Bob Servant Read Online Free Page A

the skirt, helping Frank out with the limeade, but it also made us pals.
    Well, I say pals. He tried to chat to me a few times so in the end I drew up some rules. If I was talking to girls he was to stay well away because of him looking funny and if I was talking to any of the better boys then he had to do the same because of his jumper situation. Other than that, we were inseparable.
    Maybe it seems unfair to say that meeting Frank was a bad thing for me and held me back. But then again maybe it doesn’t because, fuck me, he’s put me through the mill.
    _________________________
    13 I think Bob is again referring to the television presenter Alan Whicker but I don’t really see his point. I have checked the photos in Whicker’s autobiographical
Journey of a Lifetime
and don’t see any great progression, negative or positive, in his looks as the years have passed.
    14 See
The Dundee Courier
, 10 July 1961 –
‘Delhi Belly Kelly To Stick To Jelly
(Dundee family man Grant Kelly won’t be re-visiting the controversial new Indian takeaway in Grey Street. “I won’t be going there again,” said Kelly yesterday, while preparing to attend his son’s fifth birthday party)’.
    15 See
The Dundee Courier
, 5 August 1961 –
‘Where now for Extra Rare Ribeye?
(“She’s outgrown us and she knows it,” says Broughty Ferry Amateur Dramatics Secretary Arthur Justice.)’.

5
Mum and Uncle Harry
    I remember when my Dad died I said to my Mum that it was just me and her against the world. She agreed that things weren’t looking good for me but pointed out it was a bit unfair to drag her down with me. That was really her in a nutshell – she had a real can-do attitude and after Dad died she concentrated on enjoying her life. She had all that success with the Amateur Dramatics and then she concentrated on enjoying her life with Uncle Harry.
    I was fifteen when Uncle Harry moved in with me and Mum. He wasn’t my real uncle and I thought it was a bit much that they made me call him that, but it made them laugh and I suppose as long as someone was getting something out the joke then it wasn’t all bad. It was annoying though. I was old enough to know what the two of them were up to and even if I hadn’t been I would have soon worked it out because of the way Uncle Harry kept filling me in on the details.
    I wouldn’t have minded Uncle Harry telling me the stuff that he and Mum had been doing but the High Fives were out of order. Don’t get me wrong, Uncle Harry was pretty much the first man in Dundee to regularly go for the High Five and I was glad to be part of it in that respect, but I didn’t enjoy it at the time. To this day I don’t really enjoy High Fives because I associate them with Uncle Harry waking me up to apologise ‘for the noise’ and then asking if I had ‘a spare one going for the big man’ and making me High Five him. This went on for about six months and things got more and more tense until Uncle Harry built the tree house.
    When Uncle Harry started building me the tree house I was the happiest kid in Dundee. When he said I had to live in it I was probably the saddest. In the summer it was not too bad but once it got towardsthe winter it became a complete joke. I asked Mum if I could move back into the house and she said that as an artist she needed space to imagine which I suppose made sense but made me feel a bit down.
    In the end I went to stay with Frank and his mum and at least they appreciated the company (Frank and his mum always told people that his dad died during the war which is a bit cheeky. The war was going on when he died but, come on, the guy had a heart attack in Debenhams). 16
    I have to say that I had a good time staying with Frank and his mum that winter. The end was in sight with school and Frank’s mum had got over her Bengali Bertie’s obsession and wasn’t a bad cook. I