Surprisingly Down to Earth, and Very Funny

Barry

Right, things have got a bit dark, with me talking about all these bad things. So let me lighten things up. Here’s a cheery one for you.

There was this boy in my class, called Barry. He was one of these pupils that just appeared in your class one day, a few years into primary school. And then, not long after that, he was gone. And I don’t know if it was something to do with me.

He appears, this new boy, and right away I didn’t like him. I think it was because of his face. He looked hard. There were a few boys in school like that, ones that would punch your jaw for next to nothing. I remember there was a boy called James White, who also appeared in my school for a short while before leaving. When he told me his name, I remembered a song to use for people with names that rhymed with white. I sang this:

James White

Did a shite

In the middle of the night

Saw a ghost

Eating toast

Halfway up the lamppost.

But I got as far as ‘James White, did a shite, in the middle …’, before he hooked my jaw. We were only seven or eight. He punched me in the fucking jaw. My face felt numb, like I’d been to the dentist.

Well, this Barry looked like one of them. He had a big square jaw, he was pale with freckles, and this straight-as-fuck fringe. My hair’s like that when I haven’t put any stuff in it to stick it up. When I see myself in the mirror like that, I’m reminded of this cunt.

Anyway, what happened was this.

One day, the class had come in from playtime or lunch, and it was a rainy day. A couple of lassies put their hands up to get the attention of the teacher. The teacher asked what it was, and they said, ‘Miss, Barry splashed us.’ They were talking about a puddle.

Right away, Barry was like that, ‘Miss, Miss, I didn’t. They’re lying, I didn’t!’

It was fucking obvious who was telling the truth.

The teacher went like that, ‘Barry, why would they lie?’ Then she got out some paper from her desk and gave him lines.

A day or so passed, and we had spare time in the class. Barry was sitting on his desk, near me, reading a magazine. It was a music magazine, like Look In. And he asked me, ‘What music do you like?’

That was difficult for me. A difficult question to answer.

You see, I wasn’t really into music, in a way. It’s hard to explain why. I liked music in general, I’d watch Top of the Pops and I’d like all that, but I don’t think I liked any bands or songs in particular. I’d like novelty songs, like ‘Shaddap You Face’, or singers with a strange look, like Toyah or Adam Ant, but I was more into how they looked than the songs. I didn’t know what most songs meant. A lot of songs were about love, and I didn’t really know what that was. Everybody else seemed to know. It was a bit like that feeling I had with the Bollywig. I felt a bit left out, I felt a bit embarrassed about love.

So when Barry asked me what music I liked, I felt exposed. I felt that if I just picked a song, I’d be caught out. If I picked a song with the word ‘love’ in it, I’d be laughed at, or asked to explain what love is, and who I loved. I didn’t actually go through that thought process, but you know what I mean, it was more of a gut feeling.

So I just said, ‘I don’t really like music.’

He said, ‘You don’t like music? How can you not like music? That’s stupid.’

Then he went back to his magazine.

I felt my cheeks go red. I felt humiliated, even though nobody else heard. I can’t remember what I did next, but I can imagine I looked down at my jotter, I looked down at my drawing or whatever, and just sat there, with my pencil on the paper, not moving. My pencil making a hole in the paper.

I hated him. I hated him and his pale skin and freckly face and big stupid jaw. Who did he think he was? Who was he? Who was he to come to my school, my class, this stranger, coming to my school and splashing lassies with puddles, and sit next to me and make me feel stupid? I hated him for saying that.

A day or so later, it was raining again. And we all came back in from lunch.

When the teacher arrived, I put my hand up.

The teacher said, ‘What is it, Brian?’

I said, ‘Miss, Barry splashed me.’

And then Barry, right on cue, said, ‘Miss, Miss, he’s lying, he’s lying.’

The teacher just went straight for her drawer to pull out some lined A4, and said what I hoped she would say. ‘Barry … why would he lie?’

Stitched up like a kipper.

A risky move, considering he looked like he could batter me, but that’s how angry I was.

And not long after that, he was gone.

Lassies

As you’ve maybe been able to tell so far, I wasn’t very good with my feelings when I was wee. Well, that was especially true when it came to lassies.

I was down in Millport once, when I was nine, wandering about by myself, and I bumped into a lassie from my class, called Helen. We played about for a bit, even though I never really spoke to her in my class, and she never spoke to me.

Then, one night, when we were in the arcade, she asked me to get off with her. I don’t know if you yourself are familiar with the term ‘to get off with’, but it means to kiss. To snog.

