Surprisingly Down to Earth, and Very Funny. Limmy

experience by itself, but I was also tripping.

      We’d been driving for a while when the sun started to come up. Then they spotted another motor, the same type as the one we were in. One of them got out, pulled out the screwdriver, and then we were away with that as well. A few minutes later, we were driving down a motorway, and I was waving to my other mate who was driving next to us at 70 mph. It was like a game. It was like Grand Theft Auto. It just didn’t feel real.

      We got to this country road, this dirt path that they were familiar with, and we started belting it down, skidding about like it was a rally game. I say that ‘we’ were belting it down, but I wasn’t driving. I couldn’t drive. I gave it a shot for a minute, but I nearly crashed, so we swapped back. Then we got to a field and started skidding the motors about and banging them into each other, like they were dodgems. Dodgems that cost thousands of pounds and didn’t belong to us and had people’s belongings in them.

      But at no point did I feel guilty.

      At that age I didn’t think about how the folk would feel, having their motors stolen. I thought they would just be a bit pissed off. I didn’t think about how much it would cost, or the feeling of shock, or the feeling of being violated. I didn’t imagine how it would feel to have somebody steal this personal place of yours, like a home away from home, you have your things in it, and now somebody’s away with it, and whoever stole it doesn’t care how bad you feel. When I was 16 I just didn’t care. I didn’t think. If I did think anything, I probably thought that it didn’t cost much to get these things fixed, there probably wasn’t that much hassle afterwards. The pixies would take care of it.

      So we just had a good time with these dodgems, until one of them got a bit too done in, so we left it and drove away in the other. We headed back to that country road and started driving down it again.

      Then we saw the police.

      They were in the distance, in front, coming towards us slowly. So we slowed down. The road was so narrow that we couldn’t just do a three-point turn and get away. We had to just pass this police motor and hope that nothing happened.

      I was in the front passenger seat as this police motor passed by. We had to squeeze past slowly. I looked at one of the policemen, and they looked at me. I tried to look innocent, even though we were driving down a country road early in the morning in a wrecked-looking motor and the driver looked 14.

      When the police were out of sight, we got out the motor. We just left the thing with the engine running, and ran. One of my mates said that if we got caught we should say that it wasn’t us in the motor, we’re other guys, out for a spot of fishing. It didn’t make any sense to me. I said that we should split up, but they said we should stick together. I said no, fuck that, I was going to split, so I went away by myself. I ran over the fields until I got to Stewarton Road, this big road that cut through the fields. And I started walking down that.

      After a while I heard a helicopter, and I hoped it wasn’t anything to do with me.

      After five minutes it was hovering alongside me, hovering over the fields. It was a safe distance away, but it was low enough to make the grass move, and close enough to be loud as fuck. It followed me for about ten minutes like that. I was still tripping, and trying to act natural. I tried not to look at it, then I realised that an innocent person would look at a helicopter following them for ten minutes, so I started looking at it now and again.

      A police motor come up to me, and I was told to get in. So I did, pretending to not know what this was all about.

      They drove me to the station and started interviewing me. No lawyer. I didn’t know how to ask for one, I was only 16, I’d never been in trouble before and I was tripping. They must have known I was tripping. When I was in the motor before, I could see in the mirror that my pupils were massive. Huge black holes with just a tiny rim of blue. I felt off my fucking nut. Not only was I tripping, but I’d been awake for more than 24 hours.

      They asked me where I was before they got me, and I said I’d been fishing with some mates. It sounded fucking ridiculous.

      They sounded like they believed me, though.

      They asked who my mates were, but I told them I didn’t want to say.

      They asked me why I didn’t want to say, if I was only fishing. So I told them the names. The real names, because I didn’t want any fake names making me look suspicious. They had nothing to hide, we’d been fishing.

      When the police had the names, they switched tactics. They said they could identify me as being in the passenger seat, they had both motors, our fingerprints would be all over them, the game’s up. I got my photo taken, my fingerprints taken, and I got driven home.

      When I got home, my mum and dad already knew what had happened, because the police had given them a visit. They didn’t crack up at me, they just shook their heads and said it was a stupid thing to do. The conversation lasted no more than a minute, a bit like when I slashed my wrist.

      I met up with my mates again a few days later to talk about it all. They asked me what happened, and I said that I got caught, but I lied and said the police already knew all their names and addresses. I said it must have been that old guy that grassed them, that curtain-twitcher guy, he must have saw us. They nodded and said aye, that’s what it’ll be, it’ll be that cunt. I shouldn’t have said that. My mates weren’t violent, but still, I shouldn’t have said that.

      I eventually got a lawyer. I don’t know if I pled guilty, but I was found guilty. Two counts of car theft, two driving without insurance, two driving without a licence, and I think I got done for a bit of hash they found on me as well. Because it was a first offence, I didn’t get the jail. I got a fine, a few hundred quid.

      The rest of them got lesser punishments, if anything. Because I was the oldest, and the only one who was 16, I got done the most. The prosecution said I was the ringleader, even though I can’t drive. Even though I was tripping out my box, I got done as the ringleader. I can’t drive, even to this day.

      After I got sentenced, my mum told me to stop hanging about with them. It’s about the only time she put her foot down. I was happy to go along with it, because I was scared of being found out as a grass. But when I bumped into one of them years later, in my 20s, I confessed. I confessed that I effectively grassed them all up. He laughed and said he knew. They always knew.

      Anyway, I just want to apologise. Not to my mates, but to the people whose motors I helped steal. My 16-year-old self couldn’t apologise, because he didn’t care, but I’ll apologise on his behalf.

      Strip Search

      After summer, I went back to school to redo my Highers. I didn’t want to, I wasn’t interested any more, but I didn’t know what else to do with myself. I eventually dropped out, about a month or so in, but until then I was just hanging about. Hanging about like a ghost.