Michael Thomas or "Micahel" Thomas..

“The Acid House” by Irvine Welsh

“The Acid House” by Irvine Welsh is a book with many short stories in it dealing with different stories. The two short stories “Granny’s Old Junk” and “Where Debris Meets The Sea” deal with stereotypes and expect the unexpected. I plan to show how Welsh plays with our stereotypical expectations of the social groups in these short stories.

Irvine Welsh plays with our expectations of stereotypes in the short story “Granny’s Old Junk” as we see a young man with a beaten appearance who we find out is a drug taker, going to visit his grandmother. A frail old woman that reminds him of a “wizened puppet” and is a very nice person. She lives in a Sheltered Housing Scheme that she has lived in for the past 5 years and her grandson has not been to see her. He is going to see his Granny for one reason, Money. He reminisces of when he was a child and seeing is Granny’s shortbread tin filled to the brim with money and peeling off a few notes each birthday or Christmas to give to him for a present. But the money was to feed his drug habit now and didn’t care what the “auld doll’s” plans were to do with it. They talk about what Graham, her grandson, has been doing and she tells him that his mother told her that he has been up to no good and has been doing drugs. Naturally, Graham denies this accusation so his Granny is not disappointed with him. So he keeps her talking then eventually goes to the toilet to look for the money,. He finds the shortbread tin under her bed and without warning Granny kicks and punches him to get him away from it and the frail old Granny turns into an evil swearing old woman completely contrasting with the idea of the Granny we were originally introduced to. She claims there is no money in the tin but Graham opens the tin anyway and is shocked to find a large bag of cocaine. Granny asks if he has got works and tells him to cook up a shot. This is a complete change of the first Granny we were introduced to, The stereotypical Granny, old, short, and grey with a nice attitude and loves her younger relatives with a passion and like to look after them with all she has however when Graham finds her “stash” she turns into this cocaine addict that swears and lashes out. Through Welsh’s Characterisation we see how he changes the stereotypical Granny into an evil and law breaking Granny which completely throws you and you do not expect to be the outcome.


In “Where Debris Meets The Sea” we are given the image of the star studded area of Santa Monica where four women relax in the coolness and shade of their large room. A pile of magazines are on the table with titles such as “Wide-o”, “Scheme Scene” and “Bevvy Merchants”, not the titles of magazines you would expect to see in a large Santa Monica house. The names of these women are Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Victoria Principal and Kim Basinger, yet when they speak they speak with a broad Scottish accent and drooling over men in the magazines with names like Deek Prentice and Dode Chalmers, which suggests these mean are common and not in the same league as people with names such as Madonna who is one of the most famous pop stars of all time. The woman watch Scottish television such as The Jimmy McGilvary Show, and talk about getting into the men’s “kek’s” that are being interviewed. They also talk about going on holiday to Leith some day, which is an area in Edinburgh, completely different from where these women live and they talk about how they want to go into rough pubs and find some “cock”. This behaviour is not at all expected from these women and shows that these women are not to be put in stereotypical categories as they are completely different from their public persona’s.

Welsh plays with our stereotypical expectations in both short stories by using every day names and characters such as a grandmother or a famous person and has completely flipped round the view we have upon them to symbolise that people are different behind closed doors and to expect the unexpected from people. He does this by making Granny a drug dealer showing there may always be an evil side to a person or a side to a person that is not what we know. And in “Where Debris Meets The Sea” he uses household names such as Madonna and Kylie Minogue and has given them a broad Scottish accent and has given them a completely different persona to the famous pop singers everyone knows which continues with the theme that people are not always what they seem and may be different behind closed doors.


Michael Thomas 5C2