Running Away
by Alasdair McPherson
Genre: Memoir
Swearwords: None.
Description: Sometimes when I stroll down memory lane I don't notice the fast food outlets that line the primrose path.
_____________________________________________________________________
I was eight when I ran away for the first time. I was totally justified in my decision to go because my sister was revelling in the Terrible Twos and no one gave a toss what was happening to me. I packed my suitcase in the living room – I don’t remember all I packed but my football boots were first in and I probably included my favourite teddy.
My Dad and Mum did nothing to dissuade me, in fact Dad considerately held the scullery door open for me, quietly closing it at my back. At that point my confidence drained into my boots and I crossed to the back door leaving little puddles of courage at every step.
There was nothing wrong with my reasoning powers! The object of my departure was to force my parents to acknowledge that they had lost the prize member of their family. Elspeth, my sister, would be sure to make a scene to divert their attention from my departure so it might take some time for anyone to become concerned. I could be away for half an hour before Mum turned and asked Dad if he had seen Alasdair recently.
“He’ll be ben the hoose readin’ one of his books. He’ll come in here soon enough when he gets cold.”
That was the other problem: it was October and there was an icy wind blowing down Loch Long straight from Iceland. I used to sit behind the easy chair in the Good Room; the light from the standard lamp was good and I was out of the draft from the empty fireplace. We only had a fire in the grate on a Sunday when my Grandpa came over from Greenock with his pal to play ha’penny nap. He was in digs there but his landlady wouldn’t have them playing cards on the Sabbath.
I had to join them round the square baize top of the rickety folding table because they couldn’t play without a third. My Mum was excused to get on with making the dinner and my Dad would spend the day filing the Police Gazette. All Scotland’s criminals were listed and you had to go through the back issues marking off the ones that had been caught. I heard him explain to my Mum, one time:
“If it was a choice between the Gazettes and a shark attack, I would take my chances with the fish, but I’m not playin’ cards with your father!”
We played one of two games depending on Grandpa’s mood. Newmarket was for light relief and usually played in summer when there were no Old Folks Whist Drives. In the winter we generally played Ha’penny Nap. The ‘Nap’ was for Napoleon, although nobody could explain what the game had to do with the French Emperor.
It is a draw and discard game where you try to build sequences of cards of the same suit or face value. How it differs from Rummy I cannot now recall. Our game was fixed by Grandpa when he arranged the seating. He discarded just before me and I discarded before his pal played. This meant that Grandpa, who knew what everyone was holding, got first chance at the cards his pal threw away. The poor old soul didn’t have a clue what anyone had in their hand so he would chuck onto the table a card that would cause my Grandpa’s rheumy old eyes to sparkle.
By the time we were called to the dinner table I would have lost about a shilling, and Grandpa would be three bob ahead mostly filched from the pocket of his best friend. It wasn’t for the money but simply from a lust for victory. Grandpa would give me half-a-crown before he left and he would treat his pal to a cup of tea and a cream bun on the boat going home.
Grandpa loved cards and he remembered every one that was played. He was the scourge of Whist Drives all round Greenock. His memory for cards gave him enough edge to tilt the odds of winning heavily in his favour. He made enough out of these social games to buy himself a new winter coat every year.
Now you will have realised that it took me longer to remember all this than it did to cross the scullery floor even if I was going slow. That is an example of artistic licence and it is supposed to keep you interested. I think it probably annoys the reader who just wants me to get on with the story, but what do I know?
By the time I had my hand on the knob of the back door I had decided that it was not absolutely necessary to go out into the cold, so I opened the door, closed it with a satisfactory bang with me still inside the scullery and then I hid behind a sack of Golden Wonders.
The scullery is a single storey extension with a roof of corrugated iron resting directly on the rafters. It is comfortably warm when my Mum is cooking but it cools very rapidly afterwards: I had no problem understanding the hardship of some literary hero spending the night in a desert. When she finished the dishes Mum filled the kettle and took it into the living room where she put it on the fire-iron to boil for tea at suppertime. Only an intrepid runaway would think of spending time in the scullery.
