by Rikki Brown
As soon as the minibus had stopped we went off to explore but that took us just about ten minutes, as Millport, apart from being a lovely wee scenic place, really has nothing else but a bit of scenery.
The whole place seemed to be full of rabbits running around banging into things. We returned to base and asked Roy the question, ‘Hey, how come all the rabbits here are pure pished?’
Roy told us that they weren’t pished, they were suffering from myxomatosis, a disease given to them by man to stop them breeding and overrunning the island. Winker suggested that maybe Colin should be given a dose of it to control his plan to breed with Linda. Roy laughed, he had a sense of humour. He was about twenty and as he had just qualified, he hadn’t yet achieved the distance of the pupil and employee of the education department relationship.
Our first night in Hush Hush was spent in the sleepless pursuit of trying to get into the girls’ dorm. What we would have done once we’d managed to sneak in was a mystery but we felt we’d be letting ourselves down if we didn’t at least try.
At breakfast the next day Colin gave us the entertainment schedule. Day one we were to go into the town and hire bicycles, which we would then use to ride round the island, wooo – such excitement. I asked him why we just couldn’t go round the island in the minibus, which prompted a dirty look and a lecture about fresh air in the lungs. Roy was given the task of driving us into town as Colin and Linda were staying behind to prepare the evening meal.
Roy dropped us off and disappeared into the pub. He gave us two hours to do the circumnavigation of the island tour and said he would then meet us back at the hire shop. We got on our bikes and headed back in the direction we had just come. It was about five miles back to Hush Hush and we called the rally the ‘let’s catch them with their knickers round their ankles’ cycle race.
We cycled back like demons, cackling like maniacs as we went. We got back and they were indeed preparing the evening meal. Colin was sitting outside peeling potatoes. He did however have a glow of smug satisfaction about him so we did wonder.
We goaded Colin the best way we could for the first couple of days and he took it in surprisingly good humour. It was only later we found out that he was just biding his time. Like a Martian in H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds – slowly and surely he laid his plans against us.
On the third night he appeared at the hut door carrying a fishing net and a torch. He then made a great play of acting casually. We feigned disinterest until he selected a log and began to bang it off the floor. Satisfied with his choice, he went outside and we followed him out as curiosity had now got the better of us.
‘Colin, what’s the gear for?’
He told us that he was going to hunt Bull Rabbits for the next day’s dinner. Hunting, now this was more like it. But what was a Bull Rabbit and how are they caught? Colin explained.
‘They are male rabbits about twice the size as normal, they are nocturnal, and they can easily be identified by their large antlers.
‘The way to catch them is to run along the road stretching the net across it. The Bull Rabbits will be stunned by the torchlight, and stand so still that it’s incredibly easy to crack them over the skull with the log.’
Being from the city, and not too well versed in the flora and fauna of our native country, we believed him and the prospect of satisfying our schoolboy bloodlust was far too much for us. We asked if we could have a go. He handed us the equipment and sat on the entrance gate and watched us charge off down the road.
There were about ten of us running along the dark roads and screaming our heads off. Winker was following with the torch and Eddie was behind him with the log. Every so often a car would come along driven by a local. They’d slow down to look at the bizarre scene of ten smiling loonies armed with a net, a torch and a log. Once they had decided that we must be mad they would speed off, leaving skid marks and the smell of burning rubber.
We must have run for a couple of miles before we decided that the Bull Rabbits were in bed and dejectedly we made our way back to Hush Hush. On the way back, the torch batteries ran out and every so often one of us would yell out expletives as we fell into a ditch. We reached Hush Hush to find the place strangely silent and in total darkness. We approached cautiously and edged our way through the door.
All the lights went on and Colin was standing with all the females who were screaming and laughing. We’d been had. Well and truly had.
Colin was beyond smug as he had made us look like total idiots in the eyes of the girls, not only that but he’d probably raised his self-esteem with his ‘burd’.
Waking early the next morning, we convened a war cabinet behind the main hut and decided we’d have to be come up with something clever to pay him back for making us look like tubes.
