Judy Garland Would Have Wept
I am a major Halloween fanatic. Frankly, I don’t know why people bang on about Halloween being part of the Americanisation of our society. From where I’m standing Halloween has always been a big deal in Scotland- the only difference is that these days you can easily fashion lanterns out of pumpkins instead of having to start carving out a neep sometime in late summer to have a chance of having it done by the 31st of October (that’s a turnip or swede, non Scottish folk).
Although the smell of candle-wax on burning neep will ever be a trigger for happy childhood memories, I’m now loving the smell of burnt pumpkin even more, coupled with the fact that my fingers don’t have to be worn down to stumps in order to make a hole big enough for a candle to go inside. However, I’m still not convinced that pumpkin is any better an ingredient for a pie than turnip. Pumpkin pie is veg with sugar on, no matter which way you look at it.
Yet, for all the hoo-haa about Halloween, I think it has deteriorated since the seventies and eighties. In fact, I’d go as far to say that if you want to know what is wrong with the youth-of-today then you need look no further than Halloween for evidence. And my beef gains gravy here; in the shape of the Halloween Turn.
Scene 1: Friday 31st October 2008. There is a knock on door of the House of the Flying Martinis
Misssy: Hello! A happy Halloween!
Three lads dressed as skeletons (chorus): Hmmmmnnn….weeenn.
Misssy: Well, what have you got for me, then?
Three lads dressed as skeletons (chorus): Hmmmmnnn…?
Misssy: Song? Joke? One act play? Anything for your Halloween treat?
Skeleton One: Haven’t really got anything…
Misssy: Well you better think of something or else you’ll not do too well out there. Am I the first house you’ve been to?
Three lads dressed as skeletons (chorus):No, we’ve been out for an hour (open bags to reveal booty acquired by merely turning up in shitty supermarket costumes and grunting)
Misssy (simultaneously tightening her grip on her sweet bowl and fundamental argument): I’ll take a joke, if that’s on offer…
The three lads dressed as skeletons look at one another.
Skeleton Two: I’ve got one, but it’s rubbish.
Misssy: I’ll be the judge of that, young fella me lad (I am turning into a retired army colonel before their very eyes, but I’m keeping on going, despite the fact that the phrases “National Service”, “Corporal punishment” and “Never did me any harm” are uncontrollably popping into my head.)
Skeleton Two: Why did the skeleton feel lonely?
Misssy: Ho! Ho! I don’t know, you young scamp, why did the skeleton feel lonely?
Skeleton Two: Because he had no body.
Misssy: Hahahahahaha! Hahahahahaha! Hahahaha! That’s the ticket, you bunch of rascals! No body! Hahahahahaha! Bloody marvellous! Help yourselves, lads!
Sweets delivered, the kids leave.
* * *
Scene 2: Flashback to 31st October 1979.
There is a knock on the door of Mr and Mrs Generic-McNeighbour, Some where in Scotland.
Gladys Generic McNeighbour: Oh hello Misssy and assorted chums! In you come! In you come! Why have you for us this year?
Misssy: Well this year ,Mrs Generic-McNeighbour, we’re performing a medley of the show tunes from Vincente Minelli’s “Meet Me in St Louis”. Mr McNeighbour, if you wouldn’t mind clearing us a large space in the living room, then we’ll begin. Everybody, first positions, please! (Claps hands sharply)
Seven kids dressed as Smurfs, JR Ewing, Metal Mickey and various Star Wars characters scurry into position.
Eric Generic-McNeighbour (rubbing hands excitedly) : Excellent, we haven’t stopped talking about your “42nd Street” since last Halloween, have we, Gladys? Will you require us to move the sofa this year, or will the coffee table be enough….?
* * *
And that’s what I’m talking about.
Kids of today…pfff, why was the skeleton lonely.….. What a load of amateurish crap…..
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Six Sense
Six Things:
1. My mum and dad once saw Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs playing the piano at a school concert at my school in Rio de Janeiro in 1982. I’d like to say that Lord Lucan was draped over the baby grand singing “Summertime” but that would be untrue. The Biggs bit is true, though. They never said if he was any good.
2. My Mum once thought I’d been abducted when my Uncle saw me sitting in my pram outside a shop in Clydebank, thought, “Hello, neice!” and pushed my pram home with nary a thought. People used to leave their kids outside shops in the Seventies because crime wasn’t a “thing” then. My poor Mum came out of the shop to find me gone. Luckily no police were called because Uncle suddenly remembered that I was probably with my Mum and I hadn’t just wheeled myself there for a laugh. My Mum can still make her brother feel guilty by mentioning it even though I’m 39 now and safe and sound.
