Working Class Boy (3 page)

Dad grew up in a boxing family. His dad was a pro boxer and I think there are a few old movies of him fighting somewhere but I've never seen them. He fought in the ring and on the streets and probably at home as well. He also was a bouncer and a general hard man. The sort of person you wouldn't like to mess with or meet in a dark alley.

Mum wasn't big on boxing, as she had seen enough punches being thrown around the house I guess, but John and I, many years later in Elizabeth, used to love to sit and scream with Dad as he watched boxing on the television. We all did, even the girls. I remember being mesmerised as a young Cassius Clay rocked the world, stopping Sonny Liston in the seventh round to become world champion. Our television was as battered and broken as Sonny was by the end of the fight and only just managed to keep working until the last bell. I was chosen to hold the coat hanger in the air and act as an aerial and was even given the coveted job as the remote control for the volume while Dad and John ducked and weaved with the new champion as he floated around the ring like a ballet dancer.

Bang, bang
.

‘What a jab. Hold that aerial up a wee bit higher, son.'

Bang, bang, bang
.

‘I need a chair to get higher, Dad.'

Bang, bang
.

‘Watch yer mooth, son. I can reach you from here.'

Bang, bang, bang
.

‘I could run, Dad.'

Bang, bang
.

‘I could get ye before ye could even think aboot runnin'. Ya cheeky wee bastard.'

Bang, bang, bang
.

‘I'm quick, Dad.'

‘You're no that quick, so shut it. I'm watchin' the fight. What a right hand. Surely it must be all over. Quick, get oot the way, son.'

Bang, bang
.

‘The picture's gone. What happened? Move back where you were.'

Shhhhhhhh. Crackle. Bang, bang
.

‘That's it. Keep still.'

‘Sorry, Dad.'

Bang, bang

‘Nae bother, son.'

Every fight we saw, Dad would be rolling with the punches, weaving and lunging with the fighters on the box. It was like he felt every punch that was thrown. It must have been exhausting for him to watch, but he loved it and he instilled a love of boxing in all of us. Boxing in those days was not like the dirty, corrupt stuff that happens now that big money is involved, but the pure sport, man against man. Dad loved pure boxing and we thought it was beautiful too. He loved Sugar Ray Robinson and Cassius Clay. He'd tell us how fast hands and a quick brain could beat brute strength any time. He was a living testament to that, as he survived fights with guys twice his size all the time. He spoke quietly, never raised his voice at all, which led people to think they could take him, but when push came to shove he was deadly. He had survived the boxing ring, fighting the best in the world. And, more impressively, he survived on the streets of Glasgow where there were no rules. So he knew
about death because he had faced it on many nights along the same streets where we lived and played childish games.

John was given a floor-to-ceiling punching bag and a pair of boxing gloves the day he was born. I think I might have got them as well. The girls were probably just given the gloves; they had us to belt into.

There seemed to be a lot of dark alleys in Glasgow and there were a lot of people you wouldn't want to meet but unfortunately sometimes they lived next door. The kids in the same building as you could be as dangerous as anyone you met anywhere. Everyone was either in gangs or being tormented by gangs.

There were gangs on every street. They were all dressed the same, and it looked like the clothes had been passed down from brother to brother and sister to sister. Trousers were patched up and falling down. Shoes were scuffed until you could see the socks through the leather. Shirts were dirty with snotters wiped onto the sleeves from the kids' constantly running noses. The faces all looked the same too. Reddish hair and pale and pasty skin covered in freckles and soot, with eyes that were constantly darting left to right looking out for trouble or the police.

I was too young to understand why we had to avoid the gangs, but I knew enough to be afraid of them. We were always told not to leave the street without Mum or Dad. By the age of four I had my first encounter with one of the gangs.

Myself and another kid of about the same age made the mistake of walking out of our street into the next without an escort. That was enough to put us in big danger. A gang of young guys somewhere between the ages of five and fifteen grabbed us and took us to the spare ground, an empty block where one or more of the tenement buildings had been demolished. They put us in a little lean-to shelter that workers probably used to get out
of the rain.

Then they shouted, ‘Don't move or we'll fuckin' murder ye.'

Then they started to throw rocks at us. I ducked and curled up, trying to protect myself, but was smashed by a few pieces of broken brick. I could feel blood running down onto my face. My mate was frozen stiff with fear.

Then they stopped for a minute and yelled, ‘You've got till we count tae five to run, then we're gonnae throw bottles at yous.'