Winker came up with a plan.
We made a dummy out of clothes and stuffed it with grass and straw, for an added touched of reality we used a turnip for its head with Winker’s Rangers tammy on it as the final touch. We did debate whether or not the Rangers tammy was a good idea because Menzies might be a Celtic fan and wouldn’t lift a finger to save a Rangers fan from drowning. We decided he wasn’t a Celtic fan, for no other reason than we were pretty sure Menzies wasn’t a Catholic sounding name. Eddie said he was convinced he wasn’t a Catholic because ‘he doesnae look like one’. Since we didn’t exactly know what that meant we took Eddie at his word. I mean it’s not as if he went about dressed like the Pope.
From a distance the dummy looked quite lifelike. We took it out to the shoreline amongst the rocks and put it in the water. After letting it drift out about twenty yards, Eddie ran into the hut screaming that Winker had fallen in, banged his head and was now in the advanced stages of drowning.
Colin came running out, quickly surveyed the situation and waded in to rescue the dummy. He actually looked quite heroic. It would have been more heroic if he’d dived in, but I suppose wading in was still sort of heroic-ish.
It was only on reaching the dummy he realised he’d been duped and we all started cheering. He waded back, got out, dripped his way past us and back off into the hut to dry off. We’d had our revenge and decided to call it quits.
On our last night anyone who wanted was allowed to go into the town unaccompanied. Only four of us took up the offer, the rest wanted to stay and sing songs round the campfire that Colin was building.
Roy drove us in and disappeared off into the pub.
Eddie, Winker, Wilco and myself found this cafe and went in for some soft drinks. A few of the local kids sat about and every so often one of them threw us a dirty look. Not that this bothered us at first, as we were from Easterhouse and thought we were dead tough, but eventually it became annoying and Eddie asked them, ‘What do you think you are looking at ya pricks?’
He elongated the word pricks, so it sounded more like pricksaaaaaaaaaa. He thought the extra long ‘a’ sounded scarier.
One of the locals said, ‘Nothing,’ and Eddie said, ‘Aye, ye’d fucking better not be.’
There were only three of them and we were four, not bad odds in the event of things turning nasty. We soon got bored with the cafe and walked outside and up towards the pier. The locals came out and followed us. Winker looked back and said, ‘What’s their problem?’
It wasn’t their problem, it was ours. All along the walk they were joined by more locals coming out of houses, which was impressive because it was long before the age of mass communication and it’s not as if they texted or tweeted each other. I can only figure that they were all telepathic and that’s how the message that strangers were in town was passed around. By the time we got to the pier, there were about twenty of them ranging from about four-years-old to about sixteen-years-old. One of them only had one leg and was using crutches.
Once on the pier we were trapped, there was only one way out and that was to jump off the pier and swim to Largs or go through them.
‘What now?’ asked Winker.
Eddie was in no mood
to back down and he took a step towards them, threatening, ‘What are youse looking at?’ He had his hand in his jacket as though he was concealing a weapon. His hope was that this looked threatening. They didn’t answer him. They just stood there staring at us and their silence was a bit freaky. Winker took a couple of steps towards them and they stepped back. ‘They’re fucking shitebags, mon then, come intae us.’ He held up both hands and was beckoning them with his fingertips to come forward. The biggest one spoke: ‘We’re the Millport Young Team.’
‘Wooooooo,’ said Eddie, ‘the Millport Young Team. Well yeez urnae going to live long enough to be the Millport Old Team, so come on, are we going right ahead or whit.’
Eddie whispered to us, ‘Act mental and they’ll shit themselves.’
We started shouting names at them and generally looking as though we weren’t right in the heads. I am ashamed to say it felt good. Four against twenty and they were looking very apprehensive and stood there not knowing what to do.
Obviously they couldn’t back down and by this stage, neither could we.
The deadlock was broken when the only cop on the island turned up in his Panda car and they scattered.
We stood our ground.
‘Right, what’s going on here?’
‘It was them, they followed us.’
‘I assume you lot are from Hush Hush?’
