by Jim Wight
In a photograph of Jim and Hannah’s wedding in 1915, the large families of the Wights and Bells are there for all to see. The quality of the photograph, in which many of Alf’s favourite uncles and aunts feature, is still very good despite being taken over eighty years ago. In the back row of the wedding group are two young men, Matt and Bob Wight, both of them brothers of Jim. They were two uncles with whom Alf would spend a great deal of time in his youth. Matthew Wight was barely thirteen years older than Alf who regarded him more as a brother than an uncle. He was an open-faced, jolly man with a mischievous smile, a natural practical joker who spent a large proportion of his life laughing. The other young man, Robert Wight, was far more serious-minded. He shared the same acute sense of humour common to most of the two families but, in addition, he was a deep thinker and a man of great principle. Uncle Bob was an enthusiast and an optimist, one who regarded the world as a place of opportunity. It was these qualities that would appeal so much to the young Alf Wight during his formative years. Robert Wight was the uncle upon whom he would model himself.
Sitting in front of Jim Wight in the old photograph is a young man in army uniform. This was Alfred Wight, Jim’s younger brother and the only one of Alf’s uncles whom he was never to know. He was a sergeant in the 19th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry and tragically lost his life on the terrible Somme battlefield only one year after the photograph was taken. The family was devastated by this sad waste of a young life but his name lived on. Alf, who was born fifteen months later, was named after the uncle who had sacrificed his life on that fateful day.
The relatives on the Bell side of the family were a crowd of extroverts; they spoke their minds and did not care what the rest of the world thought about it. Two faces looking out from the wedding photograph, belonging to Stan and Jinny, Hannah’s brother and sister, epitomise this effervescent quality of the Bell family. Uncle Stan, a great favourite with Alf, was a small, dapper man with a smiling face that oozed friendliness. In common with Alf’s other uncles, he was a fanatical football fan and attended the home games at Sunderland producing a running commentary for all to hear, his head bobbing in every direction whilst giving his forthright opinions. What proportion of the game he actually saw was open to question. Jim Wight (or ‘Pop’ as he was always called by Alf and the rest of the family) was just the opposite. He was no less a devoted follower of the fortunes of the club but apart from, perhaps, a satisfied smile or an agonised spasm of the facial muscles, he betrayed little emotion.
On later visits to Glasgow, Alf always derived a great deal of amusement from watching his father – a quiet, reserved and very gentlemanly man – attempt to merge into obscurity when in the company of his high-spirited relatives. Pop never forgot a visit to Ibrox Stadium in Glasgow where Stan, despite being surrounded by glowering Glasgow Rangers fans, vociferously delivered his forthright opinion of their team, describing the players as ‘Duck Eggs!’ This was a common old Sunderland expression and one did not need to be a native of the north-east of England to appreciate its finer meaning. Pop was thankful to leave the stadium alive.
Stan was not the only Bell to send Pop scuttling for cover. He endured many embarrassing situations while in the company of his sister-in-law, Jinny, who would loudly voice her opinion in public places, often instigating an equally noisy response. Jinny was quite happy with this; she quite enjoyed a scene, but she rarely received the support of her brother-in-law. Pop learned one thing quickly following his association with the Bell family – the art of effecting a swift and silent disappearance.
Late in the October of 1916, at the age of barely three weeks, baby Alfred Wight left Sunderland to take up residence in Scotland’s largest city – one that would be his home for the first twenty-three years of his life. His happy and fulfilling childhood days spent amongst the outgoing and friendly people of this big, noisy city, resulted in Alf Wight forever regarding himself as a Glaswegian at heart.
His feeling for the city is displayed in the dedication that is at the beginning of his fourth book, Vet in Harness. It reads simply, ‘With love to my mother in dear old Glasgow Town’.
He was not alone in his great affection for this charismatic city. Many Glaswegians reminisce about their origins with great pride, despite the city having, over the years, developed something of an unenviable reputation. Between the wars, many of the big cities of Britain had a poor image but Glasgow’s was the worst of all. Later on, Alf used to observe, with ill-concealed anger, television programmes portraying it as a sordid mass of filthy slums inhabited by gangs that would slit your throat first and ask questions later. ‘No one bothers to speak of Glasgow’s finer qualities,’ he would exclaim. ‘There is no mention of the warm and friendly people, nor of the splendid buildings, parks and art galleries. And what about the wonderful country all around that can be reached so easily?’
