A Celt on The Gers Train

I believe to this day that they chose not to tell me that it was definitely the wrong train to get on. With hindsight I can see them on the opposite platform waving at me and trying not to laugh. They were off back home to Cambuslang, I was heading for the town to meet an old friend I hadn’t seen since I moved to London some years before.

 

They would have known that the next stop for me would have been the one where the Rangers supporters get on, they would have known that. They could see me, my so called comrades, wearing my Celtic colours waiting to get on the train which would stop at Bridgeton where the entire Rangers end would be waiting to get on.

 

Stung and sullen having been beaten two-one by their eternal foe; the week before the Pope, the anti-christ in their fevered, sectarian eyes, was due to visit Glasgow. In Bellahouston Park no less, a rosary-bead throw away from their red, white and blue lair – Ibrox Park. Goaded enough, they felt, without being confronted by the colours of the beast, sitting solitary and brave-seeming, on their train, the train that is accepted by both sides as theirs. For who else (and this is probably what saved me, apart from the bravado of being a little pished on whisky) but a madman, a psycho, an all-around hied-the- ba’ would be committing such an act.

 

“Huv ye no’ seen one before, then?” I heard myself say confronted by their astonishing number and hostile glares.

 

“You’ll help me tho’ hen, eh?” I say to the uniformed female sitting opposite.

 

“I’m no wi the police” she responded “I’m wi the fire service!!”

 

Another twist to this occurred the following evening when, sitting in my mates house in Cambuslang, the same uniformed female walks in. It’s my mates sister and I’d been sleeping in her bed while she was on shifts.

 

You couldn’t make it up...!

Pubic Panic

I once sellotaped my head-hair onto my pubic area. At primary school I was moved on a year due to being cleverer than my contemporaries. I never considered this an advantage as it meant that for the rest of my schooldays I was a year younger than my classmates. In puberty this can prove crucial in a number of not-so-subtle ways.

 One of these was pubic hair growth. Being 12 not thirteen was a big deal. Being thirteen not fourteen was an even bigger one.  When changing for gym or swimming the presence or otherwise of pubic hair was of vital importance – a defining moment no less. Well, for me it was.

Older boys had pubic hair I didn’t. What to do? Manufacture some!  Snip some from the head and attach to pubic area? Brilliant!! I toyed with the idea of elastoplasts, thinking it may match my skin tone, but it was too dark, if only you could have gotten the clear stuff back then. I tried glue – but it doesn’t work well with skin and hair, don’t ask me why, I’m not a chemist. Sellotape doesn’t work much better but by this time it was worth a try and I was desperate. My school days were a series of humiliations and failures as it was, so I was determined to win on this one. I would have pubic hair and that was that. I spent ages in the toilet at home. My mother and father must have thought I was merely masturbating. Indeed, I’m pretty sure they would have preferred that I was if they’d have known what I was really up to, attempting to simulate pubic maturity by snipping off hair from my head and attaching it to sellotape and then attempting to secure it onto my groin. The stuff of child psychologists, I fear.

The end result was impressive enough, admittedly to my desperate young mind, for me to attend school with my underpants full of sellotape and hair. I got through the changing room experience without comment.

Trouble is that when your swimming, water tends to have a degenerative effect on any glue-based adhesive. Afterwards, I put my trousers straight on over my wringing-wet swimming trunks and hoped no-one would wonder why there were pieces of hairy sellotape floating about the pool.

'Ah Dinnae ken Ken, ken?' - A Weegie Lives in the East

When I left Scotland, aged sixteen in 1977 to live in London, it was raining heavily. When I returned in 2009 it still was.

Walking around in the sinus-battering wind and drizzle I realise how utterly dismal the Scottish weather can be. That’s not to say that life down south was lived basking in sunshine and light breezes – it wasn’t, the climate’s typically dreary down there too. It’s just that there’s a unique quality to weather up here. When it’s cold its bloody cold; when it rains, its cold rain; when it’s dark, its pitch black. And the wind? Living in this micro-climate on the Firth of Forth is like living in a wind tunnel with behavioural problems. It whirls and skirls like a highland reel. It stops you in your tracks and blows you off your feet. It whooshes in four directions at once. It buffets your windows to breaking-point. You arrive home distressed, dishevelled and drenched muttering “why did I want to come back to this?”

