New Town

I mind the rag-man with his horse and cart trundling along Baird Hill bawling his indecipherable incantations, a cross between an oath and a howl. Ye’d give some old clothes yer maw would provide you with and he’d give you a balloon or a twirly windmill on a stick in return. These folk were considered to be tinkers and on no other level did anyone associate with them. No wee chats or ‘How’s it going?’. It was accepted on both sides that they were from an alien world, somewhere ‘out in the country’, some Romany camp-site with wooden caravans and dirt-encrusted children.

Street-grubbers, totters, rag and bone men. The ‘bone’ part referred not, presumably to human bones collected but the discarded bones of animals, still a macabre notion but such were valuable and used maybe for knife-handles or children’s toys. No-one knew who, ultimately, wanted the old rags or why? It was just how these folk made a living and no-one asked questions.

Same with ‘the ice-cream’ van; Twaddles. This was a long white affair that played Greensleeves so you knew it was coming. “Double-nouget for me,” “O a bar of Tiffin,” said my da when he was asked Tiffin or Five Boys and my ma would have a bar of Old Jamaica which was considered exotic.

Looking back, Baird Hill was a quiet street that bent like a snake all the way around The Murray. A quiet street in the New Town of East Kilbride which still shone like a new pin in those early days until some arsehole or arseholes decided to cover the centre of it with a ‘shopping mall’. It had been pretty before with Princes Square and the avenue of shops leading down to The Royal Stuart Hotel where the footballers stayed before big games.