I started driving lessons as soon as I turned seventeen and in fact, I had to take my test before I was ready because the last of my three guys lifts was about to dry up as two had changed their shift pattern and the last was about to retire.
It came to the point that if I didn’t pass my test first time on that day, then I had no idea how I would get to work the next day … . other than the dreaded bicycle. That was pressure. Especially as I sat it in the centre of Edinburgh, in rush hour.
Even though I stalled the car at least three times I managed to scrape through it by the skin of my teeth. That was my modus operandi by that point as school tests were no different.
I did have my own car while I was learning so I could use that to travel to work, well at least for a couple of weeks until I went out one evening in Falkirk and had a couple of drinks.
It was not enough to make me drunk but I knew I was technically over the limit so instead of taking the car I went to the flat of a friend from work, the same one who said I could fuck in his parents’ house and who had recently acquired his property after being told by his them that his company was no longer required in their house.
Maybe due to their bloody bed. I thought that was a safe bet and probably why I had the extra drink that put me over the limit. However, despite telling him the situation he wasn’t in the mood for company that evening and told me to be on my way. He was a bit nuts and as I found out later that was to exacerbate.
I was driving back through Grangemouth from Falkirk I got stopped by the police because one of my head lights wasn’t working, it was just on side beam. They were doing their revenue collecting duty and after they tested me and got the positive result they were looking for to get their bonus that month, my car got towed to Falkirk police station and I got charged with drunk driving, which resulted in a fine and a one year driving ban. Wonderful.
After getting let out the police station, I then had to go back to my friend’s house and he had to let me in as I had no car to drive back home to Queensferry. If he had just done that in the first place my life path would have taken a vastly different trajectory, one with far less alcohol in it for sure.
I now had to find a cheap apartment close to the factory or else lose the job and with nothing else to fall back on, I wasn’t about to let that happen.
I bought one of the cheapest flats in Falkirk just along the road from the friend who didn’t let me in that fateful night. I wish I done more research into the quality of the neighbours because there was more heroin addicts per apartment than were in an average 1970’s rock band.
Mind you, I won’t hear a bad word said against the heroin users, because many is the time they helped me out, after my TV or video got stolen. I don’t know who their supplier was but give them a call any time of the day or night and they’d be round with an exact replacement model within the hour. They didn’t bother with any of that warranty crap; it was twenty quid, cash in hand, Bob’s your uncle.
I did get a bit suspicious one time when one of them turned up with a replacement VCR only five minutes after me coming in the house to discover mine had been nicked again. I hadn’t called them, so I asked how they knew mine was missing. He explained to me all about the heroin’s clairvoyant properties.
I thought alcohol was the only drug that made you psychic, although that only works if you overdose on it. Then it’s like, ‘Fuck, fuck, I think I’m going to be sick’.
Sure enough, you always are, no matter how much you try to repress that thought. Once you’ve had it, that’s it, the spew is on its way, you know you are going to be sick. There is nothing surer …. except perhaps your TV and video going missing again.
Once I had cottoned on to the fact it was probably the addicts stealing my shit I went out and bought a few bags of pure heroin and some needles to leave on top of the TV so they’d find it, shoot up immediately and hopefully die in my living room.
One less heroin user for society to scorn at and I’ll save a fortune replacing my equipment. Everyone’s a winner! Unfortunately, I eventually moved out of the apartment before they robbed me again, and the heroin somehow got lost in the move. Oh well, can’t win them all. Let’s hope no-one else found it and thought it was brown sugar.
Cheers!
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