Mrs Rogers was a Lovely Woman

Mrs Rogers was a lovely woman but she was married to a pig of a man. She’d bring us in dinners; chunky chips and square sausage wi’ broon sauce and big mugs o’ tea. We’d be practising songs or kidding on we were rock stars and posing to mirrors on the wall. Todge had an authentic First World War Prussian helmet with a spike on top which he used to hit the cymbals with (typical Glaswegian drummer – hiedering the cymbals!)

She’d put a pack of twenty Sovereign on my tray.

When Todge was bad wi’ peritonitis in the Southern General she’d give me fifty pence after I’d visited him. Me and another mate would use this to go to the prize bingo on Jamaica Street next to the Classic Grand which showed porno films. Sometimes we’d be lucky and win fags. Fags, fags, fags – that’s what it was all about then.

Once, as a fifteen year old, and being ripened for the local job market, I was taken along with the rest of my bonehead class to the local fag factory, WD and HO Wills on Alexandra Parade to see if we fancied working there. On leaving, and courtesy of a blind eye by our teacher, we were given a handful of fags each by the foreman. Can you imagine that today? It’d make the news.