Surprisingly Down to Earth, and Very Funny

After that, I was never without a computer. The VIC-20 was replaced by the Commodore Plus/4, which was replaced by the Commodore 64C, then the Atari ST. After that came the consoles and the PC. It must have cost my mum and dad a fortune, but that’s all I was into. And it’s what I’ve always been into, more than anything. Computers. And I later became a computer programmer, of sorts.

I remember my first computer program. The first program that wasn’t just me printing my name all across the screen.

It was done on the VIC-20, when I was eight or nine, and it was adapted from a tutorial in a book that I had. The tutorial taught you how to make a program that presented the user with a series of options that they could select from, with each option giving a different response. When you ran the tutorial, it asked the user what they would like to eat, from a choice of three items. The user would press 1, 2 or 3, and the computer would respond with something like ‘Very well, sir’ or ‘I’m afraid there is no more soup.’ It gave me a wee buzz seeing it work. But I had an idea of how to adapt it.

I changed it so that it was a lassie telling me that she liked me, and one of the options was her asking me if I wanted to feel her legs.

I can’t remember what the other options were. I can’t imagine at that age I put in the option of feeling her boobs or her fanny, but it was something sexual, and I definitely remember the thing about her legs. I think I was into legs because I’d seen the music video for ‘Dead Ringer for Love’ by Meat Loaf, where Cher was dancing on the bar with these guys feeling her legs. And I wondered what it was like, to feel a woman’s legs.

Whatever the options were, when you selected them, I made the virtual lassie reply with something like ‘Oooh, feels good’ or ‘I like that.’

I don’t know if it gave me a hard-on at that age, but it turned me on in a way, and I kept looking over my shoulder at my bedroom door in case somebody walked in.

I was ahead of my time.

Proddies and Catholics

I’ll say one more thing about lassies, but this time for a different reason. This is something else that was wrong with Carnwadric, and Glasgow in general.

Not far from where I lived, there were these lassies that stayed across the road from my auntie Jean’s house. These sisters. I can’t remember if there were two or three of them, but one of them looked about the same age as me, which was about eight or nine years old, and one of them was a few years older. I remember being over at my auntie Jean’s house, and sometimes seeing these lassies across the road. I’d look at them for quite a while. I didn’t like them. It wasn’t because of anything they’d done. I hadn’t spoken to them. I didn’t know anything about them.

The only thing I did know about them was that they were Catholics. And that’s why I didn’t like them.

I was a Proddy. My mum and dad and brother were Proddies. I went to a non-denominational school, also known as a Proddy school. My uncles were in the Orange Order, and I’d sometimes get taken to the Lodge, or to the Orange Walk. Folk like me were supposed to be into Rangers and the Queen, and Catholics were into Celtic and the Pope. They were into Ireland, and I was supposed to be into the United Kingdom and the Union Jack.

I picked all that up here and there. I picked it up in the house, or from boys on my street, or from watching an Orange Walk going by and listening to what people were saying. I picked it up in school. Our school was on a hill, and down at the bottom of the hill was the Catholic school, St Vincent’s Primary. You could see it from the playground, and boys would shout down ‘Fuck the Pope’ and things like that.

It’s not that I lived in a Proddy area. It wasn’t like Belfast with the colours of flags painted onto the pavement. Protestants and Catholics all lived side by side and played together. But I sensed that there were these differences to us. I remember starting Carnwadric Primary, and a boy that I played with started in St Vincent’s Primary. He came back from school one day and asked me if I was holy. I didn’t know what it meant, so I said no. He laughed and said, ‘Ahhh, you’re not holy. I’m holy.’ I didn’t like that, I didn’t understand it, and he probably didn’t either, but I knew it was something to do with him being a Catholic and me being a Proddy.

You were on one side or the other. I don’t remember any fights between the sides, but there was other stuff. There were things that were shouted. Things that were spray-painted, like UDA and IRA. There were songs that were sung at night when folk were drunk. And there was the Orange Walk, that would bang their drum louder as they walked by the chapel. I was told that was a good thing, because that lot had it in for us, so we should have it in for them. I didn’t know why. All I knew was that I should be suspicious. Suspicious of Catholics, or the Irish. I didn’t need to know why, I didn’t need to get it. There were a lot of things I didn’t get, but you assume there was some reason for it and it’d click into place later.

So I’d look at these lassies across the street from my auntie Jean’s. These Catholics. I don’t know how I heard they were Catholics, I never heard anything bad about them from my auntie Jean anyway, she married a Catholic. I probably knew they were Catholics because they didn’t go to my school.