3. I once won the PE prize at school and the whole of the assembled school turned round simultaneously and went “Huh?” I am terrible at sports. The teacher was either on drugs or felt sorry for me. It’s very possible that she thought I was special needs and was being politically correct. Being good at sports at school is overrated. Where’s the money in it?
4. There is a fantastic and huge oil painting of me and my siblings. My dad paid a fortune for it, and it was done by quite an established artist about twenty years ago, but my Mum put it in the attic, because we were too overbearing, just like the First Mrs de Winter.
5. I once had breakfast with a bunch of Swedish actors including the legendary Max von Sydow. I embarrassed myself by telling him that he was great as Emperor Ming in Flash Gordon. He just laughed. I cringed for about two years. For Pete’s sake, the man was in The Seventh Seal! That’s like meeting Lawrence Olivier and going nuts over his turn in Clash of the Titans. The shame.
6. I am offended by ketchup and all its variants. I wrote about it here, but you may think I went too far like many others. In which case I put it to you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that I did not go far enough!
This post is the result of couple of people tagging me this week; Edinburgh’s own organically run central heating system, Mr Farty, and windswept and interesting jazz loving authoress, Kate Lord Brown. Farty asked for Seven Things About Me and Kate asked for Six Things About Me. Isn’t that just like a man to want more? Anyway, I’ve done six just to be difficult. I thought about doing thirteen but it’s too close to Halloween to be tempting fate with the devil’s numbers. In both cases I’m supposed to pass the tag on. I tag Loth, Suzie, Billy the Kid and Inchy. And we’ll call it Six Things About Me, unless of course you want to do seven, which is your prerogative.
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Ruby! Ruby! Ruby! Ruby! Aaa..aaa.aa.aaa..aa..aaaaah!
My parents got married forty years ago yesterday. They didn’t want a fuss. Fair dos.
However, in their honour, I am going to have a day doing all the stuff they wouldn’t let me do when I was a kid. I feel the occasion on them lasting that long needs some kind of commemoration, and it’s all the better if it involves me in someway.
Because…. it just is. Okay?
I am going to watch the following TV shows they wouldn’t let me watch:
OTT with Chris Tarrant.
Yes, all my mates got to stay up watching this early eighties shite and then would spend the whole day screaming about how actually OTT it was next day at school. Hah-haha! Who’s laughing now? Eh? I’m going to get it on betamax and lap it up 25 years on! Even though it’ll probably be dogshit.
The Professionals.
It isn’t too violent. I’m not too young. I am old enough to fancy Lewis Collins and Martin Shaw. Thank God it’s on UK Gold; I’m taping it all and going back to the Seventies. And after that I’m mainlining the Sweeney which no way they’d let me even have a sniff at! It was the late eighties before I even knew there was such a programme.
I’m going to wear the following:
Bay City Rollers trousers.
But all my friends had them! Why not me?
Well, read it and weep. I’ll have those trews! They’ll be white, they will be bordered with red tartan. I will also have a tartan scarf round my wrist and a black velvet slutty choker. I’ll maybe not bother with marrying Les McKeown though. Have you seen him these days? Jesus!
A crucifix.
But Madonna wears one! Yes, yes, I know we’re not Catholic. Jesus, you West coasters, get over the whole religious thing, we’re in godless Aberdeen now! Who cares about religious symbolism? All I know is: I want one!!! Now! They look goooood! Specially with fingerless lace gloves.
A permanent nose piercing.
And this time I won’t get it done and the proceed to take it out every time I go back home for fear of making mum cry. A piercing should be allowed to settle in for six weeks uninterrupted. If relentlessly taken out and put back in again to avoid a vigilant mother it will go septic and make your nostril flare unattractively. A nostrillectomy could be necessary and this would not be good thing.
I am going to:
Hang round the bus shelter.
No, I don’t smoke! I am holding it for my mate. Why if it’s ok to hang round the telephone box, is it not okay to also hang around the bus shelter? Concrete is not a corrupting force!
Go on the back of a motorbike.
Being on the back of motorbike is the only way I can get home after the last bus at EIGHT THIRTY has left the nearest town. Would you rather I slept rough? It does not mean I am a devil-worshipping crack whore Hell’s Angel. I just need a lift!
All this I am tenuously linking to my parents achievement of staying together for forty years. It has nothing to do with the fact that my mum has phoned me twice today to tell me what to do.
Nothing whatsoever.