I am reminded of my childhood in East Kilbride, one of the most exposed places in Britain, possibly on earth, outside of Siberia, surrounded as it is by moors and flatlands. My father dubbed a particular part of Princes Square, the central shopping precinct before the ubiquitous covered mall was built, as ‘Cochrane’s Corner’ after the self-service grocer shop that was situated there (I once stole a bottle of Soda Water and a Napoleon Solo magazine from there, I can still feel the thrill forty-odd years on). On a windy day (and those were plenty) you turned around this corner and were literally stopped in your tracks by the gusts of wind. If you had a bomber jacket on you could stretch it out bat-style like a proto-hang-glider and fly away toward Glasgow.

Perversely, given that such traffic usually runs the other way, I came back to Scotland for the work. Well, that and a romantic notion. Scots in exile tend to be the most patriotic, yet in my experience Scots can be reluctant to befriend one another say, in an office environment in London. I’ve worked alongside many Scots in this way and experienced no sense of camaraderie whatsoever, often the opposite in fact. The ritual of ‘where are you from?’ and ‘do you know?’ becomes tiresome very quickly. For the benefit of others though, especially the English, we’re all Rob Roy’s and even have the nerve - quite blatantly - not to support the host country during important sporting events.

Being footloose and fancy-free I made the decision to return and live in my homeland, and discovered quite rapidly that it was a foreign country to me. For the first couple of weeks I was convinced I was about to be attacked, such was the ferocity and volume of speech employed by those I encountered. I’d become a ‘southern softie’ in all practical senses, soft of tread and soft of voice. Sometimes ordinary conversations on a bus sounded to me like declarations of war, and often they perhaps were. I’d obviously been away too long.

This was all misconception of course, and I have acclimatised fully. The natives, far from being hostile, are on the whole very friendly.

Chivalry, I noticed, is not dead in Scotland. Indeed, your average ‘right-on’ feminist social worky-type in London would demand a fella’s knackers be removed and exhibited in the town hall if they witnessed some of the social mores still upheld here.

Letting women onto the bus first, a cheery greeting of ‘how are you ma darling?’ from the bus driver, offering seats to women. This all still happens in Scotland, and is accepted graciously too.

For it’s not meant to patronise or condescend. It’s not meant as an expression of male-dominance. It’s appreciative, polite and well-mannered. Cheers me up to see it (bring me my slippers and my copy of the Daily Mail, love!)

Scotland is a divided nation when it comes to health and lifestyle choices. Either you’ll see people jogging about the place in their shorts, i-pods blaring, or they’re standing in front of pubs and bookies, choking on fags held back-hand fashion, huddled against the icy wind and skittering rain.

What possible pleasure is derived from this is a mystery to me. A smoker myself, I’ve always viewed it as a sedate event, to be enjoyed in warmth and comfort accompanied by a large whisky and a facing telly. Standing in the cold wind and rain is not an option I would even consider. Strange, though, that smoking in public places was banned on health grounds when these front-of-pub wheezers are widening the scope of possible health risks to include pneumonia and hypothermia.

Even the joggers, though, are determined to uphold the stereotype of drink-or-be-damned Scot. I’ve heard the young yins in the office exclaim excitedly ‘as soon as the half-marathons over I’m gonna get absolutely shit-faced!!’ As if the marathonial effort is serving only somehow to get in the way of the main event.

Everybody’s become a wine connoisseur all of a sudden. Last I knew, wine to a Scot meant Buckfast and El Dorado, Four Crown if you were flush. Or even that old wine/whisky classic, Scotsmac. Only in Scotland would anyone think to mix wine and whisky, let alone advertise it as ‘a subtle blend’.

Now, it’s all about where to buy that half-price Prairie Merlot or how best to chill the Chardonnay - and this is from office workers. It’s all linked to this supposed healthy life-style. They still get blootered, but it’s on fine wines, and that seems to make a difference.

My Father and Jock Stein

Other than Jock Stein, Tommy Callaghan only seemed ever to have one other fan inside Celtic Park on match days: my father. He defended the prowess and effectiveness of the lanky number ten on a fortnightly basis. Abuse would be hurled at poor Tommy from all sections of the ground ‘too slow’ ‘not fit to wear the shirt’ and my father from his regular spot in the Jungle would deal with those nearest to him ‘Away ye go, big man runs his heart oot’ ‘yeez don’t know what yir talkin aboot’. And my father knew his football...

He managed his works team, Rawlplug FC up in Thornliebank. He even chose the strips they played in; the red and black stripes of the classic Man City away strip, black shorts and red and black socks. He got them promoted the first season and took them down to Essex for a five-a-side tourney. He really did put together a good, tough, well-balanced team. A skilful, hardy little outfit. He’d take me to watch them and kick a ball with me on the sidelines.

