Copyright

Mudlark

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First published by Mudlark 2019

FIRST EDITION

© Brian Limond 2019

Cover layout design Lynn McGowan © HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

Cover photograph © Brian Limmond

Brian Limond asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008294663

Ebook Edition © February 2019 ISBN: 9780008294687

Version: 2019-01-21

Dedication

Dedicated to Lynn and Daniel

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

The Primary Years

The Secondary Years

The Student Years

The Work Years

Comedy

About the Publisher

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.

On one hand, he had an ordinary job. He was a joiner, he’d go away for the day and come back smelling of sawdust. But he was also an artist. He went to the Glasgow School of Art when he was younger. He’d do oil paintings and pastels and silhouettes, he’d do portraits and landscapes. We’d have them hanging up in the house, and he’d get asked to do them for other folk. I think that was a bit different for Carnwadric, it was a bit middle class for back then, and my dad wasn’t like that. He was a bit of a hard cunt, actually, which makes the artist thing seem so unusual. He wasn’t aggressive, but he could handle himself. I saw him in this fight once.

I was coming home from primary school, which was just across the road from my house. As I started walking to my street, I could hear shouting and screaming, and there was my dad outside my house with blood on his face. And there was this hardman cunt, a big angry guy that lived a couple of doors down. He was a debt collector for the local moneylenders, an evil bastard. I stood far away, watching. I don’t remember seeing any punches, but I remember this other guy’s wife screaming something like ‘Hit him with your shoe!’ But then the fight was over. The guy had battered my dad.

My dad didn’t want to leave it, so he started training. He hung a punchbag up in this lock-up garage that he’d rented, and he’d punch fuck out of it. Then, when the time was right, he squared up to this cunt, and punched fuck out of him. I didn’t see it, so I had to ask my dad the other day for the story. He said he was kicking into the guy’s face and everything.

When my dad finished telling the story, he said it brought back a lot of happy memories. I was happy to hear it. We hated the cunt.

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.

The Secondary Years
My Best Pal

Let’s kick off this section with something happy, because I got a bit negative with all the talk about my primary school years. What a downer. I’m meant to be a comedian, an entertainer. So let’s kick this section off with something good.

Just before I started secondary school, we moved house. It was only around the corner, really, we were still in Carnwadric, in another council house. We moved from Stanalane Street down to Boydstone Road. And when we moved there, I became pally with this boy who stayed in the next block. And he ended up becoming my best pal.

He was funny as fuck. Full of patter. He was confident, kind of grown up, but always up for a laugh. He was always up for doing all the things I wanted to do, like going on all the adventures I used to go on myself, and I was up for whatever he was up for. We got on really well, considering how different we were.

I lived in my head a bit and he was outgoing, I was a bit stupid when it came to certain social things, and he was full of common sense. But he was bad at reading and writing and general knowledge. He’d read stuff all slowly. He got diagnosed as dyslexic years later as an adult, but back in the 80s he was just thought of as stupid. So there was all this stuff I’d tell him about that he didn’t know, and all this stuff he’d tell me about that I didn’t know. For example, lassies.

He’d tell me about lassies, and laugh at how much I had fanny fright. He’d say I was ‘scared of the baird’, baird meaning beard, meaning a woman’s beard, meaning her pubes, therefore her fanny. He’d never take the piss out of me in a bad way, but in a pally way. We’d hang about in Carnwadric, and I’d see him with lassies, see him getting off with one, and I’d wonder how he did it, where you started, how you learned.

I hadn’t got off with anybody before. I was in second year in secondary school and I still hadn’t got off with anybody, whereas everybody else seemed to be doing it.

My mate took me aside one night, and asked me if I knew how to get off with a lassie.

I said aye, but I didn’t really.

He laughed and said, ‘How then? Go.’ He didn’t want me to kiss him, he just wanted me to show him what I did with my mouth.

I got embarrassed and said that I fucking knew how to get off with a lassie, fuck off.

But he said, ‘Look, you just do this,’ then he started to show me, by pretending to get off with this invisible lassie. I wanted to walk away, but instead I watched him, because I wanted to know. He had his mouth open, with his tongue sticking out a bit, and he moved his chin in a circular motion. He said, ‘That’s all you do. You just move your chin in a circle like that.’

It looked easy. It looked daft, but it looked easy.

Not long after that, he told me that this lassie wanted to get off with me.

It was a fat lassie called Julie that we hung about with. She always hung about with this other lassie that was skinnier than her, and my mate would sometimes sing this song to them: ‘Fatty and skinny went tae bed. Fatty rolled over and skinny was dead.’ Julie would chase him about for singing it, then batter him. But they’d all still be pals. I think he even got off with her sometimes, her and her mate.

I was terrified, but I said alright.

It was night-time, and she took me round the corner, then got off with me.

I just stood there, doing that thing that my mate told me to do. I just stood there taking no pleasure in it, just getting through it like it was an initiation. Which it was, in a way.

Then we stopped, and walked back. I went to talk to my mate and I told him how excited I was, and he congratulated me.

It was like Footloose or something. The funny thing is, d’you remember that lassie Helen that wanted to get off with me in Millport, and that song ‘Let’s Hear It for the Boy’ was playing? That’s the song playing in the film Footloose when Kevin Bacon’s character is teaching his mate how to dance. And there was my mate teaching me how to get off with somebody.

He then wanted to move me on to the next stage of the training course.

Poking.

No, no. I said I didn’t want to do all that. I was only in fucking second year, for fuck’s sake.

He said it was good. He said you put your finger in the lassie’s fanny, and you could walk about later with your finger to your nose, smelling it.

No, no, no. No. That was Footloose, except Kevin Bacon’s character then offers his mate a pill. ‘Take it. Go on, take it. Don’t be a shitebag, take it.’

Too much, too soon.

