by Rikki Brown
3
GOODBYE TO SHORT TROUSERS
My last few months at primary school were spent preparing for my secondary school education. At secondary, classes were allocated by the intelligence levels graded at primary. Throughout primary I still managed to be either First or Second in the class and I had by now quite a library of slightly racist school prize books to prove it so I was assured a place in the A class. I’m pretty sure that’s not how things are done today but in 1969, Glasgow Corporation Education Department’s policy was very much Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. This meant that even at the age of twelve you’d been graded and would be educated according to your ability. If you were an Alpha you’d be educated properly and if you’d been graded an Epsilon you’d be stuck in a class, handed a crayon and told not to eat it. Basically they’d already decided whether or not to give up on you. They neglected to even contemplate that some pupils might be late starters, much preferring not to waste resources on good-for-nothings who’ll come to nothing.
I could have bypassed all the pigeonholing because I had been offered a scholarship to attend the posh Allan Glen’s School but although my parents wanted me to go, I really didn’t fancy being, well, fancy. They’d have taught me to talk with marbles in my mouth and anyone who talked with marbles in their mouth in Easterhouse was asking to end up with a mouth full of marbles. And I mean that in the literal sense. Another reason I didn’t want to go was because I had heard that they made their pupils wear school shorts up until two years after they’d left. And they played rugby, and not being an Edinburgh solicitor or a Borders farmer, I had absolutely no interest in a game the rules of which state quite categorically that it’s perfectly legal to try to yank someone’s privates off during a scrum. The main reason, however, that wild horses couldn’t have dragged me to Allan Glen’s was because it was boys only, and the poor ‘boys’ who ended up there must have had the pishiest puberty ever. Perhaps, though, with no girls around, you don’t get any puberty. Probably explains all the private pulling during scrums.
My scholarship refusal meant my big school wasn’t going to be Allan Glen’s, it was going to be Westwood and as the summer approached, we were taken on a pre-attendance tour. The only subtle difference I could see between a primary classroom and a secondary classroom was that the desks were bigger. The much less subtle difference was that teachers looked like proper teachers. Not that I’m saying that primary teachers aren’t proper teachers, they are, but they are proper teachers whose demeanour is very much like a kids’ TV show presenter – whatever happened they could say, ‘I know a song about that.’ The secondary teacher’s demeanour was more ‘step out of line and I’ll thrash you to within an inch of your life’. And of course, thrashing was allowed as a method of class control back then.
After a tour of the school, we were taken to the assembly hall where the headmaster, Mr Waddell, addressed us. All I remember from his address was his assurance that he’d do his best to crack down on the traditional first day of secondary initiation doing inflicted on new starts by older pupils. We weren’t at Westwood yet but we were being informed in no uncertain terms that when we got there, our wellbeing and survival depended on the success or failure of his crackdown.
I left Easthall in the summer of ’69, the summer of love, which left me two months of wondering if the love would extend to my first day of secondary. It would be just the ironic thing to be beaten up by a bigger boy wearing love beads. As it was the summer of love, everyone was wearing love beads, which were so popular even the local newsagent sold them. I remember watching the gang fights that summer and thinking that the love beads weren’t working. The gang violence that summer made absolutely no sense. On the TV news hippies in kaftans and flares were sticking flowers in the barrels of rifles, meanwhile, in Easterhouse, gangs in kaftans and flares were chasing each other around with machetes. Peace and love, man, right enough, eh? They liked the theory obviously, but just couldn’t be arsed with the practice.
We did indeed spend the summer worrying. The ‘we’ was Eddie Beattie, Jacko, Wilco and myself. Eddie was philosophical about it and would often say, ‘If they do us, they do us, so what?’ This was fair enough but he was only so philosophical because he had a plan to avoid it by spitting on anyone who came anywhere near him. He had a gap in his front teeth and could impressively spit twenty yards. But spitting, that was it. He claimed that no one likes being spat on, which is of course true, but I pointed out to him that surely spitting, apart from being disgusting and unhygienic, would more than likely lead to a double kicking from whomever was spat on. Yes, good plan, but best to formulate a plan B, which we did. Plan B was to start crying and hope for mercy.