I was like Tam O’Shanter’s wife for the first few minutes, nursing my wrath to keep it warm. I was imagining the agony my parents would go through when my almost lifeless body was recovered in the morning from a snowdrift. I forgot for the moment that it was only October and I was still inside the house. I suppose you could say that I was having an early attack of artistic licence.
It didn’t take very long before I moved from feeling sorry for my parents to feeling sorry for myself. I lay there listening to the baritone rumbles of my Dad’s voice and the happy squeals of my baby sister. Trust her to cheer up as soon as she got rid of me! I could just picture her all smiles and charm, the cynosure of neighbouring eyes – the wee pest.
The merriment went on for some time and then it all went very quiet. They had probably gone to bed and they hadn’t even looked for me – they hadn’t even called my name. I was dead to them and they didn’t care just so long as they had their precious daughter. I was thinking of crawling out my hiding place and going to the living room door to check that they really had abandoned me when the door opened and I was blinking at my Dad’s silhouette framed in the doorway.
“You can come out now. Your Mum’s just putting Elspeth to bed. The wee lamb’s worn out with all the fun we’ve been having.”
Then he turned and went back to the fire – but at least he left the door open! How did he know that I hadn’t actually gone out? I crept back into the warmth dragging my pathetic wee suitcase behind me.
I made one or two other escape attempts in the succeeding years, but I think that first experience broke my spirit. It established a pattern of behaviour that is with me to this day. It’s cold in the scullery of life and you can have almost as much fun sitting in front of a warm fire with a book in your hand letting your imagination ride with Custer without the inconvenience of being shot at by redskins.
Of course, they’re Native Americans now and it seems it was the cowboys that were the murdering savages. They should really remake all these old westerns, especially the ones where the heroine in the chief’s tepee is called ‘The-first-flush-of-awakening-dawn’ (Omaha to her friends) and is a blue-eyed blonde with a dodgy wig, wearing make-up in a fetching shade of burnt umber. The worst that was likely to happen to me was that my sister would take the book and pinch the seat when I got up to fetch it back.
So I never did manage to escape from home. It was a pretty good place to be for the vast majority of the time and I usually managed to lose myself with Rassendale or Quatermain when I was too badly misunderstood. At any rate, I stayed where I was, easing myself out by spending four years in a University Hall of Residence.
That was my moment! Graduated and with the world before me. Well, not exactly. I was in love and engaged so I turned my back on freedom and adventure in favour of a warm fire and a raft of responsibilities. The yearning didn’t disappear, but it was sublimated to the realities of life. I think I would have been all right if it hadn’t been for Laurie Lee.
Cider With Rosie was reprinted by a book club that we subscribed to and it described a childhood similar to my own. All would have been well if I hadn’t bought the next part of Lee’s biography. He set off for Spain with a violin and absolutely no knowledge of the Spanish language. I was ashamed of myself for remaining warm and well fed. He learned to play the tunes that would win him a meal and shelter for the night. When the people of a village had no ear for music – or too good an ear – he went hungry to bed under a hedge.
Lee wasn’t wandering the Spain of today, where a gap year Brit can earn a crust tending bar in a resort favoured by his fellow countrymen. He was in Malaga when the Nationalists landed and shot up the town before going on to ravage the country.
What I did was to settle for domesticity and an interesting job that offered an excellent pension. I went back to reading the real and fictional accounts of the lives of other men, happy in my marriage and smugly pleased with myself. Our boys were growing up and Sally and I were planning what we would do together when they left home in a few short years.
Then the careless coulter ripped through our warm nest to foil our best laid plans. One son was launched and the other was at university when their Mum and my adored wife, succumbed to cancer. You have to turn your face from the world, of course, while you build an acceptable mask. Once I could manage a convincing smile I had a choice when I re-entered the world.
While I was considering my options, I went on holiday to Egypt. A friend was a bit nervous about visiting a clairvoyant, so I went along and was roped in for a palm reading.
