by Rikki Brown
‘Watson it’s only half past one in the afternoon and we are not lost we are simply off course slightly.’
As darkness fell a few hours later, Menzies admitted defeat. He told us to stay put as he was going for help. We started to collect firewood and as there was no other paper to get it going we lit the map.
Winker’s attitude changed from pessimistic to philosophical.
‘Aye well whit’s fur ye will not go by ye. I’ll bet he’s planned this so he can sneak off furra bit of sheep shagging.’
‘Do you think people actually do that?’
‘Dunno, but these country folk have strange ways.’
The thing was, though, that we seemed to be in the middle of nowhere and had neither seen sheep nor country folk with strange ways all day.
It began to get bitterly cold and as hunger started setting in Winker eyed up Fat Boy, looked pensive for a moment then stated, ‘Na.’
The other members of the group weren’t coping too well and were looking a bit teary eyed, especially the two females.
I tried to allay their fears. ‘Look it’ll be alright, maybe we should snuggle up to each other for warmth, ye know all that body heat stuff.’
They decided against it and snuggled up to each other but it was worth a try.
‘What’s the time Winker?’ said Fat Boy.
‘How wid ah know, anyway it’s your fault.’
‘How?’
‘Just is, right.’
Winker was just trying to amuse himself.
One of the girls suggested we have a sing song round the dying small fire but Winker was having none of it.
‘Right that’s it, I’m offski, I’m no’ sitting here listening to these bampots singing.’
I didn’t think him leaving was a very good idea. ‘You’d better wait here, what if you get lost?’
‘Whit dae ye mean lost, mair lost than we already are, how would that be possible, we don’t know where the fuck we are so how can we get mair lost ya wank, and anyway Marco fucking Polo has probably fell doon a hole.’
One of the girl’s delicate ears was not used to such language.
‘Do you really have to swear?’
Winker looked at her and said, ‘Aye, I fucking dae.’
‘Look Wink, all I’m saying is that we’d better stay here and wait.’
‘You lot can stay here and freeze if you want to but I’m off, yeez can come or yeez can stay.’
We had a quick discussion and decided to go, so our intrepid team set off into the blackness. Winker looked up to the sky.
‘Right one of they starry bastards up there is the north star.’
We all looked up not exactly sure what we were looking for.
‘Which one?’
‘Probably, the shiniest one.’
‘That one’s quite shiny.’
‘Okay,’ said Wink, ‘that one there, now Largs is on the west coast so if we keeping heading that way we’ll hit civilisation, well … Largs anyway.’
It seemed logical so we set off in the direction we thought was west.
Fat Boy was once again lagging behind.
‘Are you gonnie keep up?’
‘I cannae help it.’
‘Well let me put it to you this way, either you keep up or ye’ll lag behind and the sheep shaggers will get ye.’
After this warning, his step quickened considerably.
We trudged on and on and on and were losing faith in Winker’s northern star theory when we heard the sound of a fog horn directly in front of us.
‘See,’ said Winker, ‘that’s a fucking fog horn so we are going the right way. I’m a genius.’
We climbed one last hill and there was Largs below us in all its splendour.
It took a further forty-five minutes to reach the town and when we got there the clock on the church tower said 10.30. We walked on until we found a police station and entered to report our predicament.
Menzies hadn’t shown up so it was presumed he was still wandering about on the hills. Little could be done until first light according to the cops, so they phoned the Easterhouse police station in order for them to tell our parents we were safe and we were put up for the night in the Inverclyde Recreation centre.
We were exhausted and with little thought of Menzies plight, we crashed out almost immediately.
Around 8.15 the next morning Menzies was located and when they brought him down he was a babbling frozen moron. Winker couldn’t resist a dig as he sat there shivering with a blanket covering his shoulders.
‘Hope you were on double time sir.’
Menzies was too cold to answer him.
Two other teachers arrived by car and one drove the minibus back to the school.
With each retelling of our adventure Winker would add bits on, but when he added on a story about how we fought off a weird hill tribe who wore blue war paint the story, and Winker, lost a lot of credibility.
17
A HIGHER CALLING
That summer I received my O-level results. I’d passed in English, Geography, Arithmetic, Biology and Chemistry. Fifth year began and I was to concentrate on four out of the five subjects for Highers. There were only fifteen pupils left from the first year intake and we were given an even smaller common room, with no telly. A situation Winker resolved by stealing the TV from the fourth year common room that we’d used the previous year. There were so few of us that the classes were now less like a class and more like one-on-one tuition.
Wilco, Ally and Winker had all stayed on, which was good because without them the drudgery would have been even more drudgerous. Drudgerous is a word. It must be because I have an O-level in English. As we were each only studying a few subjects we had lots of free periods in between classes, which we spent in the common room listening to music. We were allowed use of one of the music department’s record players and we could play what we wanted as long as the volume was so low it couldn’t be heard out with the confines of the room.
