Surprisingly Down to Earth, and Very Funny

The Primary Years

Earliest Memory

Right, I’ll start at the beginning.

I was born on the 20th of October 1974. My mum was Jessie Limond, my dad was Billy Limond and my brother was David Limond. And I’m Brian Limond.

I grew up in a council estate on the south side of Glasgow, called Carnwadric. It was maybe a wee bit rough. Maybe. If there’s one thing I don’t want to do, it’s make out that my childhood was rougher than it was. Carnwadric was alright. It wasn’t like growing up in a slum, like one of those old photos of the Gorbals. If you want to see Carnwadric, you can google it. I grew up on Stanalane Street, have a look at that. Not rough at all. And in terms of how it felt living there, it didn’t feel as rough as some other places I’d heard of, like Govan or Easterhouse, these places where it sounded like everybody was slashing everybody.

But still, I think it was maybe a wee bit rough. It was just some of the things that happened.

One of my earliest memories of Carnwadric is something I saw when I was maybe six or seven. It isn’t my earliest memory, but it’s one that stands out.

There was a woman out in the street just outside my house, there on Stanalane Street. She was holding a wee boy’s arms behind his back, and she was telling another boy to hit him. The boy that she was holding had done something to her son, so she was giving her son a free hit, in front of everybody.

But I could see that her son didn’t want to do it. Instead of taking the opportunity to hook the other boy’s jaw, he just gave him a wee hit on his shoulder. Just a wee one. Like a tap.

His mum was like, ‘Hit his face!’

Her son gave the boy a wee tap on the face.

But she was like, ‘Harder!’

I could see that her son didn’t want to do it. He looked more upset than the boy he was hitting. His face was all red and he was teary-eyed. He wasn’t upset at the other boy, he wasn’t upset about whatever it was that started all this. He was upset because of his mum.

But he gave the boy a slap. A good one. Then the mum let the boy go, and dragged her son away up the road.

That’s one of my earliest memories.

A wee bit rough.

But if you want to know what my earliest memory is, it’s of me in nursery school, about four, getting to lick the cake mixture off a spoon. All happy.

The Bollywig

When I think back to primary school, I have this memory of me always feeling different. I’ve always felt a bit different. I’ve always had this feeling that everybody else knows what they’re doing. Back in primary, I had this feeling like I’d missed a day. Not just a normal day where they taught you how to read or write, but where they taught you something else, something more important. Something you should know before any of that.

It’s something that I can’t put into words. It’s just fucking … something. I didn’t really think I’d missed a day, it was just a feeling. But there were times where there really were things that I didn’t know and everybody else knew, as if I really had missed a day, when I hadn’t. Like, there was a song we used to sing, and everybody seemed to know the words except me.

There was this classroom with a piano in it, and every week or so we were to go along to it, where there would be this teacher that would teach us music. We’d learn a few instruments, and we’d sing a few songs from some songbooks she put out. I didn’t like singing; I felt too self-conscious. But I especially didn’t like singing the song we always did at the end.

At the end of every class, the teacher would bring out something she called ‘The Bollywig’. It was a tennis ball, with cotton wool for hair, and a face on it. I didn’t realise at the time, but I think it was a play on the word ‘gollywog’. (This was the late 70s.) But other than the name, there was nothing potentially racist about it. She brought out this Bollywig like it was a puppet, and she had a song to go along with it. She sang the song, and everybody was to join in. But I didn’t know the words. I don’t remember any day where she said, right, here are the words. Yet everybody else seemed to know them. I could make out the words for the first bit, but not the rest. So I’d be singing it like this:

The Bollywig is round and small

It hasn’t any hair at all

It lives on hmmm hmmm hmmm hmmm hmmm

And sometimes hmmm hmmm hmmm hmmm hmmmmmmm.

At the bit where I’d hum, other people would be singing words. I’d be looking about, and there would be everybody singing. I’d try to work out what they were singing, but I couldn’t. One of the bits sounded like ‘salted plooms’. Salted plooms? What does that mean? I didn’t want to ask, in case I got laughed at or got into trouble for not listening.

It was fucking worrying, because it wasn’t just the words to some song, it wasn’t just that. The song was the backstory of this Bollywig. The song told you who it was and why we should love it, and the teacher would bring it out at the end like it was the big fucking finale, and everybody was excited to see it. And there was me, not getting it, wondering what the fuck salted plooms were.

It was just one of many instances where I felt like everybody knew something I didn’t.

