MacCallum and the Barmaid

“His birdsong is written, like a new moon in the sky”

MacCallum had been on about it for weeks, months even, to the point where he was now forced to follow through with the idea. As far as he remembered - and many hundred pints had been swallowed in the meantime - he’d first broached the notion that he was one of life’s impulsive free spirits, was to impress Meeta the cute and curvy little Asian barmaid.

“Ach, I might just bugger off to the continent and busk my way around like I used to”

One week in France he was referring to when he’d come home after a week having run out of money.

“Ah get restless ye know, and have to just get away. Call of the wilds you might call it”.

The pretty barmaid who could barely understand MacCallum’s Glaswegian accent (she thought he was Australian) was barely listening to him anyway. She’d heard her fair measure of male shite over her years pulling pints and, anyway, to her literal Indian mind, he if he wanted to be elsewhere why was he stood here annoying her. Let him chase his dreams not simply speak of them.

Other drinking buddies too were growing tired of MacCallum’s meanderings. “Aye, right” they’d begun to say when he started on his Wild Rover dialogue. Were they not well used to MacCallum’s lies and fantasies. Had he not told them he belonged to the Glasgow gangster clan of Jimmy Boyle and was down here ‘in hiding while some heat died down’. MacCallum, it was evident to all but the most suggestible, in his ragged denim jacket and torn plimsolls, was no more a gangster than he was a captain of industry or a Monseigneur in the Catholic Church.

And so, for prides sake if nothing else, he had to make good on his promise and come giro day had bought a one-way coach and ferry ticket to Paris, France.

They had a farewell drink for him the evening before, after insisting on viewing the ticket, and bade him a hearty trip, and only after he’d finally left for an early bed (about one am) did they confer on what a ‘silly tube’ he was.

MacCallum had barely walked an hour on the streets of Paris when, overtaken by a feeling of bleak, forlorn loneliness, he returned forthwith and was back in Leytonstone that very same night. They’d said at school that he possessed ‘no character to speak of’ and this was him proving it once again.

His problem now was to remain undetected for a decent length of time (say, a month) without being spotted by those that knew him. That way he could at least pretend he’d achieved what he’d set out to do, even if only to a limited degree.

In such a close-knit community, mind, this would not be so easy. The pubs were obviously out of bounds as would be the local shops, tube station, and even walking the streets would pose the obvious risks of bumping into someone that knew him, or someone that knew someone who knew him.

He’d either have to stay indoors for the duration, or….

Don an effective disguise.

Now, Leytonstone in those days was not unacquainted with the odd eccentric not to mention the odd weirdly dressed character. Early cross-dressers, proto-punks, retro-hippies, residents from Leytonstone House the local home for the mentally impaired, it was often hard to figure who were the sane and who were not.

There was Gimpy Ron who drew attention away from his extravagant, bow-legged sailors limp by wearing a threadbare old cabaret tuxedo he’d found in a skip outside a dry cleaners. Over the years it had acquired a culinary odour reminiscent of a brackish soup and what looked like a skid-mark motif as if he had been wiping cats arses with it. In a generous twilight he looked like an ageing Barry Manilow, if Barry Manilow had been bald, toothless and owned a pallor any self-respecting embalmer would be deeply ashamed of.

It was Gimpy Ron who was the first to espy the apparition that was MacCallum in disguise. He sees him scuttleshuffling through the trees in Forest Glade. Like some down-at-heel SAS veteran he hides-and-peeks half camouflaged by a green balaclava and makeshift battle fatigues (autumn-leaf yellow plus fours and a brown mock-leather bomber jacket, red baseball boots and a Scotland scarf make up the overall look).

MacCallum is kicking at the autumn leaves as if looking for lost keys but it’s actually an errant golf ball he seeks. He has a wedge club in his right hand with which he whips the lower branches of trees and shrubbery. He appears to be mumbling angrily to himself.

