Dancing in the Darkness (2 page)

W
e used our dad’s name, Patterson, for quite a while, even after he deserted us, until our Mum, Catherine (pronounced ‘C-A-T-E-R-E-
E-N
’), opted for her own distinctive surname – ‘Poullain’
*
– to signal a single-handed devotion and sole authority over us. Being French, and the most hyper woman on the planet, she couldn’t help but stand out among the dowdy Scottish mothers who tended to shy away from denim hot-pants and a Kevin Keegan bubble perm. It wasn’t unusual for an 11-year-old budding Romeo in my primary school to rhapsodise about her charms – ‘Franny’s ma’s a pure “ride”, by the way!’ – while his pal
would nod along sagely, just to make sure I got the point: ‘Ah’d gie her one, right enough.’

I was touched by the sentiment, but wasn’t quite sure how to respond.

She brought me up to believe that ‘Humans are worse than pigs because at least pigs push their rubbish into a corner.’ Looking back she was right, but that’s probably what triggered off my misanthropy, and it also meant my mum was accidentally responsible for me becoming a vegetarian: after all, how could I be expected to breakfast on a superior life form?

Instead, she broke raw eggs into our porridge (oats, water and salt) on school days, insisting that the heat of the oats would ‘cook’ the eggs and that this slimy ritual was the most nutritious breakfast anyone could wish for. I could gag all I like – when it came to the benefits of a healthy morning meal, my mum’s mind was made up. And there was a wooden spoon at hand to make sure we got the message.

One day back in the mid-eighties, we were cruising along the Promenade des Anglais in Nice on the Côte D’Azur, on the way to see our French grandparents, when a couple of friendly hitching backpackers noticed the UK number plate on our Mini hatchback and shouted, ‘WE’RE BRITISH
TOO!’ just as we were approaching them. It was a lovely day, but overheated car journeys can get to anyone – even mothers. She shot her head out the window and howled like a banshee: ‘F-O-C-K
O-F-F
!’The Promenade des Anglais froze in shocked silence. I looked back and saw these bewildered hippies with their mouths hanging open, wondering exactly what it was they’d done to provoke such fury.

With her French accent, and the sheer randomness of said outburst, the incident was doubly entertaining for my brothers and me. After that, whenever we saw hippies thumbing a lift we’d shout, ‘FUCK OFF!’ at them – in a French accent, of course – just to see their reaction. If there’s one thing worse than a hippy, it’s a hitchhiking one who’s British and proud of it.

Recently, she got back from a Kenyan safari holiday and made a point of telling me a story about the male bull elephant reaching adolescence. Apparently, with the first sexual stirrings he tries instinctively to ‘mount’ the mother, who then pushes him away, banishing him into adulthood and the outside world. Then, if she sees him again, she’ll raise her trunk in a greeting of recognition and he’ll silently march past in a kind of stoic shame.

It seems that even baby elephants are embarrassed about maternal relations. But you don’t learn anything if you only stay in one place, so you could say that being embarrassed is a blessing in disguise – sometimes it takes travelling the world to realise that
your
mum is the most entertaining one.

I
was the middle child. On the surface, to be in the middle is bad – a balance, a compromise, a nothing. That’s the way of life. But eager people travel from the middle to extreme directions. This can end up well or badly. They say some of them don’t even go to confession.

The three of us were born in successive years; in fact, my older brother Tim and I are ‘Irish twins’. That means there’s less than a year between us. Eight days less, to be precise – Mum and Dad were fast movers, pioneering the ‘Coitus “Non”- Interruptus’ approach years before it became fashionable among the Vikki Pollards of today. In many ways my brother’s a classic ‘Timothy’. He has what I would call ‘Posh Tourette’s’, a politer version of the usual affliction: at least half of his vocabulary consists of the words ‘thank you’, ‘please’ and ‘sorry’, spat out like friendly fire from his ‘Timmy’ gun. Sometimes you’ll walk past him and he’ll mutter, ‘Sorry’, for merely encroaching into your vicinity. And when you ask him to ‘Please stop saying sorry’ (I can be quite polite sometimes too), he’ll reply (you guessed it): ‘Sorry!’ An apology fetishist.

Tim loves to show people a good time. Apparently, cheering people up is now recognised as a form of intelligence, because, in his own words, ‘If you’re surrounded by happy people it’s bound to rub off eventually, and surely the whole point of being intelligent is to be happy?’At least, that’s how he tried to explain it to me – and he’s always had straight ‘A’s, so he should know. Like all brothers, we’re different and we’re the same. When I’m in the company of happy people, I can’t help monitoring them – just to check if they’re doing it properly.

My younger brother, Chris, is 14 months younger than me. On a good day, I’d describe him as a world-class party animal and all-round ‘dog with two dicks’, but on a bad one I’d probably plump for Peter Stringfellow – as in, all the qualities of Peter Stringfellow except for the ability to operate a lap-dancing franchise – with a sprinkling of Crocodile Dundee thrown in for
good measure: all the qualities of Crocodile Dundee except for the ability to handle aquatic reptiles. He negotiates visitors and students around Venezuelan beauty spots and organises parties for stinkingly rich types who’ve lost their imagination (there’s always a price to pay).

