so long as it doesn’t involve too many stairs.
Despite all this freedom, however, what old people like to do is gardening and when they like to do it is 6 a.m. What is it with old people and getting up early? I know they say the early bird catches the worm but not when that bird has a Zimmer frame. Have a lie-in! What have you got to do that’s so urgent? ‘I need to send a letter.’ A letter? Do it in the afternoon or just don’t send a letter! Text your friend Karen and then press the snooze button. ‘Karen doesn’t know how to work her phone.’ OK, fine. Well, 6 a.m. it is then. Even if they do have an obsession with early rises and mundane tasks, there is still a madness that surrounds all pensioners, and for reasons that I believe become more clear as you read this book, I am so very drawn to it.
My gran was like that. Wonderful woman, all six foot two of her. Now, her height isn’t relevant to the narrative in any way whatsoever, but I think we’ll all agree it’s a lovely visual image to carry through this chapter – a tall, crazy, old, female version of me. Imagine me but taller, with a fetching grey perm – you are all very welcome. She wasn’t tied down by the rules of society; she didn’t have to go to dinner parties and pretend to be fine with the very obvious fact that Colin was getting way too much attention. Fuck you, Colin, you’re only three weeks old and already you’re pissing me off. As a little aside I got my friend to read this paragraph back for me just to see if perhaps me imagining my own gran telling a three-week-old infant to ‘fuck off’ was too harsh, especially given my previous in this area, and my friend simply replied: ‘Who the fuck calls their baby Colin?’
Anywho, the point is I always admired my gran’s general disregard for ‘the rules’. Sometimes it was adorable, such as the time she assumed that Postman Pat tinned spaghetti shapes were all shaped like different post offices in her local area, and sometimes it was funny in retrospect, like watching my mum chase Gran’s 1970 black Ford Fiesta down the street after Gran had kindly accepted my and my little sister’s request to ‘get driven to the shops in the boot’. That is panic. The point is she was bloody marvellous. Awful driver, though, but still – six foot two.
THE ANTIGUA FUCK-UP (PART I)
One of my fondest memories of my gran was around the time of my first break-up. My family and I were on holiday in Antigua. I was comfortably in my twenties. Some of you might think that’s weird, and I guess in some respects it was. I had my reasons, primarily the nasty break-up and being a mollycoddled millennial. My mother still felt the responsibility was solely on her shoulders to make sure her ‘little boy’s’ broken heart was mended. Oh, fuck off, Freud!
You never really forget that first break-up. It never leaves, always there in the back of your mind, incurable, sort of like the sadness version of herpes. Mums are the only people that can really help, in my experience. My mum, I mean. I’m not just roaming the streets screaming, ‘She left me!’ at any woman with a buggy. I tried to talk to my friends about it – that was a bloody disaster. They just stare at you helplessly, a blank expression etched onto their faces, like when someone’s farted in a lift and everyone is trying to look like it wasn’t them that did it. I mean, I couldn’t move for messages on Facebook and Twitter hoping I was all right and ‘if I needed anything just ask’. Now, I’m not saying those people’s concerns weren’t genuine, but I will say that, although undoubtedly worried for my wellbeing, they certainly weren’t willing to travel in order to demonstrate it. There was someone who would, however. Someone who would move mountains for her ‘little boy’, her little 26-year-old, mortgage-owning, law-degree-having little boy – Mummy.
So I’m on this holiday, and I’m fine, totally fine, don’t look at me like that, I’m fine. We were three days in to ‘the big holiday’, and unlike our Scottish holidays of old there wasn’t a caravan in sight; however, exactly like our Scottish holidays of old, there was rain … and lots of it. Nothing gets a mum down more than rain on the main holiday. They obsess over it, constantly mentioning home. ‘In Scotland it’s beautiful,’ Mum would remark while staring out the hotel window at the grey antigen sky, like a convict looking out through his cell bars. ‘Three days’ rain on the main holiday. I can’t believe it. I’m going to call Thomsons.’ Yeah, Mum, you do that. I’m sure there is some policy that covers entirely uncontrollable and unprecedented Caribbean drizzle. They’ll give us a full refund – they can claim the costs back from Mother Nature’s insurance policy.
In order to alleviate some of the pent-up cabin (relatively upmarket hotel) fever we decided to go on a family drive. Is there anything more relaxing than a family drive? Mum shouting at Dad for driving too close to one side of the road, Dad not speaking to Mum because it wasn’t until two hours into the drive she realised the map was the wrong way round, while the kids in the back are relentless with their constant stream of ‘Are we there yet?’ and ‘Iain pulled my hair again’, which for the record was an absolute fucking lie. The only person totally at peace in this tin can of pent-up passive–aggressive anger was my gran, who just sat in the middle seat knitting. Not a worry in the world. Just absolutely over the moon to be out the house.
We drove on some more until we came to a red light, barely visible as the thick rain lashed down all around. My dad nearly missed the light, slamming on the brakes just in time and skidding to a stop as my mother muttered something loving under her breath about him being a ‘homicidal maniac’, and then we waited. What a holiday this was shaping up to be. I should get the selfie stick out right now!
After a few seconds I noticed a huge Antiguan man walking alongside the car. Now Antigua isn’t one for pavements and all that boring infrastructure stuff, and why not, it’s a paradise. You don’t need pavements in paradise. We all know what happened to paradise when they put up a parking lot so I was delighted that Antigua had decided to keep things simple. While we waited patiently for the lights to change, this behemoth of a man was now sludging his way through the grassy knoll that ran adjacent to the road. Eventually he stopped, almost parallel to our vehicle, and started to fiddle with his belt.
Now the next 30 seconds of my life are etched into my psyche in such detail I don’t think the images will ever leave me. I could be on my death bed, surrounded by loved ones, adoring fans, my wife and kids staring into my dimming eyes, and as they all ask me, in perfect unison, ‘What are your dying words, our beloved?’ I will whisper with my final breath, ‘Once, in Antigua, me and my mum spent 30 seconds staring at the same stranger’s penis … Oh, and I once told an eight-year-old to go fuck himself.’
Our Antiguan man-mountain of a friend had decided to remove his aforementioned penis – from his shorts, not physically from his body; he didn’t rip it off, stick it in a jar and hand it to my beloved mother – he simply popped it out his pants and started having a widdle in the street. So as a man peed in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of the road, the Stirling family stared on. Mother seemed furious that yet more unwanted drizzle had affected our main holiday. I was paralysed with fear – ‘paralysed by the penis’, if you will. Someone had to do something, but who was it going to be?
‘WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?’ I’VE NO IDEA, MATE. I’M ONLY SEVEN.
It’s weird the first time you find yourself in a situation in which you feel like you need to protect your parents. The role reversal is a real rite of passage into adulthood. That first time your dad can’t pick up a particularly heavy box or needs consoling following the loss of a pet, or when your mum is left helplessly staring at a stranger’s penis. Having these figures of strength and unconditional love turn to you for help and showing they’re not infallible – nothing makes you feel more like a grown-up. Like the first time you cross a road before the green man comes on and you notice those around you follow you on your journey to the other side of the road. I’ve never felt more powerful in my life. Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Iain Stirling is a fucking alpha male!
The reason this role reversal hit me particularly
