Acknowledgments

I have included some of my earliest work, published in my mid twenties. In bookform the selected stories first appeared as follows:

“He knew him well”; “An old pub near the Angel”; “Nice to be nice”:

An old pub near the Angel: (1973, Puckerbrush Press, Orano, Maine, USA)

“Remember Young Cecil”; “No longer the Warehouseman”:

Three Glasgow Writers: (1976, Molendinar Press, Glasgow, Scotland)

“Busted Scotch”; “Acid”; “learning the Story”:

Short Tales from the Nightshift ( 1978, Glasgow Print Studio Press, writers’ collective)

“Away in Airdrie”; “The hitchhiker”; “Wee horrors”; “Roofsliding”; “Not not while the giro”:

Not not while the giro ( 1983; Polygon Press, Edinburgh, Scotland)

“the paperbag”; “In a betting shop to the rear of Shaftesbury Avenue”; “O jesus, here come the dwarfs”; “A Nightboilerman’s notes”:

Lean Tales ( 1985; Jonathan Cape, London, England)

“Old Francis”; “The one with the dog”; “Forgetting to mention Allende”; “Cute Chick!”; “The Small Family”; “Half an hour before he died”; “The Red Cockatoos”; “Dum vivimus, vivamus”; “Getting Outside”; “Greyhound for Breakfast”:

Greyhound for Breakfast ( 1987; Secker & Warburg, London, England)

“Pictures”; “A walk in the park”; “A situation”; “A woman and two men”; “Lassies are trained that way”; “Street-sweeper”; “That thread”; “by the burn”:

The Burn (1991) Secker & Warburg, London, England)