Making Blanks - Omnibus

MAKING BLANKS –



What is the direct route to your father’s heart ? Normally through your mother, I’d expect and even that would be a form of diversion. Rarely through football but then again we don’t have ‘football’, we have Celtic and we are honoured to have Celtic. I don’t know about you but when I see the word Celtic I feel a sense of warmth and comfort – for some reason the e in Celtic seems to take a weird precedence, it jumps out at me. I just know Cltic wouldn’t be Celtic without it.

When I was five years old I already had two brothers and a sister. I’d been going to Paradise for about a year and was already addicted. It was the smell of the place that caught me. Neither of my parents smoked cigarettes or drank Bovril. Paradise reeked of a variety of vapour, not all pleasant but all intoxicating. On the greenest grass on earth shone the brightest team of Celtic’s history in the brightest sporting uniform there can ever be. There’s nothing like it, the cleanest sporting kit in the world. I had a baggy maroon tracksuit that I just loved taking off to reveal my Celtic strip beneath. Revie tried to emulate Real Madrid’s Persil look but our green hoops provided stark contrast. Green for Ireland and White for a purity of spirit – The Celtic Way. What else ? The wee shamrock on the corner flags, the red ash, the wee sky blue cars; everything. I’d do anything to go there, to be there.

Thursday was always a worry. If dad hadn’t mentioned the game by Thursday I’d doubt I was going. It would be a wee while before he encumbered himself with me at away games but, for some strange reason, we seemed to be at home more often in the late 60s. He was a steelworker and I would not impinge on his leisure. He went to the games and had a few pints on a Saturday night and a couple in Dawson’s before the match. I’d have some ginger and crisps but the bus could not come quick enough. Therein were all manner of characters – from the parish priest to the greatest rogues in Craigneuk’s long history of roguery. Roguery no doubt extended to the sweep. Twenty- two players numbered 1 to 11, the ref and a hundred blanks – the holder of the ticket (a tiny scrap of paper with something like C9 thereon) with the first goalscorer won the money. A goalie could win if he saved a penalty before the first goal was scored. The goal had to be scored by half-time or the ref won. In the late 60s we normally scored in the first ten minutes. The supporters club got most of the profit, the sweep doer would pockle enough for a couple of pints. I would achieve a lifetime’s ambition in years to come and continue the tradition – C7, C8, C9, C10 and C11 rarely left the clique; the luck of the draw as they say. How we cursed the introduction of squad numbers.

So come Thursday evening if dad hadn’t mentioned the game I’d painstakingly do a sweep with C1-C11, the forthcoming opposition 1-11, the ref and a hundred blanks. This took a considerable period of time. If he’d been dayshift my dad would occasionally look up from his paper and ask what I was doing. ‘Making blanks’ I’d reply, what else could I possibly be doing? I was pre-First Communion and in love with the smell of smoke and Bovril. And so, after much hard work, I’d have twenty-two players, the ref and a hundred blanks in my Celtic tammy – the dark green one with the two white hoops and and emerald green one in-between. One hundred and twenty three tickets between two people – my mum and dad. My brothers and sister were banned from the sweep. The sweep was for Celtic supporters only. Invariably my parents would draw blanks. The feeling of power this gave me was indescribable. For a child to wield such authority over his parents was unheard of. I’d save the C1-C11 and the ref and remaining ninety eight blanks in case I couldn’t be bothered doing them all again the next time and bin the opposition 1-11. I’d no time for those tickets in any case. For the most part the Opposition XI was worthless. Rarely would Celtic’s opponents open the scoring at Paradise, the Land of Smoke and Bovril.

Occasionally my dad would question the validity of the sweep. This would become a recurring theme among sweep buyers over the next twenty years. Every now and then I’d have to open between thirty and forty blanks to prove that some of the tickets had ink on. In time I would master the art of making blanks – I would have those paper rectangles more tightly folded than the players tickets. The tammy was a woollen blank sifting machine. I could tell a blank by the length of London Road. Even now if I showed myself a blank and a player I’d guess right every time. When we made slings from elastic bands at St Aidan’s and fired paper pellets I always thought of them as big blanks. If someone made a roach from a Rizla lid I’d think of blanks. My mind was a blank.

On two or three occasions mum or dad would draw a player which was a source of great concern for me if it were a Celtic player and moreso if he were a forward, The word Prize was never mentioned and no money was ever paid for a ticket but I would worry if either of them drew a player. Anything could happen. Own-goals counted. I seriously considered fiddling the sweep and withdrawing C7-C11. I considered it for all of two minutes and decided to go for it. The sweep would henceforth consist of seventeen players, the ref and a hundred and five blanks. C7-C11 were hidden in the inside of a rubber cat I called Whiskers – the toy cat had no whiskers, doubled as a Trojan Horse and carried a permanently guilty look which probably mirrored my own.

I made blanks in advance. I’d have a season’s worth of blanks in reserve even though I only parted with two every few days. Paper would disappear in our house and become blanks immediately. It wasn’t paper – it was a material for blank manufacturing. My life was a blank. It still is.




