David Livingstone's

Thursday 22:17 p.m.
                               Allegri-Misere is playing in the background. Once I loved being a catholic. When I was in Lourdes and visiting Rome. The Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church. They let you dance and drink. Shame it turned into a rest home for paedophiles. Well, that's not really fair.
                               Still we have St Francis of Assisi. I think he took off all his clothes and lay on the floor to die. I was watching a programme about David Livingstone tonight, which hardly did him justice. But it was at least about him. It seems he died kneeling in prayer.
                               Of course, I don't believe in anything, but I would like to die in a lotus position. I'll have to get shot or something for that to happen because if you die of cancer or some other debilitating disease you cannot sit up. Chogyam Trungpa died of alcoholism at the usual age for that of under fifty, so he couldn't have died sitting up, what with the hallucinations, debilitations, and whatnot... so how did he do the days of no rigor mortis, five to seven ... he must have been just lying there. Maybe they propped him up. I don't know.

                                To get to David Livingstone's Memorial in Blantyre when you were about twelve or thirteen ... well, first of all, you go to mass in the morning or at twelve o clock, and about six or seven of yous and  your protestant pals get  gathered and you kind of decide somehow to have an exciting adventure. Where is David Livingstone's Memorial? How do you get to Blantyre? I think I might have instigated this at the time since then I was not shy and a wee bit alpha.
                                 When I was about twelve I got very interested in Scottish explorers and read books about them. Mungo Park and David Livingstone, I do remember. The latter worked in the weaving factories, I believe, and read the books when he could. We did not get a good description in the show tonight, but this is a life about determination, and trying.
                                  It was a real exploration the first time I went to David Livingstone's Memorial. I don't know who told us the way there, but it was with mainly the kids who stayed nearby, mostly prods really. I suspect it was Rab Clyde who know lots of things and was from Bothwellhaugh, the Lanarkshire version of a ghost town. It's under the made pond in Strathclyde Park now.
                                  So you go from Bellshill and go down passed the golf course on the way to what was once Bothwellhaugh, and there you come to the River Clyde. It must have been the kid from Bothwellhaugh who knew this. He said we have to go down the river on the left hand side. Virgin territory.
                                  We were a bit like aborigines before this, or before we got there. Derek Gibson, who did the time in the Approved School a wee bit later, was one of the ones who disturbed the wasps nest and ended up beating the wasps out of his fabulously thick, ginger head of hair. But then we got to the Clyde and made our way down the left hand side till we came to a mill.
                                  You had to climb over whatever at the side of the river and then go through the mill to climb over the wall at the other side -- the mill must have been closed --maybe it was closed a hundred years ago -- and then it wasn't too far to get to David Livingstone's Memorial.
                                  There was a wall around it. You had to pay to get in. We all climbed the wall. Inside there were African huts which we played in and then we tried to get into the big house thing. There was a museum with artifacts.
                                  What you have to remember when you're a kid is to always stay away from adults, but we braced ourselves and sneaked into the building without paying, and we all gazed amazed at the exhibits.
                                   It was the first time I had ever been in a museum and I loved it. One or two of the staff were there and we kind of looked alienated like the tinks that we were, and they didn't bother us as we gazed fascinated at the things under the glass in the cases. So hats off to them!
                                   And hats off to the prods like David Livingstone! I must read his books!
                                    I don't think I'll ask for the Misere to be played at my funeral. I want the Heart Sutra and the first chapter (almost) of In The Land of the Demon Masters, but the Misere is very much making me cry right now, and I'm thinking of all the dead people I used to know.
                                    My Auntie Mary died a week or so ago. Ninety seven years old. I was supposed to go to Coventry to see them when I was about thirteen, and I stood in our kitchen, and I told the auld maw that I didn't want to go to Coventry with my da because I didn't know any of these people. My da had asthma. The auld maw said he needed someone to carry his case. My Auntie Mary, whom I'd never seen before, kissed me on the cheek once she'd answered the door. The first time I ever remembered being kissed. She's the last of that generation of hotboys. Go to heaven! Go to heaven! Go to heaven!