My Da was a Glasgow tram conductor (for a short time he was a driver but was stripped of this advancement due to driving up a close. (Not easy in a tram if you think about it).
“Please describe details of the crash, driver”
“Didnae really see much, your honour. I was upstairs at the time”
His home garage was in Newlands not so far from his parents home in classy Clarkston where somebody may well have invented ‘swinging’. If he was on a late shift, he’d take his takings bag home with him where his auld maw would proceed to rifle it for coins (my grandparents were more than a little aspirant and evey penny went towards social progress). The fact that she may well be jeopardising her own son’s career prospects didn’t seem to enter her calculating head.
“How do you account for the short-fall in takings, Mister conductor-man?”
“My maw stole them to buy a new tea-cosy, Mister boss-man”
There was a tool a conductor needed to change tracks at the depot at the end of a route. My da told me this piece of crafted metal had another necessary purpose in repelling and threatening Saturday-night drunks and ne’er-do-well’s.
He had a great sense of humour my Da, Milliganesque and Glesga-honed, but like any self-respecting Glasgow father he was full o’ shite.
“A wellie and a clug, son, that’s whit I wore tae school. No’ only that but my troosers were patched wi’ auld bits o’ carpet”
Like every one of his extrapolations there was a modicum of truth in there somewhere. His auld maw –to save money, of course – could well have sent him out dressed rather bizarrely and certainly not in line with any accepted fashions (bare feet, impetigo scabs and assorted rags).
I could often sympathise with my father because when I was at school my mum got all my gear from the army and navy stores. Consider my embarrassment attending classes dressed as a Japanese Admiral!
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