DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME;

"Save the last dance for me "

By Scottish Keith Stodart

I came back into my house last night after playing 5 a-side football and the radio was playing in the kitchen. I never listen much to the radio in the house as my wife listens to the local radio station, Alpha FM , which plays more commercials than music. For a change there was a song on "Three times a lady" by the Commodores, that kinda music has never been my bag but it did bring back some memories from my teenage years.

I came from a small town in Scotland called Strathaven, population approx. 8,000 and as usual in these small places there was nothing to do if you were a teenager other than go into pubs (if you could pass for 18). Most of my friends were a year younger than me and when we were 16 / 17 we didn't really go to pubs we simply went to the local off license and bought our booze which we the usually drank in a field somewhere. If we were lucky someone's parents would be out and we would pile in there.

Every fortnight there was a disco on in the local hall and we would all end up going there, with usually 150-200 other teenagers.The format was quite simple; we would buy our booze, which always consisted of 6 cans of McEwans export and a bottle of sherry. You used to take an empty lemonade bottle to the shop and for the pricely sum of £1.00 they would fill it up with sherry from a barrel. For anyone that doesn't know about McEwans Export beer then simply watch "So I Married An Axe Murderer" as the house in it is littered with empty cans and that's what Charlie Mackenzie's dad drinks.

Sorry to digress there.

There usually would be 6-8 of us and we would drink all our booze in the space of an hour, the odd one or two would be sick and go home but most of us would make the disco, holding our breath as we walked past the doormen (not called bouncers then) and paid our money. Naturally after having drank all this booze in such a short space of time we would simply go into the hall, plonk ourselves down in one of the chairs that were round the perimeter of the hall and slump with our head our hands. Occasionally we would make the odd dance or two as the night wore on but generally we would just sit (or sleep) for most of the night, that is of course until about fifteen minutes from the end when the slow songs came on invariably "Three Times A Lady" would be one of those songs. It would be deep breaths to clear your head and then make your way up to try and find a suitable female partner to finish the evening with.

It sounds a bit like a cattle market but that's the way it was. One of my best friends and I had a bit of a contest going at the time and you had to get a snog of a girl before you went home, even better if you left arm in arm. We called it back in Scotland "getting a lumber". Over the period of 18 months I successfully managed to get a lumber every disco I went and bearing in mind the disco was every 2 weeks then that adds up to a lot of girls, even taking into account the same person 2 or 3 times.

Before all your minds start thinking overtime, the contest was to get a kiss or leave arm in arm nothing else, anything else would have been a bonus, but usually what happened was that you would ensure your mates saw you then you would wish the girl goodnight and go home. It used to be quite funny really as you would set your sights high but invariably land low as you "had to get a lumber". Now I wouldn't class myself as a good looker but some of the girls, quite frankly, left a lot to be desired. It was a contest though. I'm sure there must have been similar contests going on with the girls as well as sometimes you landed a really good looking girl and you would wonder how you managed that.

=====

Mike Randle
mike@lovewitharthurlee.com

BACK TO LOVE TOUR DIARIES