“Have you ever been interested in Egypt?” the lady asked. She had no airs and graces and there was no mystical aura, but she was hitting my buttons! So far as I recall she was wearing a twinset in heather mixture. I could hardly hide my astonishment when I replied that I remembered reading about the pyramids at school. How could she have guessed that?
When I went home I looked up teletext and, after a bit of searching, the first thing I found was a holiday in Luxor with no single supplement. Talk about spooky! I booked there and then. The seer also asked me if I was interested in horse racing and my ears pricked up; anyone with her insights into the future must be good for a few reliable tips.
In Luxor I got talking to other guests tempted by the lack of single supplement, including a young lady. It turned out that her biological timer was buzzing loudly and I offered to help her with the ‘off’ button. She lived in Warwick (with a view over the racecourse, believe it or not) and I lived in Glasgow, but we entered into negotiations.
George Borrow left a lucrative but boring job to wander the by-ways of middle England. In Lavengro he tells of his adventures travelling the country with a handcart loaded with tools that he bought from a tinker. He consorted with gypsies and other undesirables living from hand to mouth and sleeping, as often as not, under a hedge.
I could have taken to the roads but, true to type, I took on fresh responsibilities instead. How could I resist the appeal of a pretty young woman in need of a reliable partner? This time I wasn’t even ashamed that I had chosen comfort and the joy of raising a beautiful daughter when I could have frozen to death starved in a ditch somewhere along the Great Glen.
Now my wife has divorced me and my daughter has moved her throne to live with her fiancé. I could have taken myself to a peak in Darien to stand silent with stout Cortez, but I don’t suppose you will be astonished to hear that I am living in comfort, still reading about adventurers real and imagined. In fact, the only thing that has changed is that I have added a few adventurers of my own to the list of fictional characters.
Swearwords: None.
Description: Sometimes when I stroll down memory lane I don't notice the fast food outlets that line the primrose path.
_____________________________________________________________________
I was eight when I ran away for the first time. I was totally justified in my decision to go because my sister was revelling in the Terrible Twos and no one gave a toss what was happening to me. I packed my suitcase in the living room – I don’t remember all I packed but my football boots were first in and I probably included my favourite teddy.
My Dad and Mum did nothing to dissuade me, in fact Dad considerately held the scullery door open for me, quietly closing it at my back. At that point my confidence drained into my boots and I crossed to the back door leaving little puddles of courage at every step.
There was nothing wrong with my reasoning powers! The object of my departure was to force my parents to acknowledge that they had lost the prize member of their family. Elspeth, my sister, would be sure to make a scene to divert their attention from my departure so it might take some time for anyone to become concerned. I could be away for half an hour before Mum turned and asked Dad if he had seen Alasdair recently.
“He’ll be ben the hoose readin’ one of his books. He’ll come in here soon enough when he gets cold.”
That was the other problem: it was October and there was an icy wind blowing down Loch Long straight from Iceland. I used to sit behind the easy chair in the Good Room; the light from the standard lamp was good and I was out of the draft from the empty fireplace. We only had a fire in the grate on a Sunday when my Grandpa came over from Greenock with his pal to play ha’penny nap. He was in digs there but his landlady wouldn’t have them playing cards on the Sabbath.
I had to join them round the square baize top of the rickety folding table because they couldn’t play without a third. My Mum was excused to get on with making the dinner and my Dad would spend the day filing the Police Gazette. All Scotland’s criminals were listed and you had to go through the back issues marking off the ones that had been caught. I heard him explain to my Mum, one time:
“If it was a choice between the Gazettes and a shark attack, I would take my chances with the fish, but I’m not playin’ cards with your father!”
We played one of two games depending on Grandpa’s mood. Newmarket was for light relief and usually played in summer when there were no Old Folks Whist Drives. In the winter we generally played Ha’penny Nap. The ‘Nap’ was for Napoleon, although nobody could explain what the game had to do with the French Emperor.