I did make the mistake of using the word ‘whomever’ when explaining that spitting could lead to a double kicking and the reply to my verbal faux pas was: ‘Whomever? Who the fuck do you think you are, Lord Snooty, ya wanker?’ Whomever, that’s Allan Glen patter. The summer of ’69 was the summer of Woodstock, the moon landing, Charles Manson and the abolition of the death penalty in the UK. The abolition of the death penalty heralded the end of the swinging sixties, which was only called the swinging sixties because they still hung people back then. Although none of us were at Woodstock, obviously, the music of The Who, Jimi Hendrix and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young could be heard on every street. This was because people had a penchant for opening their window and positioning their Dansette on the windowsill. This was them showing off how ‘with it’ they were. ‘With it’ was the phrase for ‘trendy’ back then. Seemed they thought ‘listen to what I’m listening to’ impressed people. Not that it really did because most passers by simply thought, ‘What a fud.’ Much the same way today as the driver with the car blasting out 100 decibels with the windows open is thought of as ‘a total fud’.
The problem in ’69 was the technology (and that’s the first time a Dansette has ever been referred to as technology), as Dansette record players weren’t that great and at full volume the casing rattled, so most of the time all you could hear was the rattle. Records also stuck a lot and many times you’d walk past a window and hear The Who singing, ‘Talkin’ bout … talkin’ bout … talkin’ bout …’ This could only be rectified by either pushing the arm containing the needle along a bit to get to the ‘my generation’ bit or by balancing a penny on the arm to dig the needle into the grooves. I’m talking about the old heavy penny that weighed a couple of pounds, as decimalisation was still two years away. The more blunt the needle on the record player became, the more pennies it required, and when you got to a foot high stack of pennies, which added up to £1.19.11d, it was really time to use that £1.19.11d to buy a new needle.
I was allowed to stay up late to watch the moon landing, an event that was supposed to change the world forever. One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. The giant leap, it transpired, was only a giant leap in the frying pan and clothing industry thanks to the development of Teflon and Velcro. Although the moon landing did give Michael Jackson the excuse to moon walk, which he used to distract people from noticing that he was grabbing his own crotch. Unfortunately for him, his moon walking eventually wasn’t enough of a distraction to stop people noticing that he was allegedly grabbing other people’s crotches too.
In an attempt to capture the mood of the time, Blue Peter that very week showed how to make your own brilliant and very lifelike Apollo 11 using the obligatory squeezy bottles, sticky back plastic and other everyday items you can find lying about the house. Every household did have sticky back plastic in the kitchen because it was much cheaper to cover kitchen work surfaces in it than in formica. These were the days of John Noakes, Peter Purves and Valerie Singleton, whom Wilco thought it hilarious to call John Nooky, Peter Pooves and Valerie Singletit. Mind you, he did that a lot, as there was another kids programme on then called Junior Showtime, which starred Glyn Poole, Miss Marjorie and Bobby Bennett, whom he renamed Glyn Poof, Miss Marjalezzie and Bobby Bent. What Freud would have made of
his sexual renaming is anyone’s guess.
I did make the Blue Peter Apollo 11, but it wasn’t brilliant or lifelike. It was pish, and even more pish compared to the Airfix Apollo 11 Wilco built. So I never trusted Blue Peter and their lies ever again; lies such as, ‘Your Mummy will be really impressed with this paper hankie box/holder thing you can make for her as a Christmas present,’ and, ‘If you collect used milk bottle tops and send them to us we can save the whole of Africa from starvation.’ I was never convinced that all the money they made from used milk bottle tops reached Africa. I was always thinking, ‘Here, how come the Blue Peter cat Jason can afford ANOTHER new collar?’ and, ‘New floral shirt Peter, won the pools have you?’ I mean, how can you have faith in people who insist that the best Father’s Day present is a homemade pipe holder? No one smokes a pipe. Certainly in Easterhouse no one did, probably because they’d have got their head kicked in for being a diddy. When Blue Peter weren’t collecting for the poor and starving in Africa, their other biggie was Guide Dogs for the Blind. My school got involved in that one and put a bin inside the entrance for pupils to deposit their donated milk bottle tops. There was a sign above the bin that read ‘Guide Dogs For the Blind’ that someone had changed to ‘Blind Dogs For the Guides’. I thought that was clever and hilarious, I still do.
