PARAPLEXED

Dad didn't keep a tidy workshop. Every once in a while, he'd decide to impose some order on the chaos, and move things around. But it was a lost cause - there was just too much stuff. But what stuff it was: footballs, rugby balls (of course), cricket balls, softballs, baseballs, basketballs, bowling balls, roller skates, ice skates, rugby boots, running spikes, fishing rods, fishing knives, waders, nets, gaffes, starting pistols, antique guns, box cameras, brass lenses, telescopes, a truncheon, hamsters' cages, books on first aid, physical training, self-defence and even silent killing, stacks of old magazines, Practical Mechanics, Readers' Digest, Men Only*, Trout & Salmon, demijohns, jotters, drawing books, pencils, broken clocks and watches, dowelling, wood, hardboard, beaverboard, perforated zinc, drills, hammers, chisels, saws, a lathe, a treadle fretsaw, tins of paint, solidified paintbrushes, glue, paste, turpentine, methylated spirits, broken things of every...

A vast throng in Stufital was treated on Friday afternoon to a live musical extravaganza performed, separately and together, by Paraglider and Mr G, and even, briefly, by Staffer-D who fielded a telephone call between verses 2 and 3 without losing a beat. Never before in the history of musical entertainment has so much been achieved by so few with a single microphone. In fact, Friday's microphones singularly outnumbered the available mic cables by some 500%. Though this had not been planned, it resulted in some spectacular ducking and weaving to deliver the short alternate lines of that timeless classic, Itchycoo Park. Almost equally impressive was the scene of dereliction left behind them by the Birthday Girl and her party. Who would have guessed a bag of mixed nuts could spread so far! Fortunately, seven maids were on hand, if not seven mops.

I'm sitting on Dad's shoulders. There's nobody else in the house and we've just listened to "Sailing up the Clyde" on the wind-up gramophone in the sitting room. We're now walking up and down the corridor, Dad giving his own rendering of the Will Fyfe classic in his idiosyncratic light baritone, and pausing after 'bide' to explain what it means. Mum and Dad had a relationship with Scots that was typical of the social class and period. They spoke standard English with mild local accents and a few Scots words thrown in. If this was a form of gentrification, it was still very much the norm for schoolteachers at the time. I remember wondering why Mum's people, especially Aunts Polly and Aggie, spoke so broadly, and why it was OK for them, but not for us. But I never asked. On the other hand, posh was wrong too, when friends sent their kids to private school in Edinburgh and they came back with 'English' accents. It seemed nobody spoke prope...

Back in the 50s, nobody ever saw out of the pantry window, partly because it was small and high, but mostly because it was behind the perforated zinc fly-screen that gave bug-free ventillation to the old slate meat-shelf below. When Dad took the slate shelf away, it went up to the attic for a while, for no good reason, then, for no better reason, into the garden to lean for evermore against the granite wall, just by the bee-y plant. When the ball went into the Wilsons' (formerly Robertsons') garden, the slate gave a foothold for climbing onto the wall but, because of the much greater drop, you had to dreep doon on the other side, like wee malkies. So, there was no easy way back. If Kim (the fawn dog) came out, you abandoned the ball and sprinted flat out down the garden. There, there was a heap of stones piled high enough against the back wall to let you climb to the relative safety of a precarious walk home on the loose coping, with a yapping hound on the left and an eight foo...

The kitchen wasn't big enough to swing a cat in. There was always one available, but Fitzy Puss McClure was quite a serious chap and not really the swingable type. Outside, and not welcome in the garden, were Theblackcat and Thegreycat. Mum kept a stoneware jar of ham-skins (bacon rinds) on the kitchen dresser and, for a dangled sample, Fitzy could be induced to dance on his hind legs. This, and grass, formed his staple diet, though once he varied it by stealing a mouthful of my red caps. Red caps were round-like-a-wheel not round-like-a-ball and blue caps came in a roll. So the blue ones were better for the cap gun and the red ones better in the wee rockets that you threw into the air, to go bang on landing. Mine was the yellow one. The window in the photo is a latter-day replacement of the original sash, and one of only two that were ever replaced. (The other was the Living Room). Under the window was a double porcelain sink. The one on the right was usually covered with a board,...

There were seven stairs down from the hall to the Wee Landing and twelve more down from the wee landing to the glass door. This is the wee landing window as seen from the second top step of the flight of seven. (We might as well be accurate here). It was a big window, but not as big as the one halfway down the main flight. Both stair windows were uncurtained but were of rippled glass, reducing the outside world to tonal blocks. (Are you listening, Ewan?) In later years, the wee landing window shelf, like most of the internal woodwork, was painted white, but back in the 50s, dark brown lacquer was the order of the day. And before Grandpa's crystal vase took pride of place, we used to grow plants on the shelf - cacti, geraniums and patience, mainly. I helped them on their way by feeding them plantoids at every opportunity, from a faded green cardboard box. Plantoids, though they look like mixed oddfellows, should not be eaten, but should be administered to favoured houseplants at the...

If you've ever looked backwards in a cinema you'll have seen a small window close to the projector. This is so the projectionist can check the image quality and focus, and generally keep an eye on proceedings below in the auditorium. Once, between contracts, Paraglider found himself looking after a 3D Projection Theatre in Saudi, for Aramco, and was surprised to find a wooden slatted venetian blind fitted to the viewing window. It seemed to have no purpose. Until Ladies' Day in the Theatre. Then he had to run all quality checks before the audience was admitted and, throughout the show, the blind was to be firmly closed. This, merely to ensure that the ladies could enjoy the performance without being seen by any man. Now that's paranormal!

