Child Memories Glasgow 1970s Chapter 1 I had a childhood which was mixed with a bitter sweet balance that’s really hard to define. But I will try. #life at home was probably as good as a child can expect. Two caring and loving parents that did their best to give everything possible to their three children was a wonderful and lucky thing to have. Throughout my school days when I was at home I was mostly happy, but there was always an underlying discomfort when I left the house. This discomfort and tension later started to follow me home and street frustrations often led to problems or fights at home with my sisters and parents. There just was no solution to the problem that I could think of and I would break things, tear wall paper, scratch the paintwork or annoy Valerie, who to me at that time seemed to not suffer the same problems that I did (though later I found out that wasn’t at all the case). Margaret on the other hand I knew was having an unhappy time also as I was often in fights for her and over her. And of course Margaret was always causing trouble at home too. Later in my early teens I developed nervous habits like tugging at and pulling my hair out, constantly organising the positions of objects in my room and having regimented routines before washing, before sleeping and rising from bed. These would include walking to bed in a certain way, saying prayers in exactly the same way time over time, getting up and slightly altering the position of a toy then repeating the routine again. I knew why I was doing these things and I knew they made no sense but couldn’t stop. Of course though here are so many good memories also. Summers in the garden and days out to the beach, Birthdays, Halloweens and Easter. But above all Christmas was a kids dream at home and these magical days and those happy feelings will stay with me forever. Time to a child is a much slower thing than perceived by an adult, and one or two happy days playing in a good home are enough to make the memories and hurts of a previous week disappear. The problem is however that the school week comes around again and the contrasting hardness and sadness is there once again, and it seems to go on for ever and ever never seeming to come to an end. Living in Maxwell drive, a nice street with semi detached houses and flowering gardens, maybe my parents thought that we were safe and protected from the deranged mobs of delinquents that they had grown up with in the tenements’ and council estates of Govan and Pollok. It’s true those early days to the age 4 and 5 were quiet, but #life after this slowly started to have a profound effect on how I saw the world and it would affect me and my #life, my character and my decisions from then on. In fact only just across the road from this my proud parents first house, lived the nastiest couple of animals imaginable who did their utmost to make #life for me bad as they could from the age of 5 when children start to interact with other kids in their street. I will come back to this later and these people who were altogether different from me and my family. Earliest memories 2 years to 4 years. Toddler year memories are so good I almost regret them as growing realisation soon showed that these experiences of early and perfect #life were not realistic and sustainable. However it’s nice to sometimes go back to them and not think about the rest. It was a #life of being woken up to gentle signing of “Good Morning, Good morning, the birds are singing in the trees”…..and the luxuries of being dressed and cuddled and groomed. These days were filled with Bay City Rollers songs and LuLu (Wheres yer mama gone?, chirpy chirpy cheep) and the Carpenters “Im sitting on top of the world.” The images of two people dancing together, laughing and kissing remain even today as my foremost and happiest memory. Quiet mornings being pushed in the pram, to the shops, Id spin and push the 3 coloured balls on the front of the pram and never get fed up with that. Then we would get to the strange little shops with bells on the doors. The shop with the children’s clothes, the balls of wool and tracing paper patterns. The big cold white shop with sawdust on the ground with the strong smell of fish, the hard looking lady with blood on her hands and her clothes who tried to always give me a smile but was always very busy and thankfully she never came too close. The meat shop and the sound of the hatchet, whack, whack that echoed in my ears so loudly. I looked at the sausages on a pile that would get wrapped and packaged in white then brown paper and the lumps of beef hanging from hooks. The hardware shore that had so many different and strange things, but nothing I really wanted. It all smelled bad in there too. The chemist where I would get a strange tasting lollypop that never tasted as good as those from the newspaper shop. And best of all the baker shop with the warm sweet smells. I didn’t mind being left at the door there when there was a queue. But on the whole the world was a little too cold, frightening and far to fast for me to take in, I needed my mother for reassurance and was often happy to be back home and in my bed where pictures of teddy bears and little boys were painted. Days at home were quiet; I don’t remember my sisters in those first few years. Just mostly sitting with my mum in the kitchen watching her eat buttered Danish pasties on the cooker grill door and reading magazines. Though I do remember some other little people were often there when