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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.
Nobody knew. Nobody cared. Nobody ever seemed to care about things like that. It only ever seemed to be me.
Other people seemed kind of stupid to me, the other boys and lassies in my class. Yet I tended to fall behind. I was the last person in my class to learn how to write their name. I’m not dyslexic, that’s just the way I was. Whenever we had some work to do for the end of the day, I was one of the last to hand it in. And I was all confused about those other things I mentioned, like music and love and getting off with each other and how to be pals, and the fucking Bollywig.
But seriously, is the Glasgow boundary along Carnwadric Road inside Glasgow or outside? Does it include both pavements, or just one?
You’re surely wondering the same thing yourself.
The Secondary Years (#u07359cb5-6e6b-5e1e-912b-4a5c351dea6f)
My Best Pal
Let’s kick off this section with something happy, because I got a bit negative with all the talk about my primary school years. What a downer. I’m meant to be a comedian, an entertainer. So let’s kick this section off with something good.
Just before I started secondary school, we moved house. It was only around the corner, really, we were still in Carnwadric, in another council house. We moved from Stanalane Street down to Boydstone Road. And when we moved there, I became pally with this boy who stayed in the next block. And he ended up becoming my best pal.
He was funny as fuck. Full of patter. He was confident, kind of grown up, but always up for a laugh. He was always up for doing all the things I wanted to do, like going on all the adventures I used to go on myself, and I was up for whatever he was up for. We got on really well, considering how different we were.
I lived in my head a bit and he was outgoing, I was a bit stupid when it came to certain social things, and he was full of common sense. But he was bad at reading and writing and general knowledge. He’d read stuff all slowly. He got diagnosed as dyslexic years later as an adult, but back in the 80s he was just thought of as stupid. So there was all this stuff I’d tell him about that he didn’t know, and all this stuff he’d tell me about that I didn’t know. For example, lassies.
He’d tell me about lassies, and laugh at how much I had fanny fright. He’d say I was ‘scared of the baird’, baird meaning beard, meaning a woman’s beard, meaning her pubes, therefore her fanny. He’d never take the piss out of me in a bad way, but in a pally way. We’d hang about in Carnwadric, and I’d see him with lassies, see him getting off with one, and I’d wonder how he did it, where you started, how you learned.
I hadn’t got off with anybody before. I was in second year in secondary school and I still hadn’t got off with anybody, whereas everybody else seemed to be doing it.
My mate took me aside one night, and asked me if I knew how to get off with a lassie.
I said aye, but I didn’t really.
He laughed and said, ‘How then? Go.’ He didn’t want me to kiss him, he just wanted me to show him what I did with my mouth.
I got embarrassed and said that I fucking knew how to get off with a lassie, fuck off.
But he said, ‘Look, you just do this,’ then he started to show me, by pretending to get off with this invisible lassie. I wanted to walk away, but instead I watched him, because I wanted to know. He had his mouth open, with his tongue sticking out a bit, and he moved his chin in a circular motion. He said, ‘That’s all you do. You just move your chin in a circle like that.’
It looked easy. It looked daft, but it looked easy.
Not long after that, he told me that this lassie wanted to get off with me.
It was a fat lassie called Julie that we hung about with. She always hung about with this other lassie that was skinnier than her, and my mate would sometimes sing this song to them: ‘Fatty and skinny went tae bed. Fatty rolled over and skinny was dead.’ Julie would chase him about for singing it, then batter him. But they’d all still be pals. I think he even got off with her sometimes, her and her mate.
I was terrified, but I said alright.
It was night-time, and she took me round the corner, then got off with me.
I just stood there, doing that thing that my mate told me to do. I just stood there taking no pleasure in it, just getting through it like it was an initiation. Which it was, in a way.
Then we stopped, and walked back. I went to talk to my mate and I told him how excited I was, and he congratulated me.
It was like Footloose or something. The funny thing is, d’you remember that lassie Helen that wanted to get off with me in Millport, and that song ‘Let’s Hear It for the Boy’ was playing? That’s the song playing in the film Footloose when Kevin Bacon’s character is teaching his mate how to dance. And there was my mate teaching me how to get off with somebody.
