The journey back to Scotland and Burntisland was longer than the journey down; the train seemed to stop everywhere! I was returning to what I was expecting to be a great welcome home, after all I had been away for months.
I was full of banter with the people I was meeting on the journey, I wanted everyone to know what I was, what I had experienced, what I was going to do.
The journey passed quite quickly, I suppose, helped along by a few tins of beer, well maybe more than a few.
On arriving home the smell in the air seemed different, and the wind was blowing, there was no one to meet me but I didn’t expect there to be really, it would have been nice all the same.
The time taken from the station to the house would have been covered in record time, but I was hindered by my Pussers green suitcase and eight stone of kitbag, to anyone watching it must have looked amusing.
I arrived to an empty house and an empty high street, my parents were both working, it was now early evening and I knew that the local “Palace de dance” would open around eight o’ Clock, I was desperate to meet up with my old school friends.
I was full of banter with the people I was meeting on the journey, I wanted everyone to know what I was, what I had experienced, what I was going to do.
The journey passed quite quickly, I suppose, helped along by a few tins of beer, well maybe more than a few.
On arriving home the smell in the air seemed different, and the wind was blowing, there was no one to meet me but I didn’t expect there to be really, it would have been nice all the same.
The time taken from the station to the house would have been covered in record time, but I was hindered by my Pussers green suitcase and eight stone of kitbag, to anyone watching it must have looked amusing.
I arrived to an empty house and an empty high street, my parents were both working, it was now early evening and I knew that the local “Palace de dance” would open around eight o’ Clock, I was desperate to meet up with my old school friends.
I dressed appropriately for a Saturday evening on the town.
The night club hadn’t changed in forty years and the original bouncers were still at the door, I was well known in the town and having a mother as a bar maid in a local pub was as good as a golden handshake to get in.
On this occasion, however, sods law, I was stopped, the bouncer, who I knew well, didn’t recognise me, the naval skinhead haircut didn’t help, it was near the point of no admission when I reminded him who my mother was and he remembered me and with a cuff round the back of the head I was in.
I set about looking for my friends, most of whom had left school at sixteen just like me.
They were all there in the various groups some were glad to see me, I got the usual comments, in what was lovely to hear, spoken in a fife slang, “your talking Weegie, have you been away then, how much do you get paid”.
It was nice to be home, I never stopped blethering, and by the end of the evening I felt that I had dusted out the foreign language and had reverted to being a Fifer.
The night club hadn’t changed in forty years and the original bouncers were still at the door, I was well known in the town and having a mother as a bar maid in a local pub was as good as a golden handshake to get in.
On this occasion, however, sods law, I was stopped, the bouncer, who I knew well, didn’t recognise me, the naval skinhead haircut didn’t help, it was near the point of no admission when I reminded him who my mother was and he remembered me and with a cuff round the back of the head I was in.
I set about looking for my friends, most of whom had left school at sixteen just like me.
They were all there in the various groups some were glad to see me, I got the usual comments, in what was lovely to hear, spoken in a fife slang, “your talking Weegie, have you been away then, how much do you get paid”.
It was nice to be home, I never stopped blethering, and by the end of the evening I felt that I had dusted out the foreign language and had reverted to being a Fifer.
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