At primary school we had to do News every morning. This took varied forms and normally involved accidents involving family members or pets. It was boring for me listening to my schoolmates’ tales of domestic upheaval unless there was something like a fire being reported or tales that involved the police. Some of the boys’ News stories were obviously fabricated and fantastically conceived. No-one’s news was less enthusiastically received than mine. I wrote about Celtic every day I was at primary school – not much has changed in that department four decades later. Girls hated me. They yawned at my Celtic news, they criticised me for putting two bs in Hibbs, they despised my Jimmy Johnstone anecdotes and keyring. They thought of me as a lifeless fool: Blankbhoy the Celtic supporter. They never wanted to hear the Celtic latest even when Bobby Murdoch went to a health farm which I thought was an exclusive and not-strictly-on-the-park-related. Girls hated me for loving Celtic far far more than them.
Eventually the teacher cracked, He invited my mum to the school and asked her if I undertook all the Celtic-related activity I reported daily. She denied that I drank beer but verified the rest. The teacher looked at her with a glare that shimmered with pity mixed with abhorrence. I was special in his eyes. I was the first child he had ever belted in a most praiseworthy educational career. The day before he belted me (the first day he had our class) he said it was his proudest boast that he had never had to resort to belting a pupil. The following day he heard me singing The Merry Ploughboy in The Quiet Room and his iron will wilted in the form of two crosshanders. He was of Maltese extraction and I’d made him cross.


I was indeed The Maltese Falcon’s prey. He never considered me for the school football team even when I showed up well in the trials. He called me ‘an impudent little pup’ when I didn’t know what impudent was and when I asked my mum I got more of the same. My report cards were a treatise on insubordination – ‘not only is WG easily distracted, he easily distracts others’. My mother has these items saved for future generations. He would belt me a further twice.

The first time was during a lesson when he interrupted a game of bools just as the contest was getting to the critical stage. It was Chiloggy Checkers, the most prized marbles of all and me and Fagy were playing Twosy-Roll-Away as opposed to Threesies. I’d clocked him two and was rolling away when the Falcon shouted at us. Gemmell. Fagan. We totally ignored him and he screamed at us. GEMMELL. FAGAN. ‘Whut ?’ I answered wearily. Two of it and he could definitely draw it.

Serious lumps formed on my wrists and I decided I had to do something about it. I decided to start smoking and light fires.

In actual fact I started to light fires as a means of getting my Dry Cleaning business up and running. This was an early 1970s precursor of the Towel Retrieval Service. Mum had procured for me a brand new M&S grey school jumper and I’d virtually ruined it on Day One by slipping into a puddle as I tried to score a last gasp winner in the playground. I had to get the blasted thing dry before I got home so went into the woods and constructed a small fire and billowed the jumper around the flames and smoke. It all seemed to make perfect sense back then. Some bamboo-type plants made a brilliant crackling noise as they burned and an odd coloured smoke came from them. I snapped a bit off – it was about the width of a pencil and hollow throughout – and lit the end of it at the edge of the fire. When I inhaled the fumes I half blacked-out, my eyes were streaming with smoke, I felt like a red Indian – Blankbhoy, The Native American at one with nature. By the time I’d freaked out on the bamboo I somehow managed to lose the jumper. I never saw it again. Mum went off her head and asked me where the fire was as I was reeking of smoke and my breath smelled of burnt bamboo. It was just a normal schoolday in ML2.

Vadis And Black Babies

When I was about seven years old I got in tow with a character who would have a profound effect on my ability to start fires. The guy’s name was Vadis although Vulcan might have been more fitting. Vadis’s mother operated a different pocket money system from my own – I would get thrupence every morning with a penny for my Black Baby money which I diligently paid as there was an annual day of reckoning when the list of contributors was published. I named all my Black Babies after Celtic players even Dixie which seems a bit off looking back now. If the photographed Black Baby on the certificate was a girl I would still name her Kenny. I named one African baby girl Lou and the teacher put ise at the end of it which I scored out. I’d Black Babies of all Celtic descriptions – Evan, Bobby, Harry but the teacher refused to call one wee black boy Jinky. She said it was ‘inappropriate’ and wrote James on the certificate. I was outraged and complained to my mum who asked why I didn’t call the Black Babies after my brothers or sister. I reminded her that none of my siblings played for Celtic.

Vadis got two bob at the weekend rather than money for school each schoolday. His folks didn’t bother how he divided up his pocket money or how he used it which was probably just as well. Vad was barely interested in football although he was nominally a Celtic fan and has the most Irish name of anyone I’ve ever known. There was only one match in his life and that was Mr Swan Vesta. His other main interests were liquorice and Airfix model planes. On a Friday afternoon we’d go to RS McColl’s in the Main Street and Vad would acquire his weekend entertainment – a book of matches, a wee box of Vulcan matches with the globe or a ship on and a big box of Swan Vestas – for Vad SV was the Holy Grail of Sparklife. In the early days he completely eschewed safety matches, he abhorred them and avoided them unless there was absolutely zero alternative. However Vadis’ life reached fulfilment when the giant box of Cooks safety matches hit the high street. For him it was a personal vindication of his long held belief that more matches should be on the market. He was miserly with his treasure though and rarely parted with what he lovingly called ‘Raspberry Heids’ – I’d ask him for a couple of matches and he’d grudgingly reply ‘Do you think these grow on trees ?’. He never ever referred to matches as matches, they were always Raspberry Heids or Strikers to Vadis. In addition to the matches Vad The Mad would also purchase a tin of Imps – the hard liquorice pellets that tasted good at the start and then proceeded to burn holes in your tongue. The Imps had no detrimental effect on Vadis who loved them with the same intensity he accorded to Victory V lozenges. Vad’s affection for strange ‘sweets’ was in direct proportion to how much other people hated them. No-one ever asked him for a Victory V or a Fisherman’s Friend. Other kids were appalled at his insatiable taste for menthol, for Tunes and clove rock. When he finished the Imps he’d fill the tin with raspberry heids and the fun would soon commence…….