The Gimpster trundles away unevenly. His gimpy right leg strikes out sharply like a badly executed karate kick then folds back into even tread like a tram on a tram-line. His left leg has become so used to compensating that it is bowed like an archway. He appeared like a deeply arthritic Fred Astaire attempting to recreate better times. If this method of perambulation were an Olympic sport no one would watch.

He wonders at the behaviour of MacCallum whom he only knows through mutual friends. All the Scots of Leytonstone were acquainted by some strand or other, like they were a family of travellers from the north with a family tree in common. They had come to London to re-inforce certain stereotypes, principally drinking and fighting and ‘acting the cunt’. In this, they were performing admirably.

He would have to consult this syndicate of Celts (although many of them would hate to be named as such) about their ‘cousin in the woods’.

MacCallum had taken to spending the nights as well as the days in the Forest Glade. He had an old sleeping bag that kept him reasonably warm and he washed himself in Hollow Ponds each morning (and drank the water though it was reputedly ‘full of cow dung’). As for the herd of cows that came from he knew not where he greeted them cheerily and tore up clumps of weedy grass for them to eat. He’d began naming them but, with them being largely indistinguishable from one another he quickly became confused as to which was which and referred to them generically as ‘coo’.

“Mornin’ Coo”

The ‘coo’s’ were somewhat afraid of MacCallum. Perhaps the balaclava encouraged in them atavistic bovine fears of cattle rustlers.

 His was now a chiaroscuro existence. He was a shadow in the lee of Whipps Cross hospital, a vast NHS Gormenghast of a place, it sprawled like a giant spider, one corridor alone – the central one – a mile long. He’d always liked hospitals but had no idea why. Maybe, he thought, because they were places of human caring and safe-keeping? This notion appealed to MacCallum. Hospitals contained the best features of humanity whereas outwith their domains the world could be a colder place.

MacCallum liked the old hospital best when it rained: it stained the red brick with a good soak turning it ochre and its black roof slates gleamed like black jewels. The rain pelted on MacCallum through the thinning leaves and he felt as free as the squirrels that scampered up the tree boughs. The nights were closing in with the changing season and the dawn was slow to rise over Snaresbrook courthouse. MacCallum had become expert at detecting its first blue-black stirrings. On a good day these turned to orange and then lemon and then the first hint of heat on the ground. He stretched his limbs and luxuriated in its warm glow.

Every week he had to visit the dole office on Hoe Street to sign on. Now that he was ‘no fixed abode’ he picked up his money on the day. He’d buy nuts for the squirrels and seeds and bread for the birds and ducks on the pond. For himself, he lived on a diet of porridge oats and honey and was quite happy until one day a delegation of three came to visit his little cubby hole in the woods.

“Fuck ye up tae, Davie. Yer a fucken laughing stock”

They’d brought a carry-out of about four dozen beers and two bottles of whisky (Scots never went anywhere under-stocked with booze, you never knew when disaster would strike and it would run out).

Tam Bain and the McCulloch brothers.

MacCallum refused a can that was offered to him.

“Take a drink!!” they all shouted at once. He took a drink and felt drunk after only one gulp.

“We a’ thought you were in Paris. Whit happened tae that idea?”

MacCallum shrugged an answer. The three synchronised exasperated expressions as if they were addressing a three-year-old that had just shit his pants…..again!

“I came back to live in the woods. Here in the Glade. At first it was just a way of hiding from folk who were thinking I was in Paris but then I realised that it was all meant to be. I’m much the happier chap living here in the woods and the ponds with just the beasties, squirrels and the coos. Who told you anyway?”

“Gimpy Ron” they all said as one.

The Gimpster, eyeing an opportunity for fame and a little financial award, spilled the beans to the Waltham Forest Guardian about ‘the man who lived in the woods’ and they had duly plastered the story all over their front page. This forced the police to arrive and evict MacCallum from his home in the woods.

Now he lives his sad old life of drinking and falling down a lot in public. He visits his animal friends when he can and, truth be told, he has achieved a certain notoriety. When he starts on with his ‘call of the wilds’ fantasies, even Meeta the luscious barmaid eyes him with somewhat renewed respect.