Glasgow used to be described as a ‘dirty picture in a beautiful frame’. Many parts, admittedly, were not particularly edifying but where else in Britain was there a massive city with such magnificent scenery so close at hand? The residents of Glasgow are fortunate indeed to have such a beautiful playground on their doorstep and this was not lost on the young Alfred Wight. When he was older, he would escape the bustle and grime of the city whenever he could to head out for the hills and glens that were so accessible. Those happy hours he spent in Glasgow’s ‘beautiful frame’ were to instil in him that great appreciation of the wild and unspoilt landscapes about which he would write with such feeling so many years later.
One of the most dominant features of the architecture of Glasgow are the tenements. These gaunt, multi-storey buildings stand over the city streets like giant sentinels and have been the epitome of Glasgow’s appearance since well into the last century when huge numbers of immigrants flooded into the city to find work. Glasgow, known at that time as ‘The Second City of the Empire’, was a booming city, and the tenements provided the answer to the housing problem; they were, in effect, one of the earliest examples in Britain of the high-rise blocks of flats.
Yoker is a suburb of Glasgow, on the east bank of the River Clyde, and it was here, in a ground-floor flat of a tenement in Yoker Road (later re-named Dumbarton Road), that the Wight family had their first of three homes in the city.
The tenement buildings of Glasgow have a terrible reputation of being the embodiment of all that is to do with poverty and squalor. In fact, they varied widely in their degrees of respectability. The black tenements of the Gorbals, on the other side of the River Clyde, were undeniably some of the most depressing buildings imaginable, both outside and in. There was a central passageway, the ‘close’, through which access was gained to the dingy flats on either side – with dark, forbidding stairways snaking up to the higher levels of the building. These tenements were often damp, dirty and appallingly overcrowded. Many families in the slum areas of Glasgow, like the Gorbals or Cowcaddens on the other side of the city, lived squashed together in one or two rooms. Toilet provision was rudimentary, with up to twenty or thirty people sharing one privy which, commonly, was not even within the building. Poverty and disease were rife. Many children developed rickets through malnutrition and I can remember a young woman who worked for my grandmother, having the bowed legs that betrayed a childhood of deprivation and hardship. No wonder the people living in these awful conditions would often turn to violence and drink to seek some escape from their squalid existence.
However, other tenements, such as the one in which Alf was to spend his earliest years, were in a different category altogether. Although not very prepossessing from the outside, they were perfectly respectable within. To walk inside one was often a revelation. The uninspiring, sometimes grim exterior belied a pleasant, roomy interior with high, sculptured ceilings in the living-rooms and ample space everywhere.
The ground-floor flat in which Alf spent the earliest years of his life, although not exactly the finest example of the Glasgow tenement flat, was perfectly sound and respecta
ble, so much so that the entrance to his home was known as a ‘wally close’. These were quite special in that, having tiled walls, one was considered to be a few rungs up the ladder of affluence living ‘up’ one of these. Each flat consisted of three or four rooms – a large living-room with an adjoining kitchen and one, sometimes two, bedrooms and a bathroom and lavatory. There were recesses set into the sides of the living-room across which curtains could be drawn, thus providing extra sleeping accommodation.
Milk and coal were both delivered by horse and cart. The milk was left in a jug outside the door, and the coalman would clatter into the house to dump the coal into a bunker situated in a corner of the kitchen. The coal was used for heating and, in many flats, it was also the means of fuelling the cooking ranges that were the dominant feature of the tenement kitchens. As well as cooking and heating the home, these imposing black steel fireplaces provided all the hot water the family needed. Alf’s first tenement home may not have been a palace but it was comfortable and adequate.