Technically we were supposed to use the free periods to study, but we didn’t. Well, we didn’t want to look like swots in front of the four fifth year girls who made up our band of brothers and sisters. Ally was into Jethro Tull in a big way and I think he was trying to set the world record for playing ‘Living in the Past’ the most times in regular succession. He played it so many time the Dansette was renamed the Tullsette. I was never a big fan of Jethro Tull and less of a fan after hearing ‘Living in the Past’ 573 times in a row. The music teacher Mr Baker did, on one visit to the common room, hear the song and said it was unusual because it had five beats to the bar. This was met with a ‘Is it … that’s great eh, five beats to the bar’, because none of us knew what he was talking about.
Mr Baker visited the common room many times, for two reasons. The first to drop off classical albums because he said they would broaden our horizon, and the second was to smoke out of the window. The common room window faced away from the rest of the school and this meant he could join anyone in the fifth year who smoked out of the window without being seen by the rest of the school. Not that being seen would have really mattered because Scotland hadn’t gone anti-smoking nuts in the seventies. You could still smoke anywhere. In school, in the pub, in petrol stations and leaning into prams to have a look at new borns. ‘Aw yer weans lovely, dae ye think it would want a fag?’
Our last Christmas at the school approached and we had the usual rituals of the school dance and the Christmas service in front of us. There was the usual enthusiasm for the dance and usual lack of it for the service.
It was another fourth-, fifth- and sixth-year deal due to lack of pupils and all that stood between us and the dance was the prelims for the Highers.
This was the big semi-final. We did the exams and met after each subject in the common room to discuss answers. No one seemed to have arrived at any of the same conclusions.
Winker tried to alleviate everyone’s disappointment explaining: ‘Look it’s down to the marker’s
interpretation in’t it. Okay we might all have different sorts of answers but in a roundabout way and with a bit of the old lateral thinking, they’re probably roughly nearly a’ a bit the same.’
I figured that not everyone could be wrong, and I hoped I wasn’t amongst those who were.
As there was no point in worrying until January, I put the exams out of my mind. For this dance we were allowed to choose our own entertainment and we opted for a disco, on the condition that the DJ didn’t own any Jimmy Shand records.
Being fifthies we now had our pick of the fourth-year talentio and we had our eyes on a couple of crackers. Winker reckoned that to pull these two would take a bit of Dutch courage in the shape of a bottle of El Dorado. Winker drank the full bottle and I had a capful as I was still very wary of falling face down in my own vomit and wanting to die.
The dance started at eight o’clock and Winker began tanking the bottle at 6.30, so by the time we got to the dance he had puke all down the front of his new Ben Sherman Texan shirt.
We went in and Winker draped himself over a chair. Menzies noticed him swaying while holding onto the back of it.
‘Are you drunk Watson?’
Winker looked up but was too ill to speak and I had to make his excuses for him.
‘No sir, he’s got food poisoning,’ then I added the immortal statement I was to hear many times in adult life. ‘He’s eaten a bad pie sir.’
Menzies greeted this with scorn.
Winker took a deep breath, ‘Look Minger, piss off.’
We found ourselves outside via the fire exit in about three seconds flat and we stood in the cold air suitably confused by the quickness of our impromptu change of venue.
I spoke first.
‘Aw great Winker, we’d only been in ten minutes and we never even got a sniff of the fourthies.’
The words fourthies had no sooner left my lips than we heard violent retching coming from round the corner. I wandered round with Winker hanging onto my shoulder and to our surprise we found our targets for the night on their hands and knees puking all over the ground.
One of them was crying, ‘Oh God, Oh God,’ and the other was whimpering pathetically. Winker seemed to be sobering up quickly thanks to the cold air and the sight of the two fourthies.
‘I’d recognise those two arses anywhere, there is a God, come on.’
We wandered up to them.
‘Are youse alright there girls?’
Neither of them was capable of speech and our presence didn’t really register for a few seconds. They retched violently one more time then rifted a few times indicating that their stomachs were now free of toxins.
My favourite looked at me, ‘Gonnie take me hame please.’
I helped her to her feet and wiped her mouth with the lapel of her jacket, ‘Look ye cannae go home in that state, I’ll need to walk you about for a while until you get sober.’
‘I’m no drunk, I’m no.’
‘Aye sure, whatever you say doll, mon.’
Winker meantime saw his chance and whispered to me, ‘I’ve got the key to my Da’s lock up, I’m taking this one here in there until she’s compis mental enough for a winch.’
We were a couple of chancers and took full opportunity of the situation and headed off in different directions.
As mine sobered up we got into a nice conversation and I decided that I liked her and would not take advantage of her being a bit on the steaming side. Winker had no such morals but he still didn’t manage to lose his virginity because he couldn’t go to the lock-up as there was a gang hanging around outside it drinking cheap wine. He had to put his love on hold until the next time.
In January we got our results and settled down to studying for the Highers a few months hence. As this was our last chance we did as much as we could to ensure a pass, even though occasionally we tried to find a shortcut around studying.
Macbeth was part of the Higher English paper and rather than waste months trying to work out Shakespeare’s dialogue we decided to go and see Roman Polanski’s film version at the G.F.T. (Glasgow Film Theatre). Hopefully that way we’d take a bit more in. We had performed Macbeth in the school play but we were simply reciting it parrot fashion and not taking in a word we were saying.
