The upside to my life is, my brother Mij who has cancer and going through chemo is absolutely well! Years of taking various drugs have obviously made him immune to the after effects of the medication he is on! Can you believe that he hasn’t been sick yet or lost any hair? I am impressed. Who said the drugs don’t work?

I went up to Shettleston today to see my other brother. We sat in his local pub and one of his old friends came over….I knew this guy since I was a small child. He was very drunk and also has mental problems (he once jumped off a bus at 30 miles an hour and his legs were only dong 20…my brother told me, and he landed on his head)

Anyway the guy was loud and obviously the ‘pub pest’. I smiled and shook his hand. The man made these really odd grimaces and over the top snappy-fingered twitches.

“Your book was full of shit” he shouted and then made a face that was a cross between Robert Di Nero and Coco the clown.

My brother faced him and shouted “Fuck off and don’t pick on my sister, now go annoy someone else”

The scary man mumbled something, they then had a small bit of a Mexican stand off and the man shuffled off.

“You don’t have to get that wound up, he is allowed his point of view, I did write about his street and he is entitled to his opinion” I spoke to my brother.

“Yes, but his opinion is warped and I don’t want you haven’t to listen to that shite” My brother said.

Then barmaid butted into the conversation “Janey I got your book” she held up my hardback autobiography and the pub went a wee bit quiet.

People looked over, faces I knew…guys I went to school with…standing there with grey hair and sons taller than them…all smiling and lifting a beer to me in a kind of ‘well done’ gesture.

“Shall I sign it? You can sell it for more if it’s signed” I laughed.

I signed her book and looked around the bar where my daddy had stood when he was a young man, I looked over to where my mammy used to sit with her pals and somewhere in my head I wondered what the fuck I was doing back here….holding that book in my hands.

The book that told everyone that my uncle was my rapist, they all knew my uncle, he also stood here cheering on his football team with just about everyone at this bar.

Yet they smiled and somehow gave me the nod of approval. Maybe I needed it; maybe that’s why I was here.

My brother and I walked out of the bar and he headed home.

So did I ….but not to my current home but to my childhood home that held so many memories for me.

I walked straight up

A woman pulled back the curtains and I could see right into her room, I could see the wallpaper on her ground floor flat wall. I recall Peter and my mum sitting there. Then he murdered her in 1982, he took her down to the River Clyde and we got her back in a body bag.

My soul shuddered, the wee woman stared at me and then she smiled and waved at me. I didn’t know her, I waved back.

I walked up to my old close entry to the flats where I lived. I could see a Christmas tree at our old corner bedroom window. That’s where we used to have ours.

I remembered so well, lying in that room, the darkness was being broken with red and yellow flashing lights, twinkling away. I recall standing at that window running my fingers through the frost on the inside, making wee Santa Claus faces on the glass.

I walked up to the close entry; there is a door there now. A security door they call it, there was never a security door when I was a child. Closes in Glasgow never had doors on the close entries; we could run through everyone’s closes, long thin concrete hallways that lead to back courts….its how we had our fun as kids. It’s where we kissed our first boyfriends; it was where couples got that snatched kiss before going into their wee flats.

I was looking out over the view that I used to see as a child and the door opened behind me “Do you want in?” a young guy asked me.

“Thanks” I said and started up the stairs. I had spent the first 18 years of my life on those stairs, I walked down those stairs to get married, and I played on those stairs. I ran away from my abusive uncle down those stairs.

I slowly walked up and came to my old door; well it’s a new door now, not my old door from the 60s and 70s. I sat on the step and could hear people’s lives going on behind the doors. Shouting and laughing, televisions blaring and music playing….I wished I could hear my mammy shouting “Janey, get up here, you’ve got school in the morning”

I won’t ever hear her again, but her voice is not forgotten. I wrote it in that book. My child and her children and their children and hopefully their children will still be able to know who my mammy was….when they read the book.

Merry Christmas Mammy… I miss you.

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