Ole Johnny

The lad’s been in town a few days working away at his flat and we’d not seen each other for a few years. It was in first year at High School that he arrived down from the wilds of Aberdeenshire with his two younger brothers. His Dad was a tenant farmer up there and moved down as he’d got the job as farm manager at Goodtrees above Balerno. And we hit it off - him, the wild long haired lad from the country and me the suburban slacker. As the years went in we bonded over music up in his bedroom overlooking the fields – he was into Joni Mitchell, the String Band, and all that great hippy and post-hippy stuff. Mushroom gathering days. And we stayed pretty close through his motorcycling years – he’d come and stay with me up at StA, we’d camp out the west coast, and later I’d visit him as he became an agricultural advisor and family man down in Yorkshire. No motorbikes then, but mountain biking, sea kayaking and ice-rock climbing. Nutcase. He even climbed the Old Man of Stoer I recall. 

Well, we’re both still here, grandaddies now, seventy up next year, a pair of old fucks as he did say as we chatted over our coffees; and we hit it off just like it was yesterday. 
 
Later, to see 28 years later, the new Danny Boyle movie. Ha, it’s very entertaining. Part II and III will be along shortly.