One of the myths that has grown up around Alf Wight and his success is that of his dragging himself up from the ‘grinding poverty’ of his youth. The fact is that his Glasgow days were exceptionally happy – with the cold finger of hardship rarely felt by young ‘Alfie’ Wight. The Yoker area of Glasgow – a respectable, working-class part of the city – was one in which many Glaswegians aspired to live. There was certainly heavy industry, shipyards and steelworks – and there were parts of Yoker where faint hearts would fear to tread, especially on Friday and Saturday nights – but much of it was inhabited by solid citizens who were well above the poverty line.
Only a few minutes’ walk from Alf’s home would take him out into green fields and farmland, backed by the Kilpatrick Hills and the Campsie Fells in the distance – a very different picture from the Yoker of today. The stage upon which Alfie Wight played out the happy hours of his childhood has been replaced by a scene of neglect, dominated by drab buildings and wasteland. Boarded-up shops are a testimony to the crime that, as in most other big cities, seems to be a constant threat. As he played on the streets and in the nearby fields with his friends, young Alf without doubt enjoyed Yoker’s better times.
His parents were dedicated workers who ensured that the family was always well catered for. Pop held down a good job as a ship plater in the big Yarrow’s shipyard which was close to the family home, and he supplemented his earnings by playing the piano in the local cinemas. He was the leader of an orchestra which provided the sound tracks for silent films as well as music for the intervals between the shows.
Pop took great pride in his musical ability. In the evenings, when most of his workmates were having a drink in the bars of Yoker, Pop would be found seated in front of the beloved grand piano he had brought with him from Sunderland. He would practise happily for hours. I can clearly recall my grandfather seated in front of his cherished piano, eyes closed and with a look of sheer pleasure on his face as his hands danced over the keys. He had lost the forefinger of his right hand when he was a young man but this did not seem to hinder his ability. He used to compose his own music and, in his later years, accompanied a group known as the ‘Glenafton Singers’ who performed at many concerts in Glasgow. Pop was a truly gifted musician whose enthusiasm spread to his son ensuring that he, too, would discover that the love of music was one of life’s greatest joys.
Hannah Wight was as musical as Pop. She and her husband were members of the Glasgow Society of Musicians, performing regularly at concerts in the city. He was the accompanist on the piano while she sang in the choir as a contralto under her maiden name, calling herself ‘Miss Anna Bell’. The extra money they earned while performing with this professional organisation must have been a welcome addition to the family budget.
The mid 1920s was a particularly worrying period and parts of Glasgow were grim places to be at the time of the General Strike in 1926. Soldiers were on the streets to maintain law and order, and the windows of the buses and trams were covered in steel netting to protect them from flying missiles hurled by desperate and rebellious mobs. Pop, along with thousands of workers, was made redundant from the shipyards. As with so many others, he had to sway in the winds of depression sweeping the city as work became almost impossible to get. However, he managed to survive through sheer determination and adaptability by turning his hand to other means of earning a living – working first as a joiner and later, when Alf was a teenager, by opening a fish and chip shop. He also had the advantage of having a very resolute and resourceful wife.
Around 1928, Pop’s income from playing in the cinemas was ruthlessly cut with the advent of sound tracks which accompanied the films, but Hannah was already earning a living in her own right. Musical ability was not the only talent she possessed; she was adept at making clothes. In the mid 1920s, she set aside one of the rooms of the family home to establish a thriving dressmaking business that she would keep going for almost thirty years. She became so busy that, in the early 1930s, she employed not only several seamstresses but a maid by the name of Sadie. Hannah developed a clientele of many wealthy and influential ladies – something that would be a vital contribution to the family finances.
With two parents who ensured that there was always some money coming into the home, young Alf Wight never knew real hardship. His parents, admittedly, were under financial pressure at times, especially when Alf’s education had to be financed, but they survived the years of depression in the city far better than most. Indeed, at that time, there would be few houses in the streets of Yoker that could number a maid and a grand piano among its occupants. Although there were to be times when the spectre of poverty stared Alf in the face, it was not during his childhood days on the streets of Glasgow.
Shortly before he was five years old, Alf Wight began his education at Yoker Primary School. It was a good school and the teachers were well qualified, putting great emphasis on learning the three ‘Rs’. The headmaster was a man called Mr Malcolm – ‘Beery’ Malcolm to the children as he had a florid face that looked as though it was partial to a pint of beer. He was a Master of Arts and a fine headmaster but young Alf’s favourite teacher was Mr Paterson who taught History.