I am a timelord
Like Dr Who, Marty McFly, Hiro Nakamura, Henry Detamble and Sam Tyler before me I gained access to a time long forgotten and joined the ranks of the Time Travellers.
‘Cept they are fake made up ones and I am the real deal.
It’s only happened the once, but I look forward to it happening again, and am preparing myself to be transported back and forwards in time like nobody’s business. I am also particularly pleased to one of the world’s first female time travellers.
Let me tell you what happened.
I was filming on a diving vessel yesterday. After having my safety induction I was led downstairs past the diving capsules where the divers were in SAT. All very high tech, computery and interesting. There was no mistaking it; I was firmly in the 21st century.
“That’s the Tea-shack over there,” my companion said as he left me to find my own way to the rest of my film crew who had come on board an hour before me.
On reflection, I wonder if the accompanying safety guy knew what would happen to me, or whether I have been a time traveller all along and this is the first massive manifestation of my talents. Whatever it was, it hit me like a thunderbolt.
I opened the door which may have been, in actual fact a WORMHOLE to the 1970s….
Once inside I knew something weird had happened, that something wasn’t quite right.
I looked around me. There were kitsch antique porno calendars on every wall; the like I hadn’t seen since I went to visit my Dad’s work as a schoolchild in a shipbuilding company in Glasgow. Gosh, they took me back. The hair! The unfeasibly large and pendulous boobies! The industry standard on-all-fours-on-wet-sand position!
Three men were in the room. One used the unmistakable vernacular of the past, “Hello, Doll”.
Wow! Where was I?
The banter between the three was like something out of a British television show that I might have watched as a child, if my parents let me stay up late. Something like the “Sweeney” mixed with “On the Buses”, but with men in their late fifties instead of Denis Waterman or John Thaw when he was a bit sexy and shouty. Mind you one bloke did look a bit like Blaikie so the “On the Buses” thing actually does work. But without Olive. No ladies present, y’see. It’s the Seventies; they ain’t allowed. Except me, I was there, but I was from the future, so I don’t count.
Anyway, as my head was whirling round trying to come to terms with what on earth had happened to me, I spotted a fantastic piece of antique retro art that confirmed the era for me straight away.
It was a table, handmade with such craftsmanship and loving attention to detail that it made me weep for the future Ikea flatpack, mass-produced grip on the 21st century. How had we gone from one-off pieces of genius like this magnificent item, to a world where every office looks the same, every home a copy of the one next door.
“You like wor table, lass?”
Ooh… more vernacular!
“Yes, I do”
“Lorra work went into that”, they laughed.”Lotta time at sea…”
The table top was an intricate collage of naked women. Page three girls, favourite soft porn stars, busty ladies, jugs akimbo…every pose imaginable. I believe they call this art “decoupage” and this was an exceedingly fine example from history. Would I go back to the future and see the son or daughter of one of these men present it on “Antiques Roadshow”? How thrilling!
Or would this piece of Seventies memorabilia end its days in a landfill never to be seen again like so many works of art from the decade that time tried to forget.
Except that here I was, looking at it, touching it; a rogue visitor to the past unable to snatch it away back to the future as a memento to prove my time-traveling abilities to any doubters, for fear of ruining the time/space continuum.
It would be the ideal piece of evidence to say, “I was there! I traveled back in time!”
But you all believe me, don’t you?
Raging Bowl…and other stories
So now that Jessie has gone, our family has lost its last remaining blood tie to Clydebank, where we originally came from.
If you Google Clydebank, it’ll probably come up with “the Clydebank blitz” as it’s most famous for the worst Nazi bombing raids outside of Eastend London. Except they rebuilt Eastend London, they left Clydebank as it lay, or so it seems. The place had its heart ripped out and no real attempt has been made to give it a transplant. Clydebank was heavily targeted as the town made ships for the navy and had munitions factories during the war. Both sets of my grandparents met one another working in those factories.
The John Brown shipyards in Clydebank made the QE2. They also gave Billy Connolly years worth of comedy material. Our family left Clydebank to move to Aberdeen, leaving the dying shipyard industry for the new oil industry. Transferable skills you see. Even today the rigs in the North Sea are populated with Glaswegians who did the same thing.
To us, though, Clydebank meant the grandparents. And now that Jessie is gone, we realised that yesterday could easily be the last time we ever have reason to set foot in Clydebank. We ended our possible last visit at one of the places that me and the other two siblings have the most memories of; my Gran and Papa’s bowling green.
