A Gambler's Guide to Dying

Gary McNair

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781783199556
• eBook ISBN: 9781783199563
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

What are the odds of living an extraordinary life? This is the story of one boy's granddad who won a fortune betting on the 1966 World Cup and, when diagnosed with cancer, gambled it all on living to see the year 2000. An intergenerational tale of what we live for and what we leave behind. Gary McNair and director Gareth Nicholls return to the Traverse after last year's award-winning, fivestar showDonald Robertson Is Not A Stand-Up Comedian.

GRANDDAD’S HOUSE. 1

BOY: ‘How much did you win? How much?’

NARRATOR: I’m seven years old. I’m at my granddad’s. He’s regaling me with stories of his life – one of mine and his favourite things to do in the whole world and his big 1966 windfall is one of my absolute favourites.

BOY: How much did you win?

ARCHIE: Well that’s a whole other story

NARRATOR: He knows that this is exactly what I want him to say.

BOY: Tell me. Tell me the story!

ARCHIE: OK, so you have to understand that this was a very lucky summer for me. It started on the first games of the World Cup. I correctly guessed all of the scores of the first round.

BOY: All of them?

ARCHIE: It was an accumulator. Makes it worthwhile. You put a whole load of bets on the same slip. If you get so much as one result wrong, your coupon’s bust. But, if they all come up, you win big.

BOY: So how much did you win?

ARCHIE: Brace yerself… £620.

BOY: Wha? I thought you won a fortune?

ARCHIE: Trust me. That was a fortune. You have to understand that, at the time, my weekly wage was sixteen pound.

BOY: Sixteen pound a week? That’s nothing

ARCHIE: Believe me, I know what nothing is like and sixteen pounds wasn’t nothing. God, it wasn’t much, but it was something. When I was wee, we had so little coming in that a loaf of bread had to last the whole family a week. There were plenty of times where I didn’t eat at all. I’d get so hungry I’d hallucinate.

BOY: I’m sorry. That sounds terrible.

ARCHIE: Ach. It was just the way it was. I knew no different. Plus, I didn’t mind the hallucinations. They weren’t all bad you know. One time I was sat in bed under a single sheet, shivering through the long cold winter night, I’ve no eaten in days and I’m cold and I’m lonely when who should keep me company for the night but Rita Hayworth! Oh what a sight she was – done up to the nines, feather boa, the works. Now, I may never know what really happened and I may have woken up in the back close covered in scars, bruises and the feathers of what I guess was a pigeon but that was the most romantic experience a twelve year old could have asked for.

Anyway, I’m looking at this £620 and I’m thinking ‘what shall I do with you?’ Well I could burn through it, or make it really count? I decided to turn this small fortune into a real fortune. I thought about going to see my brother, he’d just recently been telling me that he knew this guy, he was into onions, you know had big farms eh onions, needed money to invest in new machinery, I could front that and reap back the rewards later. But I didny really fancy myself as an onion guy, I figured I’d smell eh, well onions aw day, I reckon you’d never get rid eh it, then eventually you’d just kind of accept it, stop trying to pretend you didn’t smell of onions and so then you’d just be that guy. You know, the guy that smells of onions. Plus, that was someone’s job to pick onions, I wasn’t gonna buy a machine that would take that guy’s job away from him. I couldn’t profit from that. A man needs his work. No, I needed a bigger bet.

So, with the buzz still going. I stayed in the bookies and had a wee gander at the odds for the rest of the tournament. They were giving incredible odds on England to win because no one in scotland was betting on them. Something to do with honour or pride or something. Stupidity if you ask me. As my old man said ‘never look a gift horse in the mouth’. In fact he said ‘never look in any horse’s mouth, they’ve teeth the size of your fist and it would only rip your fuckin heed aff’. They had to jack up the offer to try and entice some people and I’m thinking ‘well a good bet’s a good bet. Never let your emotions get in the way, Just go with your gut’. So I just did it, before I really thought about it. All on England to win.

BOY: Was it not terrifying?

ARCHIE: Terrifying? £620 was more money than I’d ever seen in my life! To put that all down on one bet, let me tell you – I just about shat my pants! But hey, I figured the worst that could have happened was that I would end up broke. Well I was broke anyway. I tell you – I never felt so alive.

BOY: So how much did you win?

ARCHIE: Let’s just say I got my fortune.

NARRATOR: I look around the room, see the aging carpet, the wall paper peeling in the corner, the mismatched cutlery and broken stereo.

BOY: What did you do with it?’

ARCHIE: I’ve got it working for me right now.

BOY: Did you not quit your job?

ARCHIE: Oh no. I never spent a penny I never earned. I had my job, that was for living off. My winnings. I keep them separate. I’m investing in the future.

Now, let me tell you another. It’s April 1978 and I fall in the Clyde. Disaster. And then I, Archie Campbell, come out with a salmon in my mouth.

BOOKIES 1.

ARCHIE: Today is a big day. For today is your sixteenth birthday!

NARRATOR: It’s August 1997, and I’m a bit worried that my granddad is losing it. It’s not my birthday. And I’m only eleven.

ARCHIE: Exactly! You’re eleven and three quarters, which means in Gorbals years, you are now sixteen.

NARRATOR: Gorbals years are a bit like dog years but for people from the Gorbals. Him and his brother worked out that everyone they knew died well below the UK average, so rather than get broken hearted every time someone left them too soon, they would just tack a third onto their age to try and put life into perspective.

A beat,

a change of tone and tact…

ARCHIE: Do you know that if you make it to sixty-seven round here you get a letter from the Queen?

BOY: Really?

ARCHIE: And as you’re now sixteen that means that today is the day that you place your first bet.

BOY: I’m not sure I should be gambling

ARCHIE: Look son, life’s a gamble.

You decided not to wear a jacket today – gamble.

You didn’t go to bathroom before we left, even though you’d just tanned that carton of capri sun – gamble!

You let your mum go at your hair with a pair of scissors – huge gamble. And I’ve go to be honest wee man, that did not pay off.

Look, I placed my first bet when I was seven. It’s harmless.

BOY: I’m pretty sure Mum won’t see it like that.

ARCHIE: I tell you what – you don’t tell your mum about this, then I’ll not tell her that you had a packet of Jammie Dodgers for lunch.

BOY: But we haven’t had lunch yet… You’re on!

ARCHIE: Right ye are.

So, it’s simple, you just pick twenty games that take your fancy and guess all the scores.

It’s as easy as that.

BOY: Twenty? That’s a bit extreme.

ARCHIE: I live in the extreme.

BOY: It’s just stupid.

It’s impossible.

ARCHIE: Hey hey hey hey. Listen you. Nothing’s impossible.

BOY: Time travel.

ARCHIE: We’re always time traveling wee man. It’s just that so far, we’ve only worked out how to go forward.

Just ’cause you don’t know how something is done, doesn’t make it impossible. Don’t over think it. Just go with your gut.

That wee m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Prologue
• 66 World Cup Final
• Granddad’s House. 1
• Bookies 1.
• School 1.
• Grandad’S House 2.
• School 2
• Bookies 2
• Home
• Granddad’s 3
• Granddad’s 4
• Granddad’s 4
• School 3
• School 4
• Seasons in the Garden
• Hospital 1
• Hospital 2
• Hogmanay
• Epilogue