Anyway, I shat it.

It wasn’t just because I was shy. There was more to it than that. When I was in primary school, I got mixed up about one or two things. I overheard things and saw things, and I think it fucked with my head.

First of all, I’d see older boys talking about shagging. I must have just been in primary two or three. There would be older boys either in my school or on the street that I stayed, talking about lassies, fannies, poking, shagging, licking out, sluts, cows, whores. I can imagine that most of the boys were virgins, really, but I think it made them feel more grown up if they talked about lassies like that.

Any time I heard about shagging or anything sexual, it was from a boy’s perspective, and the sexual thing was something that was done to the lassie. You didnae do it with the lassie, you did it to the lassie. And then you slagged her off for it.

These boys would do shagging motions, they’d have these scowling faces, they’d make it seem nasty and minging. One of them talked about some lassie’s fanny bleeding, either through shagging or poking. They’d say all this minging stuff, right in front of me. Nobody said, ‘Here, we better talk about this somewhere else, wee Brian’s here.’

All this stuff was going into my head, all this sexual stuff. It sounded abusive. It sounded aggressive. It sounded like you had to be a bad person to do it, you had to not care about the lassie, and then later you’d slag the lassie off, you’d laugh about her. And in some way, the lassies liked it.

It was a horrible way to be confused.

But what’s that got to do with Helen asking me to get off with her? Well, I’d somehow got it into my head that ‘to get off with’ meant to shag.

I didn’t even really know what shagging was. It was something to do with putting your willy in their fanny and moving about. And that’s what I thought she was wanting me to do, or something like that. It didn’t seem out of the ordinary, because I’d heard other boys and lassies my age talk about getting off with each other, so I thought they were all at it. And it fucking horrified me. It was fucking nightmarish.

So I said to her, ‘No.’

I remember that I was playing a game in the arcade at the time, and I was trying to ignore her. But she kept asking me. ‘Please, Brian. Pleeeease!’

I went from one game to another to get away from her, but she kept following me. I started playing another game, hoping she’d go away. I was petrified. Petrified with a beetroot face. I remember ‘Let’s Hear It for the Boy’ by Deniece Williams was playing, and it made me feel even more petrified. In the song, she was singing about some boy she liked, and here was this Helen following me about.

She put her hands on my waist, and I booted her.

I kicked behind me without looking back. I kicked her leg.

And she went away.

I was fucking shitting it to go back to school. I thought that when I went back she’d be harassing me there as well, or telling everybody that I didn’t get off with her, and they’d all laugh at me. Why would I not want to get off with a lassie? What was wrong with me? Did I not know how to do it?

But when I went back, fuck all happened. I saw her about, but she didn’t even seem to notice me, like it was no big deal because she did it all the time and she couldn’t even remember my face amongst the many. Thank fuck.

As I got older, I realised that to get off with somebody meant to just kiss them. But that feeling still stayed, somehow. That fear. And the feeling that to do something sexual with a lassie, you had to be a cunt. It manifested itself in my teenage years as the phenomenon known as ‘fanny fright’. But I’ll get round to that later.

My First Computer Program

As a bit of a loner type that was scared of lassies, it goes without saying that I was into computers.

My first computer was the Commodore VIC-20. Before that, we had the Atari 2600, then the Spectrum, but the Atari was more of a console, and the Spectrum was considered to be my brother’s. Whereas I thought of the VIC-20 as mine.

After that, I was never without a computer. The VIC-20 was replaced by the Commodore Plus/4, which was replaced by the Commodore 64C, then the Atari ST. After that came the consoles and the PC. It must have cost my mum and dad a fortune, but that’s all I was into. And it’s what I’ve always been into, more than anything. Computers. And I later became a computer programmer, of sorts.

I remember my first computer program. The first program that wasn’t just me printing my name all across the screen.

It was done on the VIC-20, when I was eight or nine, and it was adapted from a tutorial in a book that I had. The tutorial taught you how to make a program that presented the user with a series of options that they could select from, with each option giving a different response. When you ran the tutorial, it asked the user what they would like to eat, from a choice of three items. The user would press 1, 2 or 3, and the computer would respond with something like ‘Very well, sir’ or ‘I’m afraid there is no more soup.’ It gave me a wee buzz seeing it work. But I had an idea of how to adapt it.

I changed it so that it was a lassie telling me that she liked me, and one of the options was her asking me if I wanted to feel her legs.