…. Not that Vadis was interested in using any of his matches. He procured them for life. We’d walk to a piece of wasteground and he’d produce a sheet of brown paper and a magnifying glass and work the sun on to the paper till it caught fire. If we’d had time he’d have done the two sticks thing instead. He learned all these lifeskills in the cubs (9th Wishaw, St Ignatius of Loyola) after I’d been booted out for an incident involving The Akela (I called her The Atilla) and my fingers. This was before I’d even achieved my Bronze Arrow or got any of the red triangular badges down my sleeves. I remain the most undecorated cub scout in the history of the youth movement.Vadis was the epitome of the Scouting Movement whose motto is Be Prepared. Whenever he travelled to pieces of wasteground he was armed with upwards of two hundred matches and a myriad variety of fire raising essentials. It was like a Last Aid kit. Vad left nothing to chance. And that’s more or less where I came in. The Lookout. I’d to look out for the following in order of importance:

Matches
Brown Paper
Ginger bottles
Embassy coupons
Bee hives
The police.


Vadis wasn’t so much a leader of men as a leader of me, we didn’t require an n at the end. Where Vadis’ torch blazed I would follow and when I followed that’s when he generally smelled smoke. Vadis had an antenna for far-away flames, an innate ability to find the wrong place at the right time. He was the antithesis of Bobby Moore. Vadis’ whole outlook on life was a mistimed interception, a search for temporary joy at the expense of just about everything else. He sought an unquenchable flame, he wanted to light fire with fire. Nothing pleased him more than finding an already lit inferno – this saved him Raspberry Heids and for Vadis the Tinder Economy was all.

Our travels took us to Hunter’s Garage in Kitchener Street, a veritable Alladin’s Cave for all things Vad. Here the haulage drivers and grease monkeys would drink copious supplies of Irn Bru and give us the empties. We’d buy Raspberry Heids and Sports Mixture with the bottle money, Vad loved the liquorice ones and so when he asked for two ounce he’d always say ‘maistly blacks’. He’d also ask for the matches last as if he’d suddenly just remembered that he needed them ‘ oh aye…..and a box of Swan Vestas please’. He adored the strip of sandpaper at the side of the box and rarely blemished it by striking one of the contents thereon. He was a walking education on Match Etiquette, an authority in his field of flame. The garage also contained what Vadis would refer to as Items of Interest – virtually any flammable object, old oily rags, petrol, tod books, nudey calendars, spark plugs etc This was Vadis’ Celtic Park, all his dreams were fulfillable here.


And so we came to be together regularly at the fire that always seemed to be burning at Hunter’s Garage. Vadis had particular affection for it as it cost him nothing to enjoy. The haulage guys got used to seeing us around and thought of us only as Hectors – bottle collectors. Initially they would warn us of the dangers of stuff in ginger bottles that wasn’t ginger and to stay away from the eternal fire where old tyres would smoulder and burn. Vadis and I would see figures in their melting forms. As the days went past the workies took less notice of us, we became part of the oily neighbourhood, The Harmless Hectors. Inevitably by this time we were virtually IN the fire. It was thus deemed opportune for Vadis to up the stakes. There were a few empty canisters of spray paint and stuff lying around and Mad Vad decided on some experimentation. He threw one of the aerosols into the flames and we waited for the outcome. Nothing happened for a long long time and then, just when we were about to give up, there was one almighty explosion. I remember it clearly as if it was yesterday – everything went orange then black, it was like July turning to August - the marching season in Wishy.

The whole of the front facing part of me was singed from top to toe. I touched where my fringe had been and the crisp curls came away in my hand like bits of Spanish Gold coconut tobacco. My eyelashes and eyebrows were history. Hunter’s wasteground was now a stockyard for me and Vadis’s burnt DNA. Our faces were blackened like Black & White minstrels, all we could see were our teeth and the smoke-drenched brown ‘whites’ of our eyes. We were like two Black Babies on a Holy Childhood certificate. I wondered what names some white schoolboy would give us. Our clothes were ruined beyond repair..Meanwhile the workies were tearing towards us, calling us all the wee Bs of the day. We were wee Bs all right, wee Bobby Lennoxes and the greasers never stood a chance of catching us. It was only when we bent double with laughter and exhaustion that we realised that worse lay ahead in the very sanctuary we sought.

My mother invoked just about every Saint in the Litany when she clapped eyes on us. The usual maternal monologue kicked in when mum would ask and answer her own questions like a machine gun spitting bullets.‘Where in the name of God have you two been ?’ ‘You’ve been at that Hunters’ ‘How many times have I told you not to play there ? ‘I’ve told you a hundred times not to play there’‘What exploded ?’ ‘You two must have put aerosols in Hunters fire’ ‘Did you two put canisters in that fire?’ ‘I knew it, you put aerosols in that fire’ ‘You could have died’ ‘Your dad will kill you’ ‘Vadis, your mother will kill you’ ‘What kind of mother will your mother think I am if I send you back to her looking like that ?’ ‘She’ll think I’m a terrible mother’ ‘Who stole your eyebrows ?’ ‘You haven’t an eyebrow between you’ ‘Hunters must be littered with the eyebrows of children’‘You look like two black babies without a holy childhood’. And on and on and on she raved while I made peanut butter pieces and covered the white pan bread with soot and ash. And she started up again but her eyes were laughing with a love that was a hot water bottle round my heart.

As usual mum looked after Vadis’ welfare first, he got dumped in the bath and furnished with a tee shirt and shorts and a bag for his burnt clothes and his selection box of carefully packaged incendiary devices. By the time he got to his house he was in a far better nick than when he’d left it whereas I got The Brunt of The Burnt when my old man got in. At the end of the day, when the ash had settled, only one thing was certain. Aerosol cans had gone to the very top of the Vadis Wishlist and I was the very bhoy to supply them.



