The Barbershop Seven by Douglas Lindsay Read Free Book Online Page A

reverted to childhood, and spent the last ten years of his life in an asylum, playing with Lego and Scalextric, pretending to be a cowboy. To be perfectly honest, they nineteenth century German philosophers get on my tits.'
    Barney wondered about himself. Why was it that when he sat over a pint and a game of dominoes in the pub, he could talk pish with the best of them, but when the chips were down, and he really needed to, there was nothing there? Like the guy who could hole a putt from any part of the green, until someone offered him a fiver to do it.
    'My friend,' Bill said, his mouth full of peanuts, 'you don't need to tell me about German philosophy. I'm as aware as anybody else of its failings. And let's face it, when it comes down to it, all German philosophy amounts to, is "if in doubt, invade it." Aye, that's it in a nutshell, so it is.'
    'Well, well, Bill, I never thought I'd hear you talk like that. Certainly Germany was guilty of horrendous imperialism during the first half of the twentieth century, but that's not necessarily indicative of the past two hundred years.'
    Barney executed a swift manoeuvre with a double four and lifted his pint.
    'Is it not? That's a load of shite. You can't just dismiss fifty years as not indicative. Especially when it is,' said Bill.
    Barney paused to take another sip of beer, studying the state of their game of dominoes. It was turning into a bloody tussle, good natured but life-threatening. He was about to make his next move and expand his thoughts on German imperialism, when he paused briefly to listen to what two young women were saying as they walked past their table.
    'So I says to her, that's not right, Senga. I'm like that, Neptune's the planet that's the furthest from the sun at the moment. All right, Pluto's further away most of the time, but Neptune's got a pure circular orbit 'n that, while Pluto's got an elliptical one, so that for some years at a time, Pluto's orbit takes it nearer to the sun than Neptune, 'n that. I'm like that...'
    The voice was lost in the noise of the bar as they moved away. Barney and Bill looked at each other with eyebrows raised.
    'Unusual to find,' said Barney, 'a woman with so much as an elementary grasp of astronomy.'
    Bill raised his finger, waving it from side to side. 'As a matter of fact, I was discussing the other day with this girl in my work called Loella, the exact...'
    'You have a girl in your work called Loella?' asked Barney.
    'Aye, aye I do. And as I was saying, Loella and I were talking about anti-particles. I was under the impression that a photon had a separate anti-particle, but she says that two gamma rays can combine to produce a particle-anti-particle pair, and thus the photon is its own anti-particle.'
    'So, what you're saying is that the anti-particle of an electron is a positron, which has the same mass as the electron, but is positively charged?'
    Bill thought about this, slipping a two/three neatly into the game. 'Aye, aye, I believe so.'
    'And a woman called Loella told you this?'
    'She did.'
    The two men jointly shook their heads at the astonishing sagacity displayed by the occasional woman, then returned with greater concentration to the game. They both tried to remember what they had been talking about before the interruption, but the subject of German imperialism had escaped them and Bill was forced to bring up more mundane matters.
    'So, how's that shop of yours doing, eh, Barney?' he said, surveying the intricate scene before him, and wondering if he was going to be able to get rid of his double six before it was too late.
    Barney shook his head, rolled his eyes. 'You don't want to know my friend, you do not want to know.'
    'Is there any trouble?' asked Bill, concern in the voice, although this was principally because he'd found himself looking at a mass of twos, threes and fours on the table, and sixes and fives in his hand.
    'Ach, it's they two bastards, Wullie and Chris,' said Barney. 'I don't know who they