A run-down of the highlights of the personal history of me.
For the last 33 years I have had the privilege of being a part of some wonderful experiences. Some of them I was the focus of and for others I was just a very happy participant.
Compiling a list of the "top ten" days/events from my life was an awful lot harder than I ever could have imagined. I challenge you to sit down and do this for yourself. You'll see what I mean.
I'm fairly sure that the natural deterioration of my memory due to age has had a lot to do with the omission of certain episodes in my life, which is a real shame, because, even though I can't recall them at a moment's notice, I know that they are in the darkest recesses of my mind. I know that my late teens and early twenties were littered with good times (and not just through the proverbial "rose-tinted glasses" either - I know I eked out the maximum amount of fun that I could from those years).
Anyway... down to business. These are my Top Ten Moments In The Life Of...
#10. Hitch-hiking from Edinburgh to Wick and back. June 1994.
I had just turned 18 and was doing what most Scottish 18-year-old "men" do... I was exercising my right to be drunk whenever I wanted, without the risk of getting arrested for it.
Most of my friends were students at Edinburgh University and we spent most of out time in or around the student's union bars. We would divide our time between Chambers Street Union (mine and most of my friend's personal favourite - unfortunately only open thursday, friday and saturday nights) and Potterrow (which was, at least, open during the day).
One particular evening, I was at Potterrow union with my friend Ben and a few other people, including some girls Ben had befriended one day whilst out driving in the ESCA (student charities organisation) minibus. Leanne and Alison were about a year younger than me and were still in the 6th form at a very posh Edinburgh all-girls boarding school.
Ben had already become the focus of Leanne's attention some weeks prior to this and they seemed to be getting along famously. I, on the other hand, was simply contented within myself to be out having fun, getting drunk and being very silly indeed with my friends.
That night, Leanne came outside to talk to me while I was having a cigarette under the vast perspex dome that covered the university buildings attached to the front o
f the student union bar. People kept drifting in and out of the bar and as soon as we had a moment alone, she blurted out a question: "What are you going to do about Alison?" I had no idea what she meant. "What do you mean: 'What am I going to do about her'? I said.
"She's crazy about you." Leanne said.
I was blown away. I hadn't even begun to suspect that a girl this good-looking would be interested, so my mind had just filed her under 'friend' and left it at that. I wasn't the most perceptive when it came to women and their subtle signals at that age.
Of course, I was interested. She was stunningly gorgeous and a great deal of fun to be around. Our relationship started that night and over the following weeks, Alison and I - along with Ben and Leanne - spent most of our spare time together having a blast. Ben and I even managed to get ourselves invited to the boarding house for lunch, which, rather predictably, turned into very funny and very childish behaviour. On the suggestion of Leanne and Alison, the four of us played a game of Bollocks in the dining room. For the uneducated among you, Bollocks works like this: one person whispers the word bollocks and then the players each take their turn saying the word. The only rule is that your utterance must be louder than the last; a kind of verbal game of Chicken for situations where it is as inappropriate as possible.
The end of the school term was approaching and Alison had told me that she would have to spend the summer back home with her parents in Wick - around 250 miles away. I was dreading the day when she had to go; especially since we had only very recently found each other.
The day she left for home, we had a bit of a get-together at one of the student union bars and we said our goodbyes there; me promising to come up and see her as soon as I could. She laughed this off, saying that there was no way I had enough money, but that it would be great if I could.
I decided there and then that I was going to hitch-hike from Edinburgh to Wick. Alison must have thought that this was me being all talk or beer-fuelled bravado. I didn't know how serious I was about it myself at the time.
Her parents came and picked her up and I went back to my friends at the bar. A lot of my friends were trying to keep my spirits up with their philosophical take on the situation. The others were content to get drunk with me... content enough to go on drinking til about 3 a.m.
During the evening, I had been telling Ben and various others about my plans for hitch-hiking. These mostly came up against a sea of derision and scorn, which only cemented my determination to do it. I'm not really sure at what point of the night it went from me just wanting to do this to me going to do this... the very next day.
I clearly remember staggering back towards Marchmont around 4 a.m., firmly set on the idea and was trying to formulate a plan for putting it into action. Alison had been right - I didn't have any money. I was 18 - I'd drank it. So I'd established that if I had some sort of food and drink and enough cigarettes, then I'd be pretty much set. The only other thing I needed was the cardboard sign.
