Adventures of a Waterboy Read Online Free Page A

were all mixed up. The only one who had his look sorted was Crigg, with his Eddie & The Hot Rods hairdo and a series of half-decent mod poses. But guitarist Ronnie was cuddly and cheery, while bassist Jim looked like he’d come from a sports car rally and couldn’t wait to go back. As for me, I was whippet-thin with flared jeans – even in the punk Year Zero of 1977 – tight velvet t-shirt, shoulder-length hair, and no sense of what to do with my body. Shall I put my hands on my hips, or here, halfway up my chest, or shall I make a funny face, or look wary, or suspicious? I hadn’t yet quite landed.
    The photos were deemed unusable and we divvied them up between us for souvenirs, each band member taking the ones that showed himself in the least-worst light. It was almost our final act as a band; at the end of summer Crigg split to form a mod trio, Ronnie gave up groups, Jim went to drama college and I moved back to Edinburgh, then ablaze with punk rock, where a new constellation of possibilities glimmered on the horizon. But before we went our separate ways there was one last local show to play.
    We had a jostling friendship with a cabaret guitarist called Brian Noble who we used to accuse of selling out because he played the squeaky-clean Eagles-type rock popular at weddings and dances. Perhaps to teach us a lesson he got us a booking at a venue in a small town called Maybole, and ever eager for a gig we took the bait. We arrived early on a Saturday evening to find the place, the Three Steps Club, not much more than a shebeen clinging to a cliff overlooking a piece of waste ground at the arse-end of town. It turned out to be an Orange Lodge, whatever that was, and it looked grim and functional, some kind of private working men’s club. ‘Set up in the corner, boys,’ said a man, pointing to a low triangular platform. Several club members were milling around and they looked hard, with dour, frozen features as if their faces had been chiselled from the cliff outside. We began to realise our cabaret guitarist friend had booked us here to take a rise out of us, but there was no way out.
    Three hours later, as the last chord of ‘Sympathy For The Devil’ echoed uneasily through the smoke-filled air, I was instructed by the wheezy young local to play the national anthem. I was shaping up to say ‘no way’ when another native stepped up and addressed not me, but Ronnie, who hadn’t sung a note all night, with the words, ‘You’re a good singer, son, sing the national anthem while Walter here accompanies you on the moothie.’ And there on cue was Walter, a wee man I hadn’t noticed before, pulling a little silver harmonica out of his jacket pocket.
    Some beneficent angel must have been watching over us and prevented the Orange Lodgers from trying to make me sing the national anthem. Or perhaps the ‘angel’ was the native himself, recognising that a confrontation was brewing and tactfully moving to head it off. Whatever, Ronnie, wiser and less the firebrand than myself, duly sang ‘God Save The Queen’ ( mumbled would be more accurate) while Walter backed him doggedly on the moothie and everyone in the place stood up. Except for our roadie Rab and me. The two of us remained seated throughout due to ideological objections, somehow managing to do so without a fight breaking out: another miracle. On the drive home I asked the others what an Orange Lodge was. Our Catholic bass player Jim told me.

Chapter 3: Where’s That Scottish Boy?
     
    At ten o’clock on a Sunday morning I sit alone in an elegant hotel dining room in west London. Antique mirrors in gilt frames hang on white walls, sunlight floods through a bay window and mellow soul music drifts lazily from the bar. I’m nineteen years old and four hours ago I stepped off the overnight train from Scotland. My breakfast, long finished, has been cleared away and I’m reading a book, The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis. I’ve read it several times before, but I have