Free Anything Goes by John Barrowman; Carole E. Barrowman

the surface and then ride the speeding current out of the tunnel into the lake. This became our own personal water slide. If I ever thought one of my nieces or nephews was getting up to something like that, I’d have them grounded for life. But, hey, it was the late seventies and children played with reckless abandon.
    Maybe a bit too much abandon at times. Once, through a rather unfortunate baking incident – you read correctly, baking – I had an early experience with the highs of, let’s say, ‘organic materials’. One afternoon, I was at a friend’s house and we unwittingly ate a whole batch of laced brownies that a much older sibling had left on the kitchen counter to cool. My friend and I treated ourselves to the entire plate of chewy delights – and then spent the rest of the afternoon stoned out of our fucking minds, watching Scooby Doo cartoons and thinking they were the best episodes we’d ever seen. Even Daphne looked good to me. I remember going home that night and hoovering every morsel of food off my plate at dinner and a few off Murn’s too. My mum and dad had no clue what was wrong with me, and for most of the duration of the accidental high, neither did I.
    It was during one of my idyllic Prestbury summers that I was finally able to take revenge on my brother for his years of tormenting me with a song he’d made up when we lived in Scotland. I know it sounds a bit Monty Pythonish that the biggest threat he could inflict on me was to torment me with a song, but it’s true. Andrew would sing his ditty, ‘Up the park, there was a man, and his name was—’ and then he’d stop. The man need never be named because whenever Andrew wanted to blackmail me into doing something for him, he needed only to sing those first few lines. Singing thesong served as a warning that if I didn’t do what he asked, he’d snitch to my parents about something I’d done ‘up the park’ while we still lived in Scotland. This song haunted me all the way across the Atlantic.
    Let me explain. One afternoon, when we lived in Mount Vernon, I was playing with a frisbee in the swing park at the top of Dornford Avenue. I can’t remember now what the provocation was, but for some reason one of our neighbours confiscated my toy and so I screamed at him to give me back my ‘fucking frisbee’, or something close to those words. I was about six or seven at the time, and it didn’t matter that I’d probably learned the phrase from Andrew in the first place. I was too wee to swear and certainly the offence was further aggravated by the fact that I’d said it to an adult.
    Andrew witnessed my verbal outburst and he swore he’d never tell Mum and Dad. He was my brother and, of course, he kept his word. Yeah, right. In retrospect, I’d have been much better off telling my parents, but I made the mistake all younger brothers make at least once in their childhoods: I trusted that my big brother had my best interests at heart.
    For years, and I do mean years, any time Andrew wanted me to do something for him, he’d begin to sing ‘Up the park, there was a man, and his name was—’ to a tune of his own making. After a while, he didn’t even have to finish the phrase. He’d just open his mouth and say ‘Up’ and I was his slave. That is, until the summer of ’77, when revenge was mine – and it tasted oh, so very sweet.
    Andrew was in his mid teens when ‘Episode III: The Revenge of the Sib’ occurred. He and his friends often borrowed 1     Prestbury’s pontoon boat, a boat that anyone – well, any adults that is – could use. Andrew and his mates would let the boat drift over to the islandat the centre of the lake, where they’d spend long chunks of their summer days drinking and smoking. How did I know? Because my friend Mike’s brother often hung out with them on the island and he had a big mouth.
    On the lazy summer afternoon when I finally got my revenge on Andrew, my brother and his buddies were on the