Gangs

Many people don’t understand how territorial poor places are. They are ridden with very rigid demarcation lines. If you are a stranger you can maybe cross them with impunity (though I once walked out of Toryglen and into Rutherglen in Glasgow and paid a humiliating price) but, if you’re known to come from a neighbouring area you may have violence bestowed upon you.

This demography is actually quite limiting. Many living in one area, say Niddrie Mills in Edinburgh, wouldn’t dream of crossing the road to visit the Greendykes area. This would be true of Carnwadric and Arden as well as Drylaw and Muirhouse (I don’t know other Scottish locales as I do in Edinburgh and Glasgow, there will be areas of Dundee, Aberdeen, Perth, Stranrear and Elgin that are the same).

Glasgow is known for its gangs and these gangs will mark an area like tom-cats pissing on walls. Certain streets will be no-go areas for outsiders, the lines may be as subtle as to be defined by a wall or a row of shops. Sojourn’s into an enemy’s territory will be for only one purpose – violent conflict; a ‘square-go’.

I would watch from a high hill the Priestie (from Priesthill) and the Toon Tongs (Arden) run at one another with chibs, fists and chains. No particular reason except for local prestige, gang and personal reputations. Being ‘gemmie’ was important currency. It won you respect from your peers and sex with girls. Not to be sniffed at.

These cities have A-Z’s that you can buy in W.H. Smiths but these guides, however useful, may not help you at all with the territorial social demographics of gangland.

Having a hard nick-name was desirable too though Bryant never had one. His name didn’t translate into ‘hardness’; you couldn’t do much with it. Bryantie didn’t work, nor did Bryo, and anyway, nothing he ever done merited a nickname. Big Shitey caught on for a while but that was hardly complimentary and was meant to denote the fact that he backed down whenever challenged to a fight. Well, not every time. If it was someone who was obviously as inept as he was then he’d give it a go, but he felt that he really couldn’t hit anyone with any force; his arms and legs felt restrained like limbs in water. It was as if proper contact would provoke an equal reaction so he just went through the ineffective motions until teachers pulled himself and his protagonist apart.

I kept an eye on Bryant at this time. I felt he had potential. Though he was far too intellectual for this school and many, including the teachers, hated him for it. They’d ridicule his efforts and parody the way he talked. “Funnily enough…” he would begin and that would be enough for them “Oooo funnily enough he says”. He found he couldn’t win. His contemporaries were meant to be the others from the scheme, yet he seemed to behave like those from the leafy lanes surrounding the school. He was the only one from the scheme in the top class in the first year, but that was all to change. When he left he was in the bottom class; in among the social rag-weed and the prison fodder of the future. This happened without intervention or apparent concern. It was if a mistake had been made that needed to be rectified. And it was.

Bryant walked around bearing the mark of Cain. He had a soft look about him, people told him this. It’s my guess that they still do.

Bryant was so shocked by his negative treatment at school that he went into a sort of dream-world where he devised heroic and impressive roles for himself. He was a pop star of such magnitude that he wasn’t mobbed or molested by his fans out of utter respect. In fact, his fans were in such respectful awe of him that they effected to ignore him completely. He was a world champion ‘walker’ and put his title up for grabs every evening after school when he ‘walked’ his way home in strategic triumph over other world-class walkers who would always be defied easily at the death. He was an ace footballer, playing for Celtic, Scotland and the world eleven, scoring goals in his Granny’s front-room with a plastic orange as a ball. He’d provide his own commentary for this because he was also a respected broadcaster. Never a week went by that he didn’t score the winning goal against Rangers and England.

A belittled figure of fun in real life he became a human God in his mind.

This tended to veer him towards a solitary existence.

His sense of self-worth was rock bottom; I could tell this from the start.

Glasgow can spit people out without remorse. The city revels in its tough image and doesn’t need much encouragement in perpetuating it.

These days I live in Edinburgh, a city which doesn’t have to labour under any such ethos. No need to continually prove itself, it can let its violence happen organically, not by rote. One can get one’s head kicked in while traipsing through The Meadows but it will be done arbitrarily by some drunken nutter or gang. They won’t have any particular point to prove like ‘This is Glesga! This is whit happens tae ye in Glesga!’ Edinburgh has nothing of the sort to live up to. I believe, these days, Bryant lives in London. A reasonably safe place as long as you keep clear of Glaswegians.

Glasgow is doomed to keep proving itself in such a negative way, it means it well never truly grow up.

Bryant started hanging around with the bad boys. Regular friendships didn’t last so he started tagging along with a group who didn’t really care if you were there or not. To be part of this gang all you had to do to prove yourself was steal. Not steal big-time, just steal anything. One night they robbed the parkie’s hut and came away with a deck of cards and a screwdriver. The screwdriver was then used to force open someone’s back window in Arden (this raid was subsequently abandoned due to the appearance of an ‘angry wee dug’ which yapped and nipped them out of the house). Bryant was chased about half a mile after lifting a Selection Box from a garage along from the school. They stole Coca Cola from the local bottling plant and drank it until they were sick. This wasn’t The Hole in The Wall Gang!

