It's Been A Funny Old Weeek....

….and a very sociable one I’m afraid. Too many glasses of wine and too many cigarettes but I can see the end, to the great relief of my liver……and my throat! We’ve got Alison, a friend of Julie and mine staying with us at the moment and although she was supposed to be returning to Gatwick last Friday, Julie persuaded her to stay until next Tuesday which means that her and I will again be out on the terrace at 1am drinking, smoking and talking about old times. Her husband and my great mate, Alan would have been here as well and we’d have had a ball but he went into hospital a couple of years ago for a simple operation and never came out again. There were great suspicions that the surgeon had been negligent but the hospital closed ranks and that was that. A partner, a father and a mate just disappeared overnight. So, some of our late night chats have been quite nostalgic and sad although it’s hard not to laugh when we talk about Alan cause he was one of life’s comics, a real good guy.  

We’ve had a 40^th birthday party, a ladies lunch where I was the token male, a lunch in the village and we went to Italy to stock up on the old vino so it’s been a busy week. Then Harry McIntosh, whom I last saw about 18 years ago sent me a comment on my blog. We e-mailed each other and then Harry called. We had a great chat but I had some friends round so we had to cut it short but I will return his call later in the week and we’ll catch up on old times. 

However, there was one episode which caused me a real problem. It shouldn’t have really but it was uncanny and took me aback. You see I started writing a book of my life a few months ago, mainly for family and friends to see what life was like from my perspective. It’s not being written for publication, although I will actually publish it myself, but there was always the thought that maybe, just maybe, somebody somewhere might quite like it and do something with it. Anyway, I was telling my brother Robert about this piece of literary genius when he completely took the wind out of my sails. He said, ‘Ach – I’ve just read a book like that. It’s identical so there’s nae point in dayin it’. Within minutes I was on Amazon and ordered the book which is called, Night Song of the Last Tram, which I thought was a crap title but then remembered that trams were a key part of Glasgow life so reserved judgement until I’d read it. 

Well I read the book in less than two days and the storyline is virtually identical to mine – an autobiography of a young boy being brought up in a poor bit of Glasgow, an abusive, uncaring father and a mother dying when her son was only 14 years old. I feel like my brain and my thoughts have been totally plagerised but of course anyone writing about Glasgow in the 50’s would describe the same things in much the same way and crack many of the same gags…… so I forgive him. So just in case you come across this blog posting Mr Robert Douglas I thought your book was ok but mine will be better.