A SPECIAL DAY by Irvine Welsh

IT was a frozen day in March at Hampden Park, where I was heading to see Hibs play in the League Cup final. But I was coming from Miami, with a pair of sunglasses and a light T-shirt and jeans, and a plastic bag containing a thick fleece and jacket. I flew in Saturday night and was glad of the plastic bag and its contents when I disembarked on Sunday morning in Glasgow. I took a taxi into town. My UK mobile wasn't charged, so I had no way of contacting the boys on the bus coming through from Edinburgh.

It was a typical cold and driech winter Glasgow Sunday morning, and everything was shut. I had time to kill and decided that the best way to get re-orientated was to walk towards Hampden. I crossed the Clyde and headed south, stopping at a McDonald's for the first time in years, drinking a coffee. It had started to snow heavily. I had just come from 90 degree heat and I was feeling the absence of every one of them. That sicky jetlagged feeling hit me hard; like being on drugs but without the buzz.

At 12.30 a pub close to the ground had opened its doors. I was in there for just a few minutes when my pals Tam and Russell came in with their dad, uncle and some friends. The pub started to quickly fill up with Hibernian and Kilmarnock supporters. I got talking to some lads from Ayrshire – they were good guys and we had a drink and a sing-song together and wished each other all the best. My jetlag was starting to recede. Tam had his phone and I was able to rendezvous with the rest of the boys outside the ground and pick up my precious match ticket.

The jetlag kicked in again with a vengeance when I got inside the stadium, where 30,000 Hibs fans and 20,000 Killie supporters were creating an electric atmosphere. I felt a bit disconnected from everything and I suppose the drinks in the pub didn't help. But the fatigue left me in the second half as the goals started to fly in. As that half progressed it was evident that it was going to be Hibs day, but Kilmarnock fans continued to back their team. Personally, I never felt totally safe even at 3-1, you just don't when you follow Hibs, and I didn't relax till the other two goals hit the net. But we were treated to some great striking from Benji and Fletch, and 5-1 in a cup final is always a great result. While we deserved to win, the scoreline was a bit harsh on Killie, as it can be in cup finals when you just have to go for it if you're behind.

We watched the cup being presented, and people were singing but had that slightly out-of-it air of unreality, like it hadn't quite sunk in yet. Me perhaps more than most, with my head still in Miami. But I'd felt the same way back in 1991 when we beat Dunfermline and I was too young to remember that much detail about the 1972 win over Celtic, though I was there with my dad.

We sang our lungs out, Sunshine On Leith, then got on the bus back to the port. It was a brilliant atmosphere heading along the M8. Our great buddy Tich Grant had died suddenly and unexpectedly just a few weeks earlier and we had a banner in tribute to him. It was a great night back in Leith, but strange not to have the Wee Man there, and it was bitter-sweet thinking about him. This game started the cult of Tich's banner though – it's now been all over the world. I left the party at 5am and walked up Princes Street. I was planning to get an early morning train through to Glasgow but Waverley Station was locked up as it was still too early. I met a couple of boys who were finishing their shift as electricians and they very kindly gave me a lift back to Glasgow. I got the connecting flight to London then the transatlantic to Miami.

My friend Kenny was working over in Miami at the dance music festival and couldn't get back over for the game. With the time differences I was able to present him with the Scottish newspapers on Monday morning at Jerry's Famous Deli in Miami Beach. I didn't have any jetlag at all by this time, but I indulged in a large Bloody Mary to toast the League Cup win. It was a great Hibs team, brought on by Tony Mowbray, with the win executed by John Collins. We knew they would be breaking up soon, due to financial problems, but it was great that they won something for us before doing so.

An exhausting day, but one I'll always remember. Let's have another, please, Mixu.

• Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh's eighth novel Crime was published earlier this month. The 49-year-old, who was born in Leith and grew up in Muirhouse, now lives in Dublin.

THAT FIRST KISS by Margot Watson

IHAD my very first kiss in the scout hall across from the school on the last day of term before the summer holidays. I was 14 years old and we were skipping school.

I had a boyfriend called Jeffrey. He was experienced in the ways of love I was not. This was 1956 and things were a little different from today. Fourteen years and never been kissed – well, I ask you.

I went with Jeffrey for about six months before the "kiss". Such was life back then that when he came a considerable bus journey to see me on my birthday I had to keep him at the door. Talk about embarrassment.

He used to meet me on a Friday after I had visited my Gran and we would walk home through the dark streets of Edinburgh, along and under the Dean Bridge by the river and through wooded areas. We held hands and had our arms around each other but I always managed to avoid the kiss on the lips. I quite simply didn't know what to do!

One memorable Friday after the long walk home from Gran's we almost almost "did it". I went home thinking I had committed a crime. So wound up and excited was I by this that I wrote it all down in my diary word for word. It read "touched noses eyes cheeks and ears . . . didn't quite kiss".

Well guess what, some class mates knew of my lack of prowess apparently and managed to steal my diary and to my utter horror, embarrassment and disbelief it was passed round the entire 3b class.

One week later, in the scout hut we were playing a game of dares and Jeffrey was dared to take me into the ante room and KISS ME ON THE LIPS.