On the rare occasions when Vadis was not intent on raising hell we’d catch bees. My trap of choice was a Hartley’s jam jar with a lid with Martin Peters on. This particular jar was the perfect size for my hand but I particularly liked it because the lid didn’t just snap on – you had to twist it around the grooves at the top of the jar which gave the bees the chance of escape and the opportunity to sting me. It was my way of levelling the playing field. Coffee jars were anathema – they were mostly orangey brown glass (which reminded me of the identically-coloured pokes of chocolate buttons you got in Easter Eggs) and you couldn’t see your prisoners very well. Where was the joy in that ? I also pointedly rejected pickle jars – the smell of Branston and onions never left those jars no matter how often you washed them out with bleach or disinfectant. I truly believed the smell of onions would upset or antagonise the bees and I honestly couldn’t put them through that. I considered all bees to be allergic to anything of the onion family, even onion aroma. From my current vantage point I can see that I was projecting my own likes and dislikes on to the bees but I can say proudly and sincerely that no bee of mine was ever incarcerated in an onion-fumed environment.

I loved bees then and I still do although I was very bad and cruel to them back in the day. There were various types – bakers (white bum, yellow or black nose), hymies (the ones that didn’t sting – small, orange bum, yellow nose), red hot pokers (brown and furry with the sorest sting) and queenies ( a rare but wonderful sight and a truly prized capture). We’d entice bees into our jars by putting some ‘food’ therein – I always chose the same flowers, pink and blue lupins. Bees went loopy for lupins,. Their brilliant colours lured the insects throughout the summer, nature’s honeybee honeytraps. I loved the feel of the lupin florets, there’s nothing quite like it in the world. If I was attracted to the flowers no wonder the workers and bakers went ‘ape’ for them. The only problem was the lupins were not wild flowers which meant we’d to invade gardens to stalk our quarry.

I’d normally settle for three or four bees tops in my jar – the more you captured the more likely an escapee when you unlidded to snare yet another. The ultimate disaster was a sting to your jar-holding hand when you would likely drop and smash the container , lose your prisoners, possibly incur further stings from the newly liberated and be left with Martin Peters . Consequently you had to trudge back home for a replacement – this invariably meant I’d to finish off what was left of the jam as a wee bonus. However, as with all things flammable, Vadis preferred quantity over quality. If my bees were humanely treated and more-or-less ‘free range’ Vadis preferred the battery approach. This meant a huge coffee jar, zero ‘food’ for the inmates (as the flowers would use up precious bee accommodation) and a missionary zeal to fill the jar to the brim with bees. Vadis refused to fork his lid so the bees could get air. He might have been Patrick but he steadfastly refused to pierce.Nothing was sacred or off-limits as far as he was concerned. His jar would tussle with mine to snaffle a bee. If his oversized jar was almost full of bees he’d beg me for a ‘transfer’. This was a hazardous transaction where I would endeavour to switch the few bees from my wee jar into The Buzzing Black Hole of Calcutta that was Vadis’ teeming swarm without losing a single bee from either prison. Further he’d freak if any florets fell into his apiary – ‘no food, no food’. When he was satisfied that he couldn’t possibly fit another bee into his jar he’d declare The Moment as being imminent. The Moment was when Mad Vad threw his jar high into the air while we scarpered before it smashed on the ground and the bees were released. It was madness but it seemed the natural thing to do for the propagation of the species. Some of the bees in the hell that was The Vadjar were already dead but I was pleased that the rest were free. The last thing we needed was a bee shortage for the remainder of the season on account of Vadis’ manic monopolising.


We had long convinced ourselves that the yellow-orange pollen baskets on the bees’ legs were in fact honey. Although neither of us was particularly keen on honey we needed experiential evidence that the buttery pouches were in fact honey. We therefore captured one of the pollen bearers and executed it a la Madame Défarge – we carefully removed the lid but covered most of the mouth of the jar. When Mr Honeybags got his head to the rim Martin Peters cut it off. We were therefore spared any guilt, Catholic or otherwise. Peters and Bee - we turned a blind eye, it was nothing to do with us. If only the England legend knew of the atrocities he carried out in the name of medical science. However, as they say in the best thrillers, ‘the beheading was the easy part’. Trying to remove the pollen bags intact from the bee’s legs was an impossibility – we managed to amputate the legs but couldn’t take the amputated leg from the pollen sack, it was harder than removing a hair from a bogey but a similar operation in many ways. There was nothing else for it - we ate the smudges of pollen, bee legs and all. It tasted of nothing. A measly lunch of bee leg pollenaise had proved unedifying. We would have our revenge……

The fact that bees could fly was a problem that beset us for several days.

Vadis had come up with the concept of a Bee Olympics , the highlight of which was an insane pentathlon in which his team of bees (Team B) would compete against mine (Team A) – Vadis wanted Team B because of Bee. In any other insect competition he would most definitely have demanded Team A. The five events were to be sprint, cross-country, diving, swimming and weightlifting. However before the Olympic Torch could be lit (and, believe me, he constructed a traffic-cone based whopper for the Opening Ceremony) we had to ground our teams for these surface events. In a typical piece of out-the-(match) box thinking Vadis decided we should empty a ten-bee-strong jarful into a puddle in order to wet the creatures’ wings and render them flightless. A couple of prescient bees escaped so we were reduced to two teams of four. We pulled the wings off the eight competitors and conducted the pyrotechnically-advanced Opening Ceremony – national anthems et al - whilst the pentathletes dried out in the sun. I recall rarely feeling happier. I was taken by Vadis’ ingenuity and attention to detail. I also knew deep down that Team A had as much chance of winning the Bee Olympics as a flying hornet.

