Age 7 or so - The nightmares start

Im guessing at the age being around 7 or so. The truth is that I dont remember, Its like they were always there. Certainly all through primary school, maybe even into early high school.

If i close my eyes just now I can see them vividy.

Two particular recurring nightmares, both widely different and stupid in design. I would wake up in torment.

One is easy to explain, its child like and stupid, the other is harder to define, it was more a torture, a torment a stabbing mind game.

Im not suggesting that the nightmares were my mothers fault, but considering all the other stuff that i have been through I could have certainly lived without them

The long dark corridor

The place had old wiring and at night the corridor that lead from the end of livingroom all the way to the bathroom was as black as night. There was only one natural skylight window about three quarters along it and the only lightswitch was at the opposite end.

I supposed now, it wouldnt seem taht long a corridor, but it did then, long and straight with spooky shadows and the noises of the old building swaying and creaking and yawning.

Its scared the living shit out of me.

Finally dad came to rescue me and brought with him a hand made bi-plane. Now, my dad was a mechanic by trade, he was great with his hands and could fix about anything that had an engine.

Over the years, i have seen him bend a bit metal to any shape you want, fix boats, cars, lawnmowers, and everything in between. Nothing short of mechanical genuis

But, give him a bit wood and he was a disaster zone.

So, picture this bi-plane, big thick planks of wood for the wings. Thick downling between the two to make it look like a bi-plane. The body of the plane, fashioned out of one thick chunk of pine.

A big round bit stuck on the front and a black throttle handle from a lawnmower painted with a white chocks away simon face.

The wheels were off a lawnmower as well I think, they would have been the little wood spindles on an old atco or something that would be right at the front in front of the cutting blades.

It originally had a propeller too, actually properly shaped like one, but this was the first to break when I threw it off the banister at the bates mansion.

Other than that, it was bullet proof, and it was for a long time my very favourite toy.

I still own it and every so often, I ask him to make a new propeller for it, he hates it and see's it as a failure as he is now quite good at woodwork, so he wont do it.

it recently lost its tail, but my wife assures me that it will be in the house somewhere, but I have my doubts that she has thrown it away.

I cant explain how much this toy meant to me, my dad was a great dad. I sometime think that he made it to compensate for me being left at the Hazelwood, but probably closer to the truth was that he couldnt afford to buy an airfix kit and had knocked something up instead.

Im sure that it would have took him weeks and I will never through it out. Its in the top shelf of my wardrobe just now and I seen it every time that I put a dress shirt on. It reminds me of my dad and thats important to me.

The bates motel

I realise now that the reason that I was packed away to the the mansion house was that this would be my mothers first stint in the hospital for her socially unnaceptable affliction.

I dont remember what my dad told me, but it was something along the lines of simply, she wasnt well and he could look after both of us.

I stayed there for weeks at a time, and I remember being strangely affected by it.

I vividly remember my mad uncle sinclair having a fetish for buying hundred of pairs of slippers, or two of the same book.

I also remember burning almost all of those slippers with the red hot poker from the livingroom open coal fire, which he consented to, I hasten to add.

Staying at Hawick

I seem to remember being packed away to my grandmothers house around this age. She stayed in the top flat of a large mansion house that had been divided up into apartments a long time ago. At one point she had owned the mansion house and all the surrounding land including outhouses and pasture, but as the depression took its toll it was all sold off.

Imagine being a small child and driving up the stone chip drive way, entering the flat door at ground level and having to climb the two flights of stairs past imposing stained glass windows until your reached the respective front door.

She owned the entire top floor and as soon as you went throught her entrance door, you were faced with a large wooden landing, about the size of my current living room. A winding staircase took you up to the apartment, a top landing if you like.

It had five bedrooms, a livingroom, a kitchen with an old Aga, a tower room and a bathroom. It also had the longest darkest hallway you have ever seen. I can only liken it to the bates mansion or the shining.

The only heating came from the coal fire in the livingroom and all the other rooms were massive.

It would make a great development opportunity now and my mad uncle still stays there to this day, granmother having long since passed away.

Cotton Wool syndrome

Dont ever understimate the devistating effect of an over protecting mother.

Mothers beware, choose a balance, an over protecting mother is something to be hated. She wouldnt let her me of her sight and although the school was 50 yards up the street, I couldnt go there alone until I was embarassingly old. That story comes later though.

She had an obsession with knitwear, maybe because it was the only job she ever held down at the pringle factory in her entire miserable life. She hasnt worked a day since she met my dad, who is a different kettle of fish altogether but more on him later too.

If she ever called me "wee lamb" again, i think i might stab her in the eye with the blunt end of a spoon.

I even hated women for a while until I met Mags and understood how a mother should be. But thats to come much much later, theres so much to tell.

Cotton Wool

Another trip to the doctors, I was always there, I knew all the waiting room posters off by heart and could tell you how many wrinkes dr robertson had on his old face, it was a lot and I had to keep counting them to make sure.

She would drag me there with the slightest cold and insist on antibiotics. Looking back in later life, its probably why I get so many colds now, in fact everything thats going as my immune system was shot to hell from an early age.

Boiled lemonade, honey and sugar on a spoon, hot water bottles and layers and layers and layers of woolens. Just what a growing boy needs.

It was the start of cotton wool syndrome

Still Age 5

Night time would come, she would get into bed with me. I told her that I was a big boy now and I wanted to sleep on my own. She told me it was for my own protection in case anything bad happened to me. It was a single bed and I didnt have much room. She would be gone by the time I would wake up in the morning. She told Dad that it was because I couldn't sleep.
At that age it was like having a life size teddy bear. I already had a normal sized teddy and I carried it everywhere.

5 years old

My earliest memory, as a little boy was sitting at a table being force fed custard and cabbage, pile and piles of rancid cabbage with butter on it. My mother would tell me that if I didn't eat it she would tell my dad when he got home and that he would be angry and he would eat it all up.

Of course, time after time it worked, and time after time I swallowed down the cabbage, and then the custard. Gladly it wasn't at the same time or in the same bowl. That would come later.

I would also learn that telling dad would prove harder than had been expected.