‘Aye.’
‘Is there anyone with you?’
‘The language lab guy, he’s in the pub.’
‘Wait here and I’ll go and get him.’
Roy was pissed off at being dragged out of the pub and drove us back in silence. We told him it wasn’t our fault but he just ignored us after saying, ‘Yeh right.’
We got back to Hush Hush and found everyone sitting round a huge bonfire singing campfire type songs. Boring!!!!! Especially after our night out.
The next morning we piled into the minibus and headed homeward.
When Roy started up the engine there was a cheer – only Colin and Linda looked unhappy at the prospect of returning to the headmaster’s moral regime.
9
ASPIRIN AND COKE
Apart from the trip to Hush Hush, nothing of any note happened in 1970 or 1971, but when 1972 kicked in, things were in a transformation. Fashion became ridiculous. We already had flares but only hippies and pop stars wore them. Now we had something much, much worse – baggie trousers. They were thirty inches wide at the thigh and thirty inches wide at the bottom. The comic look was worsened by a nine-inch waistband. The really fashion conscious glitterati had theirs made to measure by a tailor in Glasgow city centre called Arthur Black. Anyone with enough cash could be made into a clown.
Our school uniform had changed from Gloverall Dufflecoats and a pair of Levi’s to Gloverall Dufflecoats and thirty-inch bags, and the Headmaster put his foot down. He gathered us all together in the hall and lectured us on the etiquette of the school uniform. Up until this point he had been quite liberal but now he had decided enough was enough. Anyone appearing in the school in ‘Oxford Bags’ would be sent home.
The next day there were a lot of clowns wandering the streets very aimlessly.
The way we dressed was also influenced by music. Slade fans, for instance, wore Doc Martens, denim jackets and sported skinhead haircuts, while Heavy Rock fans wore Doc Martens, denim jackets and sported long hair. Note once again the subtle difference. The other footwear available were Monkey Boots and Sacha platforms, the latter of which were girls’ shoes but because they were only £13.99, as opposed to the £90 custom-made platforms you could order at Slack Shack in Argyle Street, they were worn by both sexes. I was chased one night by the West Rebels when I was wearing my Sachas and obviously I couldn’t really run, luckily for me they were wearing their Sachas too. The scene must have looked ridiculous with me taking tiny wee steps like a Geisha girl and them taking tiny wee steps like a gang of Geisha girls. I managed to escape because it suddenly dawned on me that I could take them off and run in my bare feet.
For my birthday that year I was given money. New fancy decimal money, and with my new fancy decimal money I decided I wanted a customised jersey from Argyle House, a shop at the top of Buchanan Street, which for decimal money, or any money at all, would give you any design you wanted. I wanted a jersey zipper with tartan patches and my name on it, which by that time I had changed from Richie to Rikki. So I collected my birthday money and got the bus into the Buchanan Street bus station. I went into the shop and explained to the woman behind the desk what I wanted. She noted all this down and I told her that as a finishing touch I wanted Rikki knitted into the panel of the left breast. She told me that this would be £1 extra as it was twenty new pennies per letter. The problem was that I only had 80p left so I had to drop one of the Ks. A fortnight later I collected it and was chuffed to bits because I thought it looked really cool. But the first time I wore it Eddie looked at the jersey and said, ‘You’re a prick, you cannae even spell your own fucking name.’ Needless to say I never wore it ever again.
Music was becoming an important part of our lives but our tastes were divided. Some of us liked one thing, others something else. I recall one night going up to this guy Shuggie MacMillan’s house because he said he’d the best record ever recorded. And that turned out to be, in his opinion, Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’. Admittedly it is a classic, but he ruined it by every ten seconds excitedly pointing out an on-coming guitar solo and trying to play along with it on a poxy Spanish guitar with nylon strings that his mother had got him for his Christmas.
