Back in the late 60s and 70s we didn’t have mobile phones or computer games, our politicians were toffy old upper class English men who sailed yachts (oh hang on that is today as well) and our pop charts were dominated with men in their 40s singing about Love and Marriage or stabbing women to death who happened to laugh at you and had the unfortunate name Delilah. It was different times.
We had yet to see children’s TV show that didn’t
have really old people in upper class English voices stroking shiny dogs or
they were riding about on ponies, both completely alien to an inner city
Glasgow kid. Our accent wasn’t on the telly (much the same way as today am
afraid) the comedians back then were all mainly English men in suits and short
hair like bank clerks telling jokes about women and how things annoyed them,
not many female comics were on, they mostly sang songs (much the same as today
actually).
The main difference was as Glasgow kids we were
inherently attracted to danger. Well I was, I liked nothing more than to hang
off the back of a milk lorry from the milk bottle factory in my street. Those
long low flat back growling old trucks were just begging for kids to jump and
hang onto for a free ride down to the main road, where we hopped off before
they turned.
Sometimes they would stall or bump and we would fall
off and get a ‘wee injury’ nothing that some licking and rubbing with dirty
mouths and filthy sleeves couldn’t fix.
We had a swathe of empty derelict tenements on my
street and we used to go in there and strip out the cables and sell them to the
local scrap metal for money. It was a dangerous practice as the derelict houses
were crumbling and the floors often gave way. One day I went in with my pals up
to the third landing, they always stood on the perimeter of a room (safest bit)
and edge along the walls till we got to the side of the fireplace were the
wiring was exposed. I pulled fiercely on a thick wire, got a violent electric
shock, was thrown into the middle of the floor which promptly gave way and I
fell into the house below. It was like a Laurel and Hardy sketch from
Hollywood. I lay in the cloud of dust and realised I was in old Mr Barclay’s
flat, stood up, laughed and shouted up “Old Mr Barclay has left some shoes in his
house” and all my pals came down to join me. I don’t recall suffering an injury
or catching a disease from the rancid rat piss or bugs that lived on the floor
of the empty 1860’s building. I was a Glasgow kid and survived another day.
We stroked strange angry dogs, trapped violent wasps
in jars, flattened penny’s under fast trains, swam in a rat infested chemical
waste streams, swung across dangerous open gully’s on rope swings, set fire to
abandoned cars, crept into drunken men’s houses to collect valuable empty
bottles to exchange for cash, slid down sharp snowy hills on tea trays, and
avoided the creepy parky’s who had a dirty bothy and a penchant for showing his
cock in swing parks. We survived.
I don’t have asthma, never had a back pain, don’t
have skin allergies, am not lactose intolerant, rarely get a flu and I think
it’s all down to drinking in the dirty burn near my house.
We and I include me in this have raised our kids in
an atmosphere of fear and cleanliness, they will never know the delight of
hanging off the back of a fast moving lorry.....and maybe thats for the best!
So thanks for reading, if you want follow me on
twitter @JaneyGodley for updates.
