a reason to believe

I see these murals almost every day. I even watched as the artist, in his cherry picker, conjured these sportspeople from the sandstone. His imaginative muscles as strong and practised as the sportspeople he painted.

I'm not particularly sporty now. I try the odd jog, have a kick about, walk up a hill but that's about it. When I was a wee yin it was different. I was a decent footballer, a good badminton player and an excellent swimmer.

I swam for Port Glasgow and Inverclyde. On holidays at Butlins or Holimarine (the best holidays ever !!) I remember races where I was put into more and more races beyond my age. At 9 I was racing against 16 year olds and winning. I was good. But sporting prowess gave way to an over-active imagination.

I used to train for my swimming on week nights. There was a guy in my class at Clune Park Primary who tempted me away from the rigours of technique, speed and endurance. He knew the dark magic words of this spell and those words were STAR WARS.

Like most wee guys I was utterly slack jawed and in awe - properly in awe - of the galaxy far far away. I wanted it so badly. Well, this guy in my class offered me it. He said that he had

1. A remote control X-wing fighter that actually fired laser beams
2. A Princess Leia doll "with milk coming oot her tits!"

Man, I wanted to believe, even if I didn't quite know what the Princess Leia thing was about. So I went to his house as often as I could, gave him any sweets that I had, or bought him things that he wanted. Anytime I enquired whether I could taste the delights of these Star Wars treasures it always turned out that his big cousin had them and that he'd be giving them back tomorrow.

Well, one summer night when I should have been doing fifty lengths front-stroke, breast-stroke, butterfly and back-stroke my folks turned up outside his house looking for me. I should have been back home and ready for training. I wasn't, I was hanging onto his beguiling words because I wanted to believe so badly. I got a skelp on the legs, but really my Mum and Dad recognised that my heart wasn't in my swimming any more.

So, my imagination muscles grew as my swimming muscles softened. I eventually realised that only in the most perfect of paradises is there a lactating Princess Leia doll. But it was done. My move from the physical to the ephemeral had started and would continue.