SCENE from mid-teens: My brother and I are out on our motorbikes in the sun, buzzing along a stretch of back road near his pal’s farm. I am in tailgate position on my 125cc machine. He is in front on a 50cc sports moped, the largest machine he is allowed at age 16. The arrangement is ideal.
I won’t accidentally storm ahead and make him feel bad and he won’t feel he has to challenge me with a foolhardy attempt to overtake which, even if he did manage to pull off, would result in my blasting past him at the first opportunity.
This scenario typified our rules of engagement from the early years until it didn’t matter any more. It was a friendly relationship, only occasionally and temporarily breaking down.
There was, for example, The Time I Brought Shame On The Family. This happened long before the motorbike era. Having been deemed to have shown enough potential at the age of 11 to warrant being sent to a six-year school in Lanark, I was bussed to school every day and arrived back later than my younger sibling.
One day he was blazing when I got in, almost incoherent in his anger and frustration. My mother tried to get him to tell her what was wrong but at first he would go no further than to point angrily at me and seethe: “It’s him! He brings shame on this family!” Eventually, we got it out of him and I reconstructed the scene in my head. Jack Johnson was a sad-clown faced boy who had been in my year at primary but who had gone to the local junior secondary. At the time he was trying and failing to be a hardman, as he would later fail at being a hippy.
My brother met Johnson as they passed one another on the way home. Dialogue was sparse and consisted solely of Johnson, his voice doubtless still as adenoidal as it had been at primary, saying: “Nyoor big bruhhur’s na huckin’ swot!” This he accompanied with a push.
The gibe was pretty sub-Wildean even for Jack Johnson who could usually muster “Professor Know-all” when he passed me in the street.
So the reason I brought shame on the family was that I had a modicum of intelligence. My brother had too, and was in fact second top in his year group.
Jack Johnson was an eejit who spent a substantial part of his teens up a tree. Unlike the one or two primary teachers who made aloud pointless comparisons between brothers, he couldn’t really be expected to know any better.
Gregor Steele had (of course) an East European motorbike.
