Going through old photos tonight, as one does on the eve of one’s birthday. I must have been only two-years-old in this one. I still have the small black-and-white original of it. It was taken in a photograph studio in Albany Street in Edinburgh. The date stamp says March 22nd, my birthday! Years later, my Mum has scribbled in pencil on the back of it the instructions for it to be enlarged and coloured by a family friend. The latter instructions read: “Eyes – brown. Hair – black. Compl – fair. Jersey – red, blue & white (fairisle). Trousers – pale blue. Socks – white. Shoes – pale blue.” I have to hand it to Mum. She would have had two toddlers and a baby to contend with by that time and been heavily pregnant with a fourth child. We all lived in a tenement in Clark Place in the Ferry, which she often described as “a rat-infested slum”. And her and Dad wouldn’t have had two ha’pennies to rub together. But she made damn sure that her wee boy was all dressed up to get his birthday photie taken in the Toon.
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That summer, when the young people were rioting on the streets of Paris, when Civil Rights protests in Northern Ireland were on the verge of triggering a 30-year internecine war, and when a much larger conflagration was raging in Vietnam, the talk in the Ferry was of the US Navy sailing up the Forth. Suddenly, the town was awash with Yankee sailors. My wee sister Helena invited one of those sailors to come to our house for tea. In typical country Irish fashion, my Mum pulled out the leaves of the dining table in the living room, got out her best tablecloth and cutlery, prepared a spread that could compete with Christmas Day, and summoned the rest of us to attend the momentous event. The sailor was a fair-haired, blue-eyed, good-looking and well-mannered American boy. His ship had recently returned from Vietnam, where it had been stationed off the coast for some months in support of the air and ground forces. Inevitably, the conversation at the dining table was dominated by the Vietnam War. Shortly before she passed away, when she was looking back at her life, Helena spoke to me about the American boy. She said she often wondered what had happened to him. If he has survived, I wonder, too, if he still remembers not only Helena, but also the kind and generous Irish lady who gave him such a warm welcome to our little town in that troubled time.
The nuns who taught my Mum over in Ireland spent more time drumming the Catechism into her than on the reading and writing business. So it was little wonder that in her adult life she often got things wrong. The shopping lists she wrote out were always full of spelling errors, much to the mirth of us kids. And she would say things like "giraffical maps" or "TV serious", again much to our mirth. The thing is, though, that we would be laughing with her and never at her. One day during the summer holidays, round about teatime, I was hanging about at the open back door with a pal from just along the road. The pal’s father was a rep who wore a suit to work and drove a company car and who thought he, his wife and their two children were a cut above the rest of us. My siblings, all five of them, were in the kitchen at that time, sitting round the big table and, as ever, making a hell of a racket. My Mum must have swept into the kitchen from elsewhere in the house, because my pal and I heard her shouting, “Get off the table, your tea’s not ready yet!” I knew she meant “Get away from the table”, of course, but my pal burst out in a fit of laughing at the vision of a chimps’ tea-party that my Mum’s Irishism had conjured up. I knew also that at the first opportunity he would be relating the incident to anyone who would listen, the story of the Gisby monkeys. He wasn’t my friend any more. And don’t you be worrying, Mum, spelling errors or not, Irishisms or not, you did us all proud.
That February, it was unusually cold in Paris, with freezing temperatures much like those we’ve been experiencing here recently, but thankfully without the snow to accompany them. It wasn’t the best time to take Alison on her first visit to the city. It was going to be too cold to linger outside for any length of time. But I knew the Metro system like the back of myhand, so we purchased a couple of carnets and used the Metro to travel across the city to the main attractions, popping up for a short while at each location and then retreating back down into the warmth of the underground. One evening, we were on the train to Blanche Metro station in Montmartre. With Alison dressed in her finery and me in my tux, bowtie and long Italian overcoat, looking like a Mafia don, we felt conspicuous among the other passengers, most of whom were workers making their way home. When we left the train, we headed for the stairs that would take us up to the hookers and sex shops of Pigalle and onwards to the Moulin Rouge. As we walked along the platform, I noticed that all the seats on our right were occupied by what I guessed were homeless men seeking shelter from the cold. Suddenly, one of the men stood up, swayed, fixed his eyes on a still open door of the train we had just left, and then charged headlong towards the door. Clearly very drunk, he stumbled and fell flat on his face before he could reach the door, his head almost lodged in the gap between the train and the platform. He was now in danger of being seriously injured when the train moved off, but none of the passengers inside nor any of those on the platform seemed interested. I rushed over to help the drunk. I was struggling to move his deadweight when another man came to help. Together, the stranger and I lifted him up by the arms and dragged him back to the seat he had vacated. He was moaning softly and his forehead was bloodied, but otherwise he seemed to have survived the fall. “Merci beaucoup,” I said to the stranger. The stranger nodded. He was Moroccan, a foreigner like us.
Back in my early teens, not long before I un-found God, I used to go to Chapel in the Ferry every Sunday. On one occasion, just before Mass began, two young men squeezed into the end of the pew I was sitting on. Their hair was slicked back with Brylcreem, their cheeks were red, as if their faces had just had a good scrub, and they were wearing what looked like brand new suits – those tight-fitting, pastel-coloured suits that were popular in the Sixties. It was tattie howking season and there was a farm close by, so it didn’t take much brainwork to figure that the pair were tattie howkers over from Ireland for the season. While both acted nervously, it became clear very quickly that one of them had never been in a Chapel before. As soon as Mass got underway, the latter sat back, seeming to relax a little. Then he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes and a box of matches. An urgent gesture from his companion told him that smoking in the Chapel was forbidden, so back went the cigarettes and matches. Later in the service, the collection plate was passed along our pew, starting from the end opposite where the tattie howkers sat. When the plate arrived at the novice, he reached into it, grabbed a handful of coins and stuffed them into his pocket. “Fock sake!” his companion hissed. “Would you put those back, Michael?” As a laddie who had helped his Dad scavenge for coins under the Forth Bridge, I remember thinking that an awful lot of well-fed faces came to Mass on a Sunday and that maybe Michael had the right idea.
In the words of Robert Burns: An’ ye had been where I hae been/On the braes o' Killiecrankie-o.
Back in the 1980’s, I persuaded Alison to go on a hitchhiking tour of the Highlands with me. I suppose I was trying to re-create my epic lone journey round the region some fifteen years earlier. Alison bought herself a dainty wee rucksack for the trip. I already had a big one from the Army Surplus Store. Alison insisted on taking stuff she could change into at night – shoes, jeans, jerseys and so on, not to mention her hairdryer. The problem was that all the stuff wouldn’t fit into her rucksack. So, being a gentleman, I carried it in mine. My rucksack was rather heavy as a result. But it was fine once it was strapped on my back. I could even clip the straps at the front onto my belt to help distribute the load more evenly. Very cushty. Well, it was until we took the Killiecrankie Walk, an eight-mile trail through the woodlands between Pitlochry and Killiecrankie. At one point during the walk, Alison strode up a steep slope. I attempted to follow her, but halfway up the weight of my rucksack pulled me backwards and, being clipped to my belt, actually toppled me over and had me doing backward somersaults back down the slope. I think the photo was taken shortly afterwards. Note the comparative sizes of the rucksacks. Note also the bagpipe legs, which are the subject of a whole other story. |
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