This story is semi-autobiographical. The events are based on real events. The characters based on real people. The names and places have been altered and changed to protect the anonymity. If you are reading this you will know who you are.
Which section it should appear in I have no idea and apologise if this is in the wrong place. It is a series in 14 episodes dedicated to the best of friends now no longer with us who posthumously gave me the idea to write it.
INTRODUCTION
It was the summer of 1969 and while the rest of the world was enjoying the "summer of Love" for me it was the start of the school holidays and a typical 1960's Scottish family holiday to the Red Lion caravan site in the East coast seaside resort of Arbroath -- not something I was particularly looking forward to.
Allow me to introduce myself, Raymond Cherrie, then aged 14, from Edinburgh , Scotland. I had started a growth spurt earlier that year and now stood at 5ft 5 , slim with short cut brown hair and green eyes. Sports were all I lived for. As a footballer I was on the fringes of the County squad for players a year older than myself and had enjoyed success both in swimming and athletics, so it would be fair to say I was pretty fit. Away from sports I was the average Scottish teenager of the time, hanging around in the local gang, listening to music and getting into probably more than my fair share of trouble both in an out of school
My growth spurt naturally coincided with an increasing interest in things sexual. From the day I arrived at secondary school aged 12-1/2 and saw one of my classmates in the communal showers after games with a liberal sprinkling of pubic hairs, "baw-hairs" as we called them in Scotland, I was fascinated by all things in that area of the body. My own first baw-hair appeared to my delight shortly after my 13th birthday, so by this summer I had a decent size bush though still with no signs of any developing elsewhere. I had discovered the pleasures of playing with myself early on and despite sharing a room with my brother Ken who was 11, was active in this respect every day.
I had experienced a fairly typical strict Scottish Presbyterian upbringing. My dad worked as an engineer at a local factory and my mum served in a local shop. We weren't well off but never went short. We weren't what you would call close, didn't talk a lot, and by modern standards I enjoyed a huge amount of freedom . It must be hell nowadays for teenagers with contact through mobiles being almost like tagging. Once I was out the house that was it until I came back, We had neither car nor telephone like most others I knew.
Discipline was part and parcel of daily life both in school where the tawse or "lash" ,as we called it, was liberally used for even the most minor of offences by some teachers. It had been used now and again in Primary School but now in my second year at High School virtually every lesson saw the tawse make an appearance and that had been the case since we moved to secondary school. For me the feel of leather on hand on at least one occasion was almost a daily occurrence -- on a bad day it would be three or four times - - not that I was that bad but I couldn't shut up and always wanted the final word.
School punishments were never reported home and parenst almost never sent for so what happened in school stayed there. I felt the weight of my dad's leather belt every so often usually for swearing or fighting with Ken , or when he got to hear of run-ins with neighbours and the local bobbies for such heinous crimes as breaking windows with footballs , using empty buildings as target practice, smoking and one count of shoplifting which led to a heavily applied twenty strokes. But that was where it usually ended , no long lectures, no grounding or any of the current practices which would strike me as much more abusive than the application of his belt over my pyjama bottomed backside.
Back to the holiday , it's amazing how something you looked forward to for months as a 12 year old suddenly became a dreaded prospect at fourteen. I mean what the fuck was there to do. A walk to the cliffs, a day at the boating pond, a game of pitch and put . Your mates were all somewhere else, hanging around with your younger brother and sister was certainly uncool and sharing a small caravan with four others very restrictive if you get my drift.
The bus came on time we boarded and off we went - little was I to know what an impact this summer was to have on my future