Portable Telly

My Dad had bought me a wee portable telly. He said it would give me some credibility in the house. He evidently didn’t think I had ‘much about me’ as the Glasgow saying goes. I lived with three other Glaswegians in the upper storey of a house in an ordinary street in Leytonstone. Should have been only three us but the fourth was ‘Moonie’ an itinerant nutter from Carnwadric with a penchant for drinking air freshener. We’d let him stay and now couldn’t get rid of him.

He shared a room with Jack while Jacks brother Davy, who looked like a mad Jacobite, shared another room with his girlfriend, Theresa. Theresa was thick but cunning. She could get 'tick' from any shop anywhere but once offered the opinion that Lester Piggott was the Prime Minister of South Africa. She once produced a photograph of herself as proof of identity in the Post office.

I lived in the other room with my newly gifted portable telly which was the only telly in the house – the upper part anyway. The lower floor, a fat woman and her biker husband, kept themselves to themselves through fear of the residents of the upper floor.

It sort of came to a head because of the Real Madrid versus Aberdeen European Cup Winners Cup Final which was to be televised live. I took a moody and wouldn’t let the others watch it. It was over something and nothing and I remember feeling a bit silly but I dug my heels in and there it was – I would be the only one watching it.

Moonie, who’d never really liked me and considered me ‘too clever’ for his liking, used this as a catalyst in a typically dramatic way. As the game was about fifteen minutes old he burst into my room holding what to me looked like a machete knife, curved and lethal looking. He looked me in the eye and muttered some threatening oaths, grabbed the portable telly by its handle and took it into his room where he and Jack proceeded to watch the game.

Davy then came into my room laughing his head off, told me not to be such a prick and together we went into Jack and Moonie’s room and watched Aberdeen win the cup.

Credibility my arse…!