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
Dedicated to Lynn and Daniel
Contents
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