I can’t remember much about primary school except that I always seemed to be sticking up for Garry in fights, particularly with a kid called Magoo who was always picking on him. My other outstanding memory of primary school was of Mr Thompson, the head teacher, who had a wooden leg, though I never found out why. Instead of giving us the belt when we were bad, he pulled our hair repeatedly! I clearly remember him telling me off and yanking the tuft of hair at the front of my head in time with his rantings. No wonder I’ve got no bloody hair left!
My secondary school was Jedburgh Grammar, but I was never interested in going there because I was a real out-door type, thanks to my dad’s uncles, Jim and John Wallace, having a farm. Almost every weekend I would cycle down to that farm and have the time of my life. I fed the sheep and the cows, picked the turnips and generally mucked in with the chores, then after that it was back to the house for a big farm breakfast and in the afternoons John and I would go shooting.
At that point, all I wanted to be when I grew up was a gamekeeper. I was like a little old man with my deerstalker hat with the ‘Deputy Dawg’ flap-down ear covers and a bloody big shotgun cocked over my arm. I used to feed up all the birds and ducks and make little hideouts round the ponds then come the shooting season I blew the hell out of everything that could fly – and some things that couldn’t.
I know that sounds cruel now but that was the norm in the country, especially back then, and boys will be boys after all. Having said that, I was a bit of a nasty little fucker when it came to things like that. I shot baby crows that had left the nest with my .22 rifle and kept the shotgun for the bigger birds and the nests themselves. I’m not particularly proud of it now but as I said before, it felt normal at the time.
On Sunday evenings I would cycle home again as late as I could get away with and dreaded going back to school the next day. I had pushbikes from a very early age but they were always hand-me-downs and were far too big for me. I never had any stabilizers either so I had lots of crashes because I was too small to reach the ground. My folks would hold on to me to get me going then seconds after they let me go there would be a big crashing noise, a yelp and a puff of dust as I hit the deck again. But I loved two-wheelers from the start, even when they were too big for me.
The first time I ever got a new bike was when my nana bought Garry and I brand new Raleigh Choppers for Christmas but they were just as dangerous as the too-big hand-me-downs. Choppers may have looked cool but they certainly weren’t designed for riding – they were bloody lethal. Garry once smashed his face to hell one night when he crashed cycling down a hill and he squealed in pain all the way home – the poor little bugger. We used to get into high-speed wobbles because the front wheels were so small and the high bars provided so much leverage that they made the effect worse.
Even back then we pretended we were riding motorbikes and like most kids at the time, we gripped playing cards onto the fork legs with clothes pegs so they ran through the spokes and made a noise like a motorbike. But showing an early aptitude for setting up machinery, I eventually found that cut-up bottles of washing-up liquid lasted longer than playing cards and made a better noise too!
Before we even had pushbikes, my mum says that Garry and I would sit in the house and pretend to be bike racers. We would be at opposite ends of the sofa over the armrests in a racing crouch, our little legs dangling over the side, and cushions under our chests acting as petrol tanks.
Apparently we fought over which racer we were pretending to be too and it was always Jimmie Guthrie or Geordie Buchan. Jimmie Guthrie was Hawick’s most famous son and one of the greatest names in pre-war motorcycle racing. He was born in 1897 and went on to win six Isle of Man TTs and was European champion three times when that title was the equivalent of today’s world championships. His admirers included none other than a certain Adolf Hitler who on one occasion even presented him with a trophy!
Jimmie was killed in a 500cc race at the Sachsenring in Germany in 1937 at 40 years of age and there’s still a statue of him in Hawick, as well as the famous Guthrie’s memorial on the TT course. Like I said before, Garry and I would argue over who was going to be Jimmy Guthrie and who was going to be Geordie Buchan, who was the Scottish champion at the time and also a friend of my dad. So in a sense, my first ever race was on a sofa and I think it finished in a dead heat with Garry!
Rugby is the big sport in the Scottish Borders and although I played it at school, I was never a big fan. In fact, I never liked football or tennis either and as for cricket – what the fuck is that all about? I’ll never understand the fascination with that game. It’s just grown men playing bloody rounders if you ask me. I was more into hunting and shooting things. My old Uncle John also taught me the art of fly fishing and I loved that too. I don’t do it any more but I suppose I’ll have to relearn it now to teach my own kids, Connor and Aaron.
However, I hope they never have to go through the experience I once had when I went sea fishing with my dad and Garry. Dad owned a little boat that we used to tow to the coast for a spot of line-and-rod fishing. On one occasion we took it to the Isle of Whithorn in Galloway and were anchored over some rocks on the Solway Firth doing a spot of rod fishing. It was a lovely hot, calm day so we didn’t have any life jackets on and everything was just perfect, the sun on our backs and the water lapping gently at the hull of the boat. But all of a sudden the peace was shattered by my dad screaming, ‘Get your bloody life jackets on boys, NOW! And get your rods in. QUICKLY.’ I turned to see what the hell could be causing all this panic and was startled to spot a huge dorsal fin heading directly for the boat. Bloody hell, I shat myself; it was a huge basking shark, more than twice the size of the boat (which was 16 feet long) and it was coming straight for us!
Although I didn’t know it then, basking sharks are harmless plankton feeders but they look just like great white sharks and are much, much bigger, growing to well over 30 feet. That’s pretty damned big when you’re a scrawny little four-foot kid. This all happened just two years before the movie Jaws came out and I’m pretty glad I hadn’t seen that film beforehand because I’d probably have been even more terrified and I was scared enough as it was. The shark went under the boat and I remember seeing its head emerging on the other side before its tail had even gone under – that’s how big it was. It just continued swimming away and that’s the last we saw of it, but it was a pretty scary experience – even though it was good to brag about later.
Garry and I were very close and I suppose we had to be really because there were very few other kids to play with. Obviously, we fought a bit as all boys do but we were the best of pals most of the time. We built tree houses and hammocks, messed about in the woods and by the rivers and had a real boys’ own childhood. We did used to pal around with a guy called David Cook, or ‘Cookie’ as we called him, who went on to become a 250cc Scottish bike racing champion, but he was about the only other kid we were close to.
Way before we ever got motorbikes, Cookie, Garry and I used to hone our racing skills in 45-litre oil drums. Two of us would squeeze into a drum and the third person would push it down a massive hill. It was brilliant fun to be in the drum but just as much of a laugh watching the other two getting beaten up as they bounced and rattled their way downhill, bones clattering all the way. Eventually we came up with a new addition to the game – a tractor tyre! This thing was bigger than all three of us but we managed to wheel it up the hill then I’d spend ages trying to squeeze my way inside it as if I was an inner tube. Once I was in, the lads would give me a mighty shove and off I went, bouncing and bouncing for what seemed like ages as the heavy tyre picked up speed on its way down the hill. That bit was all right – it was the slowing down followed by the inevitable crash that caused the many injuries. I’d get thrown out at the end as the momentum died out and I was usually really dizzy and disorientated from being spun round like a hamster in a wheel, so invariably I fell on my backside as soon as I tried to stand up.
One time I actually fell out of the tyre while it was still bouncing down the hill at speed and I crashed face first into a grassy knoll and bust my nose. It was bleeding and swollen and in a hell of a mess. I don’t know if it was actually broken,