Little Marcos was an adventure play-area in Glasgow. I could’ve drawn a thousand different things to represent the experience on the page: colourful things, fun things. Instead I chose a giant sign that reads ‘Little Marcos’. A sign, I may add, that never existed in real life. How can I be sure it never existed? Because the little stick family I drew beneath it suggests a scale that would place the sign somewhere in the region of sixty-feet above our heads, and composed of letters more than a hundred feet high. It’s a degree of opulence that tends not to exist outside of Stalinist Russia or an alternate universe where the Nazis won. Clearly I had a lot of space to fill on that page, and instead of offering a considered and detailed picture, my young brain simply thought, ‘Fuck it, teacher, you’re getting big letters and you’ll be happy with them, pal.’ And, indeed, the teacher seemed satisfied, seeing fit to dispense another in a long line of too-easy ticks. I would’ve respected her more had she written: “Jamie, you’re a lazy wee cock. If you were Van Gogh I expect that your famous self-portrait would’ve been a canvas with the words ‘THIS IS ME’ written on it. PS You disgust me.” Screw her, though, because she didn’t seem to notice that I’d spelled Little Marcos “Little Mar’Cos”, with an apostrophe half-way through the word, as if it was a Klingon moon or something. Actually, where does the apostrophe go? Was the proprietor Marco, or his Spanish cousin Marcos? Was there one little Marco, or several? OK, this one’s a bit of a minefield, so I think I’ll excuse my teacher’s brazen approach to marking in this instance.
Less forgiveable is the blind eye she turned to my spelling of “cousin’s”. Going to my cussons party was I, teach? The soap party? All of us herded into a big warehouse, being scrubbed down for three hours? You bloody goof-ball of a woman.
Anyway. I think I should be commended for coming up with an alternative set of lyrics to ‘Fast Car’ that improve the song immeasurably. Try it. Experiment with different ways of fitting my diary extract to the song. I did. For about ten minutes. AND THEY SAID I’D COME TO NOTHING?!!
