Hitting People!

Sunday 23:52 p.m.
Semi-pissed whilst awaiting better things ....

The first person I hit was called Peter Robertson. He stayed next door. When the auld maw moved into the house where I was born, from the room and kitchen, she stood in this new kitchen and burst into tears because she didn't know how she could afford to furnish three bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen. Peter Robertson's family stayed next door.

So I'm standing in the kitchen and I'm crying and I'm telling the auld maw and my old man that I'd been hit by Peter Robertson with a stick. I was told quite clearly to go out the back garden and hit Peter Robertson back with a stick. Few feelings have ever matched the satisfaction of walking up to Peter Robertson and hitting him with a stick. Immediately, he rushed back into his house.

It was a dark place. Only once was I ever in there and I remember well the piece the woman gave me, a jeelly piece. Later, I found out that Peter Robertson was sometimes beaten up and stuck in a cupboard, left with no clothes on, etc. All I knew was that Peter Robertson used to sometimes explode and hit you for no reason at all.

Orbiston Drive was new and they had a front garden and a wee wall outside these council houses. One day Peter Robertson exploded on me and I punched him on the nose, bursting it and knocking him over the wall. That was an amazing thing to witness. He went over the wee wall and landed in his garden.

In the dark house, his old man looked like the evil funger in any horrorshow, was murdered by asthma and his wife had several kids by other fathers. Peter was very sexualised by the time he was six, so God alone knows what he saw in that house next door. They were prods of course. Most of the prods were just like us.

My brother Silvest, row of forty medals on his chest, big chest, came home for Xmas from Birmingham and gifted me two sets of boxing gloves and a punch ball thing. I was seven or eight.

Wee boys work out pecking orders very well. By the time I was twelve and in the last year of primary, I was the bully of the school. I hadn't hit anyone for at least three years.


This was wonderful. I didn't hit anyone. No one hit me. The playground was safe. Much bigger, stronger kids deferred to me. But you had some responsibilities, even if you didn't want them.

We were playing this prod team from Uddingston, I think. Mr Murphy, who was a wonderful human being, wasn't so hands on; not the kind of joe you'd go up to to complain about threat or harassment. So while we're cuffing the prod team as usual, there's a lot of aggravation coming from the support along the lines of ... We'll kill yous! We'll get yous afterwards!

There was a lot of abuse as we're coming off the park. As I'm changing, the inside left comes over and says these screaming folk are going to kick his head in, etc. I hardly looked up. I'm concentrating on getting changed. I say: Just follow me out the door,

So the first joe out the dressing room is me and this never fed to fight wee protestant basturn stands in front of me and I push him in the chest and say: Fung off! into his face, and everyone walked out behind me and trooped past and it was as if these dwarves weren't even there.

My first bloggy photie was going to be the two trainer mits. They're very old and falling apart. I've been biffing in them for thirty years. So I opened the box and inside there's two cables and a plug and this mobile phone thing. Also, there is a booklet with 65 pages of instructions. It was very hard to get it back into the box, but at least I managed that. Fung it! If in the 65 five pages of instructions there is the instruction for BEAM ME UP, SCOTTIE! then I might be interested in opening the box again.

I read in the papers yesterday that Amir Khan's next opponent is going to be Antonio Barrera. The latter is 35, which if far too old to fight with plates in your head at that weight. Or any weight. I should ask the sensei and reverend about this. Should I bet the whole of my overdraft on Barrera or not?

Still scaling the heights with the bliss. What can I say? I am unable to be a living saint. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!