The Grandfather Clock

‘A Grandfather Clock you say?’

Looking at Chas McKinven, you’d never in a million years think of him owning a grandfather Clock never mind his urgency over it.

‘They wulnae geemie it back boss, says it’s in stores or sumfin’

Bryant had been working here two years now. Two long, harrowing years; and he thought he’d heard it all, but he never had. There was always something else to surprise him.

McKinven appeared as a shambling wreck of a man. Appeared? Sometimes, if you saw him outside the confines of the office he could look almost alright. Talking away to his mates full of the usual macho bravado that you needed in an area like this, but as soon as he walked through these doors he crumpled like an empty crisp bag in the rain. Which version was the act it was impossible to say. Probably, elements of both.  

This area was where poor people lived, but they weren’t like poor people of 100 years ago, or even 30 years ago. These were the poor in the era of Technicolour, the digital-age poor. Poor is a relative term. They certainly weren’t rich, not in any monetary sense. There were some Catholic monks in the church along the road who were maybe spiritually rich. At least you hoped they were, otherwise what was the point?

Poor, yet they managed to have all they needed, and it was his job to maintain this status quo.

These sorts of neighbourhoods were forever changing. If you went back in a time machine 50 years you wouldn’t recognise it as the same place. Once thriving industries cease to thrive then disappear. Maybe a building stays that gets used as a thousand different things. The city council begins a new initiative to gentrify the area; community development agencies move in by the dozens; new houses appear nice on the plans but ugly and cheap looking when they’re up. Pipes and fixings turn to rust quickly in this rainiest of places.

The reason affluent neighbourhoods stay exactly the same through the decades and centuries, is because they were built that way; sturdy and constant like the people that can afford to live there. The only ‘community development’ they want in Stockbridge Village is better parking facilities at the local Waitrose or a hot-stone therapist that does home visits.

Maybe in Stockbridge Village they worried about Grandfather Clocks!

People were born. They had no choice in the matter. If you were born around here a number of factors became important. Who would be your parents? Would you be tough enough to survive? Maybe you’d be good looking, maybe not. Maybe you’d be clever, maybe not.

Maybe you wouldn’t stand a cat in hell’s chance!

People joked about the spurious lineage of some of the ‘families’ around her, but it was often no joke. Jeremy Kyle wasn’t popular for nothing. He’d hit upon a motherlode of dysfunction; a shit-storm of broken-ness. Probably, his show played it up a bit with the help of would-be celebrities but, in essence, it was based on reality. There weren’t ‘extended families’ in the old sense, there were ‘sprawling jigsaws of families’. Try and be a family genealogist around here and you’d have your work cut out. It sometimes appeared that everyone was related to everyone else.

McKinven here had sisters, cousins, brothers, step-fathers, step-mothers, aunties, uncles, wives, girlfriends, ex-wives, ex-girlfriends, ex-in-laws, and a fair selection of outlaws. He’d been in and out of jail so many times only the authorities had any chance of making sense of the mosaic of his life of crime and misdemeanours. He was on prescribed medication, un-prescribed medication, heroin, methadone, Valium, legal-highs, alcohol, probably solvents for all anyone knew. He had bruises, limps, broken bones, chib-marks, scars from ancient feuds with family, friends, police, courts, social workers, support workers, job centres, doctors, doctors receptionists, psychiatrists’, housing officers. The whole panoply of community support knew well of Chas McKinven.

And, here he was bubbling like a child about a Grandfather Clock.

Folk died young in this area. Some bright-sparks at the university had done a study of it and come up with a number. Fifty-four was the average life expectancy. It was no surprise whatsoever to hear of a client dying, thought Bryant, no surprise at all. A judicious period of time was waited then their file was archived. Folk you’d been speaking to about very intimate health problems one day were dead the next. Overdose or misadventure? - impossible for even the doctors to tell.

Some indeed, many were different. A brother/cousin/some sort of relation of McKinven’s, James, was to be seen regularly wheeling a Flymo around in a wheelie-bin. Red-bearded and Jacobite-fierce he’d mow a lawn for a small price or maybe free for an auld wifie who’d give him tea and a sandwich; determined not to be ground down again by his own nature and environment. Not easy to clean your act up in an area where low temptation lurked around every corner. People were beaten up for ‘swimming against the tide’ in this locale.

Easy for someone like Bryant to say ‘but surely’ and ‘perhaps if you’ to folk self-isolated from old habits and old acquaintance. Easier to drown than to stay afloat the rest of your life. The rest of your life is a very long time. Well, maybe not, if 54 is when the race is run.

He and his three adviser colleagues were life-support in this area, well, along with doctors and maybe the odd decent housing officer and drug counsellor. They came here when snags were met. Post Office pin numbers were lost, payments hadn’t come, new benefits needed applying for, Sherriff Officers had come banging on the door, food bank referrals, a whole raft of problems were laid at these doors on a daily basis. Bryant often wondered how they, the clients, would cope without this place? And, yet probably they would find a way.

They had to..