At school he was popular with the ladies, possessing golden curls, a cherubic countenance and the kind of mischievous streak that weak-willed females are fond of labelling ‘irresistible’. Girls in my class would spell out his name on the back of their hands and along the length of their chubby arms, often dispensing with the love heart and arrow. Just the name was enough: Chris Patterson. The Scots like things simple (porridge is oats, water and salt remember?). Then they’d ask me, ‘How come yir brar’s such a ride and yir so minging?’
*

As usual, there was no hole in the ground to swallow me up – even a pothole or drain would have done just fine. Ponytailed schoolgirls are the CIA overlords of playground terrorism, and they’d sent me to Guantanamo Bay. Hopefully, that meant things couldn’t get any worse. And on the plus
side, when I received my first compliment from a member of the opposite sex, 24 years later, I felt just like Hitler must have felt when
Mein Kampf
was published.

C
hanging nappies was a pain. My mum had been wined and dined by a tweed-jacketed trailer salesman throughout my early teens. Then they decided to get a place together and she became pregnant. My mum loved kids. She had two sons by him, Sam and Jools (now two wise giants, mellow as yoga masters), making five lanky sons in total but sadly no daughters. I found being around babies a surprisingly effective way to soothe the angst of adolescence. Unfortunately, being around their father was only a surprisingly effective way to annoy the shit out of me.

For the purposes of this book, I’ll call this new man ‘Sir’, because he had a thing about formality: knocking on doors (‘You have to ask permission before you enter
my
lounge-room’), sitting at tables (‘All
joints
[elbows] on the table shall be carved’)
and leaving tables (‘You
can
leave the table, but I don’t know if you
may
’).

He was also very tight, even by Scottish standards, though he had a fair bit of money coming in. I could almost empathise when he’d peel an orange in his pocket – so he wouldn’t have to share it with anyone else, of course – but I’ll admit even I was shocked when one day I discovered him peeling a potato in his pocket. Then he’d think he was being nice on a Saturday morning by letting Mum have a lie-in, but as far as we were concerned being asked, ‘Would you like an egg or a tomato on your toast?’ wasn’t the greatest way to kick-start a weekend.

Mr Miserly wasn’t aware that most children would rather visit the dentist than the opera, and so, in the early part of the courtship, we’d be forced to endure three hours of
Don Giovanni
for an interval choc-ice – ironically, hastening our next visit to the dentist. Years later, when Brian May asked my band to come and see his musical
We Will Rock You
, I remembered the
paint-stripping
boredom of bourgeois theatreland and made my excuses.

His son from a previous marriage was Phil Kay, the wild, free-spirited Scottish comedian who
bounced through TV screens bollock-naked on his short-lived
Phil Kay Feels
Channel 4 TV show back in the late nineties. Both of us happen to have protruding jug ears. We’d spend the weekends together playing football, our nicknames being ‘Scottish Cup’ and ‘European Cup’, in reference to the respective trophy’s generous handles – better than being called ‘World Cup’ for having no ears, I suppose. Phil’s trademark has always been maintaining a positive mindset at whatever the cost – he’ll tread barefoot in fresh cow shit before breezily declaring, ‘That’s a nice warm feeling.’

Phil’s father lost the plot with a spectacular nervous breakdown, all those deceptions came crashing down around him, and my endlessly resourceful and unlucky mother had to bring up sons (a total of five now) on her own again, teaching Italian evening classes and tour-guiding in the holidays. His dad may have been the tightest man in all of Scotland, but now Phil is the funniest man in Scotland. The connection is obvious. Don’t worry if you come across a stingy person in your environment. It’s just God’s way of developing your sense of humour.

I
started secondary school in Edinburgh as a fairly timid pupil. Having only recently arrived in the capital from the backwaters of Tayside, I was the archetypal big-eared boy from down the farm, and to make matters worse I had a chronic stammer. On my first day at the Royal High, I didn’t know anyone. Picking up on my obvious discomfort, three juvenile delinquents from the depressed housing schemes of Clermiston took it upon themselves to look out for me – BJ, Bampot and Numpty are the names I’ll give them for the purpose of this book.

Appropriately enough for the founding members of the Bog Squad, it didn’t take long for them to flush me out. Three days in, BJ pissed all over me ‘for a laugh’ and I took it as a sign (wasn’t there something about that in the Bible?). My life might have turned out differently if I hadn’t, so I
really should be grateful for those golden showers in retrospect.

Numpty was subsequently expelled at 15 for punching the PE teacher in the face. Then a pensioner suffered a cardiac arrest and died after chasing Bampot down the street for putting a lit firework through his letterbox. Some heartless pupils compounded the tragedy, plastering ‘BAMPOT MUST DIE!’ all over the corridor walls. As for BJ, with a nickname like that I was just relieved the companionship hadn’t gone any further.

Gordon Wright had the right idea. He just mumbled. My mum used to go mad when he called: ‘I can’t understand anything he’s saying! Is it cool to do that, Franny? Is that why you’ve started mumbling too?’ After Numpty, Bampot and BJ, it made perfect sense to seek companionship with a more withdrawn type. There was less chance of them soaking you in wee, for a start.

We bonded over listening to music, playing darts, watching football and communicating with speech disorders. I’m sure Gordon had confidence in me because of my stutter – sometimes, if you feel insecure, when you find someone who’s more insecure then somehow it makes you feel better. It soothes your soul.

Since then, I have found myself subconsciously gravitating towards what you might call ‘loners’. And I’m glad that I developed this habit, because years later I befriended my umpteenth shy misfit and he ended up being the front man in our band. His name was Justin Hawkins.