Are 'backdated'
bumping-intos allowed here??
I mean
really backdated?
I'm talking
1978?
Picture the scene....
I'm 9 years old and I'm collecting panini footie stickers for the Argentina 78 world cup. I go down to the newsagents with me mate, and we've both been having no luck whatsoever getting Kenny's Scotland sticker, even though our albums are fairly heavy and we've got tons of swaps.
I buy a few sticker packs and me mate's got a couple more bob on him than me, so in order to talk him into buying me a mars bar I tell him that if I get Kenny in my sticker packs, he can have him.
[I really didn't believe that Kenny would be coming out of any of the packs I'd bought, so I thought I was doing good business..]
Yep...you've guessed it, I'm tearing open me stickers and as I'm thumbing through them in front of me mate....out pops the sacred
Kenny for Scotland sticker !!!
Talk about a test of character for one so young.
Anyway, me mate looked at me with a
" Go on gobshite....make good on your word " kind of look, and I'm proud to say that I didn't even flinch as I handed it over to him.
[Me Pa always taught me to be a man of my word....kind of thing..]
With the benefit of hindsight, If he'd been a
real mate...he would have just been happy to test me on this, and having satisfied himself that I was
going to hand it over, he should have just pressed it back into me hand knowing just how bonkers I was about Kenny.
But no...he just swiped it right off me with a smirk and that was that !!!
Anyway...
[And this is why I know there
IS a God...]
Later that autumn....me Ma and Pa took me and our kid to a *restaurant in Southport. This was a once every few months kind of thing for us because me Pa was by no means minted...
* [The Little Gourmet]
We walk in waiting to be seated, and whose just sitting there finishing off his grub but Kenny and his missus.
I was 9 years old for god's sake and there was me hero just sitting there sucking the fat off his lamb chops!!
Me Ma and Pa clocked him too, and they then looked at me as though sensing the danger of me having a joyous heart attack.
Long story short: [Or is too late for that now?]
Got a handshake and a few nice
wee words off Kenny, a signed napkin...[since lost and I'm gutted]...and ended up sitting in the chair he'd just vacated. It was still warm from his arse and I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.
I was 9 years old and I fucking loved the man...
I'm now 42 years old and
nothing has changed.