soviet Navy is intentional, but I like to think so.