Frankie Vaughan Ate My Hamster
Page 19
The friends who had left in third year had seldom been seen despite promises of keeping in touch and remaining pals for life. Most of them now were nearing the end of their apprenticeships or training and were real working men and women. Some were even married. Idiotic at that age, because some of their kids are now probably older than me.
I was worried that as soon as I left I’d become a hermit as everyone drifted apart. I discussed the situation with Winker as he was having one last attempt at destroying the school television.
‘How the fuck is this thing still working? I’ve pulled out every valve and we’re still getting a bastardin’ picture.’
‘I don’t know Wink … last day, eh?’
‘Perhaps if I papped it out of the window.’
‘I’m saying it’s the last day.’
‘Last day of what?’
‘School.’
‘So?’
‘Well that’s us out, into the big world, get our results, get jobs, get money.’
He pulled out a wire then punched the screen and sat down defeated.
‘You know I’m gonnie miss this place.’
At last he seemed to have found my train of thought.
‘I mean where else can you look up birds’ kilts or stare at their diddies without getting a slap in the gub?’
The meaningful conversation ended there.
The girls in the common room were wrapping presents for the teachers as a thank you for the years given out of their lives.
Winker said to them, ‘Youse are aff yer heads, they get paid to teach us.’
I leapt to the teachers’ defence. ‘Aye maybe so but it’s a nice gesture, and some of them were alright.’
Winker softened.
‘Aye Menzies was a good laugh I suppose.’ That was the only time I ever heard him praise anyone, but better late than never.
The door burst open and a box appeared with Ally behind it.
It contained twelve bottles of cider he’d just stolen off a pub delivery lorry, which was a foolhardy thing to do as the pub Griers was directly opposite the police station. But despite being a blagger he at least had some sense of the significance of the day.
‘Mon, let’s have a drink to celebrate.’
He handed out the bottles, some declined a drink and his answer to that was, ‘Don’t be such a poof,’ even to the girls.
‘Okay, okay, best of order please, five years we’ve been here and at last we are free.’ He raised his bottle, we raised ours. It was quite an emotional moment ruined when Ally pointed at the school captain and said, ‘Don’t even think about taking a slug ya prick.’
The last day came to a close and we left the girls in goodbye tears in the common room and walked through the corridor towards the main door. As we walked, we didn’t converse much. We were striding along with our wee sunken chests puffed out as far as they would go. We passed the graffiti we had put on the walls, the dent in the plasterboard where Winker had bounced a first year’s head, in other words our everlasting monuments, our cenotaph in memory of those who fell.
One of the footballing adults who joined in our games when they got home from work once told me that your schooldays were the best days of your life. I was thinking now that if this prophesy was true I was looking forward to a pretty miserable existence. We went through the door and out into the playground heading for the gate. I was scared to look back in case I was turned into a pillar of salt. I heard that actually happened to someone. There was now a bit of hesitancy in our steps. I think we all felt as though we were stepping out of one world and into another and once a certain point was reached there would be no going back.
We passed through the gate and I mentally envisaged it clanking shut behind us and the school disappearing in an eerie mist as though the last twelve years had all been a dream. In that split second, twelve years of education was over. I’d spent three quarters of my life behind desks at great expense to the taxpayer. Would we be able to justify the cost by becoming responsible adults who would contribute greatly to society. Of course we wouldn’t.
I left Easterhouse very soon after that for East Kilbride. My parents had got an exchange with a family who wanted to move in the other direction. So we swopped Easterhouse for Greenhills, and do you know what? I much preferred Easterhouse. It may have had its bad points but the good points far outweighed them. We had good neighbours, I had good friends, I enjoyed an interesting and happy childhood and I got a great education, albeit one that was drummed into me by teachers who, I only came to realise later, were very dedicated to their profession. They must have been to teach us properly regardless of the infantile crap we put them through. Of course, whether or not they were any good at teaching would only become clear in July when we received the results of our Highers through the post. Turned out they were.
EPILOGUE
Once I’d left Easterhouse you could count the number of times I returned to the area on the fingers of one hand. If that one hand had lost three fingers in an incident involving a machete. One of the times I did return, I was sent by the Scottish Sun who just happened to be my employers at the time. Prince Charles had taken the French President Jacques Chirac to visit Easterhouse to show him the urban regeneration and community spirit. Paris was having urban regeneration and community spirit problems and the Prince wanted to prove to Chirac that the British could do properly what the French couldn’t do at all.
Having grown up in the scheme, I was asked to do my bit for the Entente Cordiale by showing Hearts’ French goalkeeper Gilles Rousset round Easterhouse. And as it is with the tabloids, they made me dress in a French outfit, which made me look like a Le Dick. Gilles was a lovely bloke and the tallest person I’ve ever come across. He was like a walking Eiffel Tower. My brief was to show him the similarities between Paris and Easterhouse. This wasn’t easy. I took him to the Greggs in the shopping centre and showed him the Paris Buns they had in the window, and the only tower I could think of was the huge water tower in nearby Cranhill, which is sort of nearly Easterhouse anyway. He looked suitably unimpressed. What did strike me was how friendly everyone was to him. He kept goal for a team that wasn’t Rangers or Celtic and his skill must have cost the Old Firm goals. I could partly understand the people in Rangers tops who approached him for his autograph because Rangers are the Sons of William and Hearts are seen as the Cousins of William, but many, many Celtic fans in tops wanted his autograph too. Which led me to believe that they had completely forgotten about that year’s Scottish Cup final where Rangers put five goals past him.
All of the people we met treated him with friendliness and respect and I was proud and thought, ‘Those are my people.’ Glad they never gave me a showing up. Before we left I showed him the close where I’d spent twelve years of my life. It had been ‘regenerated’ though and looked completely different than it did when I lived in it. The bright red sandstone block been made over into some sort of plastic toy house, but I wanted to find out if every trace of my previous life had been obliterated. It hadn’t because at the back of the close on the bin shelter wall the Rikki I scratched on it with a compass in 1972 was still there. I showed Gilles and he said something in French, which I’ll translate. He said, ‘You can take the boy out of Easterhouse, but you can’t take Easterhouse out of the boy.’ I made that up, he didn’t. One of the K’s had faded and all that was left was Riki, so what he didn’t say but probably thought was, ‘You’re a prick, you can’t even spell your own name.’
COPYRIGHT
First published 2011
by Black & White Publishing Ltd
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This electronic edition published in 2014
ISBN: 978 1 84502 687 5 in EPub format
ISBN: 978 1 84502 337 9 in paperback format
Copyright © Rikki Brown 2011
The right of Rikki Brown to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accord
ance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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