The sprint track was initially the length of a rectangle of baking pavement but the bees were so slow Vadis, in an eerie preview of Souness, changed the dimensions of the sprint arena to the breadth of the pavement and then to the length of a brick. Vadis’ bee won over the shortest distance so I thought my bhoys might be better suited to the more-demanding cross-country event.

Between each sporting segment Vadis was careful to water his team as he didn’t want his lads suffering from too much sun or dehydration. My team was not allowed any refreshment which I found strange as the pool events were imminent anyway.

For the cross-country Vadis arranged an ornate matchstick-based assault course which included a slippy crisp poke and other bits of twig and stuff. Despite his methodical preparatory work, pep talks and vocal encouragement both teams were already showing signs of exhaustion and not a single bee finished the cross-country event. Already Vadis was beginning to dilute his hyper-enthusiasm of thirty minutes earlier. The Olympic Dream was falling apart at the seams as the bees obviously weren’t up to the marathon tasks demanded of them. Vadis quickly designed and constructed the diving arena, setting an upturned brick at the side of the puddle and flicking each bee off the top with his fingertip. He deemed his team to be the best divers and that was fine by me. I had long settled for silver.

We ferried the teams to another puddle for the swimming event but the selected bees only succeeded in giving a foretaste of what would later be described as synchronised drowning. I told Vadis I was disappointed as I’d always wanted to see a bee do the butterfly. He laughed and I was proud of my joke. I was nurturing my growing ability to relate things to other things and words to other words and this would form the basis of my sense of humour and patter from childhood to the present day.

All that remained was the weightlifting. Vadis emburdened my team with big ruckies and his boys with tiny pebbles – my early introduction to handicapped racing. The bumblebees and the bonhomie were dying and the afternoon was too. I felt the day begin to expire as Vadis began to construct a podium for the medal winners from some matchboxes. Team B won the Bee Olympics and, in a two-bee race, my charges had come second. Most of the years that followed would continue the two-bee race format but that was in my other world of football which , in the early Seventies, had only one king bee, CELTIC.

I wore my Celtic top everywhere and this was to become my undoing where bee torture was concerned. A few days after the Bee Olympic Flame had been doused the woman who owned The Lupin Garden finally decided she had had enough of our raids on her precious and beautiful blooms and came out to chasten the pair of us. To her abject horror she caught Vadis and myself ironing a few wingless bees on a washer board. For a spell Mrs Lupin was dumbstruck as she pointed open-mouthed at the rusty old iron and a group of flattened de-winged bees. Such apoplexy was shortlived as she let loose with a volley of moral indignation

- How dare you raid my garden to steal my flowers and torture those lovely creatures of God.

What has God got to do with it ?, I wondered as Vadis gazed way beyond Mrs Lupin and right into the eyes of his next adventure somewhere far from The Lupin Garden. Mrs Lupin was rambling on about All Things Bright And Beautiful and I truly believed I’d never touch her bright and beautiful things ever again. I loved those luscious lupins with a fierce passion and I didn’t know where the next-nearest lupins were likely to be found. Vadis’ forte was more for fire and fauna than fir and flora so I doubted he would know. Mrs Lupin, Madonna of The Bees, then turned her attention to my beloved green-and-white hoops –

- And you a Catholic too, I’m ashamed of you. Have you never heard of Saint Francis of Diseasy ?

- Who ?

- St Francis of Diseasy

- No

- That’s because you probably don’t go to school or chapel. Instead you’re out here thieving and causing harm and suffering to God’s creatures….

I observed at this stage that I was the sole recipient of Mrs Lupin’s ire. Vadis was somewhere in space on an Apollo mission and, as he wasn’t wearing a Celtic strip, she probably thought he wasn’t a Catholic so I was solely het. However my feelings were hurt and I felt duty-bound to retaliate

- I DO go to school and chapel. I’m an altarboy (Ten Hail Marys for pride).

- You’re a what ?.......... You’re a toerag.

- I serve on the altar at St Ignatius chapel. Ask Vadis. (Trying to drag him into the fight like an unwilling tag teammate on the safe side of the ropes)

- I’ll give you St Ignatius chapel……


And she took off again like one of Vadis’ flame-propelled space rockets but I was too busy worrying about what kind of disease Saint Francis was going to inflict on me for torturing God’s precious creatures and stealing Mrs Lupin’s lupins.



I asked my mum about Mrs Lupin’s lupins, bumble bees and St Francis of Diseasy. She pointed out that Mrs Lupin probably grew her special flowers to attract bees into her garden and worried that I was chasing the bees away. St Francis of Diseasy was the Patron Saint of birds and bees and all of Gods creatures. Diseasy was a town in Italy. As usual she managed to soothe all my concerns and answer all my questions. She wasn’t keen on me keeping bees in the house but I was allowed to do so that night. I had them in three separate jars (bakers, hymies and red hot pokers) on the windowsill of the bedroom I shared with my younger brothers and when the sun woke me a few hours later they were still there. But the night seemed to have drained the life out of them. They looked listless and sweaty and mum explained that it would be the same for me if someone made me stay overnight in a glass house far from my own family and friends. ‘But they’ve got friends in the jars with them’ I offered weakly and unconvincingly but mum had made her point with a gentle logic that taught me more than any Teacher or Saint or Ten Commandments could.