You never knew with MacCallum….

A Giant in the Woods

This was a time when you could still buy five Park Drive. When men wore bum-freezer jackets and the young women all looked like the Queen. The air was different back then: it was redolent of grease and the smell of fish and chip shops, sour pale ale, and farts parped beside coal fires. My grandparents smelled of apples and Pledge and welcomed you at the door cheerily then were parsimonious within. Sex had only just been invented and, somewhere near Blantyre a man saw his wife naked for the first time after eight years of marriage and filed for divorce.

Chimneys were set alight on a regular basis by burning sheets of The Citizen, a paper which regularly published my father's socialism in letter form and his opinion on away grounds that he’d watched his beloved Celtic play at. For this reason, he was never again safe to visit Motherwell.

The weather was either gloomy or bright. When the wind blew it moved the slates on the roof. Public transport wasn’t necessary as one simply spread one’s coat like wings and hang-glided to nearby towns and back again.

Men seemed perpetually drunk and women became expert at concealing black eyes with subtle make-up. If a wife had a ‘good man’ it meant he gave her ‘house-keeping’ promptly on a Friday evening then stayed at home to watch Z-Cars.

Kids sought out scrambles at the weekend where substantial silver and copper was fought over then spent on gobstoppers and ice poles.

Auld Rosie from upstairs traded pans of soup and potato fritters and, being Jewish, matzoh bread in exchange for loans for bottles of sherry wine.

No-one seemed to be bored or depressed though there was talk that the women from the corner house had swallowed weed-killer and died a painful death. Everyone else made daisy-chains and got on with ‘things’.

Protestants joined The Boy’s Brigade, Catholics couldn’t, even if they'd wanted to.

Language, certainly in the male world, seemed to be at a premium, like too much was to be given away by the use of words, though the women chirruped away like startled budgies when their men-folk were not around. Rumours spread around small communities like oxygenated bush-fires “Her man’s been sacked for organising a strike” “She’s left him and gone to live with yon gym teacher from the school. It’s the weans teacher, I believe” “Aye, tinned mince she served up. I heard he flung it at the wall”.

An aeroplane in the sky still evoked ‘ooohs’ and ‘aahs’.

Dougie Somner who later played for Partick Thistle crashed his Da’s car into the wall across the street.

My own father chucked a blazing chip pan out the kitchen window onto the wee verandah. You could still see the dent in the tarmacadam many years later.

One of the kids at school, a posh kid whose father was a doctor, invited me to tea at his house up near Brouster Hill. His house seemed like a gothic manse with a football-field sized garden at the back. His mother served us egg and chips for tea. Surely not their usual fair (I envisaged an Elizabethan banquet with hog’s heads and quails eggs). Were they dumbing down on the food to accommodate the council house boy? Kindness or patronage? Even at a young age I was class conscious.

As a child, I lived in an invisible world among trees and burns and the far-away (which was in reality no further than a five-mile radius). My imaginary friends, Solly and Bobo, were sufficient company to me. Where their names came from I have no idea but I was to fall out with Solly who emigrated to become a successful bookmaker in Australia. Bobo seemed to dissipate from the arena of my consciousness over time and as I got older, but I know he waits for me in the ether and, now in my fifties it is maybe time for a re-acquaintance, though I will now be like a grandparent to him, frozen as he is in time and on my whim.

I lived among trees and yet never knew their names. To me, they were giant climbing frames. Even to this day, I can size up a tree for climbing possibilities: where to put my feet for successful elevation. Yes, I think I’ll take that up again before it’s too late. Such a secret world, the verdant world of trees, and it’s true that they speak to each other, though their voices are not for human ears.

I think I saw a giant in the woods next to Murray Primary. A huge, spindly man with sharp teeth. He may even have looked at me. I couldn’t say; I was running away.

All my life, I’ve yearned to believe in ghosts and giants in the woods…

Ask Specky Al....!

