Mum was different. I did see the longing in my mum’s eyes; a look that said, ‘There has to be a better life somewhere for me.’ Anywhere had to be better than Cowcaddens. Sometimes that look might have meant, ‘Why did I marry this man?’ I’m not sure. There was this sense of emptiness. Looking back, perhaps it was just the need for an even break. I came to recognise that look and I saw it in her eyes for most of my childhood. Sometimes it seemed to overwhelm her and sometimes she dealt with it. But even at her lowest, I could still see the light in her heart. She was beautiful. I loved her so much, I still do. She could make me feel warm and safe anywhere. I could bury my head in her chest and the problems of the world just slipped away.
Mum was tough, too. Sometimes I think that she thought she was tougher than Dad, which might have been a mistake. When she physically fought with my dad after he came home drunk with no money to feed us, she was the one who wouldn’t back down. She would throw herself at him, hitting him with anything she could get her hands on. Night after night she was the one who ended up battered and bruised on the floor, not him. But she just kept getting up.
Dad would just leave so he didn’t have to face up to anything. It was strange though – she seemed fearless and yet constantly afraid all the time. Is that possible? Of course it is; all of us kids are a bit the same.
Mum is the person you want around in a catastrophe. She jumps up and says, ‘Get oot ma fuckin’ way, I’ll sort this,’ and then leaps straight into whatever is going on, no matter how dangerous it might be. If someone threatened the kids they had to face my mum, not my dad. He would have been away working or drinking, so I guess she had no other options. My mum wasn’t tough by choice, she had to be. She could fight better than most of the men around us. And most of them seemed scared of her.
One time my sister Linda, who was probably five, had a fight with another kid. Linda always had a bad temper and she had bitten a chunk out of the girl’s stomach. My sisters were tough even at that young age. Anyway, so justice could be done, one of the other girl’s parents had to confront one of my parents. As a result, my mum and the other kid’s mum had a fight out on the street, in front of everyone who lived there. Mum gave her a hiding. That way everyone knew not to mess with our family. That’s how we learned to deal with problems.
Mum was the enforcer. She did the dirty work. She was the one who had to be the bad guy and stop us from running wild and being brats. Dad just turned up late and let us do what we wanted. We loved Mum and would run to her if we were hurt or afraid, but if she turned on us, it was really terrifying. Something about her facial expressions could instil fear into all of us kids. She would slowly turn to us with her lips retracting. We were in trouble again. That was the signal to run. It still happens to this day.
But let’s go back to the start. My earliest memories are really quite scattered and cloudy. A bit like my later ones when I think about it. There is a room that I now know was the kitchen but there was a bed in there, built into the wall. It was probably there to make use of the heat from the stove. A family could sleep in there when the rest of the house got too cold I guess.
There’s nothing colder than a Scottish winter – though the summer comes close, I must say. I have vague memories of snuggling up in that bed with my mum, which is pretty good because I must have been well under two when we lived there. That house was number 169 Duke Street in Dennistoun, one of the poor suburbs of Glasgow.
At the end of Duke Street there had been a slaughterhouse many years before, but that was gone, torn down to make way for pubs and bars that were slaughterhouses in a different way. By the way, there were a lot of poor suburbs in Glasgow. We weren’t anything special; there were plenty of slums to go around.
I was born James Dixon Swan at four o’clock in the afternoon on 28 April 1956. My mum was Dorothy, they called her Dot, and my dad was James and they called him Jim. I was delivered by my grandmother, Elizabeth, they called her Betty. They called me wee Jim, after my dad. He was big Jim. I weighed fourteen pounds when I came into this world. I think if I had been born in a hospital I would have slapped the doctor.
But anyway, I was born in that very kitchen. My granny made my mum scrub the floor with a brush to take her mind off the contractions. It killed two birds with one stone. She didn’t notice the pain as much and she had a very clean floor. The Scots are very house proud. I’d say we were all screaming as much as each other. Granny screaming at Mum, Mum screaming at me and me screaming at the world. But luckily for Granny, she was deaf and never heard a word.
