Memory Bank

Thursday Circle

On certain Thursday afternoons — when I was small and illiterate and baffled by everything beyond my bedroom — my mum and I would drive two minutes down the road for what she called ‘Thursday Circle.’

From what I remember, this was where a group of other mums and 30-something women who lived in Bathgate would meet for a cup of tea and a natter. I’m pretty sure that the hosting duties for this informal club were rotating, and that our house would have been the meeting place at some point in my childhood.

But I don’t remember that. I don’t remember any of the other occasions. All I remember is that I was sitting in a stranger’s living room on another side of town; filled with the quiet anxiety of the unfamiliar. The room was comfortable enough: brown and beige in my memory, clean and tidy. But it was not my living room, the platonic ideal, and so it might as well have been a half-dug ditch for all I cared. I only knew what our living room and home was like. The idea that other people had their own living rooms (with strange upholstery and different coffee tables and sometimes larger tellies) was anathema to me.

I think there were other kids at Thursday Circle; I remember playing with another boy at any rate. The mums would have been chatting away in the kitchen or the garden, discussing subjects that flew completely over my head. I was shy, and overly-sensitive, and unsure of how to speak to people who weren’t family, so my debut into society was a tentative one.