Somewhere in this drunken haze, I had a moment of inspiration. It occurred to me that I was more likely to get there asking for short lifts, since I was wholly convinced that Edinburgh to Wick wasn't the most popular route. I got two flaps from a cardboard box in my room and wrote 'Wick' on one side and 'Edinburgh' on the other (another flash of clarity - after all, I was going to need it coming back, right?)
and on the other I wrote 'Perth' and 'Inverness'.
Once I had my provisions sorted, I threw the whole lot into a small rucksack and set off westwards, heading for the general direction of the Forth Road Bridge. Unsurprisingly, there wasn't a great deal of traffic on the roads at 5 a.m. and what traffic there was seemed strangely reluctant to pick up a slightly wobbly hitch-hiker within the city limits.
That's exactly how it went - I didn't get anyone stop until I was almost at the outskirts of Edinburgh. This was nearly 6 a.m. and my preconceived ideas of hitch-hiking didn't stack up against the reality. I had had this idea of the big, hairy trucker pulling his 'big rig' over to the side of the road and I hop right in and off we go. The first person who stopped for me was a regional sales manager in a large executive company car. I must have made up for stinking of booze with my story of teenage passion, since he was quite relaxed about my scruffy appearance.
He was only going as far as Perth and we made good time getting there. I was dropped off at a large roundabout on the A9 and didn't go into the town centre after my failure to get anyone pick me up in Edinburgh. It was while I was standing there waiting for the next lift that I realised that I had almost sobered up.
It was then that I had my out-of-body-experience moment. As I stood by the side of the road in the early morning sunshine, with my thumb and sign on display, a voice in my head went: "What the fuck are you doing?! What exactly do you think you're doing? You idiot!"
This was just one of those times when I figured "you've just got to throw yourself off the roof of the dentist's and see where you land". Happily, there have been many of these moments ever since and without them, my life so far would have been an awful lot more dull.
I resigned myself to the fact that I was too far to turn back and stopped worrying about it immediately. If anything, that feeling just made the whole thing more exciting. I pressed on.
There were a couple more 'sales manager' types who stopped for me that day. Alas, still no truckers.
About half way up the A9 to Inverness, in the middle of the Highlands, I came across a young deer that had been hit, by the side of the road. It didn't look like it had been dead long, but to this day it is still one of the saddest things I have ever seen. I stood and said a quiet prayer to myself for it and walked on. I didn't really know why I'd done it at the time, but I know now that it was for seeing such a beautiful creature brought to an untimely and, ultimately, needless end.
Not too far past Aviemore, a Land Rover stopped, with two absolutely stunning girls in it. They were marine biology students heading for the Moray Firth to study the porpoise population and their effect on seal colonies. If I hadn't had a girlfriend waiting for me in Wick, I might have tried to chat either of them up.
I got the one and only truck driver stop for me just after the Black Isle, north of Inverness and took me most of the rest of the way to Wick. I was given a lift by a local guy out on a short journey into Wick itself and from there I set about finding the house.
Alison had said that she was annoyed with her parents for taking her home so early, especially when she had had an offer to stay at Leanne's in Edinburgh. What really pissed her off was that they had buggered off on holiday that morning to Dunkeld (a small town that I passed on the way up there). I guess that was just the sort of mentality one has to expect from a family that would rather see their kids packed off to a boarding school for most of the year.
I had made it to Wick around 1:30 in the afternoon. A grand total of 8 hours later. Not bad, I thought.
Finding the street wasn't hard; Wick's not that big a place. It was a cul-de-sac with some fairly impressive houses on it. Hers was the last one on the right. I marched straight up to the front door, full of my own self-worth and bravado for having managed the seemingly impossible (I was only 18 remember!)
When Alison opened her front door, it was one of those moments that I really wished I had a camera with me; the look on her face was one of sheer disbelief and I'm sure she was maybe just a little bit impressed. Once our doorstep reunion was over, we went inside and she told me that I would be able to stay for the night but would have to leave first thing in the morning. Her parents had arranged for her aunt to come over and check on her every day. Trusting or what? Thankfully, 'Auntie' had been round that day already.
The part of the story between then and the next morning are not part of this story and I shall leave them to your imagination.
I got up the next day, we said our goodbyes (me promising to see her again, really soon - her making me promise I'd let her know before I was coming) and set off again for Edinburgh. The trip back, although minus the 'dutch courage', wasn't daunting at all, since I already knew it was doable. I quickly got a lift, again from a local, at the edge of town and was dropped off about 30 miles back down the coast road.
