I was eating a cone of chips at the top of Bank Lane when a William Low�s lorry stopped outside Rettie�s. The driver slammed the door of his cab and went into the chipper.

He left the window open and the radio DJ announced that �The Model� had just gone to number 1. Electronic German sounds began to fill the High Street. It was one o�clock on a Tuesday afternoon. Kraftwerk talked of nightclubs and champagne but all I could see was a wet, empty street waiting for Friday night.

The driver emerged from the shop. I won�t describe him. Build your own bear in Lows� overalls � suffice to say he was no model on the cover of a magazine. But he posed for my camera with the consumer products of the day; a haggis supper wrapped in the Press & Journal and a bottle of Moray Cup*.

I wanted to get in the lorry and go to Aberdeen or maybe even Dundee where the Tangerines played. But I had yet to learn the simple art of skiving. My dreams of being good at Tech had been filed down to shavings. We learned about the facts of life in Biology but there weren�t many. Just a million different ways of looking at a precarious world. The English teacher spoke of little fish in big ponds and about something called Metaphor. That would become a pet subject much later on. In the meantime, I was doing okay in French and History. Without finishing the chips, I threw the cone into the street for the next opportunist dog that came sniffing around.

This incident took place long before I�d heard of �On the Road� or �Paris Texas�. Some time later, just outside Crianlarich, a driver in a William Low�s lorry stopped to give me a lift. The cabin reeked of smoke and chips and the sweat, toil and boredom of the Thatcher years. We were heading for Edinburgh boosted by Fools Gold heralding the tail end of the Eighties. I smiled at the sight of The Model, scarlet and black, receding in the rear view mirror.

*A fizzy red cola manufactured in Banff, Scotland.

Steven Porter was born in Inverness, Scotland, currently lives in Girona, Catalonia and writes for www.soccer-spain.com. He translates from Spanish & Catalan. For poetry translations from Catalan and for more on the language click here. His poetry has been published in various lit mags including Cutting Teeth, Northwords and Orbis. He is currently seeking publisher for his first collection of poetry. His ebook entitled 'The Iberian Horseshoe', a long intermittent journey through Galicia, Portugal, Andalusia, Valencia and Catalonia, is available from here. For more news on on Steve Porter visit here or for a selection of his writing on the showcase section of this site, click here.

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.