I can’t remember what the other options were. I can’t imagine at that age I put in the option of feeling her boobs or her fanny, but it was something sexual, and I definitely remember the thing about her legs. I think I was into legs because I’d seen the music video for ‘Dead Ringer for Love’ by Meat Loaf, where Cher was dancing on the bar with these guys feeling her legs. And I wondered what it was like, to feel a woman’s legs.

Whatever the options were, when you selected them, I made the virtual lassie reply with something like ‘Oooh, feels good’ or ‘I like that.’

I don’t know if it gave me a hard-on at that age, but it turned me on in a way, and I kept looking over my shoulder at my bedroom door in case somebody walked in.

I was ahead of my time.

Proddies and Catholics

I’ll say one more thing about lassies, but this time for a different reason. This is something else that was wrong with Carnwadric, and Glasgow in general.

Not far from where I lived, there were these lassies that stayed across the road from my auntie Jean’s house. These sisters. I can’t remember if there were two or three of them, but one of them looked about the same age as me, which was about eight or nine years old, and one of them was a few years older. I remember being over at my auntie Jean’s house, and sometimes seeing these lassies across the road. I’d look at them for quite a while. I didn’t like them. It wasn’t because of anything they’d done. I hadn’t spoken to them. I didn’t know anything about them.

The only thing I did know about them was that they were Catholics. And that’s why I didn’t like them.

I was a Proddy. My mum and dad and brother were Proddies. I went to a non-denominational school, also known as a Proddy school. My uncles were in the Orange Order, and I’d sometimes get taken to the Lodge, or to the Orange Walk. Folk like me were supposed to be into Rangers and the Queen, and Catholics were into Celtic and the Pope. They were into Ireland, and I was supposed to be into the United Kingdom and the Union Jack.

I picked all that up here and there. I picked it up in the house, or from boys on my street, or from watching an Orange Walk going by and listening to what people were saying. I picked it up in school. Our school was on a hill, and down at the bottom of the hill was the Catholic school, St Vincent’s Primary. You could see it from the playground, and boys would shout down ‘Fuck the Pope’ and things like that.

It’s not that I lived in a Proddy area. It wasn’t like Belfast with the colours of flags painted onto the pavement. Protestants and Catholics all lived side by side and played together. But I sensed that there were these differences to us. I remember starting Carnwadric Primary, and a boy that I played with started in St Vincent’s Primary. He came back from school one day and asked me if I was holy. I didn’t know what it meant, so I said no. He laughed and said, ‘Ahhh, you’re not holy. I’m holy.’ I didn’t like that, I didn’t understand it, and he probably didn’t either, but I knew it was something to do with him being a Catholic and me being a Proddy.

You were on one side or the other. I don’t remember any fights between the sides, but there was other stuff. There were things that were shouted. Things that were spray-painted, like UDA and IRA. There were songs that were sung at night when folk were drunk. And there was the Orange Walk, that would bang their drum louder as they walked by the chapel. I was told that was a good thing, because that lot had it in for us, so we should have it in for them. I didn’t know why. All I knew was that I should be suspicious. Suspicious of Catholics, or the Irish. I didn’t need to know why, I didn’t need to get it. There were a lot of things I didn’t get, but you assume there was some reason for it and it’d click into place later.

So I’d look at these lassies across the street from my auntie Jean’s. These Catholics. I don’t know how I heard they were Catholics, I never heard anything bad about them from my auntie Jean anyway, she married a Catholic. I probably knew they were Catholics because they didn’t go to my school.

I’d look at them and try to work out why I didn’t like them.

I didn’t do it with every Catholic. There were lots of Catholics that I didn’t look at. But I maybe looked at these ones because they looked so harmless. They were nice looking, with dark hair and pale skin. But at the same time, they weren’t nice looking, because they were Catholics. They had these calm faces, these calm features – it was something to do with the shape of their lips. I wondered if they were Catholic lips. Or Irish lips.

I’d look at them and try to find something to dislike about them, but I couldn’t. But I knew that I did dislike them, or that I should dislike them, because they were Catholics.

It took me years to get that sort of shite out of my brain.

Fun House

I’ll tell you something else that took me years to get out of my head. In fact, I’m not sure that it totally is out of my head. It’s just a wee thing.

Every year, the shows would come to Carnwadric. You might call the shows ‘the funfair’, but we called it the shows. I used to go there myself, because it wasn’t that far from my house. My mum or dad never went there, not in all the years it came. I’d go myself and bump into folk from my school, play some games and go wandering about.