I was happy that I’d got off with somebody and it was over and done with. It bumped up my confidence a bit. Not a lot, but a bit. I went into school, and word got out. It’s not that everybody was interested, but, you know, a few folk heard about it. There was a group of lassies, and one of them said, ‘I heard you got off with Julie.’ Julie wasn’t in our school, so I didn’t know how this lassie knew Julie’s name, but she knew.

I said aye, a wee bit nervous, but a wee bit proud.

Then this lassie impersonated the way I got off with Julie.

It didn’t look good.

She pursed her lips tightly, like an arsehole, and squeezed her tongue through it, like the arsehole was doing a shite. Then she moved the tongue up and down, moving the mouth with it. It looked like somebody licking an ice lolly with their mouth closed, if you know what I mean. It looked fucking hideous. And they all laughed.

It was like Footloose, except imagine the bit at the end where Kevin Bacon’s pal finally does his big dance at the disco and everybody’s amazed, but instead of that, imagine everybody points and laughs and goes, ‘Hahahaha, check the fucking state!’

Bullied

Earlier in the book, you asked me the question, ‘Limmy, did your mum give you enough cuddles?’

Now I hear you ask, ‘Limmy, were you bullied in school?’

No, I wasn’t. Not really.

There were a couple of boys that bullied me for a few weeks whenever I was in art, in first year. They noised me up, slagging off my trampy clothes and my hair. Then they pushed it a bit further. We were making these puppets, making the heads out of papier-mâché, and one of these boys tested to see if it was hard yet by whacking it over my head. It was fucking sore. That’s when I snapped and went ‘Fuck off!’ and pushed one of them away. And they didn’t bug me again.

Other than that, I didn’t get hassled in school. I certainly didn’t get hassled by any older boys, because of my brother.

You remember me saying that my brother got a reputation as somebody that you didn’t want to fuck with. I’ll tell you what he was like. When I first got to secondary school and the teachers were reading out the names to see who was who, they’d all say, ‘Brian … Limond. Limond? Any relation to David Limond? You’re his brother? I see. Then we’ll have to keep our eyes on you then, won’t we?’ He was like that. I’d be having to prove to the teachers that I was a good boy. I wanted to do well, I was into my computers and that. It was a wee bit embarrassing to begin with, but the pros outweighed the cons when it came to an older boy having a go.

I was in third or fourth year, by which point David had left school. And I was waiting at the bus stop after school, along with everybody else. There was some older boy that had just joined the school, because he’d been expelled from another. I’d see him in the morning, at the bus stop to go to school. He was a shady wee hard guy that would always wear a grey tartan scarf around his mouth, and I’d wonder who he was.

Anyway, at this bus stop after school, he hooked my jaw. He took a dislike to me, an argument started, then he hooked my jaw. He knew I wasn’t hard. He hooked it in front of everybody, and I just left the bus stop and walked home.

I told David about it, I grassed the guy right up. I said he had a grey tartan scarf, and David knew exactly who he was.

The next morning, when I was at the bus stop to go to school, I saw the guy. His face was done in. He didn’t look like he needed the hospital or anything, but it was more than a black eye.

He knew I was there, but he didn’t say anything. I didn’t rub it in. I was a bit embarrassed. But, you know, it was good.

So to answer your question, no, I wasn’t bullied in school, not really. I didn’t get into fights either. I avoided them. I was a bit of a shitebag, really. There was a hard boy in my class who once offered to fight me, and I just said naw. A few months later, he offered to fight this other boy, the biggest in our year, one of these boys that was more like a man. The man-boy accepted, and the hard boy knocked his two front teeth out.

I was a shitebag, and I’m glad.

My First Wank

As I mentioned, I was a wee bit of a tramp in secondary school, to begin with. My trousers were too short, I had the wrong type of trainers, plus my hair was all flat and shite. I didn’t know what to do about it. I wanted to look good, but I didn’t want to get slagged off for it. I didn’t want anybody to look at me and say, ‘Who are you trying to be?’

That’s what it felt like. It felt like any attempt to look good would look like I was faking it. It would look like I was trying to be one of the normal boys, the ones that played football and talked about what birds they wanted to pump. And I wasn’t normal. I didn’t feel it, anyway.

Until I had my first wank.

And it changed everything.

Maybe everybody’s first wank was important to them in some way, but I don’t think so. To other people, I can imagine it was nothing more than a very good feeling, a new feeling. But to me it was something extra. I think it’s to do with the fact I’m circumcised. I’d got it into my head that I couldn’t have a wank because I didn’t have a foreskin.

Where I grew up, pretty much nobody was circumcised. Nobody was Jewish or Muslim, and nobody was circumcised just for the hell of it, like they do in America. The reason why I was circumcised was because there was something up with my cock. That’s what my mum told me when I was older. My foreskin was too tight, or something like that. So I had to get circumcised.

I noticed my cock was different from everybody else’s. I’d see the occasional cock on the telly, and it would look different to mine. Or I’d see a wee boy’s cock as he was in a paddling pool. Or I’d see my dad’s cock. I saw my dad’s cock when we went swimming once. He was in the changing room next to mine, and I looked through a wee hole, which happened to be at cock height. And there it was. I don’t know why I did it, but there it was, my dad’s cock, and it didn’t look like mine. It had this big bit of skin covering the end, whereas mine didn’t. Mine looked like a mushroom at the end.

I really noticed the difference in secondary school, at gym, when I first had to get my clothes off in front of all these other boys. I had a look at their cocks, and pretty much all of them had foreskins. It makes you feel different, and not in a good way. But nobody pointed it out. You’d think that other boys would point out your difference, but it didn’t happen. Maybe because nobody would want to admit that they were looking at your cock.