It is a draw and discard game where you try to build sequences of cards of the same suit or face value. How it differs from Rummy I cannot now recall. Our game was fixed by Grandpa when he arranged the seating. He discarded just before me and I discarded before his pal played. This meant that Grandpa, who knew what everyone was holding, got first chance at the cards his pal threw away. The poor old soul didn’t have a clue what anyone had in their hand so he would chuck onto the table a card that would cause my Grandpa’s rheumy old eyes to sparkle.
By the time we were called to the dinner table I would have lost about a shilling, and Grandpa would be three bob ahead mostly filched from the pocket of his best friend. It wasn’t for the money but simply from a lust for victory. Grandpa would give me half-a-crown before he left and he would treat his pal to a cup of tea and a cream bun on the boat going home.
Grandpa loved cards and he remembered every one that was played. He was the scourge of Whist Drives all round Greenock. His memory for cards gave him enough edge to tilt the odds of winning heavily in his favour. He made enough out of these social games to buy himself a new winter coat every year.
Now you will have realised that it took me longer to remember all this than it did to cross the scullery floor even if I was going slow. That is an example of artistic licence and it is supposed to keep you interested. I think it probably annoys the reader who just wants me to get on with the story, but what do I know?
By the time I had my hand on the knob of the back door I had decided that it was not absolutely necessary to go out into the cold, so I opened the door, closed it with a satisfactory bang with me still inside the scullery and then I hid behind a sack of Golden Wonders.
The scullery is a single storey extension with a roof of corrugated iron resting directly on the rafters. It is comfortably warm when my Mum is cooking but it cools very rapidly afterwards: I had no problem understanding the hardship of some literary hero spending the night in a desert. When she finished the dishes Mum filled the kettle and took it into the living room where she put it on the fire-iron to boil for tea at suppertime. Only an intrepid runaway would think of spending time in the scullery.
I was like Tam O’Shanter’s wife for the first few minutes, nursing my wrath to keep it warm. I was imagining the agony my parents would go through when my almost lifeless body was recovered in the morning from a snowdrift. I forgot for the moment that it was only October and I was still inside the house. I suppose you could say that I was having an early attack of artistic licence.
It didn’t take very long before I moved from feeling sorry for my parents to feeling sorry for myself. I lay there listening to the baritone rumbles of my Dad’s voice and the happy squeals of my baby sister. Trust her to cheer up as soon as she got rid of me! I could just picture her all smiles and charm, the cynosure of neighbouring eyes – the wee pest.
The merriment went on for some time and then it all went very quiet. They had probably gone to bed and they hadn’t even looked for me – they hadn’t even called my name. I was dead to them and they didn’t care just so long as they had their precious daughter. I was thinking of crawling out my hiding place and going to the living room door to check that they really had abandoned me when the door opened and I was blinking at my Dad’s silhouette framed in the doorway.
“You can come out now. Your Mum’s just putting Elspeth to bed. The wee lamb’s worn out with all the fun we’ve been having.”
Then he turned and went back to the fire – but at least he left the door open! How did he know that I hadn’t actually gone out? I crept back into the warmth dragging my pathetic wee suitcase behind me.
I made one or two other escape attempts in the succeeding years, but I think that first experience broke my spirit. It established a pattern of behaviour that is with me to this day. It’s cold in the scullery of life and you can have almost as much fun sitting in front of a warm fire with a book in your hand letting your imagination ride with Custer without the inconvenience of being shot at by redskins.
Of course, they’re Native Americans now and it seems it was the cowboys that were the murdering savages. They should really remake all these old westerns, especially the ones where the heroine in the chief’s tepee is called ‘The-first-flush-of-awakening-dawn’ (Omaha to her friends) and is a blue-eyed blonde with a dodgy wig, wearing make-up in a fetching shade of burnt umber. The worst that was likely to happen to me was that my sister would take the book and pinch the seat when I got up to fetch it back.
So I never did manage to escape from home. It was a pretty good place to be for the vast majority of the time and I usually managed to lose myself with Rassendale or Quatermain when I was too badly misunderstood. At any rate, I stayed where I was, easing myself out by spending four years in a University Hall of Residence.