I’d look at them and try to work out why I didn’t like them.

I didn’t do it with every Catholic. There were lots of Catholics that I didn’t look at. But I maybe looked at these ones because they looked so harmless. They were nice looking, with dark hair and pale skin. But at the same time, they weren’t nice looking, because they were Catholics. They had these calm faces, these calm features – it was something to do with the shape of their lips. I wondered if they were Catholic lips. Or Irish lips.

I’d look at them and try to find something to dislike about them, but I couldn’t. But I knew that I did dislike them, or that I should dislike them, because they were Catholics.

It took me years to get that sort of shite out of my brain.

Fun House

I’ll tell you something else that took me years to get out of my head. In fact, I’m not sure that it totally is out of my head. It’s just a wee thing.

Every year, the shows would come to Carnwadric. You might call the shows ‘the funfair’, but we called it the shows. I used to go there myself, because it wasn’t that far from my house. My mum or dad never went there, not in all the years it came. I’d go myself and bump into folk from my school, play some games and go wandering about.

I once went into this thing called the Fun House, or something like that. It was about the size of a big portacabin. You’d go in a door at the front, and inside was like a scary soft play, a wee mini maze in the dark, twists and turns, then you come out the other end.

I went in by myself, and there were these other weans in front of me, making their way through it. Halfway through, there was a wee window that let you see outside. A wee boy in front of me waved out the window, and I looked to see who was there. There were people waving back and smiling.

Then another wean got to the window and waved out. People smiled and waved back, and the wean was all happy. I was happy as well. It looked good.

I got to the window and waved. I smiled and waved.

Nobody waved back.

These people outside who were smiling and waving at two separate weans in front of me, they didn’t do it for me. They didn’t even smile. In fact, their smile dropped. And I didn’t know why.

I got it into my head that there was something about me. Something about how I looked or how I acted or who I was, or just something you couldn’t put your finger on. It just felt like people didn’t like me, for reasons that were out of my control.

That stuck with me for years. A self-conscious inferiority thing. A feeling that I was a bit of a freak, as well as a strong desire to overcome it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it has shaped about half of my personality.

It was only fairly recently that I realised why they didn’t wave.

They were the parents of the weans that were waving.

They were smiling and waving at their weans, then they saw me, and they stopped waving and smiling, because they didn’t know me. They probably thought my mum and dad were standing behind them and that’s who I was waving to.

It’s like when I’m waving at my son when he goes into primary school every morning. You see a few weans nearby who are smiling and waving in your direction, but you don’t smile and wave back to them, because you’re pretty sure they’re waving to one of the dozens of other parents around you.

But I sometimes do, though. I do sometimes wave at the other weans. If I’m waving at my son, then he stops waving back and looks away, but then another wean nearby starts waving in my direction, I don’t stop waving. Even though my son has looked away, there might be a chance this other wean is waving at me, thinking I was smiling and waving at them. So I keep it going for another few seconds – just in case.

I know, I’m probably overthinking things. Most weans don’t give that sort of thing a second thought. But there will be some that do, the ones like me. And if you’re like me, that sort of stuff sticks with you. You end up spending the next few decades doing all sorts of things to get people to smile and wave at you, d’you know what I mean?

The Primary Years, In Summary

So, in summary, I had a few wee issues. I had a good childhood, but something didn’t click. I don’t know why. What d’you reckon that would be? A learning difficulty? Autism spectrum? Or was it just all in my head?

Whatever it was, it made me feel a bit different. I was alright, really. But then again, I pished the bed right up until primary six or something. So I couldn’t have been that alright.

Something just did not fucking click. Something just did not add up. There was something about me and other people that just did not fucking click.

I’ll sum it up with this one example.

In the community flat where my mum worked, there was a map of Glasgow, and you could see where we lived, Carnwadric. We were right on the south-west edge of Glasgow. In fact, you could see that the border went right along the road outside the community flat itself, right along Carnwadric Road.

That meant that you could be standing on the pavement on one side of the road, in Glasgow. And then when you crossed to the other pavement, that was you outside Glasgow. You’d be in Thornliebank.

I thought that was brilliant. I thought it was mind-blowing.

I’d tell people about it, other wee boys and lassies, but they didn’t seem to be that interested.

I’d ask people if they knew what side the road itself was on. Was the line in Glasgow? The line on the map was a thick line that was the width of the road, so was the line part of Glasgow? Or was it part of Thornliebank? Or did it not belong to anybody?

I’d ask people, but nobody knew, or cared.

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.