Xmas parties here again

I was talking with the people on the BBC Radio Scotland programme about school days and long since forgotten Xmas school dances. Where the only dance you got was from Ms Largebotham the music teacher who thought you had the most beautiful singing voice for a pre-pubescent boy and seemed determined to hold you to close and squeeze it out of you.

Unfortunately I was not the dapper self-confident gigolot I am today, although I was somewhat delusional even in those days. I spent so much time up against the wall at school dances that I earned the name 'Gecko' or 'Geecko', it alternated depending on the mentality of the heckler.

I also had the misfortune one year, to be adorned with an Arran knit heavy woolen jumper which had been knitted by granny 'with the failing eyesight' and 'shaking hands'. A dear woman of whom I was well fond. So I was not going to offend her or incur the wrath of parents by defending my last thin veneer of dignity, so off I went.

I do admit to feeling a certain air of invulnerability as the rain bounced off me and I reckoned that this woolen armour would be able to deflect any minor wounding attempts by the locals. They had long since become experts in organised sectarianism in any form and to show their solidarity to the 'cause' they moved around in small gangs. I use the word 'cause' here because when confronted and attacked by these sporting lads, it was always their chosen response to a request for rational justification e.g. Why? answer 'Cause'.

I enjoyed the wet cold rainy nights because it made the guerrillas run for cover quicker than the authorities and it washed the dog crap off the streets. As I swaggered stalwartly to the school I started to be aware of the woolen jumper losing its ability to deflect water and had instead started to capture as much of it as it could. The garment grew longer and heavier, until by the time I reached the school it was dragging on the ground and I was walking partly crouched under the weight of it.

This incumbent thing, working with some trivial and perverted laws of nature had also decided to gather up as much dirt and leaves along the way as was possible. The dirty water had been wicking up through the garment from the ground and the slightly acidic rain had been doing its best to wash it away. The result was a high tide mark somewhere near my knees that would have enthralled a botanist or microbiologist.

Undaunted, it was like this that I entered the Xmas school dance, like an extra from some apocalyptic Neptune movie. I was hoping it was perhaps a fancy dress occasion and this would give me a chance to noncchalantly carry it off by carrying a small shiny trident, in the form of a school dinner fork that had been playfully stabbed into the noticeboard. It was not fancy dress and I did not go unnoticed.

I stood in my usual corner teetering on the edge of both the dance floor and my self esteem, watching the very precarious grip that I had on my dignity slowly melting and dripping onto the floor. I must have looked like a 'gecko' caught in a net that had been dredged out of the local canal. Best days of your life school days. If only I had known that at the time.