My life as a beecatcher was entering a new, more-thoughtful stage and it seemed Vadis was once again more interested in pursuing his apprenticeship as an arsonist. I was struck with the good press bees seemed to have in the grown-up world. They compared more than favourably with the universally despised wasps. Wasps now became the enemy of the bee aficionados and I was as inspired as any convert to The Cause of Bee Welfare. With Vadis in tow we embarked on The Wasp Offensive when we would meld our talents for the greater good. We executed any wasp we came across. The Yellowback Genocide was underway and disaster was inevitable.


Not far from Hunter’s Garage were some derelict houses we called The Oul Hooses, they were situated beside The Shirt Factory and opposite a large building we called The Barracks which was next to Mrs Lupin’s house and garden. I don’t know if soldiers ever resided in The Barracks but I never clapped eyes on one in all my time living in the Main Street flats. All kinds of stories were told about The Barracks mostly following the Hansel & Gretel template. There was rumoured to be some grotesque old man (kids called him Willie Wassle) on the top floor who captured and kept any child who entered his room. In this room was a piano or so the story went. And in truth sometimes when playing near The Barracks I could hear distant soft piano playing or maybe my imagination did. I resolved to find out the truth of the matter. I told my friends in confidence that I had heard the piano. Blankbhoy became Pianobhoy. The existence and possible threat of Willie Wassle took on a secondary importance to me having to vindicate myself. My day would come.

I would rescue household objects from the Oul Hooses and present them to my mother as trophies. The only thing she ever accepted and used was the skiffle platter that had served as an ironing board for wingless bees. With the proximity of The Shirt Factory I gifted my mother around twenty cards of shirt buttons per sunny day. I still don’t know what she did with them.There were scraps of material everywhere and we’d make bunting and stuff out of the colourful cloth. Vadis set aside the rags we deemed as worthless for burning on his ever-present pyre at Hunter’s. He saw himself as providing a public service for free but the synthetics would sometimes spout technicolour flame and smoke or melt in ever-widening brown or black holes. Vadis and I were experiencing psychedelic lightshows daily that Lanarkshire-based Pink Floyd fans could only fantasise over.

No-one bothered us. We’d broken into every derelict house with our wee torches and wandered through the dark damp rooms in search of treasured legacy. Sometimes others had beaten us into the houses and left legacies of their own – evil smelling foul turds obscured by flies, Rubber Johnnies with slime oozing, scampering rats and mice, all manner of spiders and insects but never any bees. Now and again a bird would flap from a hidden perch and scare the bayjesus out of us. I never had much luck with birds (some things never change) and never got the same kicks out of nesting and herrying that others did. I loved the pale blue colour and warmth of the eggs (a blackies in three, a stuckies in four) but, invariably I’d startle the mother and have her fly right into my face. Tippi Hedren had a better record in human-bird relationships than me.

One day Vadis’ younger brother, Bo, decided to indulge in our mischief making. It remains difficult to quantify exactly what he brought to the team but his debut was spectacular. Our inventory of The Oul Hooses was just about complete when Bo noticed a locked door on what must have been a coal cellar. He was convinced there was either a dead person or a German POW or both behind the door. Within seconds Vadis had the cellar door off its hinges to reveal that what lay behind it was a vinyl-covered cot mattress. I still wonder to this day why anyone would put a cot mattress into a coal cellar and lock the door. Perhaps it’s best I don’t know. Vadis and Bo hauled the cot mattress out and fed it into the greedy mouth of our fire. The results were beyond our wildest imaginings. Yellow, blue, pink, green and purple flames erupted from the mattress amid hissing pops and squeals and sizzles and splutters and gurgles. This mattress hated being burnt and seemed to be putting up one hell of a fight. I stood enraptured by the ever-changing kaleidoscope of enflamed fury whilst Vadis and Bo panicked. They rushed into the Oul Hoose to get water to fight the inferno but settled on some ‘ice’ that happened to be around some big old batteries and threw it on the fire. Within minutes they were howling as the acid burnt through their skin. I still don’t know why they thought there would be ice lying around old houses in summertime but they still have the souvenirs to this day. The irony of Volcanic Vad sustaining severe burns from a non-fire source was lost on no-one and it would be a couple of weeks before a Bo-less Vadis was allowed a return to my bit to complete The Wasp Offensive. Bo had popped his burn cherry at the first time of asking, he was scored on his debut. We played with fire and got burned but only we could do it in such an unexpected fashion and Bo was happy to bow out already. The Young Pretender surrendered all claims to the throne of King Vadis of Fireland and rarely visited Hunter’s again.

Whilst waiting for Vadis’ hands, arms and pride to heal I caught bees and followed wasps. Eventually I found their nest.

Vadis marked his long-awaited return to Hunter’s by going completely over the top and surpassing his Personal Best. Having grown tired of exploding aerosols he decided to go one better when he put a fluorescent strip light bulb into the fire. The thunderclapesque explosion was so loud that it brought parents from the flats over to the wasteground on a search for maimed progeny. ‘A rebel hand set the heather blazing and brought the neighbours from far and near’ – Boolavad ! The Pat Riot Game. My sister cites this as her first experience of Vad In Action. We were truly fortunate to escape with minor cuts but I sensed we were taking things too far. There was talk of petrol and Molotov Cocktails. Fun was turning into Danger like the time on the ghost train when I wasn’t quite sure if we were going to get out just before we did. There were fume-filled places I would rather not go and I was getting rows from my parents for my obsession with fire, smoke, detonation and explosion – my clothes were a dead giveaway for my pyropastimes.

