The Demise of Roland Ratso: Chapter sixty two

Tuesday and the chemo is starting to kick in – it won’t be long before Irene calls me a chemo – brained twat and with good reason. I am starting to feel very tired and also a bit sick, but it might be because Eric lead me astray last night. I have got to get up early tomorrow – before 8.00am so that I can eat something with my drug cocktail because I have an appointment with the washing machines for an MRI and CT scan. The last time I went there, I starved all morning, stripped off and put on a sexy gown, drank my four pints of foul tasting orange squash, listened to an argument when another inmate refused to take off his gold, only to be told that they had got the wrong date and couldn’t do the scan. Hey ho – the Wilkie curse strikes again. Irene is baking some pies – she is an incredible pastry cook and makes some lovely stuff. Not very good for the weight loss regime! Aberdeen circa 1962 and we lived in a “But and Ben” which was basically a two roomed flat in a rather insalubrious area (at the time) known as Torry. In the back garden, and I use the term loosely there was a massive air raid shelter that was heavily boarded up. We spent quite a long time gaining entrance with borrowed tools and after several days we gained entry. As nine year olds this was an incredibly exciting adventure. We arranged to meet the next day with candles because we couldn’t see anything as all of the windows were also boarded up. Gaining entry, and filled with awe, we entered the shelter that no-one had been in for at least twenty years. There were some iron bedsteads and boxes of tins of stuff that had all rusted and we couldn’t read the labels but what was stacked in one corner really caught our eye. It was a ammo box of bullets – about three thousand rounds – obviously stored there if we were going to mount a guerrilla war if we got invaded. This was an amazing secret that we had to keep. Some hopes. We all grabbed pockets full of bullets and went off to the allotment to try and set some of them off, to no avail. I went home – my mother was in hospital with tuberculosis of the bowel and my father was off work having had his first heart attack at thirty seven. There was an open fire in the living room – here was my chance to set one off and I threw a bullet on to the fire just as my father walked in and ducked down to pick up something off the floor. The bullet whizzed out of the fire missing him by inches and embedding itself in the plaster of the room. (Our tenament like everywhere in Aberdeen was made of granite so the bullet stopped when it hit the granite.) To say I was in trouble was an understatement. I still had three bullets left which my father soon discovered by going through my pockets. “Where did you get them? “ He bellowed, not normally one to lose his cool, but having been a sargeant in the RAF he was well aware of what he had found. Now I was in a bit of trouble, or so you could say. If I told him where they had come from the rest of the gang would be annoyed to say the least. Finally I had to tell him as I realised how serious the situation was, especially as I had nearly shot my own father! There was a small police outstation at the bottom of Victoria Road and he went down and summoned one of the local bobbies. An Army bomb disposal team was brought in – the whole back garden and alleyway was cordoned off while they came in and searched the shelter and removed all of the contents including the tins, leaving the iron framed bunk beds. We found out later in the next night’s evening paper that there was also a box of fifty or so hand grenades which we had missed. Just think of the fun we could have had with them! They also went through all of the shelters in the area but didn’t find any more live ammunition. We were able to make the shelter our base for sometime before the adults decided to use it for storage. I fell off the roof and broke and dislocated my elbow which was set under a general anaesthetic but I can remember coming round while they were setting it and had nightmares for a long time afterwards. Another time, in the winter of 1963 I got frostbite in my ears (having got good large Scottish lugs) and as a ten year old I was taken to my GP who cut the rotten bits off with scissors until – as he put it – the flesh started to bleed. No anaesthetic and my father told me not to be so soft! Happy days! Wednesday the 22nd and it’s the day of my MRI scan (pelvis) and CT scan (chest and abdomen) for the surgery team to look at.