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somewhere. But it doesn’t make any difference; he made them special and they were all special to me. They still are.
    I think that the trip was a new beginning for my mum and dad. Once they got over the seasickness they both tried really hard to make things better. They never belted each other around on the ship as far as I could see, so that was good. Dad didn’t go missing like he always used to. I guess he could only go so far. I think I saw them kissing a few times too – very romantic. There is nothing like a romantic sea cruise to fix a relationship . . . but this was nothing like a romantic sea cruise.
    The food wasn’t great but coming from our background any food was fine. Scotland in those days wasn’t known for its culinary delights; we ate mince and totties (boiled potatoes) orchips. There were so many people on board and they all wanted to be fed at once, so it got very busy in the dining rooms. I seem to remember one or two sittings for breakfast, lunch and dinner and at first not really knowing what to do or when to go, but we worked it out. After that we tried to be first in line, ready to eat every meal they offered us. There was no shortage of anything, it just wasn’t good. But we were happy to be eating and we were kids; we’d eat anything really. Most things they served on board were exotic to us. Pasta was exotic, fresh fruit was exotic. Anything that wasn’t made of mince or potatoes might as well have been roast wildebeest; it was all gnu – sorry, new – to us.
    We ran everywhere we could around the ship. Some places were off limits and obviously they were the places we wanted to go the most – to see the engines and inside the life rafts. We wanted to go anywhere that was dangerous, I guess. But the crew always seemed to be right there every time we turned a corner and we could get away with very little.
    The first stop I remember was at a little place run by the British, a port called Aden, in Yemen. We eagerly lined up and went ashore. We would have gone anywhere to get off the ship for a while. Not only that, but it also looked exotic and different from any place we had ever seen. The first thing we noticed was that it was hot. Glasgow didn’t get this hot unless it was burning down. Aden is also said to be as old as history itself and the way it smelled confirmed that for my parents. They moaned and complained their way around the port, looking for mince and totties or at least a pub. But they never found either.
    Later on, when we returned to the ship, Dad had bought these beautiful stuffed camels with mirrors on them to take to our new home. I remember a fight breaking out between Dad and a couple of the ship’s crew after they refused to let us bring the camels back on board. There is an old Scottish proverb I believe: Never get in the way of a drunken Scotsman and his camels .Dad wanted to kill them, until one guy insisted on cutting one of the camels open. A couple of guys held Dad back and a couple held Mum back, which was a good thing because by this point she wanted to belt Dad, so he was very lucky. The camels were stuffed with used blood- and pus-covered bandages.
    Dad was shouting, ‘When I get ma hands on that salesman, he’ll need they fucking bandages.’
    Mum, in the meantime, wanted to kill Dad even more when she saw this. ‘You wanted tae put them on my fucking mantelpiece, ya eejit?’ The romance was back on good old Glasgow terms: sex and violence. ‘If you don’t fuck off oot ma sight, I’m gonnae kill ye.’ These were courting words where we came from.
    My folks weren’t the only ones wrestling with the customs guys. Everyone bought the same things. That’s a lot of bandages and a lot of camels left without humps. You would think that the crew could have warned us before we left the ship. Dad was sure they were getting a cut – bad choice of words – from the crooked