He then wanted to move me on to the next stage of the training course.
Poking.
No, no. I said I didn’t want to do all that. I was only in fucking second year, for fuck’s sake.
He said it was good. He said you put your finger in the lassie’s fanny, and you could walk about later with your finger to your nose, smelling it.
No, no, no. No. That was Footloose, except Kevin Bacon’s character then offers his mate a pill. ‘Take it. Go on, take it. Don’t be a shitebag, take it.’
Too much, too soon.
I was happy that I’d got off with somebody and it was over and done with. It bumped up my confidence a bit. Not a lot, but a bit. I went into school, and word got out. It’s not that everybody was interested, but, you know, a few folk heard about it. There was a group of lassies, and one of them said, ‘I heard you got off with Julie.’ Julie wasn’t in our school, so I didn’t know how this lassie knew Julie’s name, but she knew.
I said aye, a wee bit nervous, but a wee bit proud.
Then this lassie impersonated the way I got off with Julie.
It didn’t look good.
She pursed her lips tightly, like an arsehole, and squeezed her tongue through it, like the arsehole was doing a shite. Then she moved the tongue up and down, moving the mouth with it. It looked like somebody licking an ice lolly with their mouth closed, if you know what I mean. It looked fucking hideous. And they all laughed.
It was like Footloose, except imagine the bit at the end where Kevin Bacon’s pal finally does his big dance at the disco and everybody’s amazed, but instead of that, imagine everybody points and laughs and goes, ‘Hahahaha, check the fucking state!’
Bullied
Earlier in the book, you asked me the question, ‘Limmy, did your mum give you enough cuddles?’
Now I hear you ask, ‘Limmy, were you bullied in school?’
No, I wasn’t. Not really.
There were a couple of boys that bullied me for a few weeks whenever I was in art, in first year. They noised me up, slagging off my trampy clothes and my hair. Then they pushed it a bit further. We were making these puppets, making the heads out of papier-mâché, and one of these boys tested to see if it was hard yet by whacking it over my head. It was fucking sore. That’s when I snapped and went ‘Fuck off!’ and pushed one of them away. And they didn’t bug me again.
Other than that, I didn’t get hassled in school. I certainly didn’t get hassled by any older boys, because of my brother.
You remember me saying that my brother got a reputation as somebody that you didn’t want to fuck with. I’ll tell you what he was like. When I first got to secondary school and the teachers were reading out the names to see who was who, they’d all say, ‘Brian … Limond. Limond? Any relation to David Limond? You’re his brother? I see. Then we’ll have to keep our eyes on you then, won’t we?’ He was like that. I’d be having to prove to the teachers that I was a good boy. I wanted to do well, I was into my computers and that. It was a wee bit embarrassing to begin with, but the pros outweighed the cons when it came to an older boy having a go.
I was in third or fourth year, by which point David had left school. And I was waiting at the bus stop after school, along with everybody else. There was some older boy that had just joined the school, because he’d been expelled from another. I’d see him in the morning, at the bus stop to go to school. He was a shady wee hard guy that would always wear a grey tartan scarf around his mouth, and I’d wonder who he was.
Anyway, at this bus stop after school, he hooked my jaw. He took a dislike to me, an argument started, then he hooked my jaw. He knew I wasn’t hard. He hooked it in front of everybody, and I just left the bus stop and walked home.
I told David about it, I grassed the guy right up. I said he had a grey tartan scarf, and David knew exactly who he was.
The next morning, when I was at the bus stop to go to school, I saw the guy. His face was done in. He didn’t look like he needed the hospital or anything, but it was more than a black eye.
He knew I was there, but he didn’t say anything. I didn’t rub it in. I was a bit embarrassed. But, you know, it was good.
So to answer your question, no, I wasn’t bullied in school, not really. I didn’t get into fights either. I avoided them. I was a bit of a shitebag, really. There was a hard boy in my class who once offered to fight me, and I just said naw. A few months later, he offered to fight this other boy, the biggest in our year, one of these boys that was more like a man. The man-boy accepted, and the hard boy knocked his two front teeth out.
