The Bay City Rollers and Me

Picture the scene, it's 1975 and the girls are in the old school outdoor Victorian toilets standing beside the big radiators rubbing their hands for a smidgeon of heat and I walk in.I budge people up for some warmth on the thick painted cast iron that gives out a dull heat.

Someone shouted "The Bay City Rollers are coming to Glasgow".

I was stunned, I loved them! I wanted to go and see them. They were HUGE, everyone I know LOVED them. 

 "My dad got me two tickets and then we are going to The Albany Hotel to meet them" said this girl I knew called Donna.  

Everyone was excited at her news.

I piped up "I love them, I might go".

Donna flicked back her long hair, stared at me and laughed as she pushed me off the radiator and yelled "You can't even afford the school dinners, you eat out of bins Currie" and all her pals giggled and shoved me on the way out of the toilets. I blinked back tears. 

I hated her, she had everything I wanted like ...boobs, shiny long straight blonde hair and really fashionable clothes. I fucking hated her.

I was small, flat chested and had hair so curly and densely thick that no matter what style you got it cut, it went back to its original thicket of black matted wool. Who I am kidding? It was never professionally styled and cut, my mammy trimmed it regularly with the giant wallpaper scissors. 

How could a Bay City Roller ever fall in love with a child-like boyish girl with mismanaged hair and cardboard to block up the holes in her shoes?

I gripped the radiator hard and listened as the others all talked about getting tickets and making plans. I left the toilet with that horrible acceptance that I would never get the money to go. 

Life could be shit in 1975 for us poor ones.

Today I was introduced to Les McKeown from Bay City Rollers at a charity event "This is Janey Godley, she is great stand up comic" the very generous woman said as she nodded to Les. He shook my hand and said "Yea, I have seen your stuff, you are right funny, hiya"

That wee girl standing beside the radiator in 1975 with wet socks wishing she had boobs, untangled hair and the money for a Bay City Rollers ticket finally smiled. 

Fuck you Donna, where ever you are.

My Father's Day

Sunday will come and go and I will miss father's day as am off to London. So here is my tribute to my dad, don't worry he is still alive and kicking at 80 years old.

My daddy used to carry me over seaweed at beach holidays as I was utterly petrified of the seething bubbly alien mass covered in blue bottles. It was basically moving and buzzing embedded in the sand and the thought of standing on dirty flies scared me to death, so he would lift me up all the way down to the water.

Then as I saw the roaring ocean, I would need the toilet and he would carry me all the way back up the beach to do a pee, as I cried behind a big stone, convinced a blue bottle would come near my bare bum.

He had three other older kids to tend to, but he had to devote this entire time to me, probably worried sick his other kids were drowning.

That's my dad.

In the early 60s before anyone else had one, my daddy made me a skateboard. Yes, an actual skateboard with roller skate wheels attached to the bottom. I managed to stand on it, roll down a hill crashed into a parked lorry and smashed my two front teeth into my upper lip.

We had no car in inner city Glasgow, so he ran all the way to the doctors with me in his arms, spewing blood and teeth. He worked in a steel factory, five days a week, so this must have been his day off.

My dad could repair television's and radio's and even built a whole stereo system way before it's time and he taught me how to solder circuit boards.

One summer's day as he lay in bed off the night shift, 30 kids in our street played rounder's and a stray dog attacked me, biting into my flesh, my dad identified my scream from all the other kids. He leapt from his bed and ran with my bleeding hand to the doctors, I am sure you recognise a recurring theme here.

One winter night I was crossing the road to the church going to the Brownie's for my road safety badge, and yes....you guessed it, I got knocked down with a car.....my dad arrived on the scene and promptly attacked the speeding driver and sat in an ambulance with both me and the man he beat up for hitting his daughter with a car. He kept slapping the driver, all the way to the hospital. That's my dad.

My dad left my mum when I was 12 years old and every weekend he met me off the bus to give me money and share a supper. He reminded me how much he loved me and missed me.

The day my mother was found dead in the River Clyde my dad sat in my house and held me for hours as I sat in shock.

My dad walked the length of a hospital corridor the night I gave birth and cried out loud as the labour went onto for 48 hours or more. When he saw his granddaughter with her tufts of dark hair, he tenderly lifted her up and whispered "why did you take so long for me to hold you?".

