I'm not there

As I was walking the wet streets home I passed a building site. The Kelvin Hall is in the process of transformation. Often when I pass this building I think of a story about the time I was taken there to the circus.
I was 5 years old and had gone to the toilet myself. When I didn't return my parents came looking for me, but I wasn't there. They retraced their steps and one of them returned to the seats in case I had found my way there. I hadn't.
Just as they were about to raise the alarm the Ringmaster made an announcement about a wee boy being found in the ring. There I was, holding his hand to the relief of my parents. Call off the hounds.
The striking thing about this story is that I have absolutely no recollection of the incident or of the circus itself. It could be baloney: I'm only taking my parents' word for it. I know it must have happened (why would they make it up?) but it has the same unnerving effect on me as the stories of my sleepwalking shenanigans did.

When I was a teenager I would occasionally sleepwalk. I phoned my Granny up once in my sleep, I almost headed out the front door of my house only for the dog to raise the alarm and my dad talk me back to bed. I only know this because - like the Kelvin Hall story- I've been told about it. The absolute worst (and mortifying) occasion this happened was one Hogmanay.
I'd gone First Footing to my friend's house where his family were having a big party. There was lots of drink, music and dancing. My friend and I got drunk along with almost everyone else there and the party eventually fizzled out. I slept on the downstairs sofa...
... and was woken the next morning by the vacuum cleaner thumping into the sofa where I was sleeping. Oh how the morning light stabbed at my vision, my head was fuzzy and my stomach felt very fragile.
"So you're awake then !!", my friend's mum said to me sharply.
I thought it must have been my hangover because she never talked to me that way and it seemed an odd thing for her to be doing and thumping the vacuum cleaner about like a maddie. Talk about lack of consideration for your guests!!
Well...
"What have you got to say for yourself about last night?" Again the weird angry voice.
"Eh... at the party?" I mean my dancing was awful but not so bad as to provoke a genteel woman into shouting me awake.
"No, not the party. In the middle of the night!!" Eh....

Okay: let's do this. What had happened (I was told, because I have NO memory of it) was that I'd got up in the night to go to the toilet (Hello Kelvin Hall!!) and, instead of going to the toilet, I turned and went into her bedroom where she and her husband were sleeping. I then walked up to her side of the bed and urinated on her. Then I decided that I'd just sleep right there on the carpet next to their bed and so down I flopped. My friend and his dad had to be woken up to carry me back downstairs.
How do you respond to being told something like that?
"I..I.. don't believe it!" I said (maybe I was still dreaming).
"Well I can assure you it is true!! Do you want me to show you the sheets and my nightie in the washing machine!?" She looked as if she was going to lamp me with the vacuum cleaner.
" I don't mean I DON'T believe you.. I mean.. I CAN'T belie.. I mean... what.. me?"
I left sharpish and didn't go back to my friend's house for quite some time.

So, that was me and some thoughts passing the Kelvin Hall building site and these happenings are things that are only there now because I've told you about them. (Not the Hall itself, that's definitely there, you can googlemap it and everything.) I have no more memory of these events than you reading them, only what I was told.

Anyway, I DO remember taking this picture today, and that it made me think of a pictogram of a frazzled pterodactyl chick. I know, I know - too much information.