First comment

Inspired by Michèle and her Thanks! post, I'm about to tell the world about David Bowie, the first person to ever comment on my wee blog.

David and I were what people used to call a pigeon pair, only twenty months apart. Yes, dear reader, I am younger.

Mum was very hard up back in those days and had no choice but to clothe David in our elder sister's cast-offs. Not such a problem when he was a new born baby, even a year old, but by his tenth birthday, people started name calling. Zsa Zsa was a favourite, thanks, in no small part to his unusual East European accent. David was born in Hungary when Mum mistakenly ended up there when thirsty during a holiday to Russia. She got the works for hungry and thirsty mixed up, then the whole thing snowballed. "I remember thinking," she said, "that one didn't need a passport to find a supermarket in London."

Of course, worse was to come. Not only did David have to wear the girly wear, but I did, too. Of course, I'm more butch than David and objected strongly. Sadly, going to school in the nude was not an option, especially in the depths of a dark Aberdonian Winter.

David and I would look forward to the Summer months, swimming in the river in the only clothing we felt comfortable in, a couple of nurse's uniforms given to us by our sister once she'd given up a medical career (she said her fingers always stank). Boys would taunt us, but David was always there to protect me. Those boys never taunted us again once David had enacted revenge on them by shoving a thermometer up their arse holes.

David ballooned in his teenage years. Our Physical Education master had been giving David a lot of chocolate in exchange for private gymnastic shows. Mum never got to the bottom of what went on, but I certainly got to the bottom. You see, David not only had a lot of chocolate around his mouth, but also all about his botty cheeks. I, sadly, remained painfully thin with only buttons and toilet paper to eat.

David left school a year before me and immediately took a job, if, for no other reason, than to buy male clothing. He started working, the first week of May, 1987, I think it was, for Unigate Dairies, delivering milk at the crack of dawn. David loved his job and often spoke of his love of cream, especially at the crack. Curiously, though, although no bicycle ever played any part in his work, he was insistant upon taking a bicycle pump to work with him every day. One morning, while heading out for my paper round, I saw him coming up the road in his milk float with one of the other milkmen. The other guy was called Loose Cannon. His real name was Henry. I thought he'd got this nick name because his mouth was like a loose cannon. Sadly, it turned out to be his bottom, which, at this point, he'd poked out of the passenger window of the milk float and subsequently began spraying cream all along the street. David then told me the real reason for his taking the bicycle pump to work every day and how Henry got his nick name. You see, dear reader, cream wasn't his forté. No. His party piece involved golf balls.

It wasn't long before David got me a job on the milk floats. The money came in thick and fast. Mum didn't have to play games any more to make ends meet. I never knew if she was actually skipping, playing hop-scotch or hide and seek with those blokes. It must have been a lot of fun, but I suppose she was getting on a bit to be doing such things. I remember her telling our next-door-neighbour that now David and I were bringing in the money she could come off the game.

David gave up working on the milk floats once the cream scandal had become known to the management and he went to work in a jack-in-the-box factory. I don't actually know where he worked or for whom, having never gone there, but I do remember him saying how he loved putting Jack in his box and all the cash he was getting for it.

My days on the milk float were numbered once Mum became pregnant again. Some pregnant ladies become obsessed with pickled beetroot, some with jam, some, even, with coal. Mum's obsession was with cream. David told her if she'd made Henry put the cream in her mouth instead of somewhere else, she'd not be in the position she was in today. I couldn't keep up with Mum's demands and with David unwilling to get me a job in his line of work, I had to leave home, sell everything I owned to the rag and bone man and go and live in a plastic bag in Jenners.

Still, if it weren't for all the moral support I'd received from David over the years, everything he taught me, all his kindnesses and love, I'd have probably ended up in a paper bag. And they're no good when it's raining, now, are they, dear reader?

David now lives in a little Château on the South of France, though he calls it a cottage. He always says how he's right at home in a cottage.

In celebration of David's on-going fabulousness, I hereby offer Hallo Spaceboy by another David Bowie and almost as famous as my dear brother. But be quick, dear reader. One hundred downloads or seven days, whichever comes soonest, and it's a goner. Go on. You know you want to. It is the Pet Shop Boys version, after all.