A committed socialist of the old school (as a union convener, he pre-dated Jimmy Reid in his advice for strike-day pickets not to hit the sauce the night before to ensure they were fit and vocal to greet incoming scabs), he was always the one to defend an underdog, and poor old TC certainly seemed to fit that billing. I think it was early ‘Peter-Crouch Syndrome’; he just didn’t look the part.

He did though have an impressive ally other than my dad – the great man himself didnae pick duds. Mind you, I never did work out why he signed Joe Filippi....

What's in a Name?

Interesting cultural thought (interesting to me anyway). You have to be careful how you pronounce place names in Scotland (and probably elsewhere too). It can be a dead giveaway if you get it wrong. I asked a colleague yesterday where he hailed from and he told me very pronouncedly 'Gore-Brig'. Now I may have said Gore-Bridge and what would that have told him?

Similarly, in Glasgow, for Christs sake don't say 'Bridge-ton', you must say Brig-ton, it gives it the harder edge that the denizens of that area think it deserves. 'Bridge-ton' means your posh and possibly homosexual (a life-style largely unheard of in those parts, and if  it does exist it is accompanied by a good chibbing).

For the same reason, you can't say 'Kennis- head' Flats to announce my old scheme, it must be 'Kennis-heid', and if you assign the pronunciation 'Barr-head' and not 'Borr-heid' to that Renfrewshire town you won't last very long in it!

These things are more important than you think. I once lived in Kilmarnock (by mistake) and we lived on Bridgehousehill Rd. Being a rookie I'd pronounce it as it's spelt. 'It's Briggus-hill' I was tersely informed.

Yir Hole

It used tae happen noo and again in the summer months durin the school hoalidays. Some lassies would come ower fae another scheme lookin fir thir hole. Fuckin bizarre it wis an a bit scary, bit thrillin anaw. Theyd dae that thing ye used tae dae in playgrounds at Primary where ye’d pit yer airms roon each ithers shooders aboot five or six ae ye and go roon the playgroon chantin ‘embdy want a gem ae fitba’? or whitever gem it wis. Thats whit these lassies wir daein only the wir chantin ‘anybiddy wantin thir ho-el? The syllables wirnae workin right so they’d pronounce each wan so it made a kinda rhythm that didnae jist sound stupit. These lassies wid be aboot fifteen and thir wir plenty bouys aboot that age playin fitba’ or jist sittin’ aboot oan the wa’s ootside the flats. Naebdy really wanted tae run up tae thim and say ‘aye me!’ cos that wid be a pure riddie, but ye hid tae know that thir wid be plenty bouys up fir it, it wid jist hiv tae be done in a mair gallus waiy.

Anywiy wan ae these lassies, an’ yiv goat tae know that these are no’ whit ye’d ca’ demure lassies, thir hard as negs itherwise they widnae be daen whit they wur, ane ae thum grabs ma wee mate Mattie, who’s aboot ages wi’ me, so he’s aboot fourteen an her an ur mates start draggin um toward the fire escape door (the fire escape bein where illicit scheme sexual shenanigans took place even though it stinks ae pish an is full ae used johnnies). Me an a couplae ither bouys get the lift up so that we can get tae the floor above whare wee matties gonnie get a seein to. So we’re crouched up ther tryin no ay giggle an the lassies are aw screetchin and sayin thir gonnie ride wee mattie an that when therz a miniscule wee brek in proceedings followed by even louder screetchin an laughin.

‘Eys goat skiddies oan ays knickers!’,  ane ae them proclaims louder than the human ear kin bear an they aw fa’ aboot. Poor wee matties left tae pull up said soiled undergarments and skulk off away hame knowin thit this’ll be roon the scheme faster thin fanny rash. Ah didnae notice any ae the ither buoys venturing forth too readily eftir that.

Embdy wantin thir hole indeed!

Desperate Measures

I stayed at Bill and Jill’s place in Chingford Hall Estate. They needed the extra dough and I needed a place to crash after breaking up with P in Dublin. I was working shifts in a care home in Woodford so I didn’t really see much of them. Bill was the most shiftless bastard you could ever meet, but true to that breed, he thought he was gods-gift. About five foot two with short bandy legs, he dressed in goth-black and gazed at his Lemmy-black hair and side-burns in the mirror. He had spawned a child with Jill and the three of them lived in squalor on this shit-hole estate where people threw their garbage out of the window, too lazy even to take it to the chute.