I remember telling my mate, ‘Get oot o' here quick or we're deid.'

Next thing I knew I was running as fast as I could, dodging a hail of rocks and glass, but I got away. My friend was still frozen and couldn't move at all.

They pelted him with rocks and bottles until they were bored and then they cut him up and set fire to the shelter. He ended up in hospital for a long time. His family moved away, hopefully to somewhere nice, and I never saw him again. I am still left with feelings of guilt and shame for leaving my friend behind. What could I do? He should have run away with me.

Was life so bad in Scotland that even little kids had no chance? It seemed no one had a chance. I think that years of depression, war and poverty had dragged the whole of Northern Britain into the gutter and it was a long way back up out of it. They say that war is good for the economy and the morale of a country. It pulls the people together; they can all work hard to defeat the common enemy. But when it is over most people are left looking for jobs; there is no more work after munitions factories or the shipyards close down. That's what happened in Scotland, especially in Glasgow. Shipbuilding stopped and so did work for more than half the population. They were left to scramble to make ends
meet and feed their children.

When I moved to Adelaide, I had a lot of friends from all over the north of Britain. They all told the same stories and they had all brought the same problems to Australia with them. But I think no one brought more problems than the Scots.

G
lasgow wasn't horrible for us because we didn't know any better. Everyone was the same as us. The streets around us weren't pretty but they were our playground. It was home. If we wanted to play football, we would go out to the road and take off our jumpers and use them as goalposts and play right there in the middle of the road. When you're a boy you have your favourite players but everyone in Scotland, boys and their fathers, wanted to be Denis Law. Everyone wanted to become a striker for Scotland. None of us wanted to be in goal. I would fight to be the centre forward. I wanted to stand just past the halfway line waiting on the ball to be passed through so I could strike. But there was no halfway line on the road and unless I could convince my brother John to be a defender no one would pass to me. I was just a kid.

‘I want tae be striker today,' I would moan.

‘You were Denis Law yesterday and the day before. It's ma turn, Jim,' John would tell me.

‘But I'm too wee tae be in goal. You telt me, John.'

‘You're too wee tae be playing at aw, so shut it and try tae look bigger, wid ye?'

‘I'm no playin' anymore. I'm goin' hame to tell Ma.'

‘You're such a wean. Go on then, get up there and I'll pass ye the ball. But ye better score or I'll murder ye.' (‘Wean' is what they called kids in Scotland, by the way.)

Occasionally the game would be interrupted by a car or truck but that was fine.

The footpaths were where the girls played and were covered in strange hieroglyphics that only girls could understand; this is where they played hopscotch. The mums would walk up and down the footpaths parading their babies in these huge prams with big wheels – something like monster trucks for beginners, the kind you might see in the English movies of the time. They would talk about each other's problems and gossip about each other's husbands. Who was in jail and who had just got out and who was caught sleeping with whose wife. Pretending that they were better than each other. They would walk past the pub on the corner to see if their husbands were spending the money they needed to feed their kids, on booze. If they were, there wasn't much they could do about it, not without causing a scene, not until they got home anyway. Then there would be trouble.

Mums would be going into the corner shops, trying to get credit so they could feed their kids, promising to pay it back at the end of the week but knowing that they probably wouldn't be able to. Every day was living hand to mouth, surviving for the time being then not being able to sleep at night wondering how they would get through tomorrow. I think my mum cried herself to sleep on many a night, praying for just a little help, knowing no one was listening to her prayers. She was doubting herself and what was left of her faith. Mum was not a churchgoing person but like a lot of the people who lived around us she would end up on her knees, praying for any help she could get. Unfortunately, help never seemed to come. But that never stopped her lying awake in bed wishing things would change.
Dad, on the other hand, drank himself to sleep and often ended up on his knees too.

You don't get used to living permanently behind the eight ball – no matter how long you've done it, it doesn't get easier. There is a constant sense of shame that eats away at you, making you feel that you're just not good enough. Some people are so poor that they can't even afford to feel shame; they have nothing. Unfortunately for us, we had next to nothing and were just poor enough to feel ashamed of everything.