WOW . . . WONDERFUL . . . there was no getting out of it, they were all waiting and they all cheered when I came out red faced, more embarrassment BUT IT WAS WORTH IT.

• Sales assistant Margot Watson, 66, of Linlithgow, is a married mother-of-three who grew up in Edinburgh and attended Trinity Academy. She loves to write poetry and is a contributor to her local church magazine.

NORTH SEA YACHT RACE by Jamie Andrew

AS Mrs Chippy leaves the great glacier carved bay of Stavanger and moves out into the North Sea, it's startling how quickly the conditions change. The pleasant breeze which played round our sheltered fjord now becomes a powerful wind and the surface of the sea rises up in a relentless procession of choppy waves, big and unpredictable.

I haven't even had a chance to change into my sailing gear so I duck down below to pull it on. Almost immediately the nausea hits me as the boat, pitching and rolling wildly, throws me around the cramped cabin while I wrestle with the waterproofs.

I make it back on deck feeling very green, but in fact it's our skipper, Stuart, who is first to succumb. He is sitting at the chart table, attempting to plot our course, but has to break off to retch into a bucket. He emerges on deck looking grim, his face the pallor of a corpse.

Before long Alan also reaches for the bucket.

As dusk approaches, we begin our watches, each taking two hours at the helm, followed by two hours on standby, huddled under the spray hood, and then two hours down below, trying to sleep.

The two hours down below are the worst – the motion of the boat is absolutely unbearable, and the sea-sickness becomes all encompassing. It engenders in me a strange desperation. It's more than wishing that I was not on the boat, more even than wishing myself dead – I simply wish that I didn't exist at all. I am uncertain that I can bear another moment of this. Looking at their faces, I guess that Alan and Stuart feel the same way.

At 2am I rise from my tortured slumber, brave the heads for a pee, retch into the bucket, struggle back into my cold, wet waterproofs, and stagger up on deck. Stuart passes me wordlessly as he descends to his bed while Alan makes way for me at the helm and without further ado curls up foetus-like in the cockpit.

Suddenly, in the pitch black of night, I feel very out of my depth. Despite being missing a hand and a foot respectively, Stuart and Alan are great sailors and I rely heavily on their experience. But now I am in charge of the boat and the conditions are quite frightening. The forecast force 5 and 6 winds have materialised as force 6 and 7, gusting 8, and the sea is very rough. The wind is blowing from the south-east – ideal for our westerly course, but it does mean that the waves are approaching from behind us. As each wave arrives, invisible in the dark, it lifts our little boat right up to its crest, at which point we either slump back down the other side, or, if we time it just right, we surf down the front of the wave, gathering speed and shooting off down the trough.

The trouble is that without being able to see the waves, it is very difficult to do this and I have to rely on the feel of the boat and the feel of the wheel as I heave it from side to side. It's a real physical job and balancing is difficult, bracing my prosthetic legs across the cockpit and clinging to the wheel with my already bruised stumps.

The huge waves often catch me by surprise and break over the back of the boat, drenching us and sending the boat crashing down into the gutter below. Then, without warning, a monster. I can sense the boat rising way up high, then before I know it we are falling, rushing down the steep face of the wave at a startling velocity.

The boat smashes into the bottom of the wave and tips over alarmingly. The starboard side plunges into the rushing water and it seems certain that we must be knocked down flat.

Alan, curled up on the port side of the boat, is hurled bodily across the cockpit and before his safety line can come tight he smashes into the portside winch and the guard rails.

In that moment, time seems to stand still. I see Alan, pinned by gravity against the rails, which are ploughing through the water as the boat heaves over into the sea, but I'm not thinking about him, or myself, or Stuart. I'm thinking about Jim. Jim, who was such an experienced sailor, so competent, so self-assured, yet who had been caught off-guard by just such a wave, somewhere in the sea north of Iceland, less than two years ago. Knocked overboard, swallowed up by the inky black sea, Jim was never seen again. Such a good friend. Such a tragic loss.

And now I'm thinking about myself. Already brutally scarred by tragedy, I survived, went on to rebuild, to marry, to have children. And now here I am again on the brink of disaster. I don't want it to be this way. I don't want to die like this. I don't want the sea to have me.

And then the moment is past. Mrs Chippy doesn't topple over but rights herself. Alan falls back into the cockpit, clutching at his badly bruised arm. Stuart rushes up from below to see what on earth has happened. We sail on into the night.

By dawn the wind has dropped slightly and the sea eased. We are making great progress and as the boat skims across the surface of the water, it is already becoming hard to imagine the fear and turmoil of the previous night. Life is good again, the sailing a sheer joy and the spirit of adventure courses through my veins.

The sea-sickness has lessened and we manage a revitalising brew. A school of dolphins joins us, leaping playfully alongside and across our bow wave. We sail on towards the horizon, to Scotland and home.

• Jamie Andrew, 38, of Bruntsfield, is a mountaineer who lost his hands and feet in a horrific accident in the French Alps. Now a motivational speaker and charity fundraiser, his autobiography, called Life and Limb, was published in 2004.

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