Ra Visit to Bellshill
Thursday 5:50 p.m.
Since I don't get paid till tomorrow, I walked up to Haymarket Station thinking I'd put the ticket to Bellshill on the credit card. I'd forgotten the number and walked back home again. I got the train eventually from Waverley Station. Dearie me!
But it was a sunny day. My maw sat out on a bench against the wall in her back garden. I sat in a half lotus on the tarmacadam path. Quite relaxed, I didn't say anything for a moment or two. My maw started singing The Fields of Athenry. I closed my eyes and started immediately doing ra bliss. My mother even at 87 years old has a very nice singing voice. A tear came to my eye as I thought of how nice it was to sit out there with my auld maw, and how these days do not last forever.
She sang another song and the sounds of the singing attracted a guy from two gardens away who came and stood in the next door neighbour's garden. My auntie Kathy gave him a cup of coffee, as he stood looking through the slats of the big fence they have there now, and he told her that he was taking 30 pills a day for a considerable catalogue of diseases. He hadn't his teeth in and shook a bit. I stood on my head in the back garden and did a tai chi set as my maw sang some more. The guy's wife died when he she was 43. It turns out the guy was 51, four years younger than me. I engaged him in conversation, embarrassed that my first inclination was to ignore him. He asked me which team I supported. We all know what that means in the west. Bellshill often does my head in. It's not like here.
A joe I knew a long time ago turned up at my mother's house just before I left last week. This joe was called Joe. He told my maw after I left that a workmate during slack time one shift had given him a book to read with a strong recommendation that it was worth reading. It was Are You Boys Cyclists? Small world!
Since I don't get paid till tomorrow, I walked up to Haymarket Station thinking I'd put the ticket to Bellshill on the credit card. I'd forgotten the number and walked back home again. I got the train eventually from Waverley Station. Dearie me!
But it was a sunny day. My maw sat out on a bench against the wall in her back garden. I sat in a half lotus on the tarmacadam path. Quite relaxed, I didn't say anything for a moment or two. My maw started singing The Fields of Athenry. I closed my eyes and started immediately doing ra bliss. My mother even at 87 years old has a very nice singing voice. A tear came to my eye as I thought of how nice it was to sit out there with my auld maw, and how these days do not last forever.
She sang another song and the sounds of the singing attracted a guy from two gardens away who came and stood in the next door neighbour's garden. My auntie Kathy gave him a cup of coffee, as he stood looking through the slats of the big fence they have there now, and he told her that he was taking 30 pills a day for a considerable catalogue of diseases. He hadn't his teeth in and shook a bit. I stood on my head in the back garden and did a tai chi set as my maw sang some more. The guy's wife died when he she was 43. It turns out the guy was 51, four years younger than me. I engaged him in conversation, embarrassed that my first inclination was to ignore him. He asked me which team I supported. We all know what that means in the west. Bellshill often does my head in. It's not like here.
A joe I knew a long time ago turned up at my mother's house just before I left last week. This joe was called Joe. He told my maw after I left that a workmate during slack time one shift had given him a book to read with a strong recommendation that it was worth reading. It was Are You Boys Cyclists? Small world!
posted by Hotboy at 5:58 PM
3 Comments:
Was that Joe of Joe and John? The Bellshill garden scene is surely fiction? I see what you're trying to do - put my own weirdness post in the shade.
BTW my daughter's bigger than yours. But you're right, the mother was on the weed at the time. Said it was the best bonk she ever had. But then they all say that, don't they?
Adolf! That's not what they said to me. It was get off! Well done! Hotboy
Good on yer ma. If more people sang ...
Was it she who taught you "there is a coo on yonder hill" ?
As you know, my own mother has certain talents, though more in the oompah department.
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