First Dates!

Tuesday

This is a photie of what I can see in the lobby whilst doing the bliss.

Grace Kenny asked me to go to a dance with her when I had a Saturday job in Galbraiths in Parkhead.

Was this the start of the sexual harrassment, Hotboy? I'm afraid so, Jack.

Her old man picked me up and drove us back to Bellshill. My heart sank as I walked into this hall and saw the King Billy posters all over the wall. The Dalmarnock Orange Lodge. Hotboy is not a common catholic name since we were turncoats long ago. Big mistake! Anyway, I survived intact and never considered that to be my first date since the whole thing was so weird, what with having tea with her invalid mother, and there was no winching.

What is winching, Hotboy? Winching is snogging in Scotland, Jack. Also, used when going out with someone, as in: Ah'm winchin' Bridget Sweeney.

The first time I went out on what I regarded as a proper date I was with John Doyle's sister in the balcony of The George Cinema. John was wanting to go out with her pal, Mary Feeney, who was his sister's best pal, and maybe his sister didn't want left out.

Folk offering up their sisters to you was pretty unheard of in Bellshill, but I'm not sure about down in Viewpark.

John and I discussed how matters stood when he went off for the cokes and crisps during the interval and nobody saw any of the movie during the second half.

John and I knocked around with much the same group at school. John was Celtic mad. His old man had died when he was young. He remembered his old man holding him up to the window on Saturday evening pointing out the orange basturns who were coming home from Rangers games. Even at the time, I thought this was a bit uncool. We were told to ignore the scum. Anyway, he was Celtic mad.

He started playing with Ayr United when he left school and one time I met him while waiting for a bus at the top of the Laburnum Road in Viewpark and he's got all these newspaper cuttings in his inside pocket. Hilarious! Anything at all that mentioned his name. John Doyle Falls Down. It didn't matter. So he's trying to show me these and I'm bending over laughing and so is he.

After I read the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, I started remembering folk I knew who were dead. He went on the list. Fiery, sense of humour; I did like him.

I was watching Celtic on the telly when they were playing Real Madrid at home once and John Doyle scored the winning goal with a header from way out. Playing against Real Madrid and scoring the winning goal. A childhood dream come true if ever there was one! Definitely my best sporting moment!!

Yesterday morning I wakened up at three a.m. in a cocoon of bliss which stayed with me as I turned over and lay on my other side. Never happened before. Hurrah!