Granny was only a little deaf but more importantly she only understood Scottish. She didn’t want to hear any accent or speak with any accent that resembled English. Most Scottish people seemed to have an inherent dislike for the English. Everyone spoke about the English with a touch of venom. But the bastards weren’t that bad really. Not anymore anyway.
I went back to see my granny many years later. I remember one day in the kitchen of my Aunty Maude’s house. Aunty Maude was married to Uncle Jackie and they were my favourite relatives. Anyway, Granny was making tea. I was reading the newspaper when she turned to me and said, ‘Wid ye like a wee cup of tea, son?’
I immediately said, ‘Yes please.’
I could feel daggers flying my way. She looked at me again, and in a slightly more annoyed voice she said, ‘Wid ye like a cup of tea, son?’
‘Yes please, Granny,’ I said as politely as I could, wanting to show her the respect any granny deserved.
To my granny this probably sounded like, ‘Oh rather, that would be spiffing Grandmama.’ Basically it was like I was waving a red flag in front of her.
This went back and forth for a couple of minutes with Granny getting more and more worked up. I could tell because her voice had changed so much that the paint was peeling off the walls and Aunty Maude’s budgie had its wings over its ears.
Finally, she said again, this time through her teeth – she had them in at the time – ‘Wid ye like a cup of tea, son?’
I turned and faced her and said in my broadest Glaswegian accent, ‘Aye, I wid.’
She let out a sigh and went back to the kettle whispering under her breath, ‘Why’d ye no fuckin’ say so the first time?’
She proceeded to begrudgingly make the tea. This was her way of showing love, I think. I’m glad she liked me. Otherwise she would have wrapped the teapot around my head.
My mum had the five of us when she was very young. John was the eldest, followed by Dorothy, then Linda, myself and then young Alan. I’ve made jokes for years that I was the white sheep of the family but as you will read later, that’s far from true. There were no white sheep in my family. Even as children we were all a handful to say the least.
My big brother John weighed twelve pounds and my older sisters weighed about eleven and my young brother Alan was a big boy too. I don’t know why we were all so big. I’ve heard people say that Mum must have had gestational diabetes, but I think it was because my granny made my mum drink a pint of Guinness every day of her pregnancies.
I can just hear her saying in a thick Glaswegian accent, ‘Come on hen, it’s good fur ye, drink yer Guinness.’ Maybe not quite that polite but something like that. Guinness would fatten anybody up.
Dad kept her company and drank a pint of whisky every day. He didn’t want to see her drink alone. He never got fat though, maybe because he sacrificed his Guinness to let her have it. What a gentleman. I think the more whisky you drink the skinnier you get. But that’s just a theory. I’ve seen a lot of really skinny Scotsmen who drank like fish. It might have something to do with the fact that they don’t eat.
Dad grew up in a boxing family. His dad was a pro boxer and I think there are a few old movies of him fighting somewhere but I’ve never seen them. He fought in the ring and on the streets and probably at home as well. He also was a bouncer and a general hard man. The sort of person you wouldn’t like to mess with or meet in a dark alley.
Mum wasn’t big o
n boxing, as she had seen enough punches being thrown around the house I guess, but John and I, many years later in Elizabeth, used to love to sit and scream with Dad as he watched boxing on the television. We all did, even the girls. I remember being mesmerised as a young Cassius Clay rocked the world, stopping Sonny Liston in the seventh round to become world champion. Our television was as battered and broken as Sonny was by the end of the fight and only just managed to keep working until the last bell. I was chosen to hold the coat hanger in the air and act as an aerial and was even given the coveted job as the remote control for the volume while Dad and John ducked and weaved with the new champion as he floated around the ring like a ballet dancer.
Bang, bang.
‘What a jab. Hold that aerial up a wee bit higher, son.’
Bang, bang, bang.
‘I need a chair to get higher, Dad.’
Bang, bang.
‘Watch yer mooth, son. I can reach you from here.’
Bang, bang, bang.
‘I could run, Dad.’
Bang, bang.