Plenty of other vehicles drove past me on the road, but I didn't care; I was elated with what I had just done and very happy to have seen my girlfriend. Then it happened... the only time this ever happened to me whilst hitch-hiking...
I was wandering down the coast road with my sign and my thumb out. A beat-up, red Transit van pulled up about 30 metres beyond me and I started to jog up to the back. Just as I was about there, the wheels spun hard and it shot off down the road. I stood there in the middle of the road and screamed after him: "BASTAAAAARRRDS!"
I know the idiot heard me; there's no way he couldn't have. I hope he had a good giggle about it. I also hoped that he suffered a major breakdown, miles from a telephone (this was '94 - nobody really had mobile phones yet!)
There was definitely someone smiling on me from above that day. Not five minutes after this happened, a red Porche 911 pulled over and I said a quiet thank you upwards and got in.
The guy's name was Ian and he seemed quite nice and not overly chatty. He asked me why I was heading for Inverness (very cleverly displayed on the return part of my cardboard sign). I told him I wasn't and explained to him my cunning plan for increasing my chances of a lift.
Then he laughed and told me that he was heading for Edinburgh himself and offered me a lift all the way back.
We rolled into Edinburgh - in some style I might add - in time for the early evening summer sun to be nicely toasting the arm I had hanging on the open window, hoping we would see at least one person I knew. Alas, this was not to be. Ian dropped me off next to Potterrow and I walked in to find a few of the usual suspects ready for another night's drunken adventures. The return journey was a mere five and a half hours from door to door.
For once, I got to be the centre of attention - in a group that excelled at doing outrageous and stupid things and getting themselves into the most impossible situations - it was my turn to have a tale to tell.
I hitched to Wick and back another twice that summer before Alison and I succumbed to the harsh reality that long-distance relationships take a lot of hard work and commitment to each other. We realised that we were young and we weren't ready for that quite yet. We did part company on very good terms, but I often wonder what would have happened between us had it lasted.
I've never seen her since, but I have to admit that I remember that summer with great fondness more for the adventure than the romance.
This has made it in at number 10 on my Most Memorable Moments, So Far... they only get better from here...
For the last 33 years I have had the privilege of being a part of some wonderful experiences. Some of them I was the focus of and for others I was just a very happy participant.
Compiling a list of the "top ten" days/events from my life was an awful lot harder than I ever could have imagined. I challenge you to sit down and do this for yourself. You'll see what I mean.
I'm fairly sure that the natural deterioration of my memory due to age has had a lot to do with the omission of certain episodes in my life, which is a real shame, because, even though I can't recall them at a moment's notice, I know that they are in the darkest recesses of my mind. I know that my late teens and early twenties were littered with good times (and not just through the proverbial "rose-tinted glasses" either - I know I eked out the maximum amount of fun that I could from those years).
Anyway... down to business. These are my Top Ten Moments In The Life Of...
#10. Hitch-hiking from Edinburgh to Wick and back. June 1994.
I had just turned 18 and was doing what most Scottish 18-year-old "men" do... I was exercising my right to be drunk whenever I wanted, without the risk of getting arrested for it.
Most of my friends were students at Edinburgh University and we spent most of out time in or around the student's union bars. We would divide our time between Chambers Street Union (mine and most of my friend's personal favourite - unfortunately only open thursday, friday and saturday nights) and Potterrow (which was, at least, open during the day).
One particular evening, I was at Potterrow union with my friend Ben and a few other people, including some girls Ben had befriended one day whilst out driving in the ESCA (student charities organisation) minibus. Leanne and Alison were about a year younger than me and were still in the 6th form at a very posh Edinburgh all-girls boarding school.
Ben had already become the focus of Leanne's attention some weeks prior to this and they seemed to be getting along famously. I, on the other hand, was simply contented within myself to be out having fun, getting drunk and being very silly indeed with my friends.
That night, Leanne came outside to talk to me while I was having a cigarette under the vast perspex dome that covered the university buildings attached to the front o
f the student union bar. People kept drifting in and out of the bar and as soon as we had a moment alone, she blurted out a question: "What are you going to do about Alison?" I had no idea what she meant. "What do you mean: 'What am I going to do about her'? I said."She's crazy about you." Leanne said.
I was blown away. I hadn't even begun to suspect that a girl this good-looking would be interested, so my mind had just filed her under 'friend' and left it at that. I wasn't the most perceptive when it came to women and their subtle signals at that age.