We headed into town for the early Saturday evening performance. There were four of us, Winker, Ally, Wilco and myself.
We walked in and the manager stopped us, I suppose we didn’t look like the normal G.F.T. punters. Generally speaking, only pseudo-intellectual-vegetarian-type people in folk-singer-style garb go to the G.F.T. to see subtitled so-called art films and analyse the movie afterwards in the cinema bar.
‘Oh yes Fraser, the darkened images definitely for me portrayed man’s inner fight with the recesses of his subconscious pre-pubescent memories.’
For the want of a better phrase, they all talk pish.
We didn’t fit that description and the manager said to us that Monty Python’s Holy Grail was actually on at the A.B.C. in Sauchiehall Street.
‘We know Mister, we’re here to see Macbeth.’
He let us in and stood behind us with his arms crossed for most of the movie checking that we behaved ourselves.
When the exams did come there were those who were convinced they’d pass, those who were convinced that they would not and those who would take them as they came. I fell into the last category.
The first exam was Geography and although I had paid attention in class and studied all the work notes, I was still reading my jotter on the way into the exam room. I left my books on the desk specially laid out for pupils’ belongings and walked to my designated desk with my name on it.
The desks had been laid out in such a way as to keep the unruly element apart.
The Adjudicator told us to turn over our papers and commence.
I scratched my head, huffed, leaned on my elbows and wished the two hours were over. Winker I could see was having trouble and was making ‘fur fuck’s sake’ faces. The only pupil within whispering distance was Colin Smith who was a right Mr Swotty and he would on no account aid and abet with a bit of cheating.
Winker, it appeared, was sunk. He stuck his hand up.
‘Sir, I have to go to the toilet.’
The Adjudicator looked at him with disgust and beckoned to his assistant to take Winker to the toilet and stay with him.
On Winker’s return he sat down and attacked the paper with great gusto. He almost had smoke coming from his pencil. After the exam was over he told me he’d stashed his jotter in a poly bag in the cistern, went in locked the door behind him and had a quick bit of revision. The Assistant Adjudicator never suspected a thing and his toilet visit was a relief in more ways than one.
The English Higher comprised of three parts. There was the play thing, then prose and finally literature. Unfortunately for me, I hadn’t really bothered to learn any prose and I was too busy doing other things to sit down and read a book. Grasping at straws, I used the words of John Lennon’s ‘Working Class Hero’ song as prose and I made a book up. My thinking was that the exam marker can’t take issue with John Lennon’s lyrics being classed as prose, and he can’t possibly have read every book or indeed knew of every book that ever existed so he’d never know that I was at it. The book I made up was ‘written’ by an Army chaplain and told of his experiences when the unit he was attached to liberated Auschwitz. I had facts, figures, dates and I waxed lyrical for the required 1000 words. I handed my papers in and hoped for the best.
The two weeks of exams passed leaving us free for the rest of the term to amuse ourselves as best we could. The common room became more of a social room where we spent our time listening to music and scanning the jobs vacant in the papers. Once a week Ally would sneak a bottle of Lanliq in and he’d share it with those who wanted.
The school had provided paper, stamps and envelopes for pupils to write off for jobs and luckily for us at that time Easterhouse had been broken up into segments with areas named Easthall
, Blairtummock and Lochend. The area had been what’s called ‘spun’. It helped because as soon as prospective employers saw the name Easterhouse on an application form the applicant was at a disadvantage. The name spinning didn’t last long as it just confused people as to where they actually lived and all the sub areas returned to the Easterhouse umbrella.
For those planning a career in the civil service, i.e. Cowglen Savings Bank, the results would be very important – the higher the pass, the higher the wages. Those with good grades could become clerical officers and those who hadn’t been as successful would be working under them as clerical assistants. That would have been weird having a boss who was in the same class as you.
Wilco wanted a job in Cowglen, Ally didn’t care where he worked as long as he got lots of dosh for very little work and Winker and I would simply take the first job offered to us.
We became friendly with some of the teachers now that the war was over. In fact it turned out that some of them were only a few years older than us and they began telling us stories of what they got up to at school. Winker was unimpressed with this however and accused them of belting us for things they’d done themselves.
In the common room Winker took to making paper aeroplanes out of the pages of his school books and flying them out of the window. This ended abruptly when the janitor appeared in the common room with a fistful of his creations and threatening to stick them up Winker’s arse. It wasn’t the first time we’d been threatened by the janitor, but it was the first time he’d ever made eye contact with us. He’d never done this before and always spoke to us with his eyes firmly focused at an imaginary object about a foot to the right of our heads. The best way to describe how strange and socially awkward he was is to think Gordon Brown in a brown janitor’s coat and that about sums him up perfectly. Why he picked our last day to look us in the eye was unclear and very disconcerting.
Eventually, after passing a couple of hours being disconcerted, we got a bit bored and decided to sleep away our remaining time at Westwood by pulling chairs together to form a bed.
When the end of my schooldays came I felt quite numb and finding that I could now do exactly as I wanted was a strange feeling. I’d heard that people institutionalised for long periods always return to the only life they know back in prison or mental hospital. After twelve long years could I adjust to life on the outside?
