Tales From The Riverbank

This was supposed to be the week the venting officially started. Instead, I was hit with a sudden, heavy wave of negativity. It arrived right as the stomach cramps from yesterday began to subside - a dark cloud that descended out of the blue. There is no logic to it; you just have to sit in it and wait for the weather to change.

It makes writing these Dispatches feel like wading through treacle. But, in the spirit of the project, I’ll take this moment of “cloud” to exhume another story from the archives: the night I fell into the River Ericht.

The Lambretta Plunge

The Ericht runs through Blairgowrie, my hometown. I would have been around 13 at the time. One night, a group of us found an abandoned Lambretta-style moped at the side of the road. We spent ages trying to bump-start it, pushing each other up and down the road. When it became clear it was a dead loss, the group decided to heave it into the river.

The problem was, at the exact moment of the shove, I was still sitting on it.

I plunged into the icy water, moped and all. As a strong swimmer, I wasn’t in danger; I swam to the bank and was hauled out by a friend. The real danger started on the cycle home. Soaking wet and freezing, I was spotted by my mother driving past.

The Berry Picker Scapegoat

As I’ve noted, my mother was a tyrant. My father would have laughed it off, but with her, honesty was never an option. We panicked and concocted a story: I had been pushed in by a “berry picker.” In Blair, the seasonal workers who lived in shanty towns on the local farms were the universal scapegoats for any local mischief.

The lie backfired spectacularly. My mother called the police.

Instead of a local constable having a quiet word, the retiring Superintendent decided this was the “big case” he would solve before he retired. He decided to called in the CID from Dundee. For several days, the police scoured the berry camps, looking for a non-existent assailant and questioning “witnesses”.

The Collapse of the Narrative

Eventually, the holes appeared. One friend told the police I’d fallen in while we were “pushing a stick” into the water (why a stick, I’ll never know). The story crumbled. I was hauled before the High School Rector to apologise on my very first day, and then faced a blistering dressing down from the Superintendent in front of my parents at their newsagents.

All of that - the CID, the school scandal, the police time wasted - just because I was terrified of my mother’s wrath.

So there you go another tale from my childhood exorcised in public. Hopefully I’ll be back to normal tomorrow.

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