To my mind there were two types of codes, our ones and the grown ups ones. Ours were simply to hide where we were going or what we were going to do. The adults ones seemed a lot more complicated.

The play park at the side of the council flats backed onto the old railway yard. Abandoned, boarded up buildings became out secret domain. We came in our droves, the whole of primary seven, and upwards. Sometimes the younger ones had to tag along if it was a wee brother or sister we’d been made to mind. Apologising to the others for their presence, they’d acquiescently grumble, knowing it would be their turn soon. But we’d never take the little ones to the ‘inner sanctum’, as we called the old Ticket Office. A hidden plank would be retrieved from a bramble entangled ditch and erected sixty degrees against a high window sill, maybe ten foot off the ground. You had to climb slowly, clutching the bending joist with hands either side like a bear and inch your way up, lift the flap of conti-board and squeeze in through a windowless frame. Balancing on the narrow ledge you swivelled around and lowered yourself down onto stacked, upturned tea chests. That was until Big Senga
had plopped right through the bases of a few, scratching her woollen tights into tatters, cutting her legs and turning them red. She’d been kept in for a week, but didn’t tell her folks where it had happened. We’d then spent a whole evening nicking bales from Wully Wilson’s barley field, passing them like parcels to a straggley line of kids until we got them to the ditch and then four bigger boys pushed them up the plank, which was a feat in itself, and stacked them like a staircase inside the window entrance. Once up in the eaves, above the glass screened office, there was a thick rope tied to the rafters, it was knotted every foot or so. You had to shin down through a boley hole in the floor, into the musty office below. Some girls wore long trousers, the boys all wore short pants, so most of us had scarted legs and scabby knees. Wellies offered some protection.

The varnished, wood lined office had three dining room chairs with ripped leatherette seats, oozing out wadding. A tiny horse shoe shaped cast iron fire place with a cracked olive green tiled hearth sat against the middle of one wall. Above it hung a map of Scotland with Fife outlined so it looked like a dog’s head with the East Neuk the penned in nose.

There was a roll top desk with dusty drawers open and empty. A pigeon hole shelf sat under the mahogany counter which was dished at the glass partition to take the ticket money. Everything was coated in mouse droppings and gritty grime that had accumulated since Beeching shut the door. We’d sit on the busted chairs or floor listening to Radio Caroline on a tinny transistor - talking, playing cards, occasionally coughing and spluttering on a shared, filched woodbine - lit candles guttering wax across the counter. The Ticket Office was butted to the Waiting Room, which had two broken benches. We’d managed to get an extra three dozen bales up the plank, through the roof, dropped them down the loft and lined them in rows in this bigger room for when we had meetings or parties and that.

Older brothers drove motor bikes, scrapped, handed down Cortinas and Minis up and down the tracks. Some nights we played MH, manhunt. Thirty kids divided into two teams with torches roaming a two mile radius, the hunted and the hunter, catching eyes in the beam, a fox out strolling, rabbits nibbling at embankments, as we seeked the hidden ones.

Billy Brown and his wee sister Megan were poor, wheezy, nervous things; pudding basin haircuts, old clothes and legs so thin you could see the bones jutting out at the back of their knees. Megan wore thick pink NHS glasses that had been mended with a plaster. Billy always had a trail of snot running out of his nose. If there was anything doing the rounds that was catching, he caught it. They wore wellies in winter, plastic sandals in summer and large black duffle coats all year round, that they were expected to grow into. They got the name of the Twa Craws. Huddled together whispering secrets, they would both answer questions in harmony. Their dad a large, angry man was proud of his nick name Killer Will, on account of him being able to slaughter and skin more beasts per hour than any of the other abattoir workers. It was piece work so he had a fat wage packet, but most of that ended up down the Boat Tavern toilet.

One filthy winters night the word went up that the Dykers, our enemies from an adjoining village, must be playing MH on our patch
as they’d seen the flash of torches from up in their flat. We were sitting on the swings in the pitch black when Robbie and his cousin Gnasher came running to tell us. Territory was divided by the burn. Generally we stuck to the west side they kept to the east.

Robbie and Spider Brain went chapping on doors to muster troops while us lot filled our pockets with big stones and gathered switches of hazel and willow from the municipal planting. Plook wanted to dip the ends in dog dirt, but she was voted down fourteen to eight.