In the seventies my brother, sister and I spent a lot of time there, as my whole family were champion bowlers…and the bowling green bar was the cooling off station after games. So we had to entertain ourselves quite a bit as we kids were not allowed anywhere near the bar.
Each of us said yesterday, independently of one another, that we distinctly uneasy about being in the club bar, expecting at any moment my Papa would catch sight of us and chase us out. The nearest we got was standing at the door, waving frantically to catch the eye of my Dad or Papa, with one of two pieces of info:
1. We’d run out of crisps and coke
2. Our little sister had done something that warranted a telling off. That’s called “cliping” in Scots. I believe it’s similar to the phrase “to grass on someone”.
When our parents and grandparents were in “the club” as it was called, there were a few recreational activities on offer to the three of us. They fall neatly into two sections; Fairweather and Rainy
Fairweather
1. If weather was good we could play outside. We might even watch Jessie absolutely gub some other lady at bowling. She was that good. Papa was also a great bowler, and we nicknamed him “Raging Bowl” after watching him take someone up on some rules transgression or lost point. I think we were teenagers at this point. The name stuck. Not that we ever called him it to his face.
2. We could look for tennis balls in the abandoned tennis court next door.
3. We could try and move the massive ton weight roller for the green, dicing with death by crushing. If only our parents knew…
4. We could slide down the silver painted railings at the steps. Or do gymnastics round them. Until someone shouted at us. Or a head got cracked.
5. We could put chuckies (little stones used for paths) down stanks (drains) for hours at a time. Magic fun, for some reason. We may be responsible for recurrent drainage problems in the Clydebank area.
6. We could fight with each other.
Rainy
1. If the weather was bad (and we’re talking the West of Scotland here, folks) we had to sit in the “TV Room” in the basement of “the club”. A stale-smoke-smelling window-less dungeon with a wooden TV up on the wall.
I don’t know if any of you remember television in the 70s. There were 3 channels. Crappy programmes interspersed with periods of time called “Close Down” where nothing was broadcast and this little girl appeared.
You may have seen her recently on the excellent “Life on Mars”. There isn’t one seventies kid that doesn’t know her intimately.
I remember that if a cartoon came on, it was like flipping Christmas! Five minutes of “Bugs Bunny” or “Tom and Jerry” before endless hours of flaming Grandstand on a Saturday afternoon. A double bill if you were lucky and Grandstand was running late. (Producers frantically searching the vice clubs for Frank Bough could be a reason for a late start. We didn’t know then, but we sure know now! Cups of black coffee poured down his throat, a bit of slapping about, a production assistant trying to get the lemon Pringle jumper on over the nipple clamps…am I taking this too far?)
“Uncle” Frank Bough
Pre- vice scandal expose ….
2. The “TV room” was also a locker room. So when there was only horse-racing on (i.e all the bloody time) we would entertain ourselves by rifling through people’s lockers. We never nicked anything, but we did tamper with stuff. We would run around with other folks glasses on, or their club blazer, that kind of thing.
I remember my brother putting a lady’s tan pop sock or stocking over his head and me and my sister peeing ourselves laughing.
3. We would play with the bowls. In an ideal world we would all have grown up to be champion bowlers and I would be reminiscing about my early days in the TV Room with Hazel Irvine on BBC 2 after winning some big game. But since we were more into shot-putting them, or throwing them at one another, our bowling skills were never discovered.
4. We would eat snooker chalk.
5. We would dare each other to run into the loos of the opposite sex.
6. We would sniff the pineapple ring shaped toilet cubes in said loos. We were kids, give us a break!
7. We would draw on each other’s faces with snooker chalk.
8. We would perform acts of wanton vandalism.
9. We would fight with each other.
Yesterday in “the club”, a million little old dears that I didn’t know or recognise came up to me to tell me how much I looked like my mum, or how they recognised me straight away, or talk about Jessie. They were all called Bella, Ella, Isa, Minnie and Jeannie and wore their bowling blazers festooned with badges.
If they only knew about the pop socks…..
Raging Bowl and Other Stories…
So now that Jessie has gone, our family has lost its last remaining blood tie to Clydebank, where we originally came from.
If you Google Clydebank, it’ll probably come up with “the Clydebank blitz” as it’s most famous for the worst Nazi bombing raids outside of Eastend London. Except they rebuilt Eastend London, they left Clydebank as it lay, or so it seems. The place had its heart ripped out and no real attempt has been made to give it a transplant. Clydebank was heavily targeted as the town made ships for the navy and had munitions factories during the war. Both sets of my grandparents met one another working in those factories.