And I never did find out the words. I tried googling it, but there’s fuck all. I think the teacher just made it up herself, the words and the tune. It was a catchy wee tune, the sort of thing you’d expect to be a famous nursery rhyme tune, where the words are different depending on where you live. But I didn’t hear that tune played again.

But then, about ten years later, when I was 17 or 18, I was in college. And one of the folk in my course starts whistling a tune to himself.

I fucking span towards him.

It was the tune to the fucking Bollywig.

This was a guy I barely knew, I didn’t know him from school or anything like that. I just span towards him and went like that, ‘Here! What’s that you’re whistling?’

He said, ‘What? Oh, it’s just a daft wee song.’

I said, ‘Aye, but what?’

He said, ‘Just a wee song from school.’

A song from school!

I said, ‘Here, it’s not the fucking Bollywig, is it?’ expecting him to say, ‘The bolly what?’

But he said aye, it was! He was all surprised that I knew, and I was surprised that he knew.

I asked him if he went to Carnwadric Primary, but he didn’t. He went to some school I’d never heard of, from miles away. The pair of us were laughing. What the fuck was going on here?

I asked him to sing a bit, to double-check that we were talking about the same thing. He started singing, ‘The Bollywig is round and small …’

I was like, ‘No fucking way!’

I asked him who taught him the song, and he said it was some music teacher. I asked him what her name was and what she looked like, and it was the same one as mine. The same fucking one. Turns out she went from school to school around Scotland.

We talked about the Bollywig and had a laugh about it. I felt like giving the cunt a cuddle.

Then I said to him, ‘Here. What the fuck were the words?’ I told him that I always felt pure out of place because I must have been the only person in my school that didn’t know the words.

It turns out he didn’t know either.

I Blame Carnwadric

I sometimes wonder if I’m a psychopath. Or if I’m warped in some way.

Something bad happens, and I don’t really care, or I might even find it entertaining. I don’t mean that I sit watching tragedies on the news, laughing my head off, having a wank. It’s just that every now and then, somebody will talk about how something is bad or dangerous or tragic, and I’ll be wondering why I don’t feel the same way.

I blame Carnwadric.

Like, I don’t know if this is anything to do with it, but see when I was wee, boys would make crossbows. They’d get a couple of pieces of wood, a hammer, nails and elastic bands, and they’d make themselves a crossbow. They’d put a wooden clothes peg on it, pull it as far back as it would go, and try to hit each other, right in the fucking face. A piece of solid wood, flying at your head at more than 100 mph. None of that eye-friendly foam-bullet Nerf gun shite. Or they’d make ninja stars by sharpening bits of metal, and they’d chuck them at cunts. Or they’d get pre-made weapons, like an air pistol or a Black Widow catapult, and fire them off at people or windows or something else, to see what happened.

And I’d be watching it all, as a wee boy. I wouldn’t be horrified, because nobody said I should be horrified. I’d be watching, hoping that something bad happened.

Boys would put stones on train tracks, to see what happened. To see if the train would come flying off, with everybody in it. When it was sunny, they’d find a piece of broken mirror, head to a busy road, and shine the sun into drivers’ eyes. I did it myself once or twice. You’re kind of hoping that you’ll blind the driver, causing him to crash and die. Well, you’re maybe not completely trying to kill somebody, but what else are you doing it for? You don’t really think about it. I was only about eight at the time.

Boys would do all sorts of things to hurt people, for a laugh.

In primary school there was a game called Pile On. A boy would get grabbed, and everybody piled on them, like it was rugby or something. You’d be trying to crush them, to see if they’d suffocate, to hear him not being able to breathe – and then you’d stop. Another time, it would be you getting piled on. It was a laugh.

There would be things that weren’t a laugh. There was something called the Pole Crusher, that older boys did to younger boys. A boy would be grabbed and lifted up, held horizontally, with his legs spread apart, and rammed into this pole in the playground, so that it crushed his cock and balls. They tried to do it with me once, but I started screaming and crying and they let me go. They got somebody else instead, and I stood and watched, happy it wasn’t me.

And then there were things that they’d do to themselves.

They’d do things like make these big rope swings that hung from bridges, and everybody wanted a shot because it went so high that, if you fell off, you were a goner.

Or they’d go to the top of the Kennishead Flats, these high-rise tower blocks, 20-odd storeys up, and they’d sit on the lights that jutted out from the building, because there was a chance you could fall to your death.

Or they’d go up to the tyre factory and steal a tractor tyre, then they’d take it to the top of a hill, one that rolled down into a busy road, then two of them would climb inside and get their mates to push them so they started rolling down towards the road. Just to see what happened.

