Coltbridge

This is all true… or maybe not entirely correctly remembered, but mostly described as it happened. I mean, it's not one of my stories.

Before we married, me at eighteen, him just turned twenty, we found ourselves a place to call home in a ridiculously tiny flat in Coltbridge, Edinburgh. Down and around a corner, in a sort of mews, I’m not sure if it was Place, or Terrace or Avenue, but whichever. A cabinet maker had his business right next to our stair door. I may or may not have taken the place at all if I’d understood that a cabinet maker made coffins. Well, who knew?

Ours was ground floor, with the bedroom window looking into the mews and the living room window looking onto a little patch of green at the back, below the bridge crossing a shallow stretch of the Water of Leith only yards away at the bottom of the garden. Our only access was through the window, but I planted crocus and daffodil bulbs in the grass, hoping to cheer the place up in the spring.

I wrote elsewhere of how our cats used this window for easy access but it was J’s access I’m speaking of here. I also mentioned how ridiculously small the place was? I’m not exaggerating, but we loved it. The tiny kitchen was basically just a gas cooker with a sink next to it, and bunker opposite, with cupboards below. Room to turn around between the two, with the cat bowls on the floor. The living room was perhaps three by four metres if that. We did have a bathroom, with a bath I might add, crammed next to the loo and a sink overhanging the bath. The bed, which came with the place, along with the wardrobe, wasn’t that big but the door hit it when you entered. The wardrobe door didn’t fully open either as it hit the bed on the other side. You could just squeeze past the window at the bottom of the bed. Seriously, the space was cramped. But still, it was our place.

Our first New Year's Eve as a married couple, we had the gang over. At some point, after sufficient lubrication, the slapping game erupted. This is where the men are shirtless and they take turns at slapping each other across the chest and back and arms. The point being to see who can land a proper handprint on the other, hence the bare chests. There is no winner, only a whole lot of laughter. Hysteria ensued, not least from one of the other girls who was upset to see her man so… manhandled. It was really hysterically funny, both the yells from the boys as her blubbing. It was just fun! Insane fun, but still. There’d be one flexing his fingers, ready for revenge for the slap he was clearly portraying across his back, and the other now cringing, waiting on it. Even if you hadn’t landed a good one, you were obliged to take the revenge slap. Eventually, it did all calm down, much more alcohol was consumed, to numb the pains perhaps… and J and a couple of the others took a shower to cool off their burning skin.

It was the wee sma oors by now and things were winding down so everyone was getting their coat (wriggling past to even put them on - wee place and all!) and they all headed out the door. J was still, miraculously, wrapped in a towel at his waist as we sat at the window, waving to them as they crossed the bridge, heading into town and home. I should perhaps have been more alert, but it was after all the end of a long and heady night. It was cold at the open window, it was Hogmanay after all, and I did warn him to be careful as he swung his legs over the sill…

…to jump down into the grass, leaving the towel in my hand. He was now dancing a merry jig over the grass to hoots of laughter from both me and every one of our pals on the bridge overhead. Naked as the day he was born. I knew there was no stopping him so could only laugh as he pranced towards the edge of the water. ‘No.. don’t!! It’s freezing!’ but there was no stopping the bold boy as he skipped merrily into the water. We were all ending ourselves as he splashed around, suddenly to realise just how cold it was. He darted past me with the towel in my hand on the grass and threw himself in the window, narrowly escaping serious damage to his bits which had sensibly retreated into hiding. He was yowling with laughter though and as I myself climbed in behind him, the crew waved and left… I could hear them still laughing until they were well out of sight.

I don’t remember how it all went after the window was closed. I honestly have no memory of how I got him to bed, or if perhaps he just lay on the floor until returning to his senses next day? Anything is possible. It had been a wild night, I’m sure I threw myself into bed right away, but honestly, don’t really remember.

I’ve always wished one of us had had a camera that night. For the slapping, the crying and for them all standing on the bridge, laughing fit to burst, and for the ghostly white figure of a drunken man dipping himself in the Water of Leith on New Year’s morning of 1974. I have the images burned into my brain though, they’ll do.

We didn’t stay there for very long. Six months I think we managed? It was way too expensive for us really, despite the size of the place. We were gone before the spring so I never did see if my bulbs came up… with luck they carpet the place, almost fifty years later, although someone will have dug the place over since, probably.

J’s reputation as a go-go dancer followed him for many years, and he has 'obliged' at odd intervals, although kept his kecks on, mostly, thank goodness. There is film, somewhere, to be released one of these days, perhaps for money. Alcohol was always involved, of course, so probably won’t happen again any time soon because those kind of events are pretty few and far between at our age, but never say never. He’s never been shy, so alcohol actually needn’t be a requisite, to be fair. I sometimes think that he and Billy Connolly are related, because BC is always getting his kit off for a prance in the snow or around Stone Henge or something. Oh, just remembered one J did in Spain… haha, but that’s another story.