While living in our wee 'but and ben' at 9 Green Street I stole our next door neighbour's baby's full milk bottle from the pram and sucked ecstatically from its teat, I pee’d into a brand new zinc bucket displayed with other goods outside the ironmongers, declaring what a good boy I was, I lay in the middle of the paddling pool in The Greens to stop my mother (who hated going into ponds, lochs, rivers and seas) fetching me in for my tea (thence, putting me to bed and hated sleep).
It was even said that I ran off with the tinkies following the carnival after sampling a frothy amber brown liquid they had. I now understand this last escapade as an exercise in getting back to my roots, since years later my mother told me that on her mother's side we had tinkie ancestry. I have always been proud of this.
 |
| An omnipotent boy in Forfar with his younger sister , J, and the tail end of their dog, Darkie, so called because his right eye was surrounded by a black patch. This name was given in the days when social sensitivities were not as highly tuned as they are - rightly in most cases - in current times. |