Alf loved History and all through his adult years he enjoyed reading books on historical subjects, saying they gave him a stab of excitement to know that he was reading about events that actually happened. Mr Paterson was the man who stimulated this interest through his sparkling and enthusiastic teaching methods. When describing battles, he charged up and down the rows of children, waving a huge cane and spearing his imaginary foes: Robert the Bruce cutting the English to pieces at the Battle of Bannockburn was brought vividly to life, and the laughing children loved every minute of it. Little did the young lad realise that one day many years later he, too, would bring the past alive with his account of the veterinary profession as it used to be. He was to be every bit as graphic with the pen as had been his animated teacher with his cane, leaping around the classroom all those years ago in Yoker.
Alf excelled at English but Arithmetic was a subject he could never fathom and he would stare vacantly at his classmate, Willie Crawford, who could come up with the answer to a problem within seconds. Fortunately, it was not a subject that was essential to his further education, and was one that would forever remain a deep, insoluble mystery.
Yoker School gave Alf Wight an excellent start to his education and he took away many happy memories after leaving. The greatest legacy bestowed upon Alf by his first school, however, was the meeting there of a boy who was to become his lifelong friend. Alex Taylor lived a short distance away in Kelso Street and the two boys struck up a friendship that was to last more than seventy years. Alf would have many good friendships in the course of his life, but none would stand the test of time more steadfastly than that with Alex Taylor.
One amazing character remained forever engraved on Alf’s memories of his days at Yoker School – a redoubtable individual by the name of ‘Pimple’ Wilson. T
his boy made a name for himself by declaring his intention to leap out of a second-storey tenement window with the sole assistance of an old umbrella. This caused immense excitement among the children and the forthcoming event was awaited with eager anticipation. The great day came, with large crowds of children, Alf and Alex among them, gathering to watch the spectacle. They were not to be disappointed. After a period of tense expectation, the hero of the hour appeared on the window ledge, his ‘parachute’ in hand, ready for action. There were a few taut moments as the boy fidgeted around on the window ledge, then suddenly, to the sound of gasps from his young audience, he sprang out of the high window, umbrella held aloft. For about one second, all went well, but his plans were to go badly wrong. The old umbrella suddenly turned inside out and, accompanied by the screaming boy, zoomed to the ground. ‘Pimple’ was taken to hospital and was soon on the mend. It had been a short but dramatic show, and was to remain Alf’s most vivid memory of his days at Yoker School.
It was, of course, long before the days of television, and Alf, Alex and the other children made their own amusements. Games played outside in the playground, going by such sophisticated names as ‘moshie’, ‘spin the pirie’ and ‘cuddie hunch’, required no expensive equipment. When not at school, they spent hours kicking a football about, while ‘Wee Alfie Wight’ often hurtled around the streets on his fairy cycle – the possession of which made him the envy of his classmates. They were happy and carefree days. Despite the poverty and desperation that stalked the streets of Glasgow during the Depression, parents had no fear for the safety of their children. How different it is today.
One of the great entertainments for the children in those days was the cinema. The whole area abounded with picture houses, with the ‘penny matinée’ one of the most popular occasions. For the princely sum of one penny, or twopence if the upstairs balcony was preferred, the youngsters could see a whole show and many a Saturday afternoon was spent watching comedy or western films. Cowboy films in those days were very popular and the children loved them despite the absence of sound tracks. A favourite hero of the Old West was a wisecracking cowboy by the name of Drag Harlin. This gunfighter did not appear on film, but was a character in some of the popular books of the day. Years later, Alf and Alex would roar with laughter as they recalled their boyhood days reading these ‘scholarly’ descriptions of life in the Old West. Alex recently recalled an example of the author’s peerless style of writing: ‘A blue-black hole appeared in the middle of his forehead. An amazed expression crossed his face as he slumped slowly to the floor!’ Such passages as these deserved, Alf once said, ‘recognition as literary classics!’