Anyway, I had it in my head that it meant I couldn’t have a wank. I maybe also couldn’t cum. I was born with undescended testicles, which I had to get fixed. And I thought that maybe that had fucked things up for me. I was maybe some sort of freak.

You want to be normal.

You want to be doing what all the other boys are doing, or at least have the choice of doing it. I was normal in all the other ways. I got hard-ons, I fancied lassies, I was ‘normal’ like that. But when it came to wanking and spunking, I had a feeling that it was the end of the line for me.

I was so confused about it all, so ignorant. I remember doing a pish in the school urinal one day. I was in there myself, and I had a hard-on. I was looking at the bubbles caused by the impact of the pish against the water, and I was wondering if the bubbles were spunk. That’s how ignorant I was. A confused and naive wee boy, feeling left behind.

But that all changed with this first wank.

My best pal, that one I was telling you about, he had this older sister. I wasn’t particularly interested in her, she was about four or five years older than me, practically a grown woman, and she’d pace about his house in denims and a jumper. Nothing that turned my head.

But then, one day, she wore leggings.

And I saw her arse.

A sticky-outy arse.

She had these long legs, these wide hips, and this sticky-outy arse. Like an athlete.

I think my jaw hit the ground. I probably reached for a cushion to cover my hard-on, I imagine.

I thought about her all the time, I’d get hard-ons thinking about her. Thinking about her arse. I’d fantasise about touching her arse, my hand on her arse, squeezing her arse, cuddling her with my hands on her arse.

I’d go over to my pal’s, looking forward to seeing her. Sometimes she wasn’t wearing leggings, but I’d know that under whatever she was wearing was her arse. Then on other days she’d be wearing her leggings again. Sometimes she’d bend over to pick things up, bend all the way over with her legs straight.

One day she was in the hall, ironing, and I had to squeeze past her, and she had those leggings on. The front of me brushed against her arse. And I think that’s what led me to having the wank. That was it.

I stayed over at his, in this wee spare room to myself. Everybody was sleeping, and I was lying there in the dark with my hard-on. I’d hold it and grab it and just think about my pal’s sister, think about her arse. I’d think about me squeezing past her, and how she didn’t move away to let me past, and I’d wonder if she knew I fancied her. I started imagining different scenarios where she’d say and do things to me, a bit like my first computer program. I imagined her pushing her big arse up against me and not letting me past, with her saying, ‘Do you like that?’

I started having a wank.

I don’t know if I knew what to do or how long for. I might have picked it up from people talking about it or people doing wanking hand gestures. I probably picked it up from my mate talking about it. Well, here you go, mate.

I started moving it about, then, after a while, it felt like things were going somewhere. It didn’t feel like I was just playing with my cock, but that I was doing something. It felt better as I kept on doing it. And all the time I was thinking about my pal’s sister, her pushing back against me, grinding her arse into me, her maybe taking me into her room and making me do things to her. Making me do things with her arse.

And then I started getting this feeling. A feeling like maybe my hard-on was getting even harder, even though it was hard already. There was a warm feeling in my face, and in my chest. I started breathing dead fast, like I was hyperventilating.

Then I came.

My cock took on a life of its own, and it started shooting this stuff out that had never come out before. I could feel these spasms, and a liquid hitting my belly and my chest.

I just lay there for a second, not doing anything, not knowing what had happened exactly, not knowing how much of it there was or where it all went. I couldn’t see very well in the dark, but I could see some of it on my belly, shining.

I touched it. It didn’t feel like pish. It was thick.

Oh my God. Was this …?

I put my fingers to my nose and smelled it, and it smelled like nothing that had come from my body before.

It was spunk!

Well, of course it was, but … I just didn’t think that I’d ever …

Oh my God, I’d just spunked!

I’d just had a wank, and I’d just spunked. I can spunk! I can spunk, I can spunk! I can spunk like other guys!

I’m normal!

That was the feeling. That was the big feeling. That was the big moment, the big realisation. I’m normal!

I’m a man. I’m a fucking man. I could actually have weans, if I wanted. I’m normal! The circumcision thing, the undescended balls thing, forget all about it now, forget all about it. Because this here, this stuff on my belly here, this is spunk! Hahahahaha!

It honestly changed everything.

I told my mum that my clothes didn’t fit me any more, that they were wee boy’s clothes, all the other boys had better clothes than me. So she gave me some money and I went straight to Concept Man to get myself an upgrade.

Because I can spunk!

Millport: Rebooted

Things just kept on getting better.

When I was about 14, I went back down to Millport with my mum. I don’t know why, there was nobody there, and I had pals back in Glasgow. I probably fancied going to the arcades to play some games. In Millport, they didn’t chuck you out for being under 18 like they did back home.

I went out for a walk, I turned a corner, and walking towards me was one of my pals from Glasgow. An actual guy I hung about with. That was a first. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

I was like, ‘No fucking way. What are you doing here?’

He was like, ‘What are you doing here? Since when did you come to Millport?’

I asked him the same thing. We stood there astonished. I was delighted to see him. He wasn’t one of my best mates, but he was one of the crowd of folk I hung about with.

I asked him what he was up to, and he told me he was on his way to meet up with some folk he knew, and I should come along.

Too fucking right.

I went along, and there was a big squad of people, hanging about. About 20 guys and lassies, having a carry-out, having a laugh. All pals. I got introduced to them all, and they all seemed decent, all welcoming, mostly working class but with a few posher voices, from around Glasgow or Paisley or Greenock or somewhere nearby. It was fucking excellent.

There was a lassie I fancied, and we got chatting. And I got off with her that very night. The next night, the lassie got off with somebody else, and I was disappointed. But then the night after, I got off with somebody else as well.

It felt like the swinging 60s to me.

Then more people came to Millport, and I’d get introduced to them. Then more. More lassies, more guys. And it would be me doing the introducing. I came right out my fucking shell, so I did.