The John Brown shipyards in Clydebank made the QE2. They also gave Billy Connolly years worth of comedy material. Our family left Clydebank to move to Aberdeen, leaving the dying shipyard industry for the new oil industry. Transferable skills you see. Even today the rigs in the North Sea are populated with Glaswegians who did the same thing.
To us, though, Clydebank meant the grandparents. And now that Jessie is gone, we realised that yesterday could easily be the last time we ever have reason to set foot in Clydebank. We ended our possible last visit at one of the places that me and the other two siblings have the most memories of; my Gran and Papa’s bowling green.
In the seventies my brother, sister and I spent a lot of time there, as my whole family were champion bowlers…and the bowling green bar was the cooling off station after games. So we had to entertain ourselves quite a bit as we kids were not allowed anywhere near the bar.
Each of us said yesterday, independently of one another, that we distinctly uneasy about being in the club bar, expecting at any moment my Papa would catch sight of us and chase us out. The nearest we got was standing at the door, waving frantically to catch the eye of my Dad or Papa, with one of two pieces of info:
1. We’d run out of crisps and coke
2. Our little sister had done something that warranted a telling off. That’s called “cliping” in Scots. I believe it’s similar to the phrase “to grass on someone”.
When our parents and grandparents were in “the club” as it was called, there were a few recreational activities on offer to the three of us. They fall neatly into two sections; Fairweather and Rainy
Fairweather
1. If weather was good we could play outside. We might even watch Jessie absolutely gub some other lady at bowling. She was that good. Papa was also a great bowler, and we nicknamed him “Raging Bowl” after watching him take someone up on some rules transgression or lost point. I think we were teenagers at this point. The name stuck. Not that we ever called him it to his face.
2. We could look for tennis balls in the abandoned tennis court next door.
3. We could try and move the massive ton weight roller for the green, dicing with death by crushing. If only our parents knew…
4. We could slide down the silver painted railings at the steps. Or do gymnastics round them. Until someone shouted at us. Or a head got cracked.
5. We could put chuckies (little stones used for paths) down stanks (drains) for hours at a time. Magic fun, for some reason. We may be responsible for recurrent drainage problems in the Clydebank area.
6. We could fight with each other.
Rainy
1. If the weather was bad (and we’re talking the West of Scotland here, folks) we had to sit in the “TV Room” in the basement of “the club”. A stale-smoke-smelling window-less dungeon with a wooden TV up on the wall.
I don’t know if any of you remember television in the 70s. There were 3 channels. Crappy programmes interspersed with periods of time called “Close Down” where nothing was broadcast and this little girl appeared.
You may have seen her recently on the excellent “Life on Mars”. There isn’t one seventies kid that doesn’t know her intimately.
I remember that if a cartoon came on, it was like flipping Christmas! Five minutes of “Bugs Bunny” or “Tom and Jerry” before endless hours of flaming Grandstand on a Saturday afternoon. A double bill if you were lucky and Grandstand was running late. (Producers frantically searching the vice clubs for Frank Bough could be a reason for a late start. We didn’t know then, but we sure know now! Cups of black coffee poured down his throat, a bit of slapping about, a production assistant trying to get the lemon Pringle jumper on over the nipple clamps…am I taking this too far?)
“Uncle” Frank Bough
Pre- vice scandal expose ….
2. The “TV room” was also a locker room. So when there was only horse-racing on (i.e all the bloody time) we would entertain ourselves by rifling through people’s lockers. We never nicked anything, but we did tamper with stuff. We would run around with other folks glasses on, or their club blazer, that kind of thing.
I remember my brother putting a lady’s tan pop sock or stocking over his head and me and my sister peeing ourselves laughing.
3. We would play with the bowls. In an ideal world we would all have grown up to be champion bowlers and I would be reminiscing about my early days in the TV Room with Hazel Irvine on BBC 2 after winning some big game. But since we were more into shot-putting them, or throwing them at one another, our bowling skills were never discovered.
4. We would eat snooker chalk.
5. We would dare each other to run into the loos of the opposite sex.
6. We would sniff the pineapple ring shaped toilet cubes in said loos. We were kids, give us a break!
7. We would draw on each other’s faces with snooker chalk.
8. We would perform acts of wanton vandalism.
9. We would fight with each other.
Yesterday in “the club”, a million little old dears that I didn’t know or recognise came up to me to tell me how much I looked like my mum, or how they recognised me straight away, or talk about Jessie. They were all called Bella, Ella, Isa, Minnie and Jeannie and wore their bowling blazers festooned with badges.
If they only knew about the pop socks…..