I once went into this thing called the Fun House, or something like that. It was about the size of a big portacabin. You’d go in a door at the front, and inside was like a scary soft play, a wee mini maze in the dark, twists and turns, then you come out the other end.

I went in by myself, and there were these other weans in front of me, making their way through it. Halfway through, there was a wee window that let you see outside. A wee boy in front of me waved out the window, and I looked to see who was there. There were people waving back and smiling.

Then another wean got to the window and waved out. People smiled and waved back, and the wean was all happy. I was happy as well. It looked good.

I got to the window and waved. I smiled and waved.

Nobody waved back.

These people outside who were smiling and waving at two separate weans in front of me, they didn’t do it for me. They didn’t even smile. In fact, their smile dropped. And I didn’t know why.

I got it into my head that there was something about me. Something about how I looked or how I acted or who I was, or just something you couldn’t put your finger on. It just felt like people didn’t like me, for reasons that were out of my control.

That stuck with me for years. A self-conscious inferiority thing. A feeling that I was a bit of a freak, as well as a strong desire to overcome it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it has shaped about half of my personality.

It was only fairly recently that I realised why they didn’t wave.

They were the parents of the weans that were waving.

They were smiling and waving at their weans, then they saw me, and they stopped waving and smiling, because they didn’t know me. They probably thought my mum and dad were standing behind them and that’s who I was waving to.

It’s like when I’m waving at my son when he goes into primary school every morning. You see a few weans nearby who are smiling and waving in your direction, but you don’t smile and wave back to them, because you’re pretty sure they’re waving to one of the dozens of other parents around you.

But I sometimes do, though. I do sometimes wave at the other weans. If I’m waving at my son, then he stops waving back and looks away, but then another wean nearby starts waving in my direction, I don’t stop waving. Even though my son has looked away, there might be a chance this other wean is waving at me, thinking I was smiling and waving at them. So I keep it going for another few seconds – just in case.

I know, I’m probably overthinking things. Most weans don’t give that sort of thing a second thought. But there will be some that do, the ones like me. And if you’re like me, that sort of stuff sticks with you. You end up spending the next few decades doing all sorts of things to get people to smile and wave at you, d’you know what I mean?

The Primary Years, In Summary

So, in summary, I had a few wee issues. I had a good childhood, but something didn’t click. I don’t know why. What d’you reckon that would be? A learning difficulty? Autism spectrum? Or was it just all in my head?

Whatever it was, it made me feel a bit different. I was alright, really. But then again, I pished the bed right up until primary six or something. So I couldn’t have been that alright.

Something just did not fucking click. Something just did not add up. There was something about me and other people that just did not fucking click.

I’ll sum it up with this one example.

In the community flat where my mum worked, there was a map of Glasgow, and you could see where we lived, Carnwadric. We were right on the south-west edge of Glasgow. In fact, you could see that the border went right along the road outside the community flat itself, right along Carnwadric Road.

That meant that you could be standing on the pavement on one side of the road, in Glasgow. And then when you crossed to the other pavement, that was you outside Glasgow. You’d be in Thornliebank.

I thought that was brilliant. I thought it was mind-blowing.

I’d tell people about it, other wee boys and lassies, but they didn’t seem to be that interested.

I’d ask people if they knew what side the road itself was on. Was the line in Glasgow? The line on the map was a thick line that was the width of the road, so was the line part of Glasgow? Or was it part of Thornliebank? Or did it not belong to anybody?

I’d ask people, but nobody knew, or cared.

I’d ask them if they thought that maybe the border was actually right in the middle of the road, right where the white lines were. Maybe the border was thinner than the white lines themselves. Maybe it was as thin as a wee line you’d draw with a pencil. Or maybe even thinner than that.

Nobody knew. Nobody cared. Nobody ever seemed to care about things like that. It only ever seemed to be me.

Other people seemed kind of stupid to me, the other boys and lassies in my class. Yet I tended to fall behind. I was the last person in my class to learn how to write their name. I’m not dyslexic, that’s just the way I was. Whenever we had some work to do for the end of the day, I was one of the last to hand it in. And I was all confused about those other things I mentioned, like music and love and getting off with each other and how to be pals, and the fucking Bollywig.

But seriously, is the Glasgow boundary along Carnwadric Road inside Glasgow or outside? Does it include both pavements, or just one?

You’re surely wondering the same thing yourself.

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