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.
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