I mean, I’d already come out my shell from primary school, and I had pals back in Glasgow, but this was different. This wasn’t a wee crowd of five or six of us floating about, like back home. In Millport there were dozens of us, and everybody was nice, or funny, or cool, or laid back. Everybody was brand new, everybody was on holiday, everybody was in the mood for a laugh. We’d all be coming out with patter, telling stories, or saying out-of-order stuff, it was fucking magic.

I came down again and again for years, during the summer holidays and every other holiday available. In summer I’d be there for eight weeks or something, and it felt like the sun was shining every day, and it felt like every night was a Saturday.

Tons of fucking pals, tons of decent people, no shady cunts. And tons of lassies. You know how there were boys in school that used to lie about what they got up to on holiday, they’d talk about these lassies they were with, or a girlfriend they had up at their granny’s bit? It was like that, except it was actually happening.

It was a brilliant fucking time. I used to look back on it and miss it, how carefree it was. I even made a sketch about it in Limmy’s Show.

So see all that stuff I was saying about the primary school years, about being alone, and those boys that said, ‘We don’t want to play with you any more’?

Forget it.

First Drink

It was in Millport that I had my first drink. I was only 14, but that’s quite late compared to the other folk that were around me.

When I first met all these people in Millport, I was the only one that didn’t drink. I didn’t like the state people got in when they were drunk back in Glasgow. They were a mess. They flopped about, they were half asleep, whereas I was hyperactive. I was like a fucking puppy, full of energy and excitement, and I wanted to keep it that way. I’d tell people that I didn’t have to have a drink to have a good time. I was full of that patter.

Then, one night, I decided to have one.

There was usually a big crowd of us, but all I remember from this time was that there were just the four of us. There was me, this lassie I knew, her boyfriend, and her cousin, who was this new lassie I’d just met. I was getting off with this lassie, the cousin. She was a nice person, with braces in her teeth. I think she was having a drink, and that’s maybe why I decided to have one, because if this nice person is having one, maybe I should have one as well.

I asked them what I should get, because I didn’t want to be flopping about, I didn’t want to get in that state. So they recommended three cans of Bud. That was my first drink. Three cans of Bud.

I drank them, and I liked them. I liked the taste. They were like cans of shandy you could get in a shop, not too strong.

I waited to feel something.

Then I started to feel it.

This glow.

I started to feel this happiness.

I remember the four of us sitting in the Ritz Cafe, with me smiling from ear to ear, telling them that it was the best feeling I’d ever felt. I honestly couldn’t stop smiling. I had this big smile and a sense of well-being. The other three were laughing at how much I was going on about it.

We went back to a house, where we just sat in the living room. Me and the cousin would get off with each other now and then, and the other lassie and her boyfriend would get off with each other on another seat. It’s funny how we’d all do that when we were young, get off with folk in the same room as other folk.

I think the cousin left Millport the next day, and it was time for me to head home as well. We didn’t swap numbers or addresses or anything, and I didn’t see her back in Millport again.

The next time I saw her was in Glasgow, about five years later. I was in George Square. And I was fucking steaming.

I was waiting for the late-night bus on a Saturday night. The place was busy with people trying to get home after being in the pubs and clubs and student unions, and I was by myself, drunk, and probably being all bitter. Then I saw her in the distance. She was with pals, pointing to a bus or taxi, smiling. She looked nice. She looked like a nice person, just like she did before. She was too far away for me to run over and say hello to, but I knew anyway what state I was in. Even in that state, I knew what state I was in. I’d be a slurring, slabbering monster. Remember me? Remember they three cans of Bud? Look at me now. Ta-da!

About five years after that, I was sitting in work with a hangover, the worst hangover of my life. A hangover that lasted the whole week. And it just so happened to be caused by a weekend trip to Millport.

I’d went fucking daft. I was steaming on the Friday, I was drinking all day Saturday, all day Sunday, I had the Monday off work so I drank all day Monday as well. Tequilas, the lot. Wrecked.

I was still drunk when I went in on the Tuesday, happy as Larry, in my golden hour. But by midday I was a mess. I had ‘the horrors’, as my dad called it. I was sitting in the office toilet, paranoid, thinking everybody was talking about me while I was in there. I had to get out of the toilet in a hurry, because I was starting to get the urge to just stay in there all day.

There was a new guy that had started, over from Belfast. He was about my age, and he was into a drink and going to clubs. He was a chilled-out sort of guy. I could tell he was one of the good guys. And I asked him to accompany me to the pub, because I needed a fucking drink. So he came along, and I told him all about my weekend. He told me I’d be alright.

That night when I got home, I don’t know what was happening to my body, but I thought I was going to die. Genuinely. One of my arms went all numb, for no reason. I wasn’t lying on it or anything. The eyesight in one of my eyes conked out for a few seconds. My insides were making all these sounds that I hadn’t heard before. It was like my body was saying, ‘Nope. Fuck this. Bye.’

The next morning, I didn’t feel that much better. I was ironing my clothes before work, and I felt a tickly feeling go down the back of my leg. I pulled down my joggies and had a look, and there was a light brown bead of liquid running down from my arse. I’d shat myself, and I didn’t even know it.

I went into work, with my scalp crawling and a feeling that I just wanted to vanish. So I asked that Belfast guy if he’d come to the pub with me again. He came along, and made everything alright once again. Like I said, one of the good guys. And he was like that all week until I got better.

It was a nightmare.

And to think it all started with three cans of Bud, because of that nice lassie.

But wait till you hear this.

See that Belfast guy? I looked him up on Facebook recently, to see what he’d been up to. I saw that he’d recently become a dad. I had a wee look through his pictures, and there was him and his wife holding their baby.

When I saw his wife, I nearly fell off my seat.

Because guess who it was.

It was her. That lassie. The cousin.

