Did Ye' Aye?

Every man’s tale is good till another be told. – The Scottish Rovers

Did Ye' Aye?

The rhythmic clatter of cheap high heels on laminate echoes through my flat. Another party departing, voices fading into the night. I lie on the sofa, pretending to be asleep. The ruins of revelry remain—sticky floors, empty cans, overflowing ashtrays, a CD case powdered with illicit white dust. I don’t sleep because the coke won’t let me. Instead, I sit up, shirtless, my young beer belly folding over itself, plucking a cigarette from a table strewn with Rizlas and weed crumbs. I spark up and check my cracked Nokia. 8:06 AM.

I grab a tepid, unopened can of Tennents and down it to soothe my parched throat. A nameless DJ's beat seeps from a 24-hour music channel, meant to elevate, now just static in the background. I survey the wreckage of the party, of my life. Two weeks prior, I was done for drink-driving, lost my license. Barely clung to my job, a job that expected and encouraged this chaos. I was an oil rig worker, a North Sea Tiger, grafting offshore for two weeks, then back on land, burning through money and brain cells in equal measure. We were supposed to be free, rich, exciting. Instead, I was skint, alone, wasted, and wasting away.

I wasn’t unique. I was just one of many. The same cycle, played out across Scotland’s young men: the pursuit of hedonism masquerading as freedom, all roads leading to self-destruction. And yet, back then, I didn’t question it. Didn’t wonder if there was another way. Because to wonder would be to acknowledge the emptiness of it all, and that was something I wasn’t ready to face.

Fast-forward eighteen years. That same drunken North Sea Tiger now sits in a sterile clinical room in Scotland’s largest hospital, wearing blue scrubs, administering cognitive assessments to a patient with a complex neurological disorder. This morning, I woke at 5 AM, shot back an espresso, hit the gym for an hour, then rolled into a 7 AM Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class before work. Tonight, I’ll return home to my wife, three incredible children, and two dogs. We’ll eat dinner, walk through the woods, unwind, and I’ll be in bed by 9 PM, book in hand, asleep like a bairn. The next day, I’ll probably run. Probably to work and back, 18 miles in two runs.

As the patient stands to leave, he shakes my hand and says, “Thank you, Doctor.”

It would be easy to believe these are two different people. A miracle, maybe. But it’s not. No divine intervention, no magic. Just time. A lot of time. Hard graft. Discipline. No hacks, no shortcuts. Going from bampot to belter is evolution in its purest form—change over time.

Note: I was an Assistant Psychologist. I'm not a doctor and never have been.

The Bampot Mindset

When I write about the bampot days, I only highlight what I controlled. My choices in that filthy flat shaped my life. I don’t talk about my upbringing—not yet. Because the bampot life wasn’t fate; it was what I knew. The only road visible. And for so many, it still is. A life of waste: wasted youth, wasted resources, wasted potential, and the one thing we never get back—wasted time.

The thing about wasted time is, you never realise it’s being wasted until it’s too late. At 20, you think you have forever. At 30, you start to panic. At 40, you realise you never did have that infinite stretch of years you once thought. That realisation hits like a tractor. The difference between the men who turn their lives around and the men who don’t? Who sinks and who swims? The ones who act before it’s too late. And even then, it’s a war, a battle waged on all fronts.

My story started in Aberdeen, with parents who shouldn’t have been together. A 47-year-old father, a 17-year-old mother. Or was she younger? My sister and I have pieced together the timeline, and the math is grim. Best case? Puts her at 16. Worst case? Puts him on a register. He's dead now.

His name was...it doesn't matter. A cabaret singer, a compere in Aberdeen’s dance halls. A local celebrity with the trappings that came with it—mainly, women. My mother was one of them. Their story wasn’t a love story; it was a scandal, whispered through the streets. And in 1981, they had my sister, called...it doesn't matter. Two years later, me.

He wasn’t there for my birth. Likely occupied' Likely baw-deep in some poor groupie across the city. He drifted in and out for five years. My only memories of him are fights. My mother, despite her youth, could hold her own. He was short, nearing 50. The only one he could batter was four-year-old me.

One memory sticks. Sitting at the kitchen table, the ice cream van’s jingle ringing through the street. I was giddy, grabbed coins from the sideboard, and sprinted out alone. Bought a cone with sprinkles and a pack of Wrigley’s—the gum I was always denied. Returning home, proud of my independence, my father stood at the door. Silent. Smiling. He let me step inside, then yanked the cone from my hand, threw it against the wall, snatched the change and gum, and floored me. Then he grabbed my ankles, lifted my legs back, pulled down my shorts, and skelped me raw. I screamed. My mum pulled him off me. My Sister stood crying.

Eventually, he left for another woman. But not quietly. He manipulated the tearaway next door into harassing my mum. It started with “SLUT” sprayed in 2 foot red letters on our front wall. Escalated to break-ins, threats. One night, I woke up as he tried to attack her. I scared him off by simply awakening. Identified him in court. He got sent down. My father never checked in once.

Next came years of the usual. Bad friends who were actually really good, and good teachers who were actually really bad. School gave me nothing but a lesson in potential left latent. Art. That was my only joy in those school years.

