Frankie Poullain - Dancing in the Darkness

N o one wants to be a runt, but sometimes being a runt can work out better than not being a runt.

Its fair to say that I was the runt of the litter. It wasnt just that I was frail and not quite all there, I also suffered from severe mood swings. Even as a baby. At least, thats what Im told Id be gleefully happy for brief, sunshine-filled moments, then the merest trifle would send me spiralling into a black hole. Perhaps it was the sherry that did it.

Or it could have been my ultra-competitive alpha male brothers, born a year either side of me. They were hungrier, stronger, noisier and cuter than me for a start. It wasnt a state of affairs I was over the moon about, if you want me to be frank. Mum would confiscate my comfort blanket and strip the crib for my own safety. When I look back, it must have been tough on her having a baby boy on suicide watch at barely 18 months old.

Once I even ate my own shit. The Belgian au pair, Antoinette, was too busy varnishing her nails to notice. I could have grabbed a handful from the potty and smeared it over the kitchen floor, spelling out the words HELP-ME-I-AM-ABOUT- TO-EAT -MY-OWN-SHIT-YOU- DOPEY-BELGIAN -COW, for all the good it would have done. But being a curious toddler, and half-French to boot, the inclination was to stick it in my mouth. Ive tasted worse. Its probably on a par with undercooked liver or stewed tripe.

It should have been my first life lesson: if you dont concentrate and pay attention, youll soon find yourself eating shit. But if you dont concentrate and pay attention, how are you supposed to learn lessons anyway? They say I was a spaced-out kid. I like to call it deep thinking. Its hard to tell the two apart sometimes, so lets just split the difference and call it growing pains.

The upshot was that as the years rolled by I just got used to the taste. And the funny thing is, almost 40 years later, I still fantasise from time to time about Antoinette scooping up my waste with those immaculately manicured fingernails. Of course, she never did, but thats not the point. Why absorb a boring life lesson when you can dream the light fandango?

O ur father was a classical violinist, and a very restless one at that. He left us when I was seven but not before an abortive kidnap attempt involving the dead of night, a smelly tartan rug, the back of a Leyland Land-Rover and the early-morning knock-knock-knocking of a Tayside policemans knuckles on his door. It was the early seventies and I was confused.

After that, he sold our home, a sprawling country pile outside Kinross known as Warwick House (over 30 years later Im still confused how could he have afforded it in the first place?), before leaving The Edinburgh String Quartet and disappearing to the west coast of Scotland to dive for scallops and build himself a yacht. Two years on, Monkey Hanger set sail for the Caribbean and hes been there ever since.

On the surface, Austin Patterson had a stable family background, and yet he was never satisfied with his lot if youve ever been to Hartlepool in the north-east of England, youll probably have a good idea why. Mollycoddled by a gentle mother and demonised by a tyrannical father, he was in many ways the classic war baby, torn between a sense of duty and a sense of disgust at said duty a rebel in a straitjacket. The unhappy soul became a driven individual, determined to: a) prove a point to the bullying patriarch, and b) get the hell out of there.

He duly won a scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music in London and pretty soon he was fiddling his way through the Swinging Sixties albeit decked out like a penguin in dinner suit and dickie bow for the BBC Concert Orchestra. Fiddling, in fact, became the recurring motif of his life. More of which later.

Contentment never led to any revolution, its true. And restlessness leads to change, which can be better or worse than the original state of affairs. Perhaps restless people shouldnt live on an isolated farm. Then they wouldnt wallop their five- year-old son over the head for singing Jesus Christ Superstar while feeding the geese (blasphemy, apparently, though he wasnt religious himself) or throw their wifes homemade pizza against the wall because it wasnt hot enough.

Some people are bad but their bad intentions result in something good. Take Guy Fawkes, for example he tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament and now we get bonfire parties every year. But Im not going to burn my Guy, despite the shadow hes cast over our life. Instead, what Id like to try to do now is forgive him. And the best way of doing that is to celebrate his mistakes. Because, without his mistakes, I wouldnt have got to where I am now: a retired rocker spouting a lot of psycho-babble.

W e used our dads name, Patterson, for quite a while, even after he deserted us, until our Mum, Catherine (pronounced C-A-T-E-R-E- E-N ), opted for her own distinctive surname Poullain would nod along sagely, just to make sure I got the point: Ahd gie her one, right enough.

I was touched by the sentiment, but wasnt quite sure how to respond.

She brought me up to believe that Humans are worse than pigs because at least pigs push their rubbish into a corner. Looking back she was right, but thats probably what triggered off my misanthropy, and it also meant my mum was accidentally responsible for me becoming a vegetarian: after all, how could I be expected to breakfast on a superior life form?