I think it's on a beach, but I'm not sure. I was taken there; I think we went in the car. Unfortunately my only memory of the car is it, in a stationary position either at the front of the house or, more usually, outside the bookies or the Plough. It was a Morris traveller, the colour of ivy with wooden side panels and us and tools in the back. We got coke and Crisps outside the plough and bored outside the bookies but it didn't seem to matter to my dad who was home on leave.

It was then, during his leave from the merchant navy that we'd spend time on Millport. We usually stayed for the whole month of August and it was a place much mythologised by us as kids although to anyone else it was just a small island somewhere off the coast of Scotland. I say somewhere, I suppose I could go and get an atlas and tell you exactly where it is. It's near Rothesay and Largs (if that means anything to you). I remember these names from childhood like I remember the smell of the morning rolls in the bakery but I don't know where they are exactly.

My dad's uncle owned a house on the Island and his family used to rent another one to accommodate everyone. I remember a bed that was set in an alcove with a curtain that closed it off from the rest of the room where my brother and I were put to bed after the long journeys up north. My dad played the guitar and my mother would sing. My grandmother told me that her family were smugglers and that the house had secret doors which led down to caves on the beach, and that, as I said before, is where I think the crocodile rock is.

Up until fairly recently I didn't know if it really existed, although I thought I spent several summers playing on it. The problem was that Elton John brought out a record with the same name, so the whole thing got a bit confused in my mind and I thought I'd probably imagined it, it seems pretty unlikely don't you think, A crocodile rock? I'm still not sure if that song is about Elton John's time on Millport, it could quite conceivably be unconnected. I'm trying to remember the words.

..Anyway, Karen (Guthrie) rather shockingly told me one day that she was from largs! Not only that, but that you can see Millport from Largs and the crocodile rock actually exists.

Since then I have harboured the rather unfocused desire to return to this place and finally separate my memories from Elton's. You see, after my dad died (I was eight) and I never went back to Scotland. My parents actually split up a year or two before that but after my dads aborted attempt to kidnap us and take us back to Scotland my mum was pretty reluctant to let him take us anywhere.

Actually part of that's a lie. I did go back once; I had a job hanging pictures in a hotel in Glasgow. Five pounds an hour in the middle of winter, It lasted about a week, one hundred and four hours, I remember, in 12 to 14 hour shifts .I stayed near the art School that he won a scholarship to but wasn't allowed to take up and passed by the shipyards where he did the apprenticeship that his father had got him but you could hardly call it a pilgrimage!

I'm not sure where in Glasgow my dad grew up, where he lived or where he is buried for that matter, because of the kidnapping incident and other acrimonious wrangling And apart from a few six million dollar man annuals at Christmas we lost touch with his side of the family. As I said, I've been back up to Glasgow, I found a shop that sold Thomson tartan but not much else that seemed to relate to my early life