Boyracers

My Brother H sent me a book called "Boyracers" which is set in the town I born and went to college in - Falkirk, Scotland. The book has awakened a lot of long-lost memories of the place as it trawls through the pubs, car parks and shopping malls where I spent my student years (for the record, I was born in Falkirk and raised 10 miles down the road in Cumbernauld but I did not return until I enrolled at Falkirk College).

Places like "The Big Bar" in Bainsford, a perennialy empty pub with huge windows and a long, nicked-up, wooden bar. An "old mans" pub that we students would go to when the money was getting low and the cheaper booze numbed the boredom. Places like the Martell pool hall where we would go at lunchtime for a roll and chips and a quick game of pool before hopping back in my friend Andy's car which he had inherited from an Uncle who had recently died. Rosie O'Grady's, the bar/club opposite the cinema that sold cheap booze one night a week that was past it's sell-by date. The Maniqui, a meat market of a club that was only to be visited when you were already well wasted. The list goes on....

I find myself in an unhealthy, but enjoyable, rut of nostalglia as I read this book. If there was one time in my life when I was carefree it was my years in Falkirk. I never had any money and jobs were scarce, but I knew a lot of people and there always seemed to be a party going on somewhere that you would be invited to - even when that party consisted in sitting in someone's flat with a 3-litre plastic bottle of supermarket brand cider.

I think about the people I knew that I've lost touch with or are dead - Big Davie Sutherland, ex-bank robber and next door neighbor who treated me like a brother. He was also my isurance man who told me that if I ever got robbed he would get my stuff back as he knew all the local gansters and they left him, and friends of his, well alone. Big Davie had liver problems but everyday could be found drinking his life away, I hope not, I guess he's dead now.

Then there was James Mills, a.k.a "Jam". Your typical small-minded, racist, neo-nazi blue-nose that Falkirk was reknowned for, unfortunately. I have no idea why this guy and me were friends as we were at oppoiste ends of the political spectrum (back then I called myself a Communist and was proud of it - today I call myself a Humanist). We used to have raging arguements over politics and religion but for some reason I kinda like the guy and we played pool and got drunk together a lot. I strongly suspect that he is probably still in Falkirk - there is a certain type of person who doesn't stray far from the nest and he's probably that type of person.

Hami (second name witheld) was another guy I hung around with. Hami was a chancer who was pulling a college grant and signing on the dole at the same time. You could tell because every second Wednesday he was late for class - a date at the brew office intervening. He was also the only guy I knew with his own flat - even if it was a council flat - he had this gorgeous Polish girlfriend that everybody fancied (I forget her name - isn't that typical?), and she used to sneak us non-Poles into the Falkirk Polish club for cut-price beer. Other times we'd sit in his flat and play on Sega games console - my first introduction to Sonic The Hedgehog!

Then there were my flatmates - John. a chef from Maryhill in Glasgow who was hiding from the police because he had run over a deer while driving drunk in the Scottish Highlands - to make matters worse, he was driving a van that belonged to the hotel he was cooking at! He moved to Falkirk, became a student, drank up all his money and stopped paying the whopping fine the police had imposed on him. Needless to say they were at the front door pretty quickly and he answered it prentending to be me. Thankfully I was not home at the time or I might've had to convince the cops I was not him! He turned himself in a week later and got 5 days in jail (a deal that I thought was pretty good considering he would never be able to pay the fine off with 5 days wages).

Another flatmate was Mark, a strange guy from the Outer Hebridies who was obsessed with joining the military and was only at college so he could join up as an officer and not a lowly private. He lived in our house like a ghost; we'd have a party and he would lock himself in his room, we'd be watching TV and he would sneak by into the kitchen without saying "hello", he would laugh at all the wrong times - an example of this led to a huge arguement between me and him - we were watching a documentary about The Falklands War and he was laughing everytime he say footage of a dead Argentinian - I was disgusted and told him so. I don't think he ever spoke to me again after that. One night Me and John got stoned and ate all his jam doughnuts - he moved out a short while later.

I am laughing inside right now recalling the jam doughnut episode and wondering where all these people are now! If anyone should read this please contact me... unless you are a nazi or an officer... lol!