As for the Manson Family, they certainly put the families in Easterhouse that we thought were bad into some sort of perspective. There was a family called Manson in Aberdalgie Place and they did have a son called Charles. But after the Manson Family’s killing spree, he insisted on being called Chick. He must have been worried that people might confuse him with his namesake and cross the road to avoid him just in case he cultmurdered them. Thinking back, people crossed the road to avoid him anyway because he was a bit of a bam. Not that they had to bother, as he was more of a danger to himself than anyone else; in one gang fight, he somehow managed to chop two of his own fingers off with a machete.
The big summer movie in 1969 was The Love Bug, the tale of a Volkswagen Beetle called Herbie that had a mind of its own. Disney neglected to mention that the Volkswagen Beetle was originally designed by Ferdinand Porsche for Hitler and his Third Reich as a family run-around. Not so much Herbie Goes To Monte Carlo as Herbie Annexes Sudetenland.
In the week before I was to go to Westwood, my mother took me into Glasgow to buy me a new blazer and school tie. I explained that it was a waste of money because out of the 800 pupils who attended the school, I would be the only pupil there in a school blazer. Why single me out? Why don’t you get a felt tip pen and write ‘bully me’ on my forehead? I also explained that it’s only called a blazer because if I turn up at school on my first day in it someone will set it on fire, with me in it.
My protests fell on deaf ears, but on the subject of protests, the trip into Glasgow coincided with a protest in George Square against the Vietnam War. The protesters were students, students who’d watched the news and heard their American counterparts chanting, ‘Hell no, we won’t go, hell no, we won’t go.’ So that’s what they were chanting too. It’s seems to have escaped their intelligence that there was absolutely no reason why anyone would even ask them to go to ’Nam and this meant that their chant was utterly meaningless. But chant it they did. You’d have thought they could have at least come up with their own chant, perhaps along the lines of: ‘Hell no, we won’t go, even though no one’s asked us to, and it’s highly unlikely they ever will.’ So students haven’t changed, still protesting and still trying to buy a bag of chips with a cheque.
It is amazing though how some things stick in your head forever. I remember another trip when I was dragged unwillingly around town shopping by mother and we came across two women who’d set up a trestle table in Argyle Street and on the table was a knitting needle, a metal coat hanger, a bottle of gin and a tin of Colman’s powdered mustard. They were proabortionists calling for the legalisation and easy availability of the procedure because women were dying either at the hands of back street abortionists or from complications from self-inflicted abortions using what was laid out on the table. To this day I can still see that table quite clearly. That childhood vision has stayed with me for over forty years.
4
DANGER, DANGER, DANGER
Back to the first-day beating. I often wondered where this ritual came from, not that I had to wonder much as this school ritual came from where all school rituals came, public school. Thankfully by the time the ritual had filtered down from public school to normal schools it had gone from being rogered by a Peer of the Realm’s son to simply getting a hiding from a ned.
The day duly arrived and we approached the school gates. It was like High Noon, except that it was nine o’clock. We were all wearing our school ties with very loose knots in a cocky men-of-the-world kind of a way, hoping that the reception committee would think that our act of sartorial rebellion would show them that we shared their maverick spirit of breaking school rules. The rule we were breaking was the strict dress code and the rule they were breaking was the much less strict not beating the crap out of a first year. There were about forty hardened pupils waiting, mostly third years with a few second years gathered on the fringes to sadistically enjoy the re-enactment of what they had gone through 365 days before. There wasn’t a teacher in sight and then I saw the Janitor, who bore a striking resemblance to Sergeant Schultz in the TV programme Hogan’s Heroes, disappearing round a corner with a brush. Schultz’s catchphrase in the show was: ‘I know nothing.’ So was this guy’s, either that or he genuinely did have a brushing up some broken glass emergency out of view of the school gates.
