'I'm fed up looking like Father Christmas,' Muttered Father Christmas one year. 'I need a new outfit. I must move with the times. So, for a start, it's goodbye, reindeer.'
He was seven and I was six, my Brendon Gallacher. He was Irish and I was Scottish, my Brendon Gallacher. His father was in prison; he was a cat burglar.
That fire, they said, was red as red as red as red as a fox, your lips, a cherry; that fire, they said spread and spread and spread, faster than a cheetah or a nasty rumour;