And who was Bryant in this his time of teenage youth?

Not a very happy boy, that’s for sure.

Bryant always felt himself a scapegoat, but we’re not going to go down that road.

Any Introduction to Bryant would not be complete an explanation of the incident that saved his life. 

A very odd, violent incident which changed him forever.

Around the bottom of the tower block they played. On a dark night the tower blocks were a solid, living presence. A hundred blinking TV lights. Inside people were watching Budgie or Coronation Street. Or Scotland Today where Bill Tennant never said ‘I hope your doughnuts turn out like Fannie’s’. Outside Bryant would be joining in the latest Abba parody song..

“There was something in the air that night, it smelled like shite Fernando…!!”

Maybe he was kicking a ball up the ramps outside the block? Whatever? He didn’t expect a kitchen knife to plunge into his brain from a great height. The twelfth floor to be exact. Wee Stuart Manson (brilliantly apt name, don’t you think. Literally from the Manson family). Wee Stuart Manson who should have been locked up and treated like the wee insane thug he was (and maybe still is, somewhere in the depths of some building out in the wilds where they incarcerate the criminally insane).

The knife, which must have been strangely weighted as it plunged point-first and perfectly straight into Bryant’s Cerebrum.

He was never the same lad after that.

Two years later, after extensive surgery and other treatment, Bryant was let home from hospital. His parents found he was the same polite, witty boy that they had known. He still laughed at the funny songs his Da made up. He still liked licking the bowl when his mother baked.

One thing had changed though which he managed to keep secret from most, and those that knew it never forgot…..

Verisimilitude

I’m amazed when people take any notice of me but can be bitterly resentful when they don’t. Two sides of the same coin? To hear someone say “I agree with Dave” makes me actually quite suspicious. Are they taking the piss? Is this some subtle hoax or practical joke. Are they really saying ‘Me saying I agree with Dave is such a ridiculous concept or statement, but I’m keeping a straight face as if I mean it, thus adding to the piquancy of the subterfuge. We’re all surely in on the joke, but look at the expression on his face. He’s actually not sure..!’

To be honest, I very rarely feel that I know what I’m talking about and will sometimes borrow other people’s points-of-view merely to add verisimilitude to my own utterings. “Of course, no system is perfect” is a recent favourite since I heard it from a colleague expressing a view about the benefit system.

My views are very often impractical and off-the-wall. I become flustered when expressing them. Other people, I notice, don’t seem to be as worried that they’re talking shite. I immediately credit them with more knowledge of the world and it’s workings than they probably deserve.

I’m often burdened with the notion that any conversation embarked upon must always get to the nub of the issue. Conclusions must be reached.

I like to view all sides of a problem and find it hard to decide which approach could be right.

I’d join the Liberal Democrats if they weren't such cunts!

So I’m told…..

Ghosts

I would see her quite often in the smoking room (this was a time when smokers were only semi-lepers, before expulsion to makeshift bike sheds and the elements). I would look forward to seeing her as she was very attractive but it was hard not to notice the squint of her eyes. She dresses like the girlfriend of a Hell’s Angel; a bit like Cher but cuter and with spiky hair. Zoe Wannamaker. Weirdly sexy.

I wouldn’t often get the chance to speak to her directly, she seemed to have no end of companions, but I would listen to the conversations she was involved in. They were invariably about ghosts and ‘ghost-hunting’ not an area I knew very much about. I considered myself a non-believer of such things. I have revised my view subsequently.

She has become a curious object of my desire, but I’m not sure she notices me all that much as I puff on my roll-up and furtively glance at her.

The smoking room had a transient community; the company changed as folk felt the urge to come in and smoke. Some would have their smoke and leave other would stay for hours, missing lectures.

It smelled stale like something unwell. The walls were becoming discoloured.

It was a little haven away from more sensible types. The odd tutor would amble in and this would cause a frisson. Tutors were like royalty.

It was a tutor who commandeered much of my biker’s moll’s time. I hated him passionately.

One day I found myself in the smoking room alone with her. She told me she was going blind. Some degenerative eye condition she had suffered from childhood. She told me she was preparing for her imminent blindness in a variety of ways, but mostly psychologically. In truth, she could barely see me sitting no more than ten feet away.

For some reason, this didn't 'sink in' the way it should have done and I'm afraid I became a little tongue-tied. What do you say to someone who tells you they are about to go blind?

So I asked her about the ghosts....

Steptoe And Me

This junk-yard on Oil Drum Lane is so familiar and I can’t believe I’m stood here looking around it. Old mangles and an ancient gramophone (a Georgian record player?), a grimy cooker and tear-worn mattresses, and here on the right, the outside ‘kaazi’, source of much ‘lavatorial’ humour, and on the left, is Hercules in the stable?

