When my ex-brother JUDAS came round yesterday afternoon for his dinner, as we agreed he would before he broke the RULES and lied to me again, I hid under my bed and pretended I wasn’t in. He knocked for ages and ages then the phone started ringing and wouldn’t shut up so I crawled out from under my bed and unplugged the phone at the wall socket, then he started ringing my mobile so I threw it at my Millais print of Ophelia that lives on the wall above the long bookcase little Emily likes to sit on. The glass smashed but the picture itself wasn’t torn. And my mobile was fine because it’s always fine no matter what I do to it – it’s an old mobile, about 6 years old now, and the make of it is NOKIA and the model is HARD BASTARD. It’s the BEST MOBILE PHONE IN THE WORLD. It’s just a phone, but what more do you need? Who uses all the other shite on these new-fangled phones anyway? My NOKIA HARD BASTARD has one game on it, SNAKE, and why would I need another one? Why do you need games on a phone in the first place, it’s a fucking PHONE not an amusement arcade. I’d had it about 2 years when I jammed it in the back door. I’d been gardening – I used to go out in the garden then – and I was sitting on the doorstep drinking a cup of coffee when I needed a wee so I stood up and tried to shut the door but it wouldn’t shut and I thought the door had seized up so I kept banging it but it stil wouldn’t shut so I looked down and there was my phone. I thought I’d killed it but no, it was still working, the only thing wrong with it was a big green mark in the top left-hand corner of the screen. But, and get this — over time MY NOKIA HARD BASTARD HEALED ITSELF. Yes, you heard right, over time the green mark slowly faded and faded and now it’s like NOTHING HAPPENED. There isn’t a mark on it. I wouldn’t part with my phone for any amount of the stupid expensive gadget touch-screen internet sat-nav smart-arse SHITEY PHONES THAT BREAK IN TWO SECONDS.

Anyhow, my phone was okay so I switched it off. Judas went away after a while and he didn’t come back but he left loads of messiges on the BT answer thingy and he sent loads of text messages as well. Why can’t he take the hint? He never could. I remember my dear dead Daddy used to get annoyed at him for not being able to take hints – ‘Your football boots haven’t been put away yet, have they, Scotty?’ – and Judas would go and have a look and come back and say – ‘No, Dad, they haven’t’ and dear dead Daddy would clout him round the ear.

I miss my dear dead Daddy. He’d know what to do about Judas and Lottie and everything that’s happening. He was smart and wise and intelligent. He was a scientist & an inventor, but his personal hobbies and interests lay within the arts, in particular opera, in particular opera from the Baroque period which was THE GOLDEN AGE OF MUSIC being that it was THE AGE OF THE CASTRATI. But he never in his life got to hear a castrato voice, which couldn’t be helped because NOBODY IN OUR TIME has heard a castrato voice. By all accounts they sang like angels, their voices a heavenly defiance to earthly laws, and my dear dead Daddy’s one wish had been to hear a castrato sing, to be part of his audience, one of the transfixed who wept in wonder at the beauty of the ethereal, disturbing sound.

And he COULD HAVE HAD THAT. My dear dead Daddy could have had HIS VERY OWN CASTRATO if he’d had Judas castrated at the age of seven. Why didn’t he? He could have done it and had him trained by the world’s best opera singer trainers, who I’m sure would have LOVED to have had a castrato to train in secret, hidden from the world until he was ready to be revealed, THE MUSICO, THE ONLY TRUE WONDER OF OUR AGE, his voice more lovely than the loveliest thing on earth, revered by all, envied by all, especially the PAPAL CHOIR who would sob with bitterness at how crap they sounded next to MY BROTHER, THE ONE AND TRUE VIRTUOSO. His name would have to be changed from Scotty to something just as beautiful as the names of the famous Baroque castrati, Farinelli, Marchesi, Bernacchi, Porporino, Vittori, Senesino, Caffarelli, Pistocchi, Marianni, Rauzzinni, Salimbeni, Carestini, Meloni, Nicolino — Scottynelli, Scottyrino, Scottyesi, Scottyoni. He would sing in the world’s greatest CATHEDRALS, he would have riches beyond riches and HE WOULD HAVE NO CHILDREN which would be a good thing seeing as he doesn’t give two shits about the ones he has now.

Why didn’t you do it, dear dead Daddy? Why? It’s too late now, even if I owned a knife sharpener.

I have to go, little Emily wants to talk to me. She has an idea.