I was born. When about thirty six I started to write and paint. Some of the intervening years were spent planting community woodlands, building dry-stane dykes and grappling with various musical instruments.

DEREK'S INFLUENCES

CHORDS

by
Derek Ramsay

It was a bit like defeat going round there again, third time this week already, still using the same excuse that he might have got some new singles from work. I fancied his mum, big time, had done since women became of interest. I’d nip downstairs for endless glasses of water in the hope of brushing against her in the kitchen. And his wee sister was getting bigger by the day. He was wearing a heavy, cotton Australian rugby top. Dead smart. “ Where did that come from?” “ Parcel bound for Davy Low’s I believe. Or unbound as it were. Totally mental, you should have seen it at dinnertime, fifteen of us in Wallabies strips, kicking the ball about. Aye, it’ll all end in tears,” It being the constant, the merciless thieving that passed for a day’s work at Dundee Express Deliveries, one branch of a network of theft, pilfering goods from London and the south east (no south west for some reason) to Inverness and the North. “Get anything today?” “ No, it was a day of rest, conserving energy for Thursday when a brand new Sharp, QT 27, auto-stop, soft-eject, AC/DC, 2-way 4 speaker radio-cassette shall be mine.” He went into position, practised, hunching, creating a space in his woollen bomber jacket across his shoulders and chest, a pouch forming beneath the fake-fur collar and lapels, into which could be slipped football strips, L.P.’s, golf balls, catering packs of Kit-Kats….a radio-cassette player, now in it’s new home sitting on the carpet, in the middle of the floor, its shiny bits glinting in the setting sun, its weave of copper and plastic and solder soon to roar out the sound of change, a call to worship of old testament intensity. Three minutes to midnight my coat’s on, John Peel all set to clock off and head out for his Indian – “ No, I can’t, I mustn’t, well, yes, I can.” GOD SAVE THE QUEEN, IT’S A FASCIST REGIME…he did it, he really did it. Banned from the B.B.C., even the women on the line at the E.M.I. plant refused to handle it. And it just seemed so right that the message should come to me through vibrating air, filling the space between us, disgorged from the speakers of this stolen radio-cassette. I ran all the way home kicking over bins, shouting at those happy and safe in their beds behind curtains and blinds, swaddled in duvets. Maybe they weren’t, I don’t know but this feeling in me was real enough and right now I needed to shout it out loud . NO FUTURE, NO FUTURE. I made myself throw up on a doorstep, did a slash over somebody’s flowery bush thing, gobbed all over the bus shelter glass and then burst out greetin’ sitting on the pavement, my back against a garden fence, shaking it with my sobs. When they’d dried to salt I dragged myself up, retraced the cold steps of my rampage, cleaning off the spit with my sleeve, put all the bins the right way up, scraped the sick off the step as best I could with the sole of my baseball boot, checked on the azalea, shook the pish off then headed for home, my parents’ house and straight to bed, head under the quilt, scared of what I now felt, knew to be true.

© Derek Ramsay
Reproduced with permission