That was my moment! Graduated and with the world before me. Well, not exactly. I was in love and engaged so I turned my back on freedom and adventure in favour of a warm fire and a raft of responsibilities. The yearning didn’t disappear, but it was sublimated to the realities of life. I think I would have been all right if it hadn’t been for Laurie Lee.
Cider With Rosie was reprinted by a book club that we subscribed to and it described a childhood similar to my own. All would have been well if I hadn’t bought the next part of Lee’s biography. He set off for Spain with a violin and absolutely no knowledge of the Spanish language. I was ashamed of myself for remaining warm and well fed. He learned to play the tunes that would win him a meal and shelter for the night. When the people of a village had no ear for music – or too good an ear – he went hungry to bed under a hedge.
Lee wasn’t wandering the Spain of today, where a gap year Brit can earn a crust tending bar in a resort favoured by his fellow countrymen. He was in Malaga when the Nationalists landed and shot up the town before going on to ravage the country.
What I did was to settle for domesticity and an interesting job that offered an excellent pension. I went back to reading the real and fictional accounts of the lives of other men, happy in my marriage and smugly pleased with myself. Our boys were growing up and Sally and I were planning what we would do together when they left home in a few short years.
Then the careless coulter ripped through our warm nest to foil our best laid plans. One son was launched and the other was at university when their Mum and my adored wife, succumbed to cancer. You have to turn your face from the world, of course, while you build an acceptable mask. Once I could manage a convincing smile I had a choice when I re-entered the world.
While I was considering my options, I went on holiday to Egypt. A friend was a bit nervous about visiting a clairvoyant, so I went along and was roped in for a palm reading.
“Have you ever been interested in Egypt?” the lady asked. She had no airs and graces and there was no mystical aura, but she was hitting my buttons! So far as I recall she was wearing a twinset in heather mixture. I could hardly hide my astonishment when I replied that I remembered reading about the pyramids at school. How could she have guessed that?
When I went home I looked up teletext and, after a bit of searching, the first thing I found was a holiday in Luxor with no single supplement. Talk about spooky! I booked there and then. The seer also asked me if I was interested in horse racing and my ears pricked up; anyone with her insights into the future must be good for a few reliable tips.
In Luxor I got talking to other guests tempted by the lack of single supplement, including a young lady. It turned out that her biological timer was buzzing loudly and I offered to help her with the ‘off’ button. She lived in Warwick (with a view over the racecourse, believe it or not) and I lived in Glasgow, but we entered into negotiations.
George Borrow left a lucrative but boring job to wander the by-ways of middle England. In Lavengro he tells of his adventures travelling the country with a handcart loaded with tools that he bought from a tinker. He consorted with gypsies and other undesirables living from hand to mouth and sleeping, as often as not, under a hedge.
I could have taken to the roads but, true to type, I took on fresh responsibilities instead. How could I resist the appeal of a pretty young woman in need of a reliable partner? This time I wasn’t even ashamed that I had chosen comfort and the joy of raising a beautiful daughter when I could have frozen to death starved in a ditch somewhere along the Great Glen.
Now my wife has divorced me and my daughter has moved her throne to live with her fiancé. I could have taken myself to a peak in Darien to stand silent with stout Cortez, but I don’t suppose you will be astonished to hear that I am living in comfort, still reading about adventurers real and imagined. In fact, the only thing that has changed is that I have added a few adventurers of my own to the list of fictional characters.
About the Author
Originally from Dalmuir, Alasdair McPherson is now retired and living in exile in Lincolnshire.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned nine novels and many short stories. His six latest novels – The Island, Pilgrimage of Grace, Desert Ark, Swordsmiths, Loyalty and Killing Cousins – are all McStorytellers publications.
You can read Alasdair's full profile on McVoices.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned nine novels and many short stories. His six latest novels – The Island, Pilgrimage of Grace, Desert Ark, Swordsmiths, Loyalty and Killing Cousins – are all McStorytellers publications.
You can read Alasdair's full profile on McVoices.