Eddie turned to us and said, ‘Just do what I do.’ The reply he got was: ‘So we’ve to shit ourselves too then?’ He looked at us and said, ‘Look, it’s under control.’ They gathered round us and in the best tradition of the military, we formed a British Square, the same sort of British Square that had worked so well at Waterloo. Then again, Wellington’s troops, or scum of the earth as he called them, were only facing Marshall Ney’s cavalry, we were facing a foe much worse, we were facing the mentals.
The boots and fists came flying. I don’t think the intent was entirely malicious, more of a case of ‘well someone has to keep traditions alive’. We were saved when Eddie pulled an air pistol out of his haversack and shouted, ‘Right ya bastards, fuck off.’ They did all back down except for one of the second years who no doubt had suffered the year before and was determined to ensure that we were going to endure what he’d had to. He started shouting something about first years not ruling the roost and his words were starting to look as though they were shaming the mentals into action … until Eddie shot him in the thigh with a dart. This should have been the perfect time for them to rush us because the particular air pistol Eddie was waving about takes about forty-five minutes to reload because you have to apply two tons of pressure to get the firing chamber back into the barrel. But that didn’t seem to have occurred to them and that was it, it was over, and of course, the moment it was over was when the teachers turned up.
‘Break it up,’ they shouted, which we would have done if there had been anything to break up. The bell rang and all the new starts were ushered into the assembly hall where we were allocated our class numbers. The curriculum was explained to us, we were to have different teachers for every subject and we were given schedules. French, Biology, Geography, Chemistry, Maths and so on, and our first class at secondary, for the boys anyway, was a double period Technical Drawing. We were separated from the girls who went off to Domestic Science, which was basically cookery, sewing and other such very important home maker pursuits, such as lessons in ensuring that their man’s tea would be ready and on the table waiting for him when he got home from work.
After about ten minutes wandering the corridors we found the techie drawing class, inhabited by a giant of a man called Mr McConnell. Six foot six inches of complete and utter bastard. He acted as though he hated us even though he’d never set eyes on us before,
but I found out later he wasn’t acting – he just hated everyone. He towered over us explaining the rules of engagement. Speak out of turn, the belt, scratching the desk with a compass, the belt, late for class by even a millisecond, the belt, defacing your jotter, the belt … defacing your jotter, the belt?
That warning came too late for Wilco and Eddie because on the front of the jotter there was a road safety warning that read: ‘Danger, Danger, Danger, better a moment at the kerb than a month in hospital’. After being handed their jotters in assembly, Wilco and Eddie had written R’s over the D’s and their warning now said Rangers, Rangers, Rangers. McConnell wandered round the class checking everyone’s kit like a martinet and picked both of them from the ranks and paraded them in front of the class. Explanations that they didn’t know they weren’t allowed to vandalise their jotters because they were new were useless and he produced a belt from under his jacket. He wore it over his shoulder under his jacket and this thing could stand practically upright. We’d never seen a belt like it, as primary teachers’ were quite flimsy fluffy things that gave your hands a nice warm feeling, the same nice warm feeling you could get from putting on gloves that have been on the radiator. His, though, meant business. He gave Wilco and Eddie two strokes each and the sting echoed round the room and the windows vibrated. Everyone in the class flinched with each stroke, except for Eddie who took the punishment with great fortitude. Not Wilco, he just blubbed.
There wasn’t a mark on any of McConnell’s desks or rubbers or rulers or anything after that. His classroom was pristine because he explained that every time we entered his class we had to check for any damage to school property and report it immediately. This would allow him to identify the culprit from the seat’s previous incumbent. If we didn’t report it, the incumbent after us would and we would therefore be blamed. Quite a good system as it happened. Technical drawing was a subject that everyone excelled at because the basis of it was drawing straight lines on a bit of paper, and since the school provided you with a ruler to do so it was kind of difficult to cock it up.