I kid you fucking not.

Slashing My Wrist

Millport was brilliant, but it was also where I slashed my wrist.

My mum and dad weren’t there this time, they reckoned that at 15 I was old enough to look after the place myself. So I invited my pals down from Glasgow. I had an empty! For weeks!

There were about six of us, staying in the caravan and the wee extension bit. It was fucking magic having them down. We’d all get ready and splash on the aftershave, then go and get a carry-out, and drink it with all the folk I knew. My mates were asking who was who, especially who the lassies were.

I wasn’t on the pull myself. There was this lassie from Greenock that I’d met. I really liked her, but she’d went home, and I was lovesick. And what maybe made it worse was that all my mates were pulling. There was all this joy around me involving lassies and guys, and I was in a world of my own, lovesick. Maybe I was jealous, fuck knows, but I think it was something else, something that wasn’t even about the lassie or my mates, something going way back.

And what made things worst of all was that I was drunk.

I was drunk, and I wanted to see her. I wanted to speak to her. So I phoned her. I’d phone her and hear her voice and everything would be alright.

I went to a phone box, and gave her a phone. I can’t remember much of the conversation, but I remember one thing.

I said to her, ‘I love you.’

This was a lassie I hardly knew. I mean, how long had I known her for? A week? A few fucking days? And we hadn’t even shagged or anything like that. We got off with each other a few times. We talked, though, we got on. I liked chatting with her, so I just latched on. I latched right on. And I told her I loved her.

I wanted to hear it back. I wanted to hear her say that she loved me as well.

But she just said, ‘Right.’

It wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

I said, ‘Do you love me?’

She said, ‘Em … I like you. I don’t love you. We haven’t known each other for that long.’

I was like, ‘But I love you.’

I started crying. My voice went all high. I was like that for the rest of the conversation, with me telling her how much I loved her and how much I wanted to see her. And there she was having to deal with this drunken fucking loony, having to let him down gently.

When we finished chatting I stayed in the phone box for a while, crying. When I left I bumped into my mates, and told them I couldn’t take it any more, and I was going to go back to the caravan and get a knife and kill myself. They said I was overreacting, but they followed me back. I went into the kitchen drawer, but I couldn’t find a sharp enough knife, so I took a fork.

That’s right, a fork. A blunt one at that.

I ran away, with them chasing me. One of them started crying, telling me that he loved me. I said I was sorry, but I needed to do it, I hated my life, I hated myself, I was a fucking joke. I probably spilled out all sorts of reasons why I hated my life, stuff going back to primary school.

I managed to get away from them, but I could hear them shouting for me. I liked it, in a way, but not in the way that put a smile on my face. I liked that I was making them aware of how I was feeling.

When I couldn’t hear them any more, when it was all quiet and dark, I just thought about myself. Just bad feelings. Bad feelings. All bad.

I took out the fork, and tried to do my wrist in with it. I pushed it and jabbed it against my wrist, hoping to break the skin, but it was like trying to slash your wrist with a chopstick. It was fucking laughable, really.

But then I found something better, an empty bottle of Merrydown cider. I smashed the bottle against the wall, and slashed my wrist with the broken bottle. I took a few swings at it, but I didn’t hit a vein. I couldn’t see or feel any blood spurting. But I could see that there was a big, dark gash. I’d slashed my wrist. Veins or not, I’d done it. I’d finally done something about it all.

I couldn’t really have wanted to die, though, because instead of having another few goes I walked down to a shelter at the beach, one where I knew people would be coming and going. Nobody was there at the time, so I lay on one of the benches inside and waited.

Eventually, somebody came along, some guy I knew. He didn’t see the wrist at first, so he was just asking how tricks were. Then he saw it and started going, ‘For fuck’s sake!’ He shouted on folk, and I was taken to the hospital.

I’d calmed down by that point. I don’t think I was numb, I think I was just calm. It was out my system. Whatever I was feeling before, it was gone.

The doctor checked me out. It was just me and him in this wee room. The hospital was this tiny wee place, because Millport’s tiny, fuck all happens there. It was this calm white place that smelled of a hospital.

The doctor asked me why I did it, while he stitched me up.

I felt embarrassed. I said, ‘I don’t know, I’ve just got … I’ve just got problems.’

He laughed. He said, ‘Problems? What age are you?’

I said, ‘15.’

He said, ‘15, haha. Wait until you get to my age. You have a wife, mortgage, children. Then you will have problems.’

Now, you might think that’s insensitive. It’s maybe something a doctor would get sued for these days. But it actually helped. The way he just laughed it off as he was stitching me up. It was his accent as well, maybe an Indian accent: ‘Then you vill have problems.’ It was like he’d been through a lot more than me to get to where he was, and if he could do it, I could do it. Or something.

I was told to stay there overnight, which I was happy to do. I woke up the next day in the hospital bed. It was a bright morning, with sunshine pouring through the windows. I was told that my dad would be coming from Glasgow to get me, and I’d be going home that day, so I was just thinking about what I’d say to him and my mum when I saw them. I felt relaxed, though.

Eventually, people started turning up. My mates from Glasgow turned up, and they were smiling and calling me a mad bastard. I said sorry for everything, and they told me not to worry about it. Then they went away and some more people turned up later. That went on for a while. I liked it. It was embarrassing, though, like I felt the need to slash my wrist because I’m special and I’m deserving of special attention. But I did like it. If you’re feeling down, I definitely recommend it. No, I’m joking.

My dad and brother turned up, and they were shaking their head, asking what I did a stupid thing like that for. I told them I got drunk and I didnae really know why I did it, I just felt down. We drove back and didnae talk about it, we just talked about other stuff like it hadn’t happened. When I got home, my mum was the same way as my dad and brother. The conversation about it must have lasted no more than a minute. My mum and dad weren’t into big conversations about feelings, whereas I’m the type of cunt that can go on about them a bit too much. As you’ve maybe noticed.