It was around this time that I became a Feen Yin. Not that I volunteered or aspired to be one, it was foisted upon me unexpectedly like a bone comb or cough medicine. I’d become accustomed to police (one in particular who I called Understand was never off my case) and neighbours calling me a Bad Yin and Wanfur The Watching and thought that a Feen Yin was simply one step badder than a Bad Yin. A few days later I realised I was only one of a whole range of Feen Yins. There seemed to be hundreds of us and we were all Catholics as well as Feen Yins. I readily decided I didn’t want to be a Feen Yin.

The Samuel Irons Memorial Hall was just around the corner from Hunter’s Garage and, Celtic top and all, I’d watch the orangemen and orangewomen marshall and the bands assemble themselves into ranks. I loved to see the big banners unfurled and studied the paintings thereon :

King William Crosses The Boyne – and there she was on a white horse, sword aloft whilst the white horse seemed to be going in a different direction from the way she was looking. How could King William of Orange be Queen at the same time ? Little did I know I wasn’t that far off the mark.

Victoria: The Secret of Britain’s Greatness – an enormous treble-chinned woman being fed fruit by Black Babies. She was holding a bomb in one hand and an iron bar in the other. I’d rather have fought King William of Orange than Victoria any day.

Most of the kids I played with at the flats were there with me getting more excited by the minute as their heroes in purple began tapping on their drums and testing their flutes. I still see these guys – Simpsons, Shearers, McDougalls and Jardines – and they remain friends to this day.

And then, after an eternity of waiting, we were off. Boom boom boom…… boom boom boom, flute and accordion bands all in step. The guy I admired most was at the front of the Purple Heroes Flute Band – he trebled as a gymnast and juggler and tossed a red, white and blue mace high into the air while he capered and cavorted all over the road. He was called Wee Boabby and what he could do with that baton was nobody’s business. Everyone, especially me, cheered when Wee Boabby hurled his stick high into the sky and Wee Boabby would shake hands with his fans as he waited for his stick to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere but he never shook my offered hand because I was a Feen Yin. He manipulated that mace like an orangeman possessed; overarm, underarm, overleg, underleg, around his neck, under oaxter, over shoulder then back into orange orbit. Wee Boabby had never been known to ‘drap the stick’ . His fans told me that if Wee Boabby ever did ‘drap the stick’ he would give up the stick altogether such would be his shame. Apart from Wee Jinky I only ever wanted to be Wee Boabby.

My time as an Orange Juvenile lasted approximately fifteen minutes, even shorter than my cub scout career. The parade route took the lodges and bands past the flats where I stayed and I stood out like a green-and-white-hooped thumb among the orange fish fingers. To her horror my mother spotted me from our living room window and raced down the stairs of the building to rescue me. I was in tears :

- Ah waant a scarf wi fringes

- You want what ?

- A scarf wi fringes

- Ah’ll gie ye a scarf wi fringes

- When, mum ?

- Don’t be daft, son. You can’t get a scarf wi fringes. You don’t qualify

- Is it because I’m a Feen Yin ?

- No, it’s because you’re my bestest boy

- Ah waant tae be Wee Boabby

- Who is Wee Boabby ?

But before I had the chance to tell her all about the perpetual-motion circus act that was Wee Boabby the police were battering on our door.

It was my good friend, Understand, Constabulary Confiscator of Matches and Flammable Materials. He had another policeman alongside him and my mother immediately went on the defensive saying I was only a child and too young to know about The Religious Divide. I knew this was something to do with the chapel and sums all at the same time. But Understand, for the first time in weeks, wasn’t interested in me. He said that someone called Persons Unknown was throwing objects at the orange procession from one of our upstairs bedrooms. My mother clambered up the stairs to discover that Persons Unknown was in fact my sister, Shelley, who was gleefully throwing her dolls down three storeys onto the irate loyalists. ‘For Dolly’s Brae and Derry’s Walls She Couldn’t Give A Fig’ Apparently I was lucky I had not been clobbered by Tiny Tears whilst I was giving Wee Boabby Byney cheers. As is their want the orangers were enraged by this affront to their civil liberties and were baying, not for the first or last time, for Feen Yin blood. Understand was delivering a lecture to my mum and using the word Understand at the end of every sentence when news came through that there was further trouble brewing in the flats across the road from ours. The Feen Yin family over there were flouting pictures of Pope Paul The Sixth and Johneff Kennedy from their window and the orangers were going out their heads with fury. Understand and his buddy left mum, Shelley and me with a variety of fleas in our ears, and returned to The Queen’s Highway, Wishaw Edition.

More or less from that day onwards Shelley and I engaged in a lifelong role reversal with me at the forefront of the anti-orange movement and her accumulating a succession of loyalist boyfriends and husbands – The Protestant Succession !. The most outrageous and hilarious piece of anti-orangeism I ever witnessed took place on Wishaw Main Street the same summer as Wee Boabby & The Doll Shower. Some bold bhoy who was working for ‘The Burgh’ parked his bin lorry across the Main Street and tipped the rubbish out just as the parade was turning up the corner of Dryburgh Road. He promptly left the lorry there and walked away – from his job as well no doubt. I never discovered who that legend was but he retains my undying admiration

I decided to teach myself how to be a true Feen Yin by learning the words to some Feen Yin songs. We had some Irish records in the house which we played when my aunt Mary, uncle Tam and my cousins arrived from Craigneuk. My favourite album wasn’t a rebel one but another called Irish Country Style by Tony Walsh & The Little People. What I liked best about Tony was that he could yodel as well as sing. He was to be my Role Yodel for singing Irish Country Style. If I was singing a Beatles song I’d do it Irish Country Style. If we were singing hymns in the chapel I’d do it Irish Country Style. If we were doing Singing Together at St Aidan’s I’d sing like Tony Walsh & at least two of The Little People by self-harmonising. I particularly admired how Tony would yodel at the end of I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen. People thought this was the way I actually sang - they didn’t know I was impersonating Tony Walsh. They wondered why I yodelled softly during the solemnity that was Soul of My Saviour but no-one said anything about Yodelbhoy. At least he was prepared to sing. I’d listen to Tony Walsh & The Little People at least nightly and The Boys From The County Armagh became my signature yodel and a song I sing to this day using my other voice.