In adversity, most of us suffer from a version of Stockholm Syndrome. Any little kind word or gesture is accepted with pathetic gratitude.

“I’m sorry, sir…erm…Mr Bryden, but we have no record of any claim under your name, or even under the National Insurance number you gave us. Nothing at all. Very sorry, sir”

This has been happening all day. No benefit claim, no bank account. Something very strange is going on.

He – Bernie – has a key to my flat. He tells me he’ll give me until the end of the month to find ‘somewhere else’. He even wears some of my clothes which seem to fit him even though I’m six four and he’s almost a midget (under four foot anyway). Of an evening he takes control of the remote and drinks my whisky. I’m scared to go out unless he changes the locks.

“You know, the landlord wants me to change the locks. He doesn’t know who you are and talks of getting the police. I always talk him around saying there’s no harm in you and you’ll do the right thing…in time”

He has a remarkably deep, authoritative voice for a midget and, as I rely on him for food, I don’t argue.

I’m Sam Bryden – or at least I used to be – and society seems to have wiped me from its records. My best friends claim to only faintly know me ‘from somewhere’. All of my personal paperwork has disappeared and seemingly can’t be replaced because I have no official identity. My N.I. number belongs to someone who is “deceased some time ago, sir. Obviously, we can’t divulge any further information”.

The only clue or guidance I’ve had so far is when the chap at Scottish Power advised me to “ask Specky Al”. He’d put the phone down before I could ask “Who’s Specky Al?”

I ponder my future. Does this new state of affairs make me free? Can I now roam the world unbidden? Well, obviously not is the quick answer. No passport, no documentation to obtain one. 

"Just the UK, then?"

“And what will you live on?” asks the midget Bernie who lives in my flat. "No cards, no money. You’ll be a vagrant as soon as you walk onto the street. Even the hostels won’t take you in without proof of identity”

I looked in my wallet again to find not even a library card.

“What should I do?”

“Ask Specky Al”

I pick up my guitar and find I no longer know how to play. Not even a basic chord. I clear my throat to sing, and what emanates is a strangled squawk like a seagull having something larger than himself shoved up his shiter.

I walk the beach. Dogs run up to me and sniff, their owner’s squint their eyes as if they can’t see me properly under the suns glare. I look for my reflection in a café window and find I’m becoming increasingly, well….indistinct!

I stop approaching people I know from church as it’s upsetting when good Christian folk claim not to know who you are, although some scrunch up their eyes and say “didn’t you used to do my gardening?”

I’m becoming no more than semi-visible.

I visit the priest who tells me “the bins are around the back, young man”. I explain what’s happening and he eyes me warily then tells me “you’re being taught a lesson in humility. You’ve thought rather a lot of yourself – your talents, your cleverness, your sharp-wittedness – and now you’re being brought down a peg or two. ‘All is vanity’ – Ecclesiastes 1:12”

“Is it perhaps erm…God who’s teaching me this lesson?” Maybe if it’s God, I think, then he can just make everything all right again?

“No, it’s not God, actually. It’s…..”

I leave quickly before I hear the name.

So now I just sit on the beach invisible to the world. The dogs still sniff around me sensing my presence but their owners just call them back thinking they’ve found some dog-shite. I fight with the gulls for the fast-food scraps left behind by the revellers and fish and chip wrappers left by Maw. Paw and the weans. 

Now and again I think of my past life – the singing, the songs I wrote, the recordings, the gigs I played – and realise it was all an illusion. I was a fraud and a phoney, only it needed a higher power to show me this, to take away my ill-conceived ambitions, even if it left me a non-person, sitting invisible and semi-starving on a beach.

When the winds and the rains come I coory-up next to the old disused toilets at the end of the beach. One day I saw a poster badly glued and fluttering on the concrete wall..

“Don’t miss the multi-talented, the wonderful, the genius of Granton…”

I read no further but go back to my shivering slumber.

It seems I’m to continue learning my lesson.