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Authors: Jimmy Barnes
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salesmen. They were all foreigners and couldnât be trusted. I mean, we had known so many Scottish people we could trust in our lives, hadnât we? Iâm sure there were a couple of blokes on the ship saying to themselves, âWeâve got a load of bandages in Glasgow, there must be some way I can start a wee business like this at home. Now where do we find camels?â
Next stop was Bombay in India. Now, no one told my dad that cows â or coos as they are known in Scotland â were sacred in India and were not to be touched. Our coos never walked around the town; well, not the ones with four legs anyway.
âWhat do coos do in toon anyway? Are they meetinâ up wiâ other coos and goinâ oot tae catch a picture or somethinâ?â Dad said.
Apparently they could go wherever they wanted to in India, which was nice for them but a shock for some of the tourists. It wasnât long until a rather large coo walked in front of my mum.
Dad, who had not had the chance to fight anyone or anything in days, leaped to her defence. Poor coo didnât know what was going on. Iâm talking about my mum here. She wasnât used to Dad leaping to her defence for anything. He wasnât a leaper really. Dad had seen red and was swinging at the beast like some kind of drunken Celtic toreador. I think he was winning when the locals broke them up. He had the coo on the ropes, giving it a terrible beating. The locals, it seemed, didnât like people having fist fights with their cows at all and soon enough we were rushed back to the ship, before Dad was locked up in a Bombay jail. Someone had to save those poor incarcerated Indian criminals from my dad. He would surely have started trouble in there. I think Mum might have been a bit taken by Dadâs acts of chivalry so the sea cruise romance looked like it was on again. So it was on with the journey to strange new lands and strange new people or animals to punch in the name of love.
Somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean I was up on deck when I noticed something coming out of the water. It started out as just a flash of light in the corner of my eye. Then I saw one or two fish jumping. Soon there were huge schools of flying fish leaping up into the air, flying just above the waves, like they were trying to escape a predator. Maybe they just liked to fly, who knows, but they looked great to a kid from Glasgow seeing the world for the first time. The sun would hit their scales and flash back at me like something magic out in the water. Iâd never seen anything like it and I started going up to look for them every chance I got.
The flashing, flying fish were soon joined by schools of dolphins surfing on the white waves the ship was making as it cut through the dark blue waters of the ocean. They would swim alongside the ship for hours and I got the impression that theywere trying to entertain us as much as they were entertaining themselves. It looked like they were showing off in front of me, riding high on the waves then diving off to the side and circling back around, before darting up at high speed alongside us again, ready for another ride. They were taking turns, one after another, just like the surfers I saw much later at the beaches in Australia. Some nights when we were up on deck I was sure I could see them night surfing next to the ship but that could have been my imagination.
The ocean seemed to pull me in and I would sit and look out to sea for hours. I liked the feeling I got when I was on deck at night, looking out into the pitch-black nothingness that seemed to go on forever. I would sit, not thinking about anything. There was nothing out there. No light, no land, not another soul; it was endless and frightening like a dream but for some strange reason I liked it. I still do; I just seem to get lost.
Even as a child there was something about staring into nothing that appealed to me. We lived in very small houses.
Next stop was Bombay in India. Now, no one told my dad that cows â or coos as they are known in Scotland â were sacred in India and were not to be touched. Our coos never walked around the town; well, not the ones with four legs anyway.
âWhat do coos do in toon anyway? Are they meetinâ up wiâ other coos and goinâ oot tae catch a picture or somethinâ?â Dad said.
Apparently they could go wherever they wanted to in India, which was nice for them but a shock for some of the tourists. It wasnât long until a rather large coo walked in front of my mum.
Dad, who had not had the chance to fight anyone or anything in days, leaped to her defence. Poor coo didnât know what was going on. Iâm talking about my mum here. She wasnât used to Dad leaping to her defence for anything. He wasnât a leaper really. Dad had seen red and was swinging at the beast like some kind of drunken Celtic toreador. I think he was winning when the locals broke them up. He had the coo on the ropes, giving it a terrible beating. The locals, it seemed, didnât like people having fist fights with their cows at all and soon enough we were rushed back to the ship, before Dad was locked up in a Bombay jail. Someone had to save those poor incarcerated Indian criminals from my dad. He would surely have started trouble in there. I think Mum might have been a bit taken by Dadâs acts of chivalry so the sea cruise romance looked like it was on again. So it was on with the journey to strange new lands and strange new people or animals to punch in the name of love.
Somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean I was up on deck when I noticed something coming out of the water. It started out as just a flash of light in the corner of my eye. Then I saw one or two fish jumping. Soon there were huge schools of flying fish leaping up into the air, flying just above the waves, like they were trying to escape a predator. Maybe they just liked to fly, who knows, but they looked great to a kid from Glasgow seeing the world for the first time. The sun would hit their scales and flash back at me like something magic out in the water. Iâd never seen anything like it and I started going up to look for them every chance I got.
The flashing, flying fish were soon joined by schools of dolphins surfing on the white waves the ship was making as it cut through the dark blue waters of the ocean. They would swim alongside the ship for hours and I got the impression that theywere trying to entertain us as much as they were entertaining themselves. It looked like they were showing off in front of me, riding high on the waves then diving off to the side and circling back around, before darting up at high speed alongside us again, ready for another ride. They were taking turns, one after another, just like the surfers I saw much later at the beaches in Australia. Some nights when we were up on deck I was sure I could see them night surfing next to the ship but that could have been my imagination.
The ocean seemed to pull me in and I would sit and look out to sea for hours. I liked the feeling I got when I was on deck at night, looking out into the pitch-black nothingness that seemed to go on forever. I would sit, not thinking about anything. There was nothing out there. No light, no land, not another soul; it was endless and frightening like a dream but for some strange reason I liked it. I still do; I just seem to get lost.
Even as a child there was something about staring into nothing that appealed to me. We lived in very small houses.
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