My Shit Life So Far Read Free

your pockets are picked by vested interests that may or may not be lizards. You’regoing to end up with celebrity reality shows piped directly into your eyes the same way that classical music is played to fatten cattle. What kind of person buys the autobiography of a panelshow contestant? Wake up you CUNT.

ONE
    I grew up in a Glasgow. It’s a disturbing but strangely loveable place, lurching like any alcoholic from exuberance to unbelievable negativity. I always loved the hilariously downbeat motto, ‘Here’s the Bird that Never Flew. Here’s the Tree that Never Grew. Here’s the Bell that Never Rang. Here’s the Fish that Never Swam.’ It’s like the city slogan that got knocked back by Hiroshima. They might as well have a coat of arms where St Mungo hangs himself from a disused crane.
    We lived in a place called Pollokshaws. It was an aching cement void, a slap in the face to Childhood, and for the family it was a step up.
    Until I was about three we had lived in the Gorbals, a pretty run-down bit that got knocked down as soon as we left. I’ve still got a few memories of it. Standing out in the back, while a wee boy with a grubby face lit matches. He let them burn down to his fingertips while I stood there thinking, ‘This is one of those bad boys Mum keeps telling me about.’ I remember Mum giving me money in a sweetshop to pay the man behind the counter and just throwing the coins at his surprised face. And I have a vivid memory of being with my brother and finding an old tin sign that advertised ice-creams and lollies, the kind that creaks in the wind. We loved it so much that we kept it outside our front door. Whenwe got back from holiday with Mum that summer, my dad said it had been stolen and we were in tears. We’d been talking all the way home about how much we were looking forward to getting back and seeing our sign. In retrospect, Dad obviously fucked it onto a rubbish tip.
    My dad was a labourer. There had been a building strike starting the day I was born and he’d been planning on joining it. I imagine my mum probably had something to say about him walking out of his job as she gave birth. He did the honourable thing: feigning sciatica and getting a three-week sick line. After my sister came along he was able to put our name down for a new council house, move us to somewhere a bit more childfriendly. He went for a place a little further down the Gorbals because it was near his work. This is the last recorded instance of him using his own judgement. Mum went screaming across town like an artillery shell, landing in the housing department and refusing to leave until they gave us a flat in the Shaws.
    One of the first things I did after we moved in was, aged 3, to eat a whole bottle of painkillers that my mum had hidden in a cupboard. I had thought they were her secret supply of sweeties. I was rushed to hospital and had my stomach pumped. There they discovered that I had also scoffed a packet of rusks and these had prevented the painkillers from hitting my stomach and killing me. Saved by my own greed!
    I already showed a general talent for the offensive non sequitur at this age. My parents introduced me to a friend of theirs who was over from Ireland. I’d never met her before but listened to her pronouncements on what a big boy I was, before sailing in with,
    ‘I saw you washing your bum in the bath last night.’
    She was quite a shy, demure lady so there was a sort of choked silence and then we went our different ways.
    Our house was part of a tenement: six flats linked by a communal stairway (called a close) with four big back gardens divided by fences but linked by the traffic of stray cats and children. This is where adults dried their washing and dumped their rubbish in a concrete midden. Where we built dens and dug holes and captured wee beasties and killed them.
    One major feature of my childhood was how cold the house was. The only heating was a three-bar gas fire in the living room