Two down, ten to go (that's how many windows I photographed) and I've decided to get the spare room over and done with. Looking at all twelve pictures, it's the only one that gives me no pleasant feelings. It's strange how, so many years later, I've suddenly happened on something that I must always have felt, but didn't really know till now: I never liked the spare room at all. The dressing table all but filled the window, and such light as could squeeze through somehow made you look a bit sick in the mirror. Or maybe it just wasn't a nice mirror. The dressing table drawers were for holding tea-towels, Mum's bible and the hymn book. These (not the towels) were taken to church every second Sunday except when we didn't go. Dad never went to church and had a long lie every Sunday. I didn't like church except the bit where Mr Telfer would announce "the Children's Hymn during which the little children will leave". Then Miss Somerville wo...

Dad's black Anglia, HAG 390, had a choke and a starter, two cream coloured pull-knobs in the middle of the dashboard. A little below were two smaller cream coloured knobs. These could only be the wee choke and the wee starter, because that's what they looked like. Some would argue that they were the heater controls, but it's appearance that matters. It was the same in the house. Along the corridor from the Big Bunker was, the Wee Bunker. So what if it was really a small front opening window-cupboard and strictly not-a-bunker-at-all? The laws of how things are must prevail. A Big Bunker requires a Wee Bunker. That's how it goes. One of the great things about the Wee Bunker was the smell when you opened the door. This was where we kept the soap, the paraffin, the shoe brushes and polishes (kiwi-black or kiwi-brown) and the firelighters. We kept matches there too, to tempt providence. The peg-basket didn't smell of much. Old grey wooden pegs, new yellow ones and broken...

The big bunker window looked straight across the yard at its counterpart in MissMcMinn's house. There were actually two MissMcMinns. Their names were NiceMissMcMinn and TheOtherMissMcMinn. NiceMissMcMinn had a dog called Frisky that looked huge when it barked over the wall at us but assumed normal terrier proportions when on a lead in the street. I still don't understand how it did that. NiceMissMcMinn had a reddish-brown coat and a beret and had walked Frisky to the shops every day for a hundred years. TheOtherMissMcMinn wore a blue dress. Always. The big bunker was where we kept coal and sometimes logs. There were two coal pails and frequent debates about whether they were really coal buckets. The distinction was lost on me. But I knew all about coal and what it was really for. Burning it was a waste. Far better was to go to Roddy's house and make gramophone records out of coal dust and water. I'm sure they'd have sounded just great if we'd been allowed to ta...

I've decided to come clean. I have too many outlets on the web and it's becoming impossible to service them all properly. So, here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to kill off Paraplexed because it doesn't really have a purpose in life. I apologise to anyone (*I think there's only one!) who has linked to it. By way of compensation, I'm providing an RSS portal here, on Paranormal, to my Real Life Blog (see side panel). Till now, I've kept the two strictly separate, but it's not really working. So, welcome to the rest of me! Also, I've been writing a fair bit on Hubpages recently. If you haven't come across it, it's a community site with quite a few good writers. But it's more geared towards articles, not blogging. It also makes me a leeetle pocket money on the side. Not enough for a pension, unfortunately. So I'll be here in the Middle East for some time to come. Here endeth the housekeeping...

- that John bought. It was built in 1894. John, my grandfather, must have been built a little earlier, but family history was never my forte. By the time I arrived on the scene, all four grandparents had coiled their mortal slips, the house had been flatted and the downstairs (we never called it the ground floor) sold to Mrs Gordon who ran it as a B&B guest house. Mrs Gordon merits a paragraph. She was born old, with grey hair tied in a bun. She kept two huge carved wooden pipes on the mantlepiece. Sometimes she would chop wood with a hand-axe. She didn't like us climbing the fence, looking for red ants in her rockery, running on the stairs, shouting, or breaking her window even by accident. I liked her. Though I never knew old John McClure, the house was full of his presence through what he left behind - walking sticks, plate cameras, brass lenses, a set of bowling balls, ivory chess and draughts sets, silver cigar boxes, a strange pewter coffee pot that you could do tricks wi...

It was as if a year had not passed. The floor is still Paranormal pink. The dartboard, mercifully, shows no signs of having been opened. The corner behind the propped-open door (yes, it was the afternoon) was freezing. Such changes as were perceptible were of degree, not of substance. The bar staff are more mixed, with Ethiopia challenging Romania. Bammy has moved 11 degrees clockwise round the (Scottish) table, enough, perhaps to signify creeping insecurity of tenure? Angie has changed the tailored jacket look for something less formal, but the chin is strong as ever. And Helga? She's not grown an inch - upwards...

Ani's yellow chiffon descended on his head and, for once, Dindsay was silenced. Even dumbstruck. For all too brief an interval, an other-worldly calm permeated Stufital's Old Manger. Diners sat motionless, their steak-laden forks frozen in mid-air like so many bullrushes in a frosted millpond. Coral, realising her song could suddenly be heard, dropped to a velvet pianissimo. Mr Bab stopped swearing and even the AC seemed to draw breath. Such moments are short-lived. Dindsay found his tongue and the mock-doric noise generator licked back into life, with the grace of a rusty pulley. Normality, sadly, was restored.