First Steps

First steps in life are very important. Bryant thought of his first steps into the school system: Murray Primary in East Kilbride. On the very first morning this frightened, sensitive wee boy had literally shit himself then cried through fear and shame. To have earned the nickname ‘Shitty Knickers’ on your very first day at school is some achievement and maybe even unique in world history.

Years later the first steps into a pub. The fatal journey into the warmth, the bustling chatter, thud of dart on cork, click of cue on ball. The busty Asian behind the bar, pearly white teeth, when she threw a dart her top rode up exposing sleek woman skin. The roaring lads were all agog.

Bryant fell in with the Irish builders. There was Kango John who shook like a palsied man. If they’d have known of it they’d have said ‘Parkin sons, but they knew he’d become a prisoner of his work instrument; he shook in sympathy with it. ‘One Round Foley’ – named thus as he’d only ever been known to buy one round and that back in the slurry mists of another drunken time. Once, to charm a lady who resembled a pit pony, he’d treated his hair to shoe polish to hide the grey. Unfortunately for him, and possibly the pit pony, he’d been caught in the rain and turned up at the North Star resembling a tearfully dishevelled Black and White Minstrel who could have sung ‘Mammy’ and had coins thrown at him.

Jonny Currie, a hard little man made of Galway teak, a work-horse who laid the black stuff as if it was both friend and enemy that he defeated for fun six days a week. How these men survived was a question for anatomical science. Up at six to sit in vans smelling of stale Guinness, socks and farts so noxious that Bryant, on his first day with them was almost forced to leap out of the back doors into speeding traffic. Then work. “We’ll have the fourth pile today, sure. Get this fekker finished” says Currie, hardly a bead of sweat on his feral face. Bryant has been demoted at least twice on his first day. Too weak for the roller and tearing up the tar with the balance bar; useless with the spade, soft hands all bloodied and blisters. “You just fetch the water, make sure we’ve enough”.

Then pub. Not that we hadn’t been in one in the dinner hour. Consumption of beer by labourers goes back a long way in history to when it was a staple, and atavistically this indulgence remained as money wasted and sweated out within the hour. Every night was a session. Guinness and whisky, Guinness and Whisky. A German scientist once conducted a study of these drinking habits and concluded ‘they should all be dead in the grave’. Not these boys. Session after session, night after night. Carousing weekends up in the dancehalls of Kilburn. The National, The Gresham where never a dance was danced. Late licenses had them flocking. Then work, six days a week, never a day off sick, never a mention of ‘hangovers’ in the van, then huge greasy Ulster fry’s before making the start.

Bryant, Zelig-like, pretended he was an Irishman. He wasn’t Bryant at all, but Murphy from Cork. They, not really caring too much, indulged him in this sad fantasy. Trying to fit in.

Aside from Catholic procreation (I can only imagine of the drunken kind) the only other activity these men took a part in was attendance to mass of a Sunday morning. You’d see them rushing out of the chapel doors around noon, dressed in Puckoon-style shabby suits and ties careering down Leytonstone High Road for the doors opening at The Crown. From sacred to profane in world record shattering times.

‘The dancer that dances in the hearts of men’