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