Of course, I was interested. She was stunningly gorgeous and a great deal of fun to be around. Our relationship started that night and over the following weeks, Alison and I - along with Ben and Leanne - spent most of our spare time together having a blast. Ben and I even managed to get ourselves invited to the boarding house for lunch, which, rather predictably, turned into very funny and very childish behaviour. On the suggestion of Leanne and Alison, the four of us played a game of Bollocks in the dining room. For the uneducated among you, Bollocks works like this: one person whispers the word bollocks and then the players each take their turn saying the word. The only rule is that your utterance must be louder than the last; a kind of verbal game of Chicken for situations where it is as inappropriate as possible.
The end of the school term was approaching and Alison had told me that she would have to spend the summer back home with her parents in Wick - around 250 miles away. I was dreading the day when she had to go; especially since we had only very recently found each other.
The day she left for home, we had a bit of a get-together at one of the student union bars and we said our goodbyes there; me promising to come up and see her as soon as I could. She laughed this off, saying that there was no way I had enough money, but that it would be great if I could.
I decided there and then that I was going to hitch-hike from Edinburgh to Wick. Alison must have thought that this was me being all talk or beer-fuelled bravado. I didn't know how serious I was about it myself at the time.
Her parents came and picked her up and I went back to my friends at the bar. A lot of my friends were trying to keep my spirits up with their philosophical take on the situation. The others were content to get drunk with me... content enough to go on drinking til about 3 a.m.
During the evening, I had been telling Ben and various others about my plans for hitch-hiking. These mostly came up against a sea of derision and scorn, which only cemented my determination to do it. I'm not really sure at what point of the night it went from me just wanting to do this to me going to do this... the very next day.
I clearly remember staggering back towards Marchmont around 4 a.m., firmly set on the idea and was trying to formulate a plan for putting it into action. Alison had been right - I didn't have any money. I was 18 - I'd drank it. So I'd established that if I had some sort of food and drink and enough cigarettes, then I'd be pretty much set. The only other thing I needed was the cardboard sign.
Somewhere in this drunken haze, I had a moment of inspiration. It occurred to me that I was more likely to get there asking for short lifts, since I was wholly convinced that Edinburgh to Wick wasn't the most popular route. I got two flaps from a cardboard box in my room and wrote 'Wick' on one side and 'Edinburgh' on the other (another flash of clarity - after all, I was going to need it coming back, right?)
and on the other I wrote 'Perth' and 'Inverness'.Once I had my provisions sorted, I threw the whole lot into a small rucksack and set off westwards, heading for the general direction of the Forth Road Bridge. Unsurprisingly, there wasn't a great deal of traffic on the roads at 5 a.m. and what traffic there was seemed strangely reluctant to pick up a slightly wobbly hitch-hiker within the city limits.
That's exactly how it went - I didn't get anyone stop until I was almost at the outskirts of Edinburgh. This was nearly 6 a.m. and my preconceived ideas of hitch-hiking didn't stack up against the reality. I had had this idea of the big, hairy trucker pulling his 'big rig' over to the side of the road and I hop right in and off we go. The first person who stopped for me was a regional sales manager in a large executive company car. I must have made up for stinking of booze with my story of teenage passion, since he was quite relaxed about my scruffy appearance.
He was only going as far as Perth and we made good time getting there. I was dropped off at a large roundabout on the A9 and didn't go into the town centre after my failure to get anyone pick me up in Edinburgh. It was while I was standing there waiting for the next lift that I realised that I had almost sobered up.
It was then that I had my out-of-body-experience moment. As I stood by the side of the road in the early morning sunshine, with my thumb and sign on display, a voice in my head went: "What the fuck are you doing?! What exactly do you think you're doing? You idiot!"
Now, I have been what I would call impulsive for a great deal of my life, starting with the day my mother caught me and some friends from school throwing ourselves off the roof of the local dentist's office when I was 7 years old.
This was just one of those times when I figured "you've just got to throw yourself off the roof of the dentist's and see where you land". Happily, there have been many of these moments ever since and without them, my life so far would have been an awful lot more dull.
I resigned myself to the fact that I was too far to turn back and stopped worrying about it immediately. If anything, that feeling just made the whole thing more exciting. I pressed on.
There were a couple more 'sales manager' types who stopped for me that day. Alas, still no truckers.