As became apparent to everyone except Bill, Jill was busy running off with a millionaire builder she’d met in the pub she worked in on the Mount. When she finally fled the nest Bill fell apart. So self-absorbed was he that he couldn’t believe that Jill could aspire to anyone but himself. As he’d often drunkenly proclaimed in his lazy Plymouth burr, he was ‘brilliant at shaggin’”, so why would any woman seek pastures new?

It hit him so hard that he fell from self-indulgence to the only other place his character knew – self-pity. And a pitiful sight he became. Crying and pleading like a child he was, as Jill sent him packing back to his mother in Hounslow (a strange woman who used to bring him a copy of The Beano when she visited). He still had a key to the flat though, and one day he returned to find the flat empty. Seeing empty champagne bottles around the kitchen bin he began to rummage. In the bin itself he found plastic wraps which had contained cocaine. He proceeded to lick these in the hope that any residue would give him a little relief from his pain and despair.

 When he told me this, it struck me as profoundly sad. To seek succour from the leavings of your former lovers, probably sex-fuelled, shenanigans with her rich, new boyfriend, this seemed low, even for Bill. 

The Rube Boy

Rube once told me that he suspected his dentist of deliberately drilling holes in his teeth. The rationale for this was that Rube would have to keep going for treatment, and the dentist would make more money from him. I said, that sounds terrible, why don’t you change your dentist? He said, o he’s handy, he’s only ten minutes down the road.

Rube’s folks died within eighteen days of one another just before Christmas. I’ve been concerned about his welfare. His greatest fear, as he expressed to me often, was to be left alone to cope without his parents. Rube is fifty-seven and has never lived outside the family home.  His mother was a bit of a monster and his father feigned deafness so he wouldn’t have to listen to her. If Rube was over at my place he’d have to give her the phone number, she’d phone up drunk and drugged on pills shouting that she would burn the house down if he didn’t come home. She could cause a row in an empty house. Phyllis and Monty – what a couple.  Poor, anxious Rube. They locked him up in Goodmayes mental hospital once (he wrote a song about it called ‘The Mogadon Shuffle’), he had suffered a total breakdown the likes of which I had never witnessed before. They said he was ‘paranoid schizophrenic’ but I think that was what they tagged everyone in there. I wrote a letter to his psychiatrist advising he should perhaps take a look at Rube’s mother if he wanted to get to the truth of Rube’s condition. I never received a response.

He relies now on the support of cousins, none of whom I have ever met. He attends the Mental Health Support Centre in Ilford where he plays pool with the other attendees. When I speak to him on the phone I refer to this as his ‘Nutter’s Club’ and he laughs. He regularly sees a psychiatrist and he is on strong medication which tempers his ‘disorder’. Rube is anxious and tense to a greater or lesser degree depending on how life impacts upon him. He walks an emotional tightrope which factors either leave alone or prod at him making him fall off. His mother was the greatest of these ‘prodders’ right up until the end. In the last days of her life she revealed to Rube in very bitter tones that Monty had cheated on her with some woman he had worked with (good for old Monty I say) and she had harboured this resentment for years, and now she was shouting and goading her husband of fifty-odd years from her very death-bed. In death, as she was in life, a manipulative and poisonous hag. She would never admit to Rube having any mental or emotional disorder, which left him as just a weak disappointment in her eyes.

 I could tell by the sound of him if he was feeling ok, or if he was anxious, and nine times out of ten the source of the anxiety was his mother, and sometimes, by association, his father.

I visited him recently on my trip to London, and I’m pleased to say I can’t remember him looking healthier or happier, though he is concerned about Iain Duncan-Smith’s new Work Capability Test which could well see him pronounced fit for work. I cheer him up by suggesting that no employer in his or her right mind would ever consider employing the likes of him.

This was a ‘transcendent’ Rube. Though, still shell-shocked by recent events, there was something in his demeanour which suggested he was in an emotionally healthier place. He was better groomed than I’ve ever seen him; hair cut neatly, Leyton Orient supporters jacked zipped up smartly and, astonishingly, no nervous tics or the irritating clearing of the throat every twenty seconds which used to drive me nuts. He actually seems relaxed. I made him laugh uproariously five or six times, he’d found his old nutty sense of humour again. Admittedly he was laughing at my description of his general ineptitude and social incompetence, but it was a good, healthy laugh. I even asked him if he had suicidal thoughts at all and he said ‘Naaa, I wouldn’t try that again’. So, maybe there’s hope for Rube. It was good to see my old friend in this new light, with a new lightness about him.