I was taken to a counsellor, a one-off meeting where I said I wouldn’t do it again, and the counsellor said okay then, and away I went.

As for the lassie from Greenock, I met up with her, in Glasgow. We hung about for a day, just fannying about, chatting. I don’t even think I got off with her, it was all quite friendly. Then we didn’t meet up again. I can’t remember if we decided we were just pals, or if we just didn’t bother getting back in touch. Either way, I was fine with it. I had a pretty easy-osey attitude about it all, considering I’d slashed my wrist a month or two beforehand.

Fucking Up School

About halfway through fifth year in school I decided to move from Hillpark Secondary to Shawlands Academy. It was right in the middle of me doing my Highers, and because of that I ended up failing them. Failed the lot of them.

Now, why would I go and do a thing like that? Why would I move school and risk failing my Highers? Was I being battered in Hillpark or something?

No. It was because I was loved up with this lassie from Shawlands Academy, and I wanted to be with her all the time.

This is like the third time I’d fucked things up because of a lassie. This is the final part of the trilogy. First the drinking, then the wrist, then this. It wasn’t their fault, obviously, and I would have fucked things up anyway. In fact, this lassie was only part of the reason I moved school.

It was mostly because the people at Shawlands Academy had better clothes.

I’m not joking.

Remember I said that I was a bit of a tramp when I started secondary and that I was mostly interested in doing well and proving myself. Well, it was kind of the opposite by fifth year.

Me and my mates were right into all the designer gear. We were all from council estates, but we’d save up our monthly £30 family allowance and blow it on one John Richmond Destroy T-shirt or a Junior Gaultier top or something else that made us look a bit better than we were. We’d go to the under-18s like Fury Murray’s and the Tunnel and Tin Pan Alley and rub shoulders with all these other youngsters from better areas, dripping with money, these 15-year-olds with posh accents and £500 John Richmond jackets. We couldn’t keep up, but we did our best to look the part. We’d also do our best to sound the part. If a lassie asked me where I was from, I wouldn’t say I was from Carnwadric. I’d say I was from Thornliebank. Things like that.

I started noticing that a lot of these trendy folk went to Shawlands Academy or St Ninians, whereas none of them went to Hillpark. All my mates were Catholics, so they were at St Ninians, making me about the trendiest cunt in Hillpark at the time. I’d sometimes wear some of my gear into school, almost to show off, to make up for feeling like a tramp back when I started. Some folk would have imitations of the designer gear I had, like I’d have Junior Gaultier and they’d have Benzini Junior, and they’d slag me off for having what they believed to be a rip-off. And I’d be like, ‘Oh my God, you just don’t have a fucking clue, man.’ Really making up for my trampy period, really enjoying my superiority.

Anyway, this lassie.

I met her during the summer holidays before fifth year, and we really liked each other. She was into all the gear, she came from a better area with a better house, and she had a posher voice. Plus she went to Shawlands Academy. I felt like I’d pure moved up in the world.

When I started back at Hillpark and I was seeing less of her, I missed her. We’d meet up and she’d tell me what she’d been up to in school. The more I thought about her school, the more it felt like a better scene. It just felt like where I belonged. Fuck Hillpark, man. I’m out of here.

So I managed to move school about halfway through. Fuck knows how I convinced my mum and dad to let me and what my reasons were. I think I just said I was dead unhappy, and they shrugged and made the phone calls.

I met all these new folk, folk that I’d seen in the clubs. It was all fresh and exciting. People were wondering who this new guy was, I felt all interesting. The teachers didn’t seem to take a liking to me, though. I think they thought I’d be a problem, having to get me up to speed with their class. And they were right.

I couldn’t catch up with what they’d been doing. I felt myself fucking it up, and I started to just let it happen.

Me and that lassie drifted apart, until we broke up. We more than broke up. I went to speak to her one day and she said, ‘I’m not talking to you. I know what you said about me.’ I didn’t know what she was on about, and I still don’t.

I started losing interest in all the fancy clothes. I just started wearing plain gear – denims, a band T-shirt, a denim jacket. It felt better.

Then I did my exams, fucking clueless. And during summer I got the results through for the four Highers that I’d taken. Failed the lot.

What a silly boy.

I didn’t know what the fuck I was going to do.

Cutting Myself Up

I maybe should have spoken to that counsellor more, that one from when I slashed my wrist, because I started cutting myself up. I’d get a wee bit of glass, or I’d fold an empty can of lager in half so that it was pointy at the sides, and I’d cut up my forearm. Nothing too deep, but I’d cut it enough to hurt and make a mess.

I really can’t say why I did it, exactly. It was a mix of things. I had these feelings that I couldn’t express. I hated who I was, I was pathetic, I was this incomplete person, something wasn’t right with me, everybody else seemed to take things in their stride but it felt harder for me, I wanted to send a message to people, I wanted to send a message to myself, I wanted somebody to help me, I wanted me to help me, but there was no reason for me to get special treatment and I was sorry for everything and I was angry, angry at myself and angry with people and angry with how things were, but it wasn’t normal anger, it was something else, it was a sad type of anger. I didn’t know what it was.

So I’d cut up my arm.

By doing that, it was like I didn’t have to put my feelings into words. I didn’t have to write it down in a diary, or write a letter to somebody and somehow find the words for what I was feeling, because fuck knows how I would begin to do that. So I’d cut my arm. It would be sore, and I’d like it. It was a relief. I’d see the cuts and the blood, I’d see this horrible thing I was doing to myself, and it just made sense. That there, that mess I was making of myself, that’s how I felt.

I don’t know why I was like that, I don’t know why I’ve always been a bit like that. All bottled up. I remember being like that in primary school. I remember this one wee incident in particular.