‘I could get ye before ye could even think aboot runnin’. Ya cheeky wee bastard.’
Bang, bang, bang.
‘I’m quick, Dad.’
‘You’re no that quick, so shut it. I’m watchin’ the fight. What a right hand. Surely it must be all over. Quick, get oot the way, son.’
Bang, bang.
‘The picture’s gone. What happened? Move back where you were.’
Shhhhhhhh. Crackle. Bang, bang.
‘That’s it. Keep still.’
‘Sorry, Dad.’
Bang, bang
‘Nae bother, son.’
Every fight we saw, Dad would be rolling with the punches, weaving and lunging with the fighters on the box. It was like he felt every punch that was thrown. It must have been exhausting for him to watch, but he loved it and he instilled a love of boxing in all of us. Boxing in those days was not like the dirty, corrupt stuff that happens now that big money is involved, but the pure sport, man against man. Dad loved pure boxing and we thought it was beautiful too. He loved Sugar Ray Robinson and Cassius Clay. He’d tell us how fast hands and a quick brain could beat brute strength any time. He was a living testament to that, as he survived fights with guys twice his size all the time. He spoke quietly, never raised his voice at all, which led people to think they could take him, but when push came to shove he was deadly. He had survived the boxing ring, fighting the best in the world. And, more impressively, he survived on the streets of Glasgow where there were no rules. So he knew about death because he had faced it on many nights along the same streets where we lived and played childish games.
John was given a floor-to-ceiling punching bag and a pair of boxing gloves the day he was born. I think I might have got them as well. The girls were probably just given the gloves; they had us to belt into.
There seemed to be a lot of dark alleys in Glasgow and there were a lot of people you wouldn’t want to meet but unfortunately sometimes they lived next door. The kids in the same building as you could be as dangerous as anyone you met anywhere. Everyone was either in gangs or being tormented by gangs.
There were gangs on every street. They were all dressed the same, and it looked like the clothes had been passed down from brother to brother and sister to sister. Trousers were patched up and falling down. Shoes were scuffed until you could see the socks through the leather. Shirts were dirty with snotters wiped onto the sleeves from the kids’ constantly running noses. The faces all looked the same too. Reddish hair and pale and pasty skin covered in freckles and soot, with eyes that were constantly darting left to right looking out for trouble or the police.
I was too young to understand why we had to avoid the gangs, but I knew enough to be afraid of them. We were always told not to leave the street without Mum or Dad. By the age of four I had my first encounter with one of the gangs.
Myself and another kid of about the same age made the mistake of walking out of our street into the next without an escort. That was enough to put us in big danger. A gang of young guys somewhere between the ages of five and fifteen grabbed us and took us to the spare ground, an empty block where one or more of the tenement buildings had been demolished. They put us in a little lean-to shelter that workers probably used to get out of the rain.
Then they shouted, ‘Don’t move or we’ll fuckin’ murder ye.’
Then they started to throw rocks at us. I ducked and curled up, trying to protect myself, but was smashed by a few pieces of broken brick. I could feel blood running down onto my face. My mate was frozen stiff with fear.
Then they stopped for a minute and yelled, ‘You’ve got till we count tae five to run, then we’re gonnae throw bottles at yous.’
I remember telling my mate, ‘Get oot o’ here quick or we’re deid.’
Next thing I knew I was running as fast as I could, dodging a hail of rocks and glass, but I got away. My friend was still frozen and couldn’t move at all.
They pelted him with rocks and bottles until they were bored and then they cut him up and set fire to the shelter. He ended up in hospital for a long time. His family moved away, hopefully to somewhere nice, and I never saw him again. I am still left with feelings of guilt and shame for leaving my friend behind. What could I do? He should have run away with me.
Was life so bad in Scotland that even little kids had no chance? It seemed no one had a chance. I think that years of depression, war and poverty had dragged the whole of Northern Britain into the gutter and it was a long way back up out of it. They say that war is good for the economy and the morale of a country. It pulls the people together; they can all work hard to defeat the common enemy. But when it is over most people are left looking for jobs; there is no more work after munitions factories or the shipyards close down. That’s what happened in Scotland, especially in Glasgow. Shipbuilding stopped and so did work for more than half the population. They were left to scramble to make ends meet and feed their children.