The buildings were crumbling outside but inside the mums would be scrubbing the steps and cleaning the floors in an attempt to make their homes a little bit better for their kids. It was for their neighbours' benefit too. They didn't want anybody to know how much of a hard time they were having, but they were all going through the same things. Sometimes they would put window boxes on the windowsill with flowers growing in them to try to add some colour to their otherwise black and white existence. Even the flowers had a hard time seeing the sun I think. It seemed to be grey everywhere. The sky was grey. The streets were grey. Life was monochromic and depressing. These same streets had been the home to Scots and Irish for a hundred years and they had been spilling each other's blood on them for as long as they had been there. I doubt that it ever felt safe.

We didn't have regular holidays like normal people; we couldn't afford them. But I remember going to the beach at Port Seton for a holiday one year. It might have been just for one day but I know we went. It was a big thing for us to get away from the grey oppressive filth of Glasgow and see the sea. The beaches in Scotland are not like the beaches in Australia though. When we got there I wondered where the sea was and someone said, ‘There it is – that grey bit, between the grey sky and the grey sand.'
No one went swimming; it was way too cold in the water, or out of the water for that matter. What they did do was kick off their shoes and turn up the bottom of their trousers and paddle around. We were on the beach in jackets and jumpers wishing we'd brought hats and gloves with us.

Mum and Dad and whoever it was who took us, went out when the tide was low and came back with a sack of mussels and whelks. We all got to eat as many as we wanted. That day sticks in my mind as one of the great days in Scotland.

We loved mussels and didn't get them often. You could buy them at some of the barrows (the markets) and the fish shops in Glasgow. We could never afford them but for very little money you could get a cup of mussel brae. I think this was the water that they cooked the mussels in with a bit of salt. But it tasted fresh like the sea to us.

We would stand outside the fish shop in the cold, shivering and watching the guy making the chips.

‘What are you kids doin'? Stop hangin' aboot ma shop. You're puttin' off the customers.'

‘We're hungry, mister.'

‘You'll get nothin' here, now get lost.'

But we would just stand there drooling, breathing in the smells that wafted out of the door of the shop. The smell of mussels being boiled in salt water and chips with salt and vinegar would be driving us crazy.

Sometimes, if we were lucky enough, someone would feel sorry for us as they staggered out drunk from the pub and into the fish shop, and would buy us some chips.

‘You weans shouldnae be standing oot here by yersels. Take these chips and go hame tae yer ma's.'

‘Thanks mister, can you get us a drink too?'

‘D'ye think I'm stupit? Just take the chips and fuck off before I belt ye.'

Other times the guy running the shop would walk out and give us a wee bag of all the crunchy bits that were left in the fat when they cooked the chips. This was like a gourmet meal to us.

‘You kids hungry? Here, eat this and go away.'

When Dad got really drunk he would sometimes give us enough money to buy some mussel brae. He would stick his head out of the pub door and say, ‘Don't tell yer ma I gie'd you this. Go and get yersels somethin' from the fish shop.'

‘Thanks, Dad.'

‘Don't tell her I'm in the pub either.'

He was probably in there spending all the money that Mum was sitting home waiting for so she could feed us. But when we got to drink mussel brae we felt like kings. Small, dirty, snotty-nosed, cheeky kings. But still kings in our heads.

There were good times in Cowcaddens, too. November the fifth, Guy Fawkes Night, was a great night in Glasgow. I can remember massive bonfires on the spare grounds. It seemed like the only time kids from different streets mixed. Maybe this was because the parents were around but I don't think so; it was just a chance to forget about everything and be a kid for one night. Whatever the reason, we all loved that night and couldn't wait for it to come around.

The excitement built for days as the pile of stuff to be burned grew and grew until it was the size of a house. They should have burned a few of the houses too, come to think of it; they were shocking. Everybody brought out old furniture and beds and piled them up with bits of old wood that had come from demolishing the buildings around the area and anything else they wanted to burn. Evidence, bodies – no, I'm only kidding.

We would all stand around and watch the wood and furniture go up in smoke and light up the sky. We would stand and stare into the fires until we were dragged into the house for bed. Then the next day there would be a mound of smouldering ashes lying on the ground, which were blown around by the wind, leaving more shit that never got cleaned up. But for that night it looked spectacular and Glasgow shone – in the eyes of the children anyway.

I felt relatively safe near Mum and Dad, particularly my mum, but when they weren't around my world would collapse. It hurt to be away from my mum's side. She was my world, she was everything. My first day in preschool traumatised me. My mum and granny took me to this place filled with strange kids and very cold-looking women, and just left me there. Where were they going?

