Twinned with Trumpton....the story.

Aged 7 my parents moved to rural West Perthshire from a really rather grand house towards the top end of Helensburgh. From manicured to manured at a stroke. Farm life and village life suddenly replaced quiet suburbia. 

I loved it. It was the best thing to ever happen to me. Smaller ponds irrespective of the fish size suited me. And so many changes. I went from being 1 in a year group of 40 odd to 1 in 4. 3 classes with the one teacher. Separate boys and girls play grounds. So much to take in.

High school followed and college too but I ended up back in the sleepy village, working first for the old man but eventually on a farm across the fields growing Christmas trees.
I had a wide range of friends..the pool team in Blackford, the Braco Branch of the SAFCSC, the Allanbank pool team, the Port posse, and all the John / Paul / Gav lot. 

But one winters night in 1991 after leaving the local pub on a Friday night, we got wind of a house party in the village. Some of the kids who hung about outside the pub mentioned as we left so we figured we'd go have a look.

It was largely sixth formers from the local public school but I knew the older brother of the girl whose party it was so despite an initial reluctance to let us in, a couple of us sneaked inside.

I met two people that night who would leave an indelible mark on me. Steph and Iain. Steph and I went on to date for a couple of years, and for a while we were really close. Until she finally accepted I was never going to be able to provide for her in a manner shed like to have become accustomed to. And Iain. 

I'd missed him at school, his family had moved to Braco from Ayrshire after I'd left high school and so unlike pretty much everyone else who went through the village school and then the high school and generally everyone knew everyone. 

But we got talking and that was pretty much that. Over many years we went to Glastonbury,  mad weekends in Preston, numerous adventures as part of a wider Port of Menteith but most notably as Twilight Discos. 

Iain was a wannabe entrepreneur. At 14 he'd started a lawn mowing / gardening business in the village. And then sold it to his younger brother. Or gave him a 50% share and let him do all the work. Property developing too. But Twilight Discos... his business but I'd chum him for kicks. I'd roadie and DJ, he'd charm the ladies. Many a weekend in Crieff or Montrose or Blairgowrie. Trying to sneak in the most outrageous track you could get away with and not kill the vibe. 3am chats as we drove back from far flung corners of Scotland playing crazy mix tapes and talking even crazier nonsense. There was drink, there was drugs but not obsessively,  just what everyone else was doing at the time.

As our travels extended, we came to realise that the village we'd grown up in was the safest most sterile and boring village ever..which was great. It gave us the framework to then explore everywhere else in relative immunity. So one drunken evening we as part of a larger group were chatting and we hit on the idea that Braco was the model village. A shop, a school, no crime, nicely manicured gardens , the stereotype gossip, doctor, postman...just like Trumpton. We lived in Trumpton!
We should be twinned with Trumpton. So that's what I did. Some months later after a footballing trip to Arbroath, I got my 2 footballing sidekicks to drive and do lookout duties whilst i took a stencil and spray paint and...well...see the extra. 

Iain got credited with it but even though he didnt actually do it, it wouldn't have happened without him.

There was Bobfest, a rave a load of us organised,  famous for being so loud that the ministers sermon at Sunday service 4 miles away was punctuated by 4 to the floor Detroit techno beats some 15 hours into proceedings. Road trips to Carradale with a band called Duncan's Last Resort ( who deserve a chapter all of their own), mixing and creating our own hybrid sounds, barbeques at Balquhidder, the time we set up an entire band in my parents dining room whilst they were on holiday in the States and played a full 3 hour set and countless all nights here there and everywhere.  

Some guy, so he was. We sparked off each other. There was a creative flow between us allied to stubborn determination and an array of unlikely talents.

Mum called this evening to say he'd died on Monday. 47. Fuck.