I was in primary one or two, sitting at my desk, doing a drawing. It was around Christmastime, so we were all doing drawings of Santa and things like that, while the teacher put tinsel up.

I was drawing away, when the teacher walked up to me and put some tinsel around my neck. I didn’t know what she was doing to begin with, then I saw what it was. She was smiling, she was a good teacher, maybe my favourite. But I didn’t like it.

Everybody turned around and looked at me, and some of them started laughing. They weren’t all pointing and pissing themselves, but they thought it was funny. And my face went bright fucking red. I didn’t know what to do.

I pulled at it to get it off, but my teacher had tied it in a double knot. I tried pulling it over my head, but it was too tight. And the class was laughing.

I pulled it really hard against my neck to try and snap it, till it started to hurt. I saw that the teacher looked concerned. So I kept pulling it against my neck to show her I was hurting myself, to show her how much I didn’t like it.

I didn’t know how to just ask her to take it off, or how to handle any of it. She rushed over and cut it off with scissors, and asked if I was alright. But I just went back to my drawing, embarrassed.

That was like my first instance of self-harm, if you like. Maybe I’ve always been like that, or maybe the tinsel incident planted a seed, fuck knows.

I remember my last instance. I remember when I stopped.

I stopped because there was this lassie I was going out with for a few weeks in school, a while after breaking up with that lassie I moved school for. One day she asked me back to her house during lunchtime, because it would be empty, and I was scared that she wanted me to shag her or something. I went back with her, though, but we just talked. I didn’t even get off with her, just in case it led anywhere. I was scared of being intimate. I just couldn’t shake off that feeling from earlier in secondary school, that low self-confidence, and that feeling that went all the way back to primary school where I felt out of my depth. I just couldn’t break through that barrier, as much as I wanted to. If I was drunk I could have a go at it, but not when I was sober, no way.

So I started cutting up my hand. I didn’t do it there and then or anything, but later in the week. It was partly for self-loathing reasons, but partly because I wanted her to spot it. She did spot it, and asked why I did it. I don’t know if I said why. I probably didn’t even know myself at the time. It was maybe a way to get some intimacy, through her worrying and talking to me. Maybe she could work everything out.

One night, she said she wanted to show me something. She took off her glove, and she’d cut up her hand. It was all scratched, like mine.

And I just fucking stopped.

My First Acid

I took my first acid when I was 16. It was during that summer after fifth year, when I knew I’d fucked up my exams. I don’t know if that had anything to do with me deciding to take it, like I’d ‘turned to the drugs’, but that’s when I took it anyway. It was 1991, and everybody was taking it.

The acid I got wasn’t like the acid I saw on the news. It wasn’t a square bit of paper with a cartoon on it. It was something called a purple microdot and looked like the head of a match. I was told that it was better, it was stronger, it had more acid, it would knock my fucking block off. And that sounded good to me.

I think it was a Saturday night, and we were just going to get a carry-out and hang about round the back of Arden Primary School, we weren’t going to a club or anything. So I got a drink, and took this purple microdot, and waited. I felt like I’d be safe with my mates, because they were the mates I was with when I slashed my wrist, I’d been through all that shite with them. Anyway, I wasn’t expecting anything too mental. I was expecting all these funny visuals like my mates said, like seeing Pac-Man, or seeing these trails when I moved my hand. A couple of hours of visuals, something like that.

But what happened was this.

It turned my head inside out.

It turned it inside out, upside down and back to front.

There were the visuals, but that wasn’t it. That wasn’t the thing. My mates never told me about all this other stuff. They never told me about the thoughts I was going to have.

How can I sum up my thoughts? If you’ve never taken acid, or if you’ve taken it but you’ve never experienced it in the same way as I did, how do I explain it? Here’s an example of one thought I had …

My dad is just a guy.

That might mean fuck all to you, reading that. It’s obvious that my dad is just a guy. But to me, my dad is my dad. I don’t call him ‘Billy’. I don’t say, ‘Billy, what time’s it?’ It’s my fucking da. There’s a reason I don’t call my dad by his first name, or why I don’t talk to him about certain things. There’s some reason that I can’t explain. There’s some invisible barrier, some invisible wall.

What acid did was it took away these walls. All these walls that kept everything in their place.

You know how you get comedians, observational comedians, that ask the audience if they’ve ever noticed some peculiarity about daily life? It was like that, but with everything. It was like that with the thing about my dad, my mum, people in general, faces, eyes, blinking, hairstyles, the bricks that made up the school, speaking, words, money, pals.

What are pals?

I was thinking all sorts of shite. It was like that thought I had about the Glasgow boundary along Carnwadric Road when I was younger, that sense of wonder, that puzzlement, but constantly, with everything, with everything I saw and thought about, with no thought reaching its conclusion, just one overlapping another.

After a few hours, things started to calm a bit in my mind. I was still tripping, but my mind had simmered down. It was getting late, and a few mates said they were heading home. But I didn’t want the night to end.

A couple of them said, well, they were staying out, but they were going to steal a motor.

That was another thing that was big back in 1991, as well as acid. Joyriding. My mates said they did it, but part of me never believed it. It was hard to imagine. So when they asked if I wanted to go, I said aye.

We walked up to this wee cul de sac, it was maybe about 2 or 3 in the morning. All the lights in the houses were off, everybody was sleeping. One of my mates said we should keep an eye on a certain house, because there was an old guy there who was known as a curtain-twitcher. But it looked like he was sleeping as well.

Within a minute, we were in a motor with the engine running using nothing more than a screwdriver and brute force. And we were off.

The mate who was driving could hardly see over the wheel. I think he was 14 at the time, but he could drive like a cunt that had been doing it for 20 years. The other one was in the passenger seat, and I was in the back. We were driving down roads at night, stopping at traffic lights, going on the motorway, in a motor that didn’t belong to us.

