My Story

But here we were in Macduff, yes that famous place from Macbeth (Not!) The Macduff Arms was a beautiful pub previously run by a musician and businessmen were behind the spit and sawdust front bar, he could “play the bottles” which meant knocking out a tune on the whiskey and other spirits bottles behind the bar. His party piece of course would be dinging away on the bottles until he hit a bump note, where miraculously it rang true again, after he relieved said bottle of one “nip tot, measure, swaally” whatever, then of course it rang true like a bell…

Oh the good old days…

Today this would have been on the pubs “facebook, insteeraaagraam” page, thank god that was never inflicted on us in those golden days…

The pub was a busy pub full of returned fishermen, and fishermen waiting to return! Plus farmers and local businessmen and workers. It was a sweltering summer and those nights behind the bar were burned into my memories, it was fun, exciting and hard work, but as a family we pulled together and made it work. So there we were ensconced in the bar for the whole of the summer holidays I got to meet most of the guys who were regulars, coming and going in the bar and had conversations with them, which turned out to be very useful in the future. Me and my brother learned a lot about stocking the bottles up, and cleaning up in the pub. Mum walked into a house with fungus on the walls, and damp as it had not been lived in recently, and it was built in 1790 so it wasn’t new. But a lot of hard work, cleaning and tidying, it was a busy busy time but it was a new life and we just got on with it…

The long hot summer was over, but living by the sea and its constant restlessness had awakened something in me, plus that rude shocking “uprootal” from ordered society, to the rough and tumble and close up interaction with people often “under the influence” from very working class, even brutal jobs, at the farming, and the fishing, was giving me another view of life, another layer of that onion was developing…

So school began and eventful as ever, we developed a flat tyre on the way to the school, dad went to the local garage to phone the school and my mum, to keep everyone informed as you did in those days, not just a quick text fixed all…

In my life nothing is usual or normal, or it’s just my perception of events, but it’s justified, as you will observe if you stick with me….

So eventually we meet the headteacher, we are introduced.

My mother and father of course had it all prepared, he and my mother had met a few of the teachers over the summer as they had become regulars at the pub, as they obviously had a lot in common with their ex fellow teachers my parents. Plus my father knew the deputy head teacher as they had both been school Rugby coaches, and of course my father did a lot of socialising in Aberdeen, as did many of the teachers of that time.

Me and my brother had done tests and had been allocated the levels we should be integrated in, at Banff academy…

Banff Academy did not have the same high level of education as “The Grammar School” in Aberdeen. The larger city school had a tiered graded system, and I had been at the higher end. It was just the way it was, the more rural academy just didn’t have the pupils that were that way inclined, most were happy to continue in the family business, and there was not the pressure cooker educationalist environment that did exist in the city. Anyway, the main result was that I was pushed ahead one year academically.

Of course this didn’t help my particular situation, as I remind you, I was small, I was always small. My brother although 18 months younger, was almost the same size as me, so the normal pecking order was fiercely contested, which results in my brother believing I bullied him, but in fact I was so conscious that he was almost my physical equal, that I probably over corrected and was more physical than was appropriate, as its basic human nature and hard wired into us that the older sibling should occupy that position as the physical better… anyway, that’s another story, me and my brother’s adventures…

So the last thing I needed at that moment in life was to be thrown forward in the school system, to be surrounded by huge kids, the stock of generations of hard physical worked fishermen and farmers with all the calloused hands and nit boned genetics of Neanderthals, and that was just the girls…

But being small I have learned to use my mind and my mouth, instead of my small fists when accosted and surrounded by my fellow classmates, springing forth tales from their fathers stories, told to me when they were “lets say relaxed” which let me have the key to defusing the delicate situation, of …say for example …“Lets kick the shite out of this wee city fucker!”

I would gently unlock the doomed situation, by interrupting the immediate arse kicking, with a question or two about their parents names etc, which would lead to questioning furrowed neanderthal brows, and “What the Fuck?” “How do you know my da?”, “How does this loon know all aboot my folks?? “

Then, the ace in the hole was my access to all things required by teenagers in a small town…

Cigarettes, Condoms. Beer, well for starters..! more of that in later stories…