I was getting bathed in the kitchen sink. Sometimes a bath with Dad too, but the water was always too deep, too hot and that was uncomfortable and went on for too long. There was a nice picture of a baby having a bath on the wall that I liked to look at though. I remember being often in my parents bed and being held by my father while he slept, his big heavy arm pinning me and stopping me from moving. Id wriggle and wriggle till he’d let me go with a tut or a grunt. Then I would feel a little bit bad that I hadn’t kept still enough. At 3 years old I went to nursery and the walk there was along a nice street with big trees and large houses. I remember the other children and the big people, but no faces. I mostly remember the duck with wheels and little metal pedal car and the wooden bus that you could sit on. It was a big older Victorian house with a large concrete area at the back to play on the wheeled toys and climbing frames and chutes at the side of the building. Inside felt huge, the rooms with high ceilings and large bay windows had place for what seemed like hundreds of children. The actual amount of boys and girls there was obviously much less but it felt like such a busy fast place where we moved from painting rooms, to block building rooms to singing time to story book telling time, one event straight after the other. I don’t remember playing or indeed much interaction with other children though I know that must have happened. Being on my own for the first time (without mum there), my memory is of it is the sentiment of a strange adventure you take alone. Possibly because of the very many new experiences that were rushing into my young head at once, coupled with a certain apprehension that quiet children possess, my more profound memories are of the place, the surroundings and my feelings neither happy or sad, being much clearer to me than that of any actual face or friendship with other children that were there. For example I remember the children were often offered a sweet from a big large tin, but it was hard to make a choice because they had mixed so many different kinds in together there, but you had to choose quickly or you might loose your chance. Strangely I remember all the little hands in a circle in and around the tin but not a single face or name. I remember the day I got a staple in my thumb, the click of the stapler and the terrible pain when it was pushed in. But neither how it happened nor who helped me, but remember screaming and being hastily carried into another room where it was removed, washed and dressed. I remember the pain and my panic, the blood washing into the sink and down the drain and the long wait it took for my mum to come. I remember a bigger boy who would push and kick me off the little chute and the wheeled bus. I remember my mum talking to his mum many times and how he didn’t kick me then but would instead just stare at me in silence. Actually I do remember his face though. I started school early (when 4 years old) at Bellahouston Primary. I can vaguely remember that first day. I don’t know whether my mother stayed long or if I cried, but I remember the sentiment of those first few days, the huge building, the cold atmosphere and the teachers that didn’t seem as nice as those at the nursery. You don’t see yourself as a little boy or a child of young age, you are always just yourself, an ageless person within your own perception of the world. The big people seemed distant and they talked with words I didn’t understand. I would just stare back and nod sometimes and hope it was the right thing to do. One day after having done something obviously wrong or naughty a particular teacher pulled me to one side in the corridor, holding one of my arms firmly and bending down stern in the face, finger pointing just millimetres off my nose, “Are you and I going to have a fall out?”, she asked. I thought about what she said and repeated the words quietly in my head. She asked the question again, in a slow whisper “Are you and I going to have a fall out?”. I had never heard this sentence or term before and didn’t have the slightest idea what she meant, or more to the point what the correct answer was. Again she repeated, this time much louder, “ARE YOU AND I GOING …. TO… HAVE … A .. FALLOUT!!?” I said the words over and over in my head “fall out.. fall out” what does it mean? What is the right answer?, I had no idea. I blurted out “yes” because yes is always better than no. Of course it was the wrong answer and instantly I felt my arm being squeezed to the point I thought it would break. “No No, I don’t know!!” I tried to explain, but it was too late I was dragged off, by the wrist my arm pulled up high to a small medical room when I was firmly placed in a big chair that was turned to face the wall and made to sit until there till the play time was over. When the door closed I turned and looked out the high window and listened to the playing children and wondered nervously what would happen next. Later she came back and lectured a bit more. I wanted to cry but I didn’t and bit my lip trying to keep still I looked at her lined, marked and annoyed face. Big people have really horrible faces I thought. I had never been pulled pushed or handled in this way by a big person before. This was not one of my parents, and more over this was a woman who up till then had always usually smiling down at me. And to cap it all off I had no idea what I had done to produce the reaction and situation or the punishment.