I used to be the kind of boy mothers bragged about. My shoes shone like mirrors, my ties were straight, and my conscience was cleaner than my Sunday shirt. Every morning, my mama would part my hair just right and remind me, “Keep out of trouble, son.”

Then Bernadette rolled into the neighbourhood like a thunderclap.
Leather boots, teased hair, a laugh that could break windows. She wasn’t walking—she was strutting, leaving trails of perfume and danger behind her. The boys watched. The girls whispered. And me? I fell headfirst into the fire.

She’d catch my eye and smirk, like she already knew I’d follow her anywhere.
By the time I did, my mother’s prayers were already working overtime.

The first night we went out, she dragged me into The Gamp, a discotheque pulsing like a second heartbeat. Smoke curled through the strobe lights, and every song sounded like sin. Bernadette taught me how to move, how to laugh too loud, how to live without permission.

When my mum saw me walking home with her—tie loosened, hair a mess, lipstick stain on my collar—she nearly fainted through the window.

But it was too late. Bernadette had already rewired me.

She showed me the world outside curfews and choir practice: sex, cigarettes, discotheques, kinky boots, and leatherette. She wasn’t a saint, and she never claimed to be. “The devil needs dancers too,” she’d say, winking as she pulled me into another midnight adventure.

Looking back now, I see it clearly -  my mum called her the devil’s child. Maybe she was right. But who wouldn’t want to have a dance with the devil’s child just to see what happened?

And all these years later, every time I smell cigarette smoke on a rainy street or hear a bass line from the ’70s, I can still see her smile in the neon light.

Bernadette.
Can’t forget.
It was you.

RECORDed on tape in 1978 in forth studios, edinburgh with d hume, D wharton, A wharton, s rOsie