When my daughter was ten she went missing after going to the shops and we had to call the police. You can imagine the terror and shock this caused.

For four hours she was in a new friend's garden in the West End of Glasgow oblivious to the trouble she had caused, and playing on a bike. My dad ran up and down the Byres Rd with a photo of Ashley, stopping everyone and asking them to look at the picture. The police didn't find Ashley, my dad did. She walked out of a garden and into his arms, wondering why her granddad was running about with a photo of her. He bought her a bike.

My dad sat in a court in 1996 and watched me give evidence against a man who sexually abused me as a kid, he wept buckets throughout the whole ordeal.  He stood outside the court room and waited for me as I walked out of the witness box and he apologised for not protecting me from this man who was his brother in law.

 He told me he was so proud of me for standing up there and telling the truth and being brave. I assured him he didn't need to apologise to me, that he was a great dad and I was proud of him.

The court officials all stood back as we both wept.

I hugged him tight and he whispered to me "want to leave here, go to the beach? Don't worry I will carry you over the seaweed"

Happy Father's Day Daddy.

The Woman on the Street

It was Christmas 1974 and Shettleston was knee deep in thick hard snow. The cold seeped in through the badly designed council window frames and the coal strikes coupled with the 3 day week, made us all feel what Russia must be like. We were hungry and freezing.

 

My mum and dad had just split up and it was rough going, the bedroom was chittering cold and my mum was deeply depressed, swaying between bitter rages and horrible weeping. I was 13 years old and didn't know how to cope. My big brother was worried as well, but at a loss as what to do, we were just kids.

 

I provided lots of hot mugs of tea as she sang Patsy Cline in an angry spitting voice. Passive/aggressive singing is something all the women in her circle were very good at, you haven't experienced rage till you have heard a Carpenters song screamed into your face at full beer breathe volume.

 

Mum was busy shouting at the Morecambe and Wise Christmas special "Stupid English bastards dancing with that poof Nureyev, this isn't even funny" proving she could be racist and homophobic it one sentence.

 

"Janey, black up and climb over the school yard wall and steal some coal, that bastard Janitor sells it, we may as well steal it, am freezing" she said. So I did. I put my hand up the chimney, blackened my face....did an Al Jolson song (it was the 70s my mammy needed a laugh) and went off stealing a bag of coal from the stockpile in the school yard down the road.

 

 I felt like the man from the Black Magic chocolate advert, all black and climbing over walls and being creepy.

 

I was headed home when I saw a woman sitting on the snow in the street. It was disconcerting, what was she doing? Did she fall? I got closer, put down my bag, pulled off my woollen hat and offered her my hand.

 

"Excuse me, you ok?" I said and she looked up at me and of course what she saw a small child with a blackened face and ragged clothes, carrying a sack of coal.

 

"ARRGGHHHH" she screamed and got up, drunkenly falling about and ran through the snow screaming "It's a wee black ghost, a wee dark ghost, it a wee black dead wean"

 

I just stood there and watched her stagger about running...she fell over and panicked, screaming, clawing at the snow and finally she got up and wobbled off. I waited ages watching her making her way up the street, people were staring at her.

 

Finally, I picked up my coal bag & I headed off home. We had soup for Christmas dinner and at least we would now have a fire and if my dad popped by with some cash (which I knew he would) we could have a good Boxing Day supper and maybe mammy would sing a song without the tears getting in the way.

 

So thanks for reading, if you want follow me on twitter @JaneyGodley for updates.

 

Janey Godley’s Podcast Episode 126

(Please be aware that this Podcast Contains strong language)

 

In episode 126 of Janey Godley's podcast, Janey is in London with her pal Monica. They chew the fat about sexuality, life, hopes and dreams. Monica tells us about her favourite holiday, the best and worst food she has ever eaten and what she would tell her 16yr old self.

 

Janey gives us a quick round up of this week's news, some debates about cougars and they women chat earnestly about vulnerability in teenage years. 

 

Mother and Daughter comedy team get to natter and the world gets to hear it on Janey Godley’s podcasts, expect some bawdy language and home truths, as Janey Godley and Ashley Storrie lead you down the roads less taken in their fantastic weekly podcast. Listen as mother and daughter banter, bait and burst with laughter.

 

Janey Godley Podcast at: Episode 126

 

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Things I did as a kid...

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.