18
It has been great fun recording the old stories for you, and I hope we do it again in another book soon. To finish off I want to share a few real-life stories from my past as a traveller. Remember at the beginning of the book I told you about my life on the road in a big blue bus? Well, come on back to those old days, take the journey with me.
This is what I did at the tender age of six...
It was a beautiful warm summer, and we had met up with some relatives in Crieff, Perthshire. Our campsite, on the low Comrie road, was at one time a Prisoner of War camp. During World War Two there were four very large POW camps in Scotland. When the war ended, some prisoners from Germany and Italy liked Scotland so much they stayed on and spent the rest of their lives there.
As the camp was built by the Army to accommodate hundreds of prisoners, it meant there were toilets already there, or lavvies as we called them (I shall bring these into the story soon), and a supply of fresh water. There were solid concrete bases to keep our bus home on, and this meant Mum didn’t have muddy welly boots dirtying her carpets, another bonus.
In the year I write about, several families joined ours, and for a long summer we played at ghosties and hide and seek in the thick yellow broom, which grew in abundance along the river Earn’s banks and up to the doors of our mobile homes. We enjoyed cutting branches of broom and making brushes. Our parents allowed us to sell our home-made brushes to neighbouring farmers. When we had sold enough to give our mums money to help pay for school uniforms, we spent the rest of our earnings on sweets and ice-cream when we went to the Saturday movie matinees.
So there we were queuing up along with lots of Crieff kids waiting for the Ritz picture house to open. Crushing through the doors and rushing inside to see our favourite weekly serial added to the excitement of the day.
This particular Saturday, the serial was just the most brilliant story of a flying gent called Batman. When I sat down on the big cloth seats in front of the massive screen, bag of sweeties firmly grasped in my tiny hand, I wanted time to stand still. No one could tell me that there weren’t a hundred musicians hidden behind that screen playing their very hearts out as Batman flew from the highest skyscrapers. I was transported.
Afterwards I couldn’t even remember walking home the two miles from the Ritz, down the High Street, along King Street and past the Gallows Hill, where only a hundred years ago, real life outlaws hung by the neck until dead. Nothing distracted me from my imaginary life in the clouds with the greatest hero of all time, Batman.
After the film I could hardly think of anything else. ‘Mum, Dad, guess what?’
‘What?’ they both said, looking up from their newspapers.
‘If I was dropped from a great height, would I fly to safety?’
‘Away, lassie and don’t be stupid. If I’m not mistaken, wings are needed to do that.’
‘Batman does it!’ I screeched in reply. ‘He flies all over Gotham City.’
Dad smiled, folded his newspaper and said, ‘There’s no such place, lass. Batman has kid-on wings made of Hollywood leather strapped to his back, the rest is done with camera tricks. Now be content with those legs of yours and be grateful they work. Wings are for birds. Off you go and play.’
As I kicked at stones and twigs in my angry and dejected state, all I could think of was my hero, saving maidens from burning buildings, or catching baddies and throwing them in jail for robbing banks. No, Batman had real wings, how else would he be able to save the world? I would prove to my parents that, just like bats and birds, us humans can fly; nae bother!
However, on terra firma I could only get to about three skips and two jumps – I had to get up on a high roof to start with, that would be the only way to use my wings. Oh, I couldn’t feel any sprouting under my shoulder-blades, but I was convinced that as my chin was launched into the wind they’d appear like magic and I’d soar upwards.
Cousin Anna and other traveller kids were playing over by the lavvy, and as I ran to join them, something monumental loomed on my horizon – the lavvy roof. What a brilliant take-off point, a perfect sloping roof from where with a few swoops I’d be airborne.
I called on cousin Anna and the others to starting building steps to the roof with a few boulders that were scattered around. In no time they had completed a fairly stable set of stone stairs.
‘Why do you need this?’ they asked. Promptly, and with much pride, I told them my plan. This started up a chorus of, ‘Silly fool, away and no be so daft. You’ll flatten the broom when you plummet to the ground – and wait till your mammy finds out!’
Well, I informed them that nothing ever happens if clever folk don’t take the lead, or something like that, and proceeded to climb the steps. I later found out that I was ten feet from the ground. It felt good surveying the caravans and our bus roof, and for the first time I realised that rivers from a height look like giant snakes. Truth be told, I began to feel slightly sick and decided maybe humans couldn’t fly after all. Batman might have been scared too, but with that mask on you didn’t notice his face.
I was about to abort the take-off, when suddenly, beneath me, a laddie who was doing his business on the toilet let out a loud resounding fart. It was the last thing I remember as off I flew from the roof.
From then on it was a hectic dash from examination by a doctor to the emergency department of the hospital. I lay in Dad’s van cursing every inch of Batman, the invincible. Little did I realise at that point that my right leg was broken in five places.
When I came to after the operation to reset my leg, I was tucked up in a white-sheeted hospital bed being waited on by pleasant ladies called nurses. There I stayed for six weeks. No more flying for me!