Hendrix fans were a breed apart from the rest of us. They were the people who would scrape off the insides of the banana peel and smoke it saying, ‘What a high man.’ I did try it but it never worked for me. I was told I didn’t have the right vibes for a hit. They also put Aspirin into Coke because they said this gave them a high. It more than likely didn’t and just gave them an Aspirin and Coke. Drugs didn’t really exist, at least that’s how I remember it, unless I was on drugs at the time and that’s why I can’t remember drugs existing. No, they didn’t, that was a problem that was far off.
New words started appearing in our language, words such as ‘far out’, a derivative of ‘far off’. There was also ‘heavieee’, and ‘stoned’. In Easterhouse it caused a lot of confusion, if one were to say, ‘I’m gonnie get stoned the night,’ it either meant that one would be partaking of a banana roll up or had the intention of walking down the wrong street and criticising the local gang leader.
Being in a group became the cool thing to do. All the girls were into pop stars and 99% of them had ‘I Love Marc Bolan’ written on their schoolbooks and schoolbags. With that in mind we decided to start a band with the idea of seeing our names on their schoolbags.
We had our first meeting in a guy called Kenny’s house. Kenny was a year younger than us but he had a big brother in a band and the equipment was stashed in his house. We knew this, befriended him and asked him to join us.
At our first meeting we discussed the stuff we would play and who would play what. Kenny said he would be the lead guitarist, Eddie on drums, Wilco on rhythm, Winker on vocals and me on bass. We visited the Congregational Church fifty yards along the road from Kenny’s house and asked the minister if we could rehearse in the hall. Being a kindly soul he agreed as long we didn’t break or steal anything.
We approached this particular church because it was the church my mother went to and as the minister knew our family, he unfortunately agreed by using the shortened version of my Sunday name of Richard, which I was only ever called by my Dad. ‘Of course you can Dick.’ Wilco said he wasn’t really surprised because he always thought I was a dick. It took me years to live that down. Why are so many names words for sexual organs? There’s Dick, Willie, Boaby and Nobby, and not wanting to appear sexist, there’s Fanny and Nan too. It just isn’t right. Parents should really think about what they call their kid, they should check it can’t be shortened or messed about with to something
that can leave a permanent scar. Then again every Dick, Willie and Boaby have got off lightly compared with the couple from Possil who christened their poor kid Pocahontas.
We carted all the stuff along from Kenny’s house and set it up.
‘Right,’ said Kenny, ‘we’ll start with Free’s “All Right Now”.’
Kenny hit the first few chords while the rest of just looked at each other. Kenny stopped playing, ‘What? Do you not know it then?
‘Aye, we know it but we don’t fucking know how to play it.’
Kenny looked at us.
Winker piped up, ‘I know the words.’
Eddie added, ‘So what, we all know the words.’
Kenny said, ‘Okay it’s basically just the chords C, G and F, then the rest is simple.’
Wilco asked him, ‘So what’s a chord then?’
Kenny put his Fender Stratocaster down. ‘Can any of you lot actually play anything?’ He directed the question to Wilco and myself.
‘Well naw, no really.’
Kenny had a look of puzzlement on his face. ‘Well how the fuck can we start a band then?’
Eddie hit a drum a few times. ‘Well this bit’s a fucking dawdle.’
Winker said, ‘Knowing the words must be a start as well.’
Kenny went on to explain the principles of being in a group and that being able to play something was pretty high up on the list. He added that he had been playing the guitar for three years and it was not an easy thing to play well.
After a lot of cajoling he agreed to teach us and within three weeks we had just about learned to play one number badly. Fame was just around the corner. We were just in the process of learning our second number when Kenny’s big brother’s band went on tour and took their equipment with them. That was the end of our musical aspirations, albeit temporarily. But it was just as well, as most rehearsal nights we were joined by Kenny’s pal Scraggs and his girlfriend, and if Scraggs wasn’t stealing chocolate bars belonging to the Church’s playgroup, which were stored in the kitchen, he was up in the pulpit with his girlfriend winching the face off her. Now I’m not really all that religious but somehow I just felt that using the pulpit for winching was something that the Good Lord himself might just frown upon. And God knew exactly what was going on because God is omnipresent. Seemingly he’s like Santa in that respect.