At 15, you drink, you smoke, you try drugs. Like every kid in working-class Scotland, right? At 17, you join a band, you write songs, and for a moment, you think you’ve found something, something bigger than yourself. Music becomes an escape, a way to make sense of the chaos.

We were called...it doesn't matter. Played the Aberdeen circuit, had our moments. Wrote an album, gigged our way through grimy venues, lived the kind of reckless life that felt like it meant something at the time. And then, at 20, I got diagnosed with cancer. On my fucking tongue.

You don’t get tongue cancer at 20, right? That’s not how it works. Except it was. Maybe the years of drinking, smoking, eating durty pussy, and shouting into a mic had something to do with it. Maybe it was just bad luck. Maybe it was a test. Either way, they cut it out. The cancer. The music stopped. Everything stopped. And for the first time, I had to think about what came next. Because there had to be a next. Right? 

Of course, the rigs. But not before a stint selling drugs, the inevitable slide into the easiest money a lost young man can make. Then the rigs—where the work was hard, the pay was good, and the cycle of working, drinking, fucking, and fighting was just another part of the job description.

Then love. My wife—her name? Doesn't matter. What matters is what she did. She flipped the script, turned the page, made me see life wasn’t just something to endure, it was something to fight for. Something to win. It wasn’t just me against the world anymore. It was us. A team.

Then came more love, in the shape of three kids called..yup. My name might be on their birth certificates, but they gave me life, not the other way around. They turned chaos into meaning, made me more than just another lost cunt trying to outdrink his demons.

Love changes everything. But only if you let it. 

Life’s was solid on my end. Wife, kids, job, dog—don’t need much else. Even dabbled in a bit of Jesus for a while. He still lurks in my thoughts, rattling around my psyche. I told him to keep his religion, though. Funny thing is, I believe in him despite all that pish, not because of it.

He woke up the song writer in me though. Wrote some songs for The Lord then a few hundred for myself. Made them beauties into seven albums. No one listened but they are in my list of the top seven best albums of all time.

Then a test. Like the time my best mate OD’d to death. His name? Doesn’t matter. He was feral mayhem, the kind of chaos that made life worth laughing at. A walking cliché of shite parenting and trauma, but he was my friend. The best of us. And seeing him taken at 34 broke something in me that’s never quite healed. Never will, but that's ok.

From there, my life pivoted. The rigs were done. I tried to do right by my friend. I became obsessed—with psychology, autism (after my son’s diagnosis), self-improvement. I studied relentlessly while building my family, holding down a full-time job. Earned a First-Class Honours degree, a victory snatched from the jaws of exhaustion. Kept pushing. Applied for a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology. Fought through thousands of applicants. Twice. Failed. Twice. Why? Because I wasn’t a fresh-faced, mid-twenties, middle-class girl parroting neoliberal ideals. Maybe. I wasn't gay, and I wasn't oppressed. Maybe. I was a working-class grafter, covered in the dirt of real life. And that, in their eyes, was the wrong type of experience. And they were right.

A third attempt at haughty academic folly was scuppered by that pesky bastard called cancer. Again. This time, it came for my wife. Colon. She fought, she won. But in that moment, I took stock. I walked away from the NHS, from psychology. Who the fuck needs a forty-something straight white man listening to their problems anyway? They are right. Instead, I took over my wife’s dog-walking business, spent my days outdoors, walking, and remembering—really remembering—that I was, and always have been, a creative motherfucker.

Should I do what I was meant to do then?

Only took me 41 years to realise.

No Redemption

This isn’t a redemption story. It’s not a guide. It’s proof. Change is real. It’s possible. But it never stops. The thing about change is, it keeps changing. You don’t reach the end and call it done; you keep moving, because the second you stop, the world shifts beneath you. Change isn’t a mountain, it’s a river—constant, relentless, carving you into something new whether you like it or not. You either flow with it or get left behind, stagnant and drowning in what could have been.

And if you’re a bampot looking to become a belter, you need to be ready for war. Not just one fight, but a lifetime of them. You’ll battle yourself every day—your old habits, your comfortable excuses, the voice whispering to just take it easy, stay in your lane, keep things as they are. And you’ll want to listen, because change isn’t just hard—it’s brutal.

But that’s the test. It’s supposed to be hard. The world doesn’t hand out second chances, it makes you earn them. And the truth is, most people won’t. They’ll stay put, convincing themselves it’s too late, too risky, too much effort. But if you want to become something more, if you want to break free from the cycle that trapped you and everyone before you, then you fight. Every single day.

Because change isn’t just possible—it’s inevitable. The only question is whether you shape it, or let it shape you.

But what waits? Not money, not fame, not a pat on the back. Discipline, strength, purpose. These are prizes. The kind of character that carries you through fire and doesn’t flinch. The ability to power through life, whatever it throws at you. To welcome the war. Because you’re Scottish. You were made for endurance. Made for the fight. Not for trophies or titles, but for resilience. For the satisfaction of knowing that no matter what comes, you’ll stand, you’ll adapt, and you’ll push forward. No excuses. No self-pity. Just action.

Because the only way out is through. Through the fire, through the fight, through every excuse and obstacle thrown in your path. No one is coming to save you. No magic moment, no sudden epiphany. Just you, your will, and the next step forward. You either take it, or you don’t. And if you don’t? Then don’t expect the world to change for you.

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