I’m here just in my ordinary duds – jeans and stuff – and I’m about to ‘write’ my way into the life of Steptoe and Son. I’ll just knock on this famous door and I’ll be ‘in it’ as it were.

The door is opened by the ‘dirty old man’ himself. Wilfred Brambell aka Albert Steptoe; the proprietor of these premises. Slight and hunched with a face like a grizzled stoat he asks “’Oo are you and what do you want?” He looks me up and down and a slight look of perplexity crosses his scrunched features but just as soon vanishes and is quashed by professionalism. In all these years he has become inured to theatrical ‘surprises’ and errors. He faults Harry H Corbett for these but everyone on the show knows that it is he, Brambell, who is at fault for the stutters and missed cues. He is often three parts pissed during his performances.

I reply “Is Harold around?” This cues him instinctively to reply “Is Harold around where?” The ambiguity draws a laugh from the capacity audience. These are the days when a flushing lavatory elicits hilarity among the eager-to-be-entertained (or, at least, panned hilarity). I carry on the enjoyable banter “Is it possible to see your son, Harold”. The old man, seeing no joke or retort shouts “’’Ar-old” in time-served manner, an ascending two-note comedy ker-ching.

He turns back and scowls at me. I’m fast becoming a natural and say “nice day for it”, he gives me his best “baah” and moves off as his co-actor and son bounds toward the door and beckons me in. Do I know this character; he acts as if I do.

No sooner than I‘ve sat down than I’m treated to some classic repartee. Brambell hates Corbett; insiders know this well but the viewing public are blissfully unaware. Corbett is often perplexed by his co-stars hostility. He used to attempt to court the older man’s friendship but has long-since given this up as a hopeless pursuit. At any rate, it serves their ‘on-stage’ personas well. It leaves them free to ‘let-it-rip’ as it were. Some of the scenes between them crackle through Brambell’s loathing and Corbett’s resentment.

They start on about a tin bath in the front room. Is it a front room? It’s a room full of Steptoe props; the skeleton on which is draped Harold’s cap and tattered old scarf; the array of optics on the baroque sideboard; the table at which the old man sits rejuvenating ancient batteries “I made a fortune from these during the war – you couldn’t get ‘em!”

Harold feeds his goldfish.

“These days Pater, one does not conduct one’s ablutions in the front parlour. One does it in the privacy of one’s bathroom. I mean for gawd’s sake…” He turns on his father who just gurns disdain and dismissal.

“I mean, Dave, you would agree wouldn’t you, being from the future..?” I wonder how he knows this. He looks at me imploringly, his bulging eyes pleading for my allegiance. For years he has been fighting this same fight week after week, series after series and he rarely wins if he wins at all. Any victories are usually pyrrhic; he gets to move back in after a vain attempt at independence or he beats off an impending Stepmother to leave just the two of them again as if, in some sort of emotionally warped way, this is his chief desire. Once, he attempted to escape to the high seas “sail round the world in a skiff” only to be deemed too old for the trip by his fellow adventurers.

I look at the old man who eyes me threateningly and try to even up the odds for Harold.

“The modern bathrooms are so much more cost and energy efficient” I offer. There is an eerie silence from the audience.

“And more comfortable……..than the tin bath!” I stutter and look for some comic instinct within myself that may save the day.

“It also offers, well, more….privacy”

There is an innuendo here which the old man picks up on.

“Why? What would you be doing in there?” The audience laughs though a little nervously. Harold picks it up.

“Why, any number of things, Dad. Don’t you see? It’s what modern people do. The tin bath belongs in the dark ages.”

“Baah! You lot want it all too easy. I remember back in the trenches…”

“Oh Gawd…!!”

“We didn't even have tin baths. We had to stay dirty or rely on billy cans and stream water…”

This is more like it. Now they’re back in the old familiar groove. Maybe if I just sit quiet and don’t interrupt, I can be just another spectator of this most tragic of comedies. The frustration, the love, the manipulations, the loathing, the sentimentality, the awful bind they find themselves in.

Both of these actors played both of these characters for far too long. It was only supposed to be a one-off Comedy Playhouse. They became addicted to the money and became totally typecast.

It was Corbett who blinked first. Once a budding Shakespearean actor with Joan Littlewood – ‘Britain’s Marlon Brando’ - he became a shambling caricature of what was already a caricature. Long side-burns and paunch and the signs of drink and fags slowly wearing him down. He died a disappointed man, aged 57.

Wilfred Brambell, similar to that other self-pronounced misnomer, Kenneth Williams, was a homosexual who hated being a homosexual. He lived the life of a sad, unfulfilled alcoholic who made, by an eerie comparison, Old Man Steptoe appear happy as a Buddhist with a twelve inch cock.

It is to be hoped they have not resumed their famous roles in heaven.