It would have been a trippy experience by itself, but I was also tripping.

We’d been driving for a while when the sun started to come up. Then they spotted another motor, the same type as the one we were in. One of them got out, pulled out the screwdriver, and then we were away with that as well. A few minutes later, we were driving down a motorway, and I was waving to my other mate who was driving next to us at 70 mph. It was like a game. It was like Grand Theft Auto. It just didn’t feel real.

We got to this country road, this dirt path that they were familiar with, and we started belting it down, skidding about like it was a rally game. I say that ‘we’ were belting it down, but I wasn’t driving. I couldn’t drive. I gave it a shot for a minute, but I nearly crashed, so we swapped back. Then we got to a field and started skidding the motors about and banging them into each other, like they were dodgems. Dodgems that cost thousands of pounds and didn’t belong to us and had people’s belongings in them.

But at no point did I feel guilty.

At that age I didn’t think about how the folk would feel, having their motors stolen. I thought they would just be a bit pissed off. I didn’t think about how much it would cost, or the feeling of shock, or the feeling of being violated. I didn’t imagine how it would feel to have somebody steal this personal place of yours, like a home away from home, you have your things in it, and now somebody’s away with it, and whoever stole it doesn’t care how bad you feel. When I was 16 I just didn’t care. I didn’t think. If I did think anything, I probably thought that it didn’t cost much to get these things fixed, there probably wasn’t that much hassle afterwards. The pixies would take care of it.

So we just had a good time with these dodgems, until one of them got a bit too done in, so we left it and drove away in the other. We headed back to that country road and started driving down it again.

Then we saw the police.

They were in the distance, in front, coming towards us slowly. So we slowed down. The road was so narrow that we couldn’t just do a three-point turn and get away. We had to just pass this police motor and hope that nothing happened.

I was in the front passenger seat as this police motor passed by. We had to squeeze past slowly. I looked at one of the policemen, and they looked at me. I tried to look innocent, even though we were driving down a country road early in the morning in a wrecked-looking motor and the driver looked 14.

When the police were out of sight, we got out the motor. We just left the thing with the engine running, and ran. One of my mates said that if we got caught we should say that it wasn’t us in the motor, we’re other guys, out for a spot of fishing. It didn’t make any sense to me. I said that we should split up, but they said we should stick together. I said no, fuck that, I was going to split, so I went away by myself. I ran over the fields until I got to Stewarton Road, this big road that cut through the fields. And I started walking down that.

After a while I heard a helicopter, and I hoped it wasn’t anything to do with me.

After five minutes it was hovering alongside me, hovering over the fields. It was a safe distance away, but it was low enough to make the grass move, and close enough to be loud as fuck. It followed me for about ten minutes like that. I was still tripping, and trying to act natural. I tried not to look at it, then I realised that an innocent person would look at a helicopter following them for ten minutes, so I started looking at it now and again.

A police motor come up to me, and I was told to get in. So I did, pretending to not know what this was all about.

They drove me to the station and started interviewing me. No lawyer. I didn’t know how to ask for one, I was only 16, I’d never been in trouble before and I was tripping. They must have known I was tripping. When I was in the motor before, I could see in the mirror that my pupils were massive. Huge black holes with just a tiny rim of blue. I felt off my fucking nut. Not only was I tripping, but I’d been awake for more than 24 hours.

They asked me where I was before they got me, and I said I’d been fishing with some mates. It sounded fucking ridiculous.

They sounded like they believed me, though.

They asked who my mates were, but I told them I didn’t want to say.

They asked me why I didn’t want to say, if I was only fishing. So I told them the names. The real names, because I didn’t want any fake names making me look suspicious. They had nothing to hide, we’d been fishing.

When the police had the names, they switched tactics. They said they could identify me as being in the passenger seat, they had both motors, our fingerprints would be all over them, the game’s up. I got my photo taken, my fingerprints taken, and I got driven home.

When I got home, my mum and dad already knew what had happened, because the police had given them a visit. They didn’t crack up at me, they just shook their heads and said it was a stupid thing to do. The conversation lasted no more than a minute, a bit like when I slashed my wrist.

I met up with my mates again a few days later to talk about it all. They asked me what happened, and I said that I got caught, but I lied and said the police already knew all their names and addresses. I said it must have been that old guy that grassed them, that curtain-twitcher guy, he must have saw us. They nodded and said aye, that’s what it’ll be, it’ll be that cunt. I shouldn’t have said that. My mates weren’t violent, but still, I shouldn’t have said that.

I eventually got a lawyer. I don’t know if I pled guilty, but I was found guilty. Two counts of car theft, two driving without insurance, two driving without a licence, and I think I got done for a bit of hash they found on me as well. Because it was a first offence, I didn’t get the jail. I got a fine, a few hundred quid.

The rest of them got lesser punishments, if anything. Because I was the oldest, and the only one who was 16, I got done the most. The prosecution said I was the ringleader, even though I can’t drive. Even though I was tripping out my box, I got done as the ringleader. I can’t drive, even to this day.

After I got sentenced, my mum told me to stop hanging about with them. It’s about the only time she put her foot down. I was happy to go along with it, because I was scared of being found out as a grass. But when I bumped into one of them years later, in my 20s, I confessed. I confessed that I effectively grassed them all up. He laughed and said he knew. They always knew.

Anyway, I just want to apologise. Not to my mates, but to the people whose motors I helped steal. My 16-year-old self couldn’t apologise, because he didn’t care, but I’ll apologise on his behalf.

Strip Search

After summer, I went back to school to redo my Highers. I didn’t want to, I wasn’t interested any more, but I didn’t know what else to do with myself. I eventually dropped out, about a month or so in, but until then I was just hanging about. Hanging about like a ghost.

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