There was just all this stuff where you were either trying to kill somebody or risk getting killed yourself. And some boys did get killed. You’d hear about somebody falling from the top of the flats, or falling down the lift shaft. It would be shocking news that everybody would talk about for a few days, then they’d go back to carrying on as usual. It was like Russian roulette or something.

It was mental, really. But it didn’t feel mental at the time. That’s what I’m trying to say. Nobody came along and said, ‘Now, now, that’s enough of all that.’

Well, there was this Sunday School thing. Some Christian thing, over at the school, that I went to a few times. We played games for a while, then they got out a projector and lectured us about Jesus, to try and make us all good. One day, some boys outside opened the windows to the hall, and threw in a firework. A mini rocket. There was a panic as the rocket lay there with the fuse thing sparkling away. Nobody knew what to do. Then it screeched all over the place, in every direction. Everybody fucking shat it. You didn’t know where to go.

It was magic.

I don’t know if that’s warped me in some way, all of that. It’s not that I still go out with a broken piece of a mirror in the summertime, I’ve grown out of that kind of stuff. But there is still a part of me that’s into it. I’m a 44-year-old man with a family, but there’s still a part of me that wants to reflect the sun into a driver’s eyes, causing him to close them, which causes him to swerve into oncoming traffic and kill about six people, including himself. There’s a part of me that finds that funny.

It’s terrible, I know. But like I said, I blame Carnwadric. It rubs off on you.

Loner

I might have given you the impression that I had all these pals during my primary school years, and we’d go about causing mayhem. But I was quite a loner when I was wee.

There were people I’d sometimes play with in school or on my street or around the back gardens, where everybody would just be dipping in and out of whatever game was being played. But I didn’t really have a best pal, somebody to go on adventures with. I didn’t have a wee group of pals that I always hung about with, like in Stand by Me, but I’m sure a lot of people were like that. I didn’t mind, because I quite liked my own company.

I’d go on adventures. I’d spend summers going for walks, alone, just following my nose. I’d walk for ages. I’d pick blackberries as I’d go. I’d walk to the middle of nowhere, and see some older boys, so I’d hide in a hedge until they went by. Then I’d just stay in there, because it felt good. A wee weirdo.

I’d be alone, but I wouldn’t feel that lonely. Well, I’d sometimes feel lonely. I’d feel a bit lonely when I went down to Millport.

Millport’s this wee island town off the west coast of Scotland, about an hour’s drive west of Glasgow, where my mum and dad would take me during the school holidays. Tons of folk from the west coast would go there, the place would be mobbed, but I’d always be kicking about by myself. I’d go to arcades, play some games, or watch other folk play them. I made pals with some boys there once, a group of boys that already knew each other, who were all staying in the same house. I hung about with them on the beach, playing about for a while, maybe for a day, maybe two. Then one day they had a whisper with each other, and one of them said to me, ‘We don’t want to play with you any more.’

And I wandered off.

That was horrible, that.

It stuck in my mind so much that for the next few years I’d go back to their front door. Not to chap on it and ask if they’d be my pals, but just to look at it, kind of angry. I’d wonder what I could do to it. Maybe scratch it, or spit on it. Or just fucking stare at it, sending bad vibes into the door, hoping that somehow it would make those boys die.

I spent a lot of those holidays in Millport just watching people from afar, watching other boys and lassies in groups, and wondering how I’d become pals with them. But I’d also not want to be pals with them, in case I got told that they then didn’t want to be pals with me any more.

Back home, though, I was happy with my solitary adventures. I fancied going out for some adventures at night, in addition to my daytime ones. My mum and dad wouldn’t let me, obviously, so I’d sneak out.

I’d sneak about Carnwadric, trying to not be spotted by the grown-ups. I’d hide from all the folk coming and going from the pubs, I’d hide in gardens and watch them go by, listening to them all drunk and talking shite.

I climbed up a scaffolding once, where somebody was getting their roof done, and watched the folk walking past below. I chucked wee bits and pieces at them, to see them react. They didn’t know where it was coming from. Fucking idiots.

One night I went out with a knife that I took from the kitchen. Just a wee one, a few inches long, but a sharp one. I sneaked about the gardens, cutting clothes lines. I felt like a ninja. I felt like a dark force. A shadow. There was a football lying in somebody’s garden, and I stabbed it. I went stab, stab, stab, then ran away. Then I sneaked all the way back home, and back to bed.

I liked my own company. I wanted pals, but I grew to like my own company. There was me, and there was all yous. I liked that feeling. I still do.

