Joe wasn’t exactly the ‘good wee laddie’ the family thought him to be. He had enthusiastically embraced just about every sin available to him.

To get back home I had to hobble/ shuffle/hop down through Dudhope Park on crutches which I couldn’t work, to catch the 29 bus on Lochee Road.

A kindly old lady asked why I was distressed. She gave me loads of sympathy and a sweet when I told her what had just happened.

The walk up Craigowan Road to South Road was slow and very uncomfortable for me and it seemed to take forever to reach our close.

I called up to the window for some help but, of course, no one was in, so I was forced to crawl up four flights of stairs and let myself in.

Joe came back first. He had heard at school I’d been taken away to the DRI so was very keen to get the whole story and examine my injured toe.

He was very disappointed when he saw it was covered in a bandage and immediately lost interest.

Mum and Dad gave me plenty of sympathy, though and put me to bed, where I was spoiled with treats for the next few days.

I think I was off school for about a week then went back on crutches for a couple of days after I’d had my stitches out. I dreaded having them taken out but that bit wasn’t bad at all.

I probably hated more the fact that my injury cost me about six weeks of football. That was a terrible price to pay, adding insult to injury. Misdemeanours

Having stitches in hospital really was as awful an experience as I had imagined it would be and the bad memory of my visit to the DRI took a great deal of time to evaporate. And now you know why I don’t like basketball. In the run-up to Christmas 1966, it became clear that brother Joe wasn’t exactly the “good wee laddie” the family thought him to be.

He had by then enthusiastically embraced just about every sin available to him and, just when he was expected to knuckle down to his Highers after bagging 7 O Grades in fourth year, he launched into a spate of even greater misdemeanours.

Had she known the whole truth, Mum would have been wringing her hands and praying to St Jude, the patron saint of lost causes.

I had to do my bit to keep him from getting rumbled but it was close at times and I knew one day he’d come unstuck.

For a start he was getting a fair taste for the drink, not only at the weekends but during the week, especially at his pal Graeme’s house up in Menzieshill.

Although Graeme was a nice enough young man and a fairly close friend of both of us, I suspect that a major attraction of his flat was the inordinate amount of home brewed lager he seemed to always have there.

Lots of lads of Joe’s age were turning to home brew in an effort to get drunk as cheaply as possible and it was common knowledge that, even if it didn’t always taste that great, it was guaranteed to get you legless with only three or four pints.

Luckily, Graeme lived uphill from us otherwise Joe might not always have made it all the way back after a drinking session with him.

Staggering downhill through the field, Joe required neither concentration nor navigation: he just set off at the top and eventually reached the old railway embankment between the field and South Road. A challenge

From there it was just a matter of crossing the road without being run over and then heading for our tenement.

He confided in me that climbing the four flights of stairs was sometimes a bit of a challenge but not as difficult as focusing long enough to get the key in the door, turn it the right way and come in without attracting the attention of Mum or Dad.

Once in our bedroom, Joe would collapse on his bed, leaving his wee brother to put the blankets over him (often fully-dressed) and sneak a basin under his bed just in case.

This pantomime was, of course, fraught with danger and Joe eventually adopted the tactic of staying over at his pal’s house.

If he did that, he could also have a cigarette or 10 because by then his school blazer pocket was never without a packet of Number 6 in it.

Nearly all of his pals smoked too, many even in the presence of their parents but there was no chance of that happening at our house.

When they visited, Joe’s pals would be invited by my Mum and Dad to go downstairs and have a puff at the entrance to the close.

Coming from two smokers as our parents were, that was a bit hypocritical but rules were rules and ours was not to reason why.

Apart from his continuing deep interest in girls, Joe’s other predilection was gambling at cards. We’d both developed a taste for card games from our parents, who found a Friday-night family game round the dining table was the perfect way to end the working week.

That’s why we knew how to play the commonest games like trumps, Newmarket, pontoon, rummy and our very favourite, nine-card brag.

The playing chips at home were always matches and they all went back into the Bluebell box at the end.

When we played with our friends there were two vital differences. Firstly, nine-card brag was replaced with the more exciting three-card game and secondly, our group of friends played for money rather than matches. Delight

You had to stump up a penny to enter the game and then the pot either rose by a penny a round, or shot up as high as sixpence if luck had given somebody an especially good hand.

As in poker, which we didn’t then play, you had to add a final sum to the pot to see your opponent’s hand.

The game also allowed a player to bluff his way to victory if the others took cold feet and packed in their hands.

On such occasions the victor would delight in returning his three cards to the pack without ever revealing what he’d had in his hand.

The other players would never know if he’d bluffed or not.

A further edgy aspect of three-card brag was the ability to play blind, ie. without even looking at your three cards.

If anyone chose to play their hand this way the others had to put in double what the blind player added to the pot.

(More tomorrow.)