As the Pope and his entourage make their way over to visit us here in Scotlands Capital city and the preparations get to fever pitch I wonder if I’m the only one in the world who can state honestly The Pope knocked me out. He did.
In 198? I was a student a Napier and lived in a flat in Barclay Place up Tollcross way on the third floor. The back window looked out onto the meadows and I lived intermittently between Chaplins (no longer) and The Golf Tavern drinking snakebites, well ’til my grant ran out anyway.
I shared a flat with 3 guys and one of them spent his days and nights sitting stuffing great bowls of cereal into his face in front of the telly as I tended to my axolotl aka a black Mexican marsh newt called Toby who only had 3 legs due to losing one in a fire before I adopted him, anyway I digress. On this particular day I was chasing George, the cereal eater through the flat with a shoe as he had confessed to feeding my goldfish to Toby, the axolotl. Murderer! I shrieked at him. Naturally he could move faster than me (the axolotl could move faster than me) so he escaped quickly to the far end of the kitchen. As I lunged at him he grabbed the shoe from my outstretched hand and flung it out of the 3rd floor window onto the meadows 40 feet below. Bloody furious I poked my head out but couldn’t see it anywhere then as I craned my neck one way, then George screamed.’Holy shit ! it’s the pope ‘
Yeh right I snapped pulling my head back up at speed and knocking myself out on the window in the process apparently the window wasn’t open as wide as I thought it was.
Anyway I came round in time to see all 3 boys with their heads out the window as I scrabbled up onto my feet in time to see The Pontiff being ushered off to visit The Head of The Church of Scotland who apparently lived just across the Meadows. So there we are. The Pope knocked me out. Told you.
Moral of the story. Don’t share flats with boys. Or Mexican Marsh newts.