About half way up the A9 to Inverness, in the middle of the Highlands, I came across a young deer that had been hit, by the side of the road. It didn't look like it had been dead long, but to this day it is still one of the saddest things I have ever seen. I stood and said a quiet prayer to myself for it and walked on. I didn't really know why I'd done it at the time, but I know now that it was for seeing such a beautiful creature brought to an untimely and, ultimately, needless end.
Not too far past Aviemore, a Land Rover stopped, with two absolutely stunning girls in it. They were marine biology students heading for the Moray Firth to study the porpoise population and their effect on seal colonies. If I hadn't had a girlfriend waiting for me in Wick, I might have tried to chat either of them up.
I got the one and only truck driver stop for me just after the Black Isle, north of Inverness and took me most of the rest of the way to Wick. I was given a lift by a local guy out on a short journey into Wick itself and from there I set about finding the house.
Alison had said that she was annoyed with her parents for taking her home so early, especially when she had had an offer to stay at Leanne's in Edinburgh. What really pissed her off was that they had buggered off on holiday that morning to Dunkeld (a small town that I passed on the way up there). I guess that was just the sort of mentality one has to expect from a family that would rather see their kids packed off to a boarding school for most of the year.
I had made it to Wick around 1:30 in the afternoon. A grand total of 8 hours later. Not bad, I thought.
Finding the street wasn't hard; Wick's not that big a place. It was a cul-de-sac with some fairly impressive houses on it. Hers was the last one on the right. I marched straight up to the front door, full of my own self-worth and bravado for having managed the seemingly impossible (I was only 18 remember!)
When Alison opened her front door, it was one of those moments that I really wished I had a camera with me; the look on her face was one of sheer disbelief and I'm sure she was maybe just a little bit impressed. Once our doorstep reunion was over, we went inside and she told me that I would be able to stay for the night but would have to leave first thing in the morning. Her parents had arranged for her aunt to come over and check on her every day. Trusting or what? Thankfully, 'Auntie' had been round that day already.
The part of the story between then and the next morning are not part of this story and I shall leave them to your imagination.
I got up the next day, we said our goodbyes (me promising to see her again, really soon - her making me promise I'd let her know before I was coming) and set off again for Edinburgh. The trip back, although minus the 'dutch courage', wasn't daunting at all, since I already knew it was doable. I quickly got a lift, again from a local, at the edge of town and was dropped off about 30 miles back down the coast road.
Plenty of other vehicles drove past me on the road, but I didn't care; I was elated with what I had just done and very happy to have seen my girlfriend. Then it happened... the only time this ever happened to me whilst hitch-hiking...
I was wandering down the coast road with my sign and my thumb out. A beat-up, red Transit van pulled up about 30 metres beyond me and I started to jog up to the back. Just as I was about there, the wheels spun hard and it shot off down the road. I stood there in the middle of the road and screamed after him: "BASTAAAAARRRDS!"
I know the idiot heard me; there's no way he couldn't have. I hope he had a good giggle about it. I also hoped that he suffered a major breakdown, miles from a telephone (this was '94 - nobody really had mobile phones yet!)
There was definitely someone smiling on me from above that day. Not five minutes after this happened, a red Porche 911 pulled over and I said a quiet thank you upwards and got in.
The guy's name was Ian and he seemed quite nice and not overly chatty. He asked me why I was heading for Inverness (very cleverly displayed on the return part of my cardboard sign). I told him I wasn't and explained to him my cunning plan for increasing my chances of a lift.
Then he laughed and told me that he was heading for Edinburgh himself and offered me a lift all the way back.
We rolled into Edinburgh - in some style I might add - in time for the early evening summer sun to be nicely toasting the arm I had hanging on the open window, hoping we would see at least one person I knew. Alas, this was not to be. Ian dropped me off next to Potterrow and I walked in to find a few of the usual suspects ready for another night's drunken adventures. The return journey was a mere five and a half hours from door to door.
For once, I got to be the centre of attention - in a group that excelled at doing outrageous and stupid things and getting themselves into the most impossible situations - it was my turn to have a tale to tell.
I hitched to Wick and back another twice that summer before Alison and I succumbed to the harsh reality that long-distance relationships take a lot of hard work and commitment to each other. We realised that we were young and we weren't ready for that quite yet. We did part company on very good terms, but I often wonder what would have happened between us had it lasted.
I've never seen her since, but I have to admit that I remember that summer with great fondness more for the adventure than the romance.
This has made it in at number 10 on my Most Memorable Moments, So Far... they only get better from here...
