Toy Fights

A Boyhood - 'A classic of its kind' William Boyd

Don Paterson

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2023
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9780571377367
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

Exquisitely sharp, deeply humane and brutally hilarious, Toy Fights is a future classic from one of the greatest writers of his generation.

'Devastatingly funny.' Geoff Dyer
'Thought-provoking, hilarious, sardonic and scarily brilliant' Scotsman
'Laugh-out-loud funny' Herald on Sunday

This is a book about family, money and music but also about schizophrenia, hell, narcissists, debt and the working class, anger, swearing, drugs, books, football, love, origami, the peculiar insanity of Dundee, sugar, religious mania, the sexual excesses of the Scottish club band scene and, more generally, the lengths we go to not to be bored.

Don Paterson was born in Dundee, Scotland, in 1963. He spent his boyhood on a council housing estate. When he wasn't busy dreading his birthdays, dodging kids who wanted to kill him in a game of Toy Fights, working with his country-and-western singer dad, screwing up in the Boys' Brigade, obsessing over God, origami, The Osmonds, stamps, sex or Scottish football cards, he was developing a sugar addiction, failing his exams, playing guitar, falling in love, dodging employment and descending into madness. While he didn't manage to figure out who he was meant to be, the first twenty years of his life - before he took a chance, packed his guitar and boarded a train to London - did, for better or worse, shape who he would become.

Table of contents

• Landing Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• 1. Pre Face
• 2. The Man with the Blue Guitar
• 3. The Ball of Clava
• 4. All I Can Remember Before 1967
• 5. Happy Birthday to Me
• 6. I’m Out with The Inn Folk
• 7. Nickety Nackety Noo
• 8. From Secret Admire
• 9. Bungopolis
• 10. The Lore and Anguish of Schoolchildren
• 11. Got Any Swetchies
• 12. Metric Mental
• 13. Bus Did Flatten Batten Roo
• 14. Dr Jekyll and Stanley Gibbons
• 15. Donald Is Seeking Fellow Paper-Folders
• 16. A Man in Uniform
• 17. Farm of the Warrior
• 18. Your Time Is Up
• 19. Heinz Fry Dry Fear
• 20. If with His Skirt He Do Touch Bread or Pottage
• 21. For the Love of God Amen
• 22. Absolutely Tragic
• 23. Oombara Coombara
• 24. Your Representative
• 25. Nowhere Fast
• 26. Stairwell to Heaven
• 27. Un-American Activities
• 28. A New Jerusalem
• 29. Party Fears
• 30. Aieeee Banzai
• 31. Black Sheep
• 32. It’ll No Be You Then
• 33. Straight Box
• 34. A Knock from Below
• 35. Adventures in Clubland
• 36. You Are a Dundee United
• 37. Kammakammakammakammakamma
• 38. The One Note
• 39. Let’s Get Horsin’
• 40. Near by Dundee and the Bonnie Magdalen Green
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• By the Same Author
• Copyright