I usually arrive in Maybole when it is dark after my 7 hour drive from London

You can see the lights twinkle in the distance as you come in the Ayr road and the hair on the back of my neck stands on end - never fails.

I drive to Roderick Lawson Terrace to my parents’ house and think “who came up with that street name?” I used to get cramp at school writing my address you see.

I was born at 8 Red Brae - now that’s what I call an address - on 9/9/52. A fine year, God is it that long? 53 this year.

As soon as we walk in the door handshakes, kisses and cuddles, good to be home. Strange that I left in 1972 but still call it home.

“You must be hungry,” says my mum and so begins a week of eating all that lovely Scottish food unrivalled any where on the planet, sit up late talking about the old days crying with laughter.

Next day dad picks 6 bunches of flowers and we head for the graveyard to see my mates no longer here; pass Wullie Meek’s shop (bought many a sweetie in there) and then down Crosshill Road.

We wander round and lay our flowers, a tear comes easily. I can see and hear them as if it was yesterday. So many characters and many so young, you could write a book. It was a joy to have known them all.

We head back past the Glebe Park and I said to my dad, “Where is everybody?” He said, “Nobody plays football now, like your day.”

We used to play on a Sunday - two hour each way halves, 25 a side, no quarter asked for and none given and scores of 42-39 not unusual.

On we go up the Cairnfield, where my grandparents lived. I remember him yet, coming in from work so dirty and so tired my grannie had to fill the big steel bath help him in it and wash him. We don’t know we are born these days.

On past the Cairn school, it is so small, as a wee boy there I thought it was at least 10 times that size.

What memories of the Cairn school in BOBBY ELDERS GANG, charging round the school like maniacs, my first love Jan, my first game of football in a proper team. How much I owe MR ROSAMOND HEAD MASTER and football daft.

On we go down Kirkland Street, number 61 gone - now a 3 storey tenement THE PARRS THE WILSONS THE BROWNS THE WHITEFIELDS THE BRYDENS AND US THE PATERSONS.

We kids had the time of our lives but looking back it must have been awful for our parents. Up the High Street and it hits you; crumbling, once proud buildings, many closed and lorries thundering down the street - a disaster waiting to happen. It is sad.

No Joe Capaldi’s café, no King’s Arm’s, no Morton Wallace where everyone in the town had the same haircut, no Jackie Dent’s no Bruce and Stella arguing with each other in the chip shop.

Then down the Croft and home.

It is time to go home, a week has past and I have enjoyed meeting a lot of my many friends and going out to the shore. It was deserted, the National Trust has seen to that.

No fires, no camping, no dogs, no laughing, nobody goes now except TOOTIE and his hardy lads. National Trust - more like national disgrace.

We head back to London, my wife never speaks to me until get to New Cumnock.

She spots the lump in my throat and the misty eyes; parents getting older; will I see them again and Maybole, my kind of town.

My wife does not understand - she was not born in Maybole.

BOBBY PATERSON