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…..