My Mum, Dad and Brother

I’ve not said much about my brother and my mum and dad, so here’s a bit about what they were like when I was wee. I’ll try and keep it short in case you’re not interested in that sort of thing.

My brother David is about three years older than me, I think. I can’t remember him playing much with me when I was wee, but I remember him telling me stories, making lots of shite up that fascinated me. Like, when we’d get the ferry over to Millport, he’d point down at the foam at the side, caused by the propellers or whatever it was, and he’d say that the foam was caused by sharks biting the water. It’d normally be scary stuff, but it wasn’t to scare me. I’d just be slack-jawed, imagining it all. He probably saw that I was into that type of thing.

But he never played with me much. He’d be playing with older boys, and I think I cramped his style. I didn’t like his pals, though. One of my earliest memories of David is of his pals being pricks to him.

They did this thing called the Heil Hitler. They held him down on the ground, while another boy stood with his feet at each side of David’s head. Then the boy would click his heels like a Nazi, and say, ‘Heil Hitler!’

It wasn’t dummy fighting. It looked like it hurt, and nobody else got it done to them. They just did it to him. But he still hung about with them. That was the worst thing of all, that these were his pals.

I hated them. I must have only been about five, but I fucking hated them. I remember one of them emailed me when I was in my 20s, when my website Limmy.com was doing the rounds. He emailed to say he liked my stuff, and asked if I remembered him. I said, ‘Aye, I remember you were a prick to my brother, mate, right in front of me.’ He didn’t reply.

I think David then started hanging about with these other pals. Bad boys. I’d want to hang about with him, but he’d always tell me to beat it. He told me years later that it was because him and these bad boys used to get up to trouble, and he didn’t want me joining them.

It sounds like he was on a tragic path, but by the time I got to secondary school David had a reputation as somebody you didn’t want to fuck with. Which is a happy ending, depending on how you look at it.

Anyway, my mum …

My mum was a volunteer in the Carnwadric Community Flat, which was a kind of citizens’ advice bureau. Folk would come round to ask advice about a leak or some other thing wrong with their council house, and my mum would get the council to sort it. Other than that, my mum would spend her time in our house, looking after me and my brother, or watching the telly. She was just like most mums where I lived.

But she had this photo album that I used to look through. She was from Glasgow, a working-class area in Glasgow, but in this photo album she had these pictures of when she used to live in New York, when she was younger. She’d moved there during the 60s when she was 20-something, and I always thought that was amazing. My mum used to live in New York, like on Cagney & Lacey.

There were photos of her wearing all these 60s clothes, with skyscrapers in the background, or in an office, or on a train with all these people going to a party. She never looked like a tourist. She was never just standing still in front of a landmark. She always looked like she was doing something, like talking or having a laugh or just getting ready to cross the road. She looked like somebody living their life there.

There was a man that kept appearing in the photies, a guy who looked a bit like Clark Kent. Sometimes the pictures were just of him, doing things like fixing a motor. I asked my mum who he was. She said it was her husband. She’d got married over there to this guy. Then, for whatever reason, the marriage didn’t work out, and she moved back to Glasgow about a year later, where she met my dad.

She just looked like anybody’s mum, but the photo album and everything else gave me a feeling that I wasn’t just talking to my mum. She was this person who’d been places and done things, she had this whole other life before me, she’d even been married to another man before my dad. She wasn’t just my mum.

But what you really want to know is, ‘Did she give you enough cuddles, Brian? Did your mammy never tell you that she loved you?’

No, she didn’t, now that you mention it. I don’t remember her ever telling me she loved me or her giving me a kiss or cuddle or any of that. It’s not that she neglected me or treated me badly. We’d talk about things and she was funny. We’d watch films together. Her favourite film was Calamity Jane, this camp Western musical from the 50s. We watched it over and over. She loved it, and so did I. My dad didn’t love it, my brother didn’t love it, but me and my mum did. But she never told me that she loved me, and I didn’t tell her. I didn’t really notice, and I didn’t care. But I think I must have, because I tell my son I love him. I tell him all the time. He sometimes says, ‘I know, you’ve told me a million times.’ And I’m very glad to hear it. That way he won’t grow up wondering if his dad ever loved him.

My dad never told me he loved me.

Thank fuck. Imagine it. Your smelly fucking da telling you he loves you.

My dad was kind of like my mum. He was from some working-class area in Glasgow as well, and he was funny. Him and my mum were always having a laugh, I never heard them have an argument once. And like my mum, he also seemed a bit different to everybody else.