Spider Brain appeared back, walking with the awkwardness of a deep sea diver. He’d tennis rackets tied to the soles of his boots, reckoning they were snow shoes. We laughed so much he took them off in the huff and hid them in a dustbin. We waited for the rest to arrive and then set off up the siding , forty odd of us. Leggy had the whistle to toot out instructions - directions and so forth. We’d learnt this from the drumming and marching classes at the youth club and had adapted it to our own code. And not, as Plook used to brag to the little ones, from the Orange men.

By the time we reached the goods yard the sleet was slanting down, getting down wellies and the backs of necks.

‘ Look.’ Shouted the Twa Craws in unison, and pointed their torches in the direction of the main platform several hundred yards away. But how they saw anything at all from beneath their hoods was beyond ken.

Leggy blew a single blast. We all stopped, switched off our torches and hunkered down in the slushy mud. Everyone had seen the dim bobbing lights ahead except Spider Brain.
‘ What’s happening?’ He whispered.
‘ There’s twenty or so up at the main drag.’ Someone hissed.

We held a quick council and decided to split into two. One lot were to cut over to Wilson’s barley field and edge along the barbed wire fence while the others crept along the burn to the Tarzan swings. There were two suspended from the metal bridge - long pieces of heavy rope with a tyre tied on at the end.

In our group Big Senga was the first across, skimming the swollen stream, causing water rats to dart from their hidey holes, and soaking already sodden clothes. Both groups planned to end up on either side of the main drag where we’d have the Dykers in a pincer movement, pelt them with ammo and whip them like spinning tops back to Cellardyke. Or at least that was the plan.

Scrabbling up the slidey banking on the other side we saw the blue flashing lights and heard the nee naw, nee naw of the siren.

‘ It’s the Polis.’ Gnasher shouted needlessly.
We edged forward slowly, unsure, torches clicking off. We started emptying our pockets and laid down our flails.
Three short whistles came from our left. Creeping around the dilapidated, wooden engine shed we heard the others inside, stamping wellies on the concrete floor and blowing on frozen fingers. Leggy volunteered to go on and have a closer look. Gnasher, his teeth chattering so hard his braces had locked together, went with him. Big Senga had unclamped him with her Swiss Army pen knife, as I held a torch aloft, like a grand inquisitor. I would have said in my best Nazi voice,
“ Ve av vays of making you tawk.” But I didn’t think of that till after.
A while later we could hear distant shouting, dogs barking, but couldn’t see much through the blizzard except white whirling flakes that had become an hypnotic blur, and an eerie orange glow in the direction of the station.

When Leggy and Gnasher arrived back to report after ages, they stood about, shrugging off questions and took the Twa Craws away to one side. I tried to listen. But only caught the odd word.
“ Fiddled with…Lynching…Stramash…”
The two silently went off home, then we all got the proper tale.

Bob Bett had called at the Twa Craws house for Wee Billy, who was out, but Killer Will had invited him in, stinking of drink and his trousers undone. He’d made a grab for him and tried to rip his breeks off, and that. Wee Bob had ducked and dived and managed to get out the back door and run home in a right state. Bob’s da had got his mates from the fishing and they’d gone out to give him a hammering. More and more had joined the noisy throng. They’d spied their quarry down at the harbour eating a black pudding supper and given chase. Killer Will had run up to the old railway station to hide and bashed his way into the Waiting Room. Big Maulky, Bob’s Uncle had set fire to it by pushing a petrol soaked rag through the splintered door. Well, what with the bales, and that, it had gone up like a torch.

By the time we got up to where the crowds were gathered the fire engine had arrived and filled hoses from the burn. Everyone was stood on the tracks. Wivies with folded arms were clustered in bunches muttering. The sparks danced up to the snowy sky, slates cracked, slid down and smashed on the platform. The Polis were there pushing back folk with orange-lit upturned faces. It was like bonfire night gone wrong. Roof lights exploded, showering down glass, which I stamped on hard with the heel of my welly. It made the same noise that happens inside your head when you crunch on sweeties.
What really got me was the way folk with Rangers scarves were stood next to men with Celtic scarves all cheering together when the roof - sort of - crashed in on itself.