may isle

may isle

CONTENTS

Welcome

Welcome to 'A Frample', a confused tangle of columns, prose poems and lyrics. It's not so much a blog as an online folder, lying somewhere between a drawer and the bin.


Digging in for fun and freedom



East Fife Mail, July 15, 1992

The war may well have ended in 1945 but there was one person who kept our shores free from foreign invaders long after that.

The unknown warrior kept a lonely vigil in a small dugout on Leven beach, armed to the teeth and scouring the horizon for the first glimpse of an armada of landing craft coming over the horizon into Largo Bay.

The fact they never came just shows how intimidating this lone military presence was.

This hero was me.

Looking back, I can't help wondering why no kind soul whisked me away for psychiatric counselling because the behaviour could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be considered normal.

Every morning over the summer I would head, sometimes with another one or two recruits, along to the Mile Dyke.

It must have been a terrifying sight for the caravanners at the end of the Prom. A young, muscular lad; a GI's helmet slung back on his head, a hefty Bren gun in his hands, grenades strapped across his chest, a foxhole pick, camouflage uniform and back pack.

Maybe it was hard for them to recognise this warrior. To them they saw a scrawny kid whose head disappeared into an old ARP helmet, carrying a funny-shaped log in his hands, in a Marks and Spencer tee-shirt and shorts with his pockets stuffed full of rocks and duffel bag strung across his back with a coal shovel.

No imagination some people!

And so, once crossing minefields and enemy terrain, I would re-locate my camp, dig another foot into the foxhole, prop up my stick (Bren gun) put the grenades (pebbles) within easy reach then squint for eight hours over the bay.

This behaviour, which at best can be described as mental, lasted an entire summer, later being relegated to weekend duty then being dropped in favour of 40-a-side football matches.

To be fair, sometimes we were called into action.

We were the platoon that dammed that river, cutting off a vital supply line to the enemy, and flooding the Mile Dyke green on the golf course.

Once we even found the enemy. We trespassed on to Silverburn to set up camp one afternoon and were unearthed by an adult who had to be madder than we were because he let loose with his shotgun.

Once a farmer outside Colinsburgh took exception to us crossing his fields as we stormed Shell Bay and he had no hesitation in blasting away at us with salt pellets.

I suppose there are a mittful of folk out there who sit around and curse the changing times and regret the passing of the days when you could go out and shoot at a kid in an ARP helmet.

But there were other oddballs in Leven back then and I'm amazed any of us were ever allowed out by ourselves.

There was one lad who used to hurl himself off the bing on his bike, hands and feet stretched out; a boy who pretended he was a sniper up the Glen and would suddenly pop up in plastic helmet covered in leaves when a couple were about to kiss in the shadow of the trees, fire off a few `ratatats' and hurl himself back into the undergrowth.

Then there was my first fantasy figure - a girl in Manse Place. Leven, who sat up a tree all day and fired sharpened sticks from a home made bow at you if you trespassed on her territory

Ah the world of innocent fantasies! Just think, these weird little warriors grew up and, in secret, we are probably weird little adults... but all the better for a little imagination.

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