‘Come back, what have I done? I'll be good!' I remember screaming at the top of my voice. But they were gone. There was a playground and a wall around the outside so I ran up a slide to see if I could stop them. But they never even looked back. I was certain that they were never coming back. I thought that I was going to have to stay there and take mid-afternoon naps forever. I don't think I ever forgave them for that. I hate naps.

But kindergarten turned into school and school turned out to be not so bad. The school I went to in Cowcaddens was called the Normal School. It was sort of clean and every day you got fed a hot meal. For us and a lot of other kids that might have been the only hot meal we got. Most of the kids looked as scared as I did so I didn't stand out. I was only four going on five, but I learned very quickly that if I made the teachers like me, life would be easier. I was the kid who always had his hand up first. The kid who was always trying to get the teacher's attention. I would try to be involved in everything the class was doing.

* * *

Around the time I started school I was faced with another challenge. It came from home and a place I least expected it to come from – my mum. She started force-feeding cod-liver oil to me and the other kids. Maybe it was one of those times when all the adults in the country decided that this would be good for their kids. And it might have been, but it was torture to me. It was like tongue kissing a salmon. Not that I've ever tried kissing one. My mum had to chase me around the house and hold me down and force the vile liquid down my throat. I would be yelling and sputtering as she force-fed me. And no sooner was it in my mouth than it was all over the floor or even my mum. But after a couple of swift smacks across the legs I soon swallowed it like it was sugar syrup. I know fish oil is supposed to be good for you but that stuff nearly put me off fish for life. It wasn't until much later that I started to like fish oil – when I discovered caviar. A much better delivery system, I think.

The fish oil probably helped in the fight with the cold too. It was an ongoing battle, especially during winter. Life was tough in the summer but it was brutal in the wintertime. The snow brought another set of challenges. It was beautiful to wake up to a blanket of clean white snow covering Glasgow's usual dull, depressing shroud of grey. We would look out the window and laugh and get ready to go out and play in it. But with holes in your shoes and not enough warm clothes the novelty would soon wear off.

Quite often the snow was so high that no one could open their front doors and we couldn't get out even if we wanted to. Sometimes Dad would have to jump out the window from one or two storeys up and dig his way to the pub.

Then the pipes would freeze and there would be no water. Waiting for deliveries of coal was always a worry. If the trucks
couldn't get through a lot of people got very cold. I heard stories of old people and young kids freezing to death in winter. Living in Cowcaddens in that sort of climate was not like it would have been if you lived in a quaint mountain village somewhere. There were no fondues, marshmallows, skis or toboggans where we came from. When the weather turned bad, parents all over Scotland had to work really hard to keep their families warm, lying clothes along the bottom of the doors to stop the wind blowing through. Lighting small coal fires made the difference between freezing or not for most families. For a place that was so sooty, coal was not that easy to get. It cost money – money Mum and Dad never had.

At least we didn't have to drive in the snow, because no one could afford a car. None of my family or their friends had a car. I remember seeing them parked in the street sometimes but not for long. No one wanted to get back to a car that had no wheels or the aerial and the mirrors ripped off. The cars I did see were wrecks or they looked quite funny. There were some that looked like bubbles with one wheel in the front and two at the back, a kind of enclosed golf cart. I've never seen them anywhere else. But I'm sort of glad that no one had cars when I think about it. That would have been something else to knock people to the ground with. Driving drunk would have been the norm and in the winter it would have looked like some sort of demolition derby on ice.

When the snow thawed, the street sweepers would come through and clean up the slushy black mess it left behind. A mixture of water from the melting snow and dirt and soot, mixed up with broken glass and blood from the gutters outside the pubs. Apparently no matter how cold it got, it was still warm enough to drink yourself into oblivion in Glasgow, and if you were still conscious when you left the pub you could be punched, kicked and stabbed on the way home. That particular sport went on all
year round. Glasgow – it was beautiful one minute, a bloodbath the next.

There was a lot of drinking in the house, and with that came a lot of violence and abuse; not necessarily directed at us, but every punch and threat that Mum and Dad threw around hit each of us as if we'd been thrown against the wall. The sound of bottles being opened and voices slowly getting louder always sent us into a panic. Sooner or later a fight would break out and we would hide under the beds and in cupboards, crying and praying it would all stop. Often we'd be dragged out of the house in our underwear, freezing cold, to the sound of Mum and Dad swearing at each other, using us as bargaining chips or hostages. The next day all would be forgiven and the cycle would start again.