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or Rothesay, was financially out of the question. In the Baby Austin, we would set off to places like the East Neuk of Fife, particularly the Silver Sands at Aberdour, and
Culross, Pittenweem and Burntisland. Our other favourites on the West Coast were Largs and Ayr, and inland, if it was too cool for the seaside, we headed to Loch Lomond, where Balmaha was a
well-loved spot.
    On these family outings, I have no recollection of my father doing anything other than driving us there and back, and joining in the picnic lunch. He would disappear with his car after he had
eaten, leaving us playing and my mother reading or chatting to one of the grannies, whom we often squeezed in. We assumed that he was meeting fellow bus drivers, familiar with the billiard halls
and other social haunts popular with those who had brought busloads of trippers.
    At first I loved it when my new friends who lived around Dunbeth Road came to play and we were offered the chance to go for a short trip by my father. I felt special as they ran to ask their
parents if they were allowed to go with Sandra and her daddy. Laughing excitedly, we would all pile in. There was Joy, who lived beside the Maxwell church, which had a drama club for youngsters
that she was desperate for me to join. You had to be over seven, so I had a little while to wait, but with her I went to see a show put on by the Maxwell church kids. The two Anderson girls, Moira
and her sister Janet, and Moira’s pal, Elizabeth Taylor, were all in this club, and Joy and I saw them on stage. We could not wait to be up there singing and dancing too. Joy and I went to
Brownies together too. I became friends with two ‘sisters’, both called Elizabeth. One had long dark ringlets and was called by her full name, the other was fair, with identical
ringlets, and known as Beth. They were cousins, in fact, being brought up together. Another pal who sometimes tagged along was Elizabeth Bunting, who lived further down Dunbeth Road, a few doors
away. A bubbly redhead, who often had uncontrollable fits of the giggles, she was in my class at Gartsherrie Academy. Elizabeth’s father was the manager of our local Co-op store. There were
other girls, too, Jean and Beryl, the inspectors’ daughters from the police houses.
    My father would take me and a group of my friends to local beauty spots, like the lochs at Coatbridge, now a country park. Then there was only a rudimentary car park – used at night by the
odd courting couple – a dilapidated toilet block, set among a clump of rhododendron bushes, and paths for walkers. One hot day in 1956, he took some of us away to this remote area. The eldest
of us would have been eight or nine, the others just seven. When we got there I was sent for ice creams from a van we had passed. It was a fair distance away and I returned with ice cream cones
dripping up my arms to find the doors of the black Baby Austin locked, the windows misted. I could, however, make out that clothing was scattered about inside before everyone got out. What, I
puzzled to myself, had been going on? Had he been playing the horrible Beardie game or what?
    Once, in the same place, we had all got into the car to escape a shower of rain. I was in the front passenger seat, and my father began a tickling game. As usual, when he gripped my knee and
tweaked it, I let out a cry, then laughed as he went for my ribs. Two of my playmates in the back giggled at his antics, then he turned his attention to them. My head swivelled round over my right
shoulder, and I saw that while I had got underarm and rib tickling, he was tugging at my friends’ knickers and groping at their chests. I turned away, feeling sick. I pulled up my knees and
hunched over them, staring straight ahead, trying to ignore the noises. Something told me that what was happening was wrong. Two of my chums had no father figure, so it may be that they thought
this was how a loving father behaved. Perhaps they felt