When I moved to Adelaide, I had a lot of friends from all over the north of Britain. They all told the same stories and they had all brought the same problems to Australia with them. But I think no one brought more problems than the Scots.
CHAPTER TWO
next to nothing
Glasgow wasn’t horrible for us because we didn’t know any better. Everyone was the same as us. The streets around us weren’t pretty but they were our playground. It was home. If we wanted to play football, we would go out to the road and take off our jumpers and use them as goalposts and play right there in the middle of the road. When you’re a boy you have your favourite players but everyone in Scotland, boys and their fathers, wanted to be Denis Law. Everyone wanted to become a striker for Scotland. None of us wanted to be in goal. I would fight to be the centre forward. I wanted to stand just past the halfway line waiting on the ball to be passed through so I could strike. But there was no halfway line on the road and unless I could convince my brother John to be a defender no one would pass to me. I was just a kid.
‘I want tae be striker today,’ I would moan.
‘You were Denis Law yesterday and the day before. It’s ma turn, Jim,’ John would tell me.
‘But I’m too wee tae be in goal. You telt me, John.’
‘You’re too wee tae be playing at aw, so shut it and try tae look bigger, wid ye?’
‘I’m no playin’ anymore. I’m goin’ hame to tell Ma.’
‘You’re such a wean. Go on then, get up there and I’ll pass ye the ball. But ye better score or I’ll murder ye.’ (‘Wean’ is what they called kids in Scotland, by the way.)
Occasionally the game would be interrupted by a car or truck but that was fine.
The footpaths were where the girls played and were covered in strange hieroglyphics that only girls could understand; this is where they played hopscotch. The mums would walk up and down the footpaths parading their babies in these huge prams with big wheels – something like monster truc
ks for beginners, the kind you might see in the English movies of the time. They would talk about each other’s problems and gossip about each other’s husbands. Who was in jail and who had just got out and who was caught sleeping with whose wife. Pretending that they were better than each other. They would walk past the pub on the corner to see if their husbands were spending the money they needed to feed their kids, on booze. If they were, there wasn’t much they could do about it, not without causing a scene, not until they got home anyway. Then there would be trouble.
Mums would be going into the corner shops, trying to get credit so they could feed their kids, promising to pay it back at the end of the week but knowing that they probably wouldn’t be able to. Every day was living hand to mouth, surviving for the time being then not being able to sleep at night wondering how they would get through tomorrow. I think my mum cried herself to sleep on many a night, praying for just a little help, knowing no one was listening to her prayers. She was doubting herself and what was left of her faith. Mum was not a churchgoing person but like a lot of the people who lived around us she would end up on her knees, praying for any help she could get. Unfortunately, help never seemed to come. But that never stopped her lying awake in bed wishing things would change. Dad, on the other hand, drank himself to sleep and often ended up on his knees too.
You don’t get used to living permanently behind the eight ball – no matter how long you’ve done it, it doesn’t get easier. There is a constant sense of shame that eats away at you, making you feel that you’re just not good enough. Some people are so poor that they can’t even afford to feel shame; they have nothing. Unfortunately for us, we had next to nothing and were just poor enough to feel ashamed of everything.
The buildings were crumbling outside but inside the mums would be scrubbing the steps and cleaning the floors in an attempt to make their homes a little bit better for their kids. It was for their neighbours’ benefit too. They didn’t want anybody to know how much of a hard time they were having, but they were all going through the same things. Sometimes they would put window boxes on the windowsill with flowers growing in them to try to add some colour to their otherwise black and white existence. Even the flowers had a hard time seeing the sun I think. It seemed to be grey everywhere. The sky was grey. The streets were grey. Life was monochromic and depressing. These same streets had been the home to Scots and Irish for a hundred years and they had been spilling each other’s blood on them for as long as they had been there. I doubt that it ever felt safe.
Working Class Boy Page 2