So I guess its time I wrote on this thing again.
I kind of realised an important memory in my life was missing apart from when I was born. It just came to me the other day when I was probably feeling a bit low or left out of something, perhaps ...
Anyway, here it is....
I don't remember my Dad holding me, strange.
I can remember being taken away by a stranger when I was very very small, a tall figure in a raincoat standing on an old stone bridge waiting for me to catch up as long thin fingers curled on a long thin arm beckoned me,
Likewise my daredevil ride downhill in Coatbridge on a tricycle my legs akimbo whooping for joy ending with a shop window racing toward my head which in turn became dome shaped and my life turned black and white as colour left my life for a year aged 4
Who could forget the football dog in its black and white strip skills that defy belief past one player up and over another only dafty the goalie to go, left right he weaves then through my legs, its a goal and I am on my back looking at stars and know one calls a foul just an ambulance aged 5
I can remember talking to a lamp post after sailing with pirates through a wafting side curtain of the butchers delivery lorry one sunny morning, impacting the pavement with my golden lock covered skull aged 5 1/2.
And then there was Shirley Temple deciding it was not my turn on the playground Shute and catapulting my skinny frame from the top flying through the air like a red indian from his horse, meeting hard metal as my flesh burst nut against retaining nut and red against white as I lay in the arms of the local chemists the sirens became louder and the sun became darker aged 6
Big bad school, bricks and bottles seamed to fly toward my head like fillings to a magnet sometimes quite innocent if that is possible other times with definite intent, a brother with a bottle and a grudge or a game of sectarian tig although school was fun aged 7
I can remember the dull thud of a dart impact my head while interrupting the Easterhouse darts final in the bedroom I shared with my brothers, George the eldest explaining in the only way he knew that it was not my turn aged 7 an 3/4
There was an episode which is hard to explain but at the time I was one of the three musketeers involved in a dual with skilful skeletons while balanced on the bedroom window ledge screaming like a banshee as I took a knife to my throat rather than be captured aged 8 or so.
I remember Robert Mckay my best friend and arch rival in doing bad as we scooted down hill on a two wheeled pillion of death which suddenly stopped as we did not. knees and face crunched and smashed arse over tit as we said, ripping skin and embedding grit in a human scar filled time capsule aged 9
I remember slings n' stones and bow's n' arrows games of knifey that all went wrong allevio, two man hunt and kick the can, the gang,the girls and 30 a side football fun.
But not the one that escapes me now ..... is it any wonder my grandfather would say to mum
"That boy is going to be an imbecile"
For me Dad...