The other records featured covers with Irish flags and neckerchiefed peasants holding their arms (limbs not rifles, ….not yet) aloft and got the blood stirring. Irish rebel songs were my self-introduction to Irish History and The Feen Yin Movement of which I now considered myself to be in the vanguard. I would stop-start-stop-start the records and write down the lyrics of the songs or, rather, I would write down what I thought were the lyrics of the songs. I would then learn the songs and deliver them a la Tony Walsh & The Little People. This would result in some hilarity for my parents and relations. One Christmas my uncle Tam asked me to oblige the company with an Irish song. I got into full Tony Walsh mode and started belting out The Irish Soldier Laddie and yodelled the following

“My young brother cannot talk and my friend attends the Scotchy “

They were in tears laughing at me. Something obviously got mistranslated between vinyl and paper. I also loved a single we had by Brendan Shine that had The Merry Ploughboy on one side and Come Down From The Mountain, Katie Daly on the other. I loved the trumpets on The Merry Ploughboy, a precursor of the mariachi beauty that is Love’s Forever Changes. When I sung the line ‘I’ve always hated slavery since the day that I was born’ I thought of Fat Victoria and her fruit-offering Black Babies. I wanted to join the IRA and marry a rebel’s wife and preferably do it all tomorrow morn but mum would make me go to school instead.

I saw a strange title of a song on one of the albums – My Old Fenian Gun. I had no idea what kind of gun a Fenian one was but I intended to find out. It was probably one of the machine guns I saw in my Commando books where I always wanted the Germans to win and they never ever did – Die Britisher. I played the song and the penny drapt – the opposite of Wee Boabby’s stick. The words and story of My Old Fenian Gun were pretty representative of my relationship with my dad where Ireland was concerned. He didn’t discourage me from learning the songs but, at that time, he would not hear talk of the IRA in the house even if his interest in the situation in the North was increasing as the Troubles intensified.

And then I caught lice from Tam Mog.

Tam was a Rangers supporter from the top floor of the flats and hygiene was well down his parents list of priorities. My dealings with him generally revolved around theft and shoplifting. We were regulars at the Pick n Nick counter at Woolworths after we’d bought Broken Biscuits. I called the whole operation – Going to the BBs. The deal was we’d pick a couple broken biscuits which cost next to nothing and put them in big bags. We’d pay for the broken biscuits, wander around to Pick n Nick, fill the bags with sweets and casually walk out with our booty. It was simplicity itself and foolproof. We’d sell some of the loot at highly discounted prices to the other kids for raspberry heid money. The scam eventually went pear-shaped when Tam revealed our Modus Operandi to Aileen, my next-door-neighbour, who was promptly busted on her shoplifting debut. Naturally she blamed Tam and me as she pleaded for clemency from her overbearing mother. Tam was safe on the top floor and I got all the grief for leading the hitherto-saintly girl guide astray. To give him his due Tam felt he owed me for accepting the brunt of the blame and invited me to lunch at the West End café where the Golden Fry is these days. We went through the card and Tam paid with the fiver (an enormous sum of money back then) he had stolen from his mother’s purse.

Whilst looking back I am struck by the lack of adult intervention in our varied plots and ploys. Understand was around now and then but we rarely encountered the Fire Brigade despite the magnetism naked flames held for us. The grown-ups seemed to take all things at face value. For an adult to accept a five-pound note in a cafe from a ten-year-old boy in 1973 seems incredible to me but nothing was ever queried. Mrs Mog went radio rental when Tam returned her ‘change’.

For a couple of days I’d mentioned to my mum about having itchy hair which she dismissed saying hair didn’t itch. When I stressed that my head was incredibly itchy she checked my scalp and the awful truth dawned. It seemed I’d also infected my siblings or they’d infected me. The following days consisted of bone combs, steel combs (much worse), my parents crushing ‘beasts’ and nits between their finger nails and multiple applications of Derbac shampoo and lotions. I accepted the treatment patiently as my head had felt alive for days. Characteristically I took my lousy rehabilitation to ridiculous extremes. Despite the blistering heat and sunshine I wouldn’t leave the house without my anorak on and the hood up. I didn’t want people to know I was lousy by smelling the anti-nit aroma that emanated from Mouldylocks so, in the absence of a balaclava, I did the hood thing. Others would ask me what I was doing dressed thus on a glorious summer’s day. I gave them a hair-and-head related reason that was as good as they come. I told them I was suffering from alopecia, that my hair was falling out in clumps and the chances were I would need a wig but the doctors were hopeful of a complete recovery. In truth a classmate of mine did suffer from the condition so I was well up on the detail. When asked how I had contracted alopecia I said I’d been playing chopsticks on the roundabout at Belhaven Park and whilst looking for the lollipop stick under the whirling roundabout I’d scraped my head on the ground and alopecia had immediately set in. I’d get alopecia at anyone’s door. My subsequent and predictable ‘cure’ was laid at St Anthony’s (patron of lost items including hair) and Lourdes Water which I had poured on my head thrice daily.