I don’t read books. I do know how to read and I have read some books. I don’t have anything against reading books as a concept. It’s just that I don’t ever choose to do it. I like to write. I have always enjoyed writing. As a kid I used to write episodes of my favorite TV […]

Whenever I’m asked where in Scotland I am from, my response is always ‘Barrhead’. I lived there from the age of 7 until I left home at 18. In the same way that bands are always listed as being from a particular city, presumably because their music is influenced by their home, I feel that […]

I’m still amazed that more people don’t remember me as a TV child star. My standout appearance on the low budget Saturday morning television show ‘The Untied Shoelaces Show’, in April 1984, was probably my breakout moment. Actually I only know one person that saw it live, and it was never shown on television again. […]

In writing these chapters, I have been able to look back at all sorts of diaries, notes, and journals that I’ve been keeping since I was 7 years old. The earliest diaries rarely contain expressions of emotion, and tend to be simple statements about what happened that day, like ‘December 29, 1986: Today we went […]

There was a lot going on in the world in 1990. The Berlin Wall had fallen, the first Gulf War was kicking off, and Maggie Thatcher was on the way out as Prime Minister. But as a 15-year-old adolescent boy, I was mostly focused on getting my first snog. The rest of the time I […]

I was 16 years old in May 1992 when I sat my Highers at Glasgow Academy, the exams that would determine where and what I might study at University. It seems like a long time ago, but then again, I am not sure how much I’ve changed. Highers. It’s not a word that I’ve thought […]

I was a bit emotional on my last day of high school at Glasgow Academy in June 1993. Most of the other boys were in the mood to celebrate as if they had just been released from a prison sentence. But I’d grown to love the school and my friends, so I was sad that it […]

I had just turned 18 when I started out as a first year student at Edinburgh University in 1993. Reading my diaries at the time, I thought I had it all figured out. It’s apparent now, that I really didn’t. And it was that potent cocktail of overconfidence and cluelessness that fueled most of the […]

My 2nd Year at Edinburgh University started in August 1994 and finished 10 months later. I lived with some of my best friends, I watched as British indie music became ‘Britpop’, and my brother and I started to become friends. But really I was just drifting along aimlessly until one day in 1995, when I […]

The screenplay I wrote in Australia essentially starts in August 1995 when I first arrived in Austin. It is based on the tumultuous year I had while studying abroad in Austin, and it’s mostly true. So I’m going to use some of that screenplay to tell the story of that period. Reading the screenplay this week for the […]

The events of this chapter all happened over a few weeks in October 1995. At the time I was a couple of months into my year abroad studying at the University of Texas in Austin. I had just turned 20, and my brother Andy was 18. What follows are some of my memories about his […]

The weather in Glasgow is generally miserable, and that can have an effect on people. My Grandma passed away a couple of years ago and she started every letter she wrote to me complaining about the terrible weather. Even after living in Glasgow for 90 years it still bothered her. Scottish winters are inevitably cold […]

I had the worst day of my life on March 13th, 1996, in New Orleans. I can say that with some certainty, and I don’t enjoy reflecting on that day. I didn’t have fun writing this chapter, and it likely wont be a pleasant read either. For the first half of 1996, I didn’t keep much […]

After New Orleans, I returned to Austin, drained and dispirited, and I tried to shift my focus to law school and the upcoming final exams. I couldn’t handle the emotional storm inside me. I didn’t have the time or the ability to manage it, and so I just wanted to suppress it all. To somehow […]

I spent a lot of July 1996 on a train, trundling across the vastness of North America with my best mate Nelly. It was the perfect way to reflect on a long and tortuous year that began and ended in Austin. But I was also worried about what lay in wait when it was time […]

There are only two entries in my journal from the last four months of 1996. One was written in September, and the other I wrote while sitting on a train 3 months later. The reason for the gap is partly explained by a sober decision I made in September to not be sober for a […]

To most of the world the name means nothing. But to me and a few others, the name ‘Forest Pump’ means everything. It represents a football team, a permanent bond, a shared existence, a way of life. I’m exaggerating, but only a little. Forest Pump started as just a weak pun for the name of our Edinburgh University […]

The long summer of 1997 should have been some of the best days of my life. I’d just finished my law school final exams, I went on a two-week road trip to the Channel Islands and France with some of my best friends, and then we had nightly graduation parties in Edinburgh for a week. […]