Trivial Tales of Everyday Madness

8/14/2019 Trivial Tales of Everyday Madness

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Trivial Tales of Everyday Madness: A future legend in my own mind.

Robert K Hogg

I miss my granddad. He on my mothers side. Youd have liked him.Most people did. I miss my gran too. She on my dads side. I could saygrandmother or grandma, but as we never called her that, Im not about tonow. She was less easy to like, certainly so unequivocally, but thats thenature of people. I called my mother mum, and my father dad. They splitup when I was six or seven. Probably seven, as I recall the move to thelarger council flat on the top floor, and where I stood at what was to be our

bedroom window and watched with no little curiosity a girl sitting againstthe wall below.

We were never to become romantically involved in any way, both being too tentative, the close proximity to each other ruling it out from theoutset in all probability. She lived at the bottom with her younger brother whom I came to like. They stayed with a commonplace-minded bore of awoman, rarely cheerful, whom they called Nana. Their mother was a raresight. I dont think she stayed there, or if dad was ever on the scene.Some things get lost in the mists of time and obscurity and relativeindifference. Andy slipped once while climbing the shortish metalwashing poles. A freakish accident, he gashed his leg. I was glad I wasntthere to see it. Strange, the things one remembers. Perhaps it was becauseof the uninhibited relish of whoever told me of it at the time. And becauseit seemed so unlikely. A greenie pole. Just outside his house.

The irony was I was forever taking off and risking life and limb,literally, as if to feel the life more in me, or tempt the fates, who seemeddetermined to give me a hard time anyway, mainly in the guise of mymother. Perhaps it was my way of thinking I might bring the fight to them,it not being possible to bring it to her; an unthinkable thought. If I

believed on an unconscious level God had it in for me, perhaps this wasmy way of testing the boundaries. Bring it on, big guy. But I didnt really

believe that. I think it was a phase most adventurous spirits go through.That quite simply, I was excited by it and enjoyed the intensity of concentration it demanded to walk slowly along the outside of the bridgefor walking perched high above the road in Balgay Park, or outside therailings and above the sheer drop adjacent to the stairs that led down from


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the entrance to Dudhope Park from the Constitution Street side and also a busy road, but no car stopped and no-one told me to stop and get back onthe right side of the railings. Maybe they didnt want to be the one whodistracted me. Clearly I had a head for heights as they say, but to me it

was all about self-reliance and not falling. It was my choice so I was incontrol. There was no question or incidence of dizziness or nausea. Thatwould have been the end of me. I wasnt lacking in common sense,though my mother begged to differ. She positively insisted on it, thoughshe knew nothing of my often hair-raising excursions. Neither was Istupid, though she was as vehement in her insistence on that too. I could

be impulsive, but equally I could give a potential climbing project, such asthe electricity pylon on the Law Hill, a few minutes thought, as I did, anddecide against it. I well recall that. I didnt know if and where theelectricity flow began, or if it affected a section of the metal rails at acertain height, or what. My ignorance on the subject was enough to decideme, however exciting the prospect of climbing higher than what I took to

be the highest point in Dundee.There was always the Steeple, but from the inside like everyone else,

as I did one school lunchtime with my buddy. Everest the hard way fromthe inside. Now I look on mountain-climbers and the like, getting strandedand freezing to death on the side of a mountain or dying in a crevasse inthe proverbial middle of nowhere, and I think, thanks but no thanks. Itseems nuts to me. Know your limitations. I just dont have the same faiththe technology will get me through it. As a kid I could check my shoelacesand that my hands werent sweaty by wiping them on my front or trousers,

but neither would I climb if it were even remotely damp. I think. No flieson me, though a well-placed bug might have ended it all but not really,unless it was a wasp. Nothing would distract me short of being struck bylightning, though I suppose there was always the possibility of someinsane kids throwing stones at me. A possibility I never considered.Something to come back to. Variations on a theme. But I digress. I wasthinking of my close relatives.

It seems silly they didnt get on with each other when I was so centralto both their lives in many ways. I could say the same of my mum and dadof course, but that was as problematic for other reasons. Otherwise mygranddad and gran had little contact with each other. They had gottogether so to say, to discuss the question of which of them might adoptme. My gran was willing to take me alone but granddad was reluctant toseparate my younger brother and me. Maybe he felt and possibly rightly


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so, that if the buffer of sorts I was were to be removed, there would belittle to stop her inflicting her wild projections on him alone. I knewnothing about this of course, at primary school age still, and difficultthough it was, Id have missed my brother intensely. It was obvious to

anyone aside from my mother and Bo that we took great pleasure in eachothers company; we had a lot of laughs together, and he was no lessimportant to me for that reason. It was a balance of opposites. During theintense insecurity of adolescence, and the constant and sometimes extremeattacks on my image of myself, he was, for all his faults as well as myown, a symbol of normality for me, and of sense and sanity, though whomI could experience myself more in keeping as I believed myself to be;intelligent and amusing. School and home seemed to conspire ininculcating in me the perception I was as valueless as I was potentiallydangerous, if in an inconsequential, silly way.

They liked to have it all ways. In retrospect it was my intelligence andthe joyfulness they saw in me that threatened them. Like many peoplethey secretly hated life and themselves, the former quite overt at times inmy mother as when she would rage at how she had had it up to here, tohere , she would scream, almost slapping her straightened hand againsther chin for emphasis, the treat of violence, tangible as always. I knew shehated me. There was no accounting for her irrational enmity. It wassomething to be accepted and avoided wherever possible. I preferred tostay in our room and read.

When I wasnt reading there was playing football outside in the back green with mates and other acquaintances. Few things as engaging asfootball as a kid. Through it one learned of the character of ones fellowsand oneself. Kicking the ball around was almost incidental, or it mighthave been if we didnt take it all so personally. Another aspect of our character, not least mine. I took the game seriously enough to practice onmy own for a time, by trying to control the ball as I attempted to dribble itaround the conveniently placed aforementioned poles for the washing. Ashort-lived enthusiasm. I gave up in frustration, though I was no slouch atthe old bodyswerve and an accurate striker or could be. I toyed for a whilewith the notion of being a professional football player for a living. What Ididnt know was that my dads dad, my other granddad who lived inAustralia with his wife had been just that. For some reason my favouriteteam came to be Celtic. I even bought their record at the time, precociousas my musical tastes could be for a kid. I could and did go to the localgrocers and heard Argents Hold Your Head Up playing in the background


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Trivial Tales of Everyday Madness