Glasgow (31 page)

Vanity is as much a dominant motive in the slums as outside them. Johnnie had little to be proud of except his strong body and reckless spirit. He spent a lot of his leisure at the Green Gym, and much of his money on clothes. He was not ill-looking and in the Gorbals men and women too are very much judged by their appearance. A good suit of clothes wins a certain respect for the wearer. Johnnie wore ‘a whole suit' – that is to say, the coat and trousers were of the same navy blue cloth and had been sold together
as
a suit. His shoes were well polished, a bright ‘tony-red'. In the language of the Gorbals, he was ‘well put on' and proud of his ‘paraffin'. There was actually a paraffin dressing on his sleek black hair, and perhaps there may have been some association of ideas between slumland's passion for smoothed and glistening crops and its general term for a smart appearance.

But Johnnie would never have worried his head about the derivation of words. At school he had not even secured his ‘merit certificate', that minimum standard of education which the council had set. His failure to do so meant thirty evenings at night school when, by reason of his age, his normal ‘schuling' was at an end. Even a diligent lad can't contrive to learn a great deal in thirty evenings. Johnnie, utterly bored,
endured the night school as so much detention and learned nothing at all. He could read the racing papers and the football reports and he could do simple sums and he was satisfied that this was an adequate equipment for all practical purposes.

ARE YE DANCING? 1958
Jack House

To Presbyterians of yore, dancing was tantamount to devil worship. Why Glaswegians paid no heed to such nonsense ought perhaps to be the subject of deeper study. The influx of the Irish – whose feet can never be nailed down when a band begins to play – may have something to do with it. Historians of the city know that Glasgow's love of dancing is by no means recent. On the contrary, it has played an intrinsic part in its development. In the 1950s, while many took to the Great Outdoors an even greater number preferred the Great Indoors. As one keen tangoist recalled: ‘Many young men pass through a phase which has often been described by their parents and friends and sometimes even by themselves as “dancing mad” . . . the search for a mate and dancing go hand in hand.'

Dancing is tremendously popular in Glasgow and there is a higher proportion of dance halls to the population than anywhere else in the British Isles. The standard of dancing was considered, up till 1940, the best in Britain. Experts now say that the standard has deteriorated because of such ‘foreign' influences as the arrival of American soldiers and sailors. Although the standard may have deteriorated, the number of dancers is still enormous, and many of the patrons of the big ball-rooms attend four or five times a week. In a recent broadcast from Barrowland Dance Hall in the Gallowgate, a girl said that she danced seven nights a week – six nights at Barrowland and Sunday night at a special dance club.

There are more than 30 licensed dance halls in Glasgow and a large number of small halls where dances, as distinct from ‘dancing', are held. No dance hall in Glasgow is licensed for the sale of alcohol, and trouble is sometimes caused by young men bringing in bottles secretly and drinking from them in the lavatory. This is sternly discouraged. The occasional fights, followed by police court appearances, on Friday and Saturday nights are most often caused because doorkeepers will not allow ‘drunks' to enter.

Dennistoun Palais holds 1,700 dancers and is the biggest dance hall in Glasgow. The Plaza is renowned as the place where family parties go, particularly for twenty-first birthday celebrations. ‘Jiving' is not encouraged in any of the big dance halls but one, the Locarno, has experimented in having a special place for ‘jivers'.

Many private and club dances are held in Glasgow, in hotels, Masonic halls, community centres and church halls. Less than 30 years ago most churches would not countenance dances, and church youth clubs held what were euphemistically called ‘socials'. At some of these the number of dances was restricted to, say, four. But there was no restriction on ‘games', so the organisers would include The Grand Old Duke of York, the Eightsome Reel and items of a similar nature as games. Each of the four dances lasted for at least a quarter of an hour. Nowadays church youth clubs are, in the main, unrestricted, and no longer have to call their dances ‘socials'.

NORTH AND SOUTH OF THE RIVER, 1958
Jack House

Like most big cities, Glasgow is a patchwork of communities, some more distinct and protective of their identity than others. Jack House (1906–91), one of Glasgow's lustiest psalmists, was well aware of the offence he was likely to cause when, in his book
The Heart of Glasgow,
he ran out of space to cover south of the Clyde. Nor, he admitted, had he been able to deal with the ‘villages' of Glasgow. ‘But what can I do?' he wrote, as if pleading for mercy. And well he might for Glaswegians are forthright in asserting where exactly they come from and why it is a better place to live than elsewhere. Thus you will still find East Enders who talk of the West End as if it were Timbuctoo and vice versa and South Siders who refer to the North Side as if it were beyond Aberdeen. Which, of course, in their minds it is
.

Glasgow may not be the closely-knit city it was in 1901, but there is still a decided difference between the North and South sides of Glasgow – though it may not be as easy to distinguish between a Northerner from a Southerner as it was fifty or more years ago.

Outwardly the inhabitants of both sides of the River Clyde look the same. But most of them say flatly that they would not want to live on the other side of the river. There are numerous cases of South Side families who, for various reasons, have to ‘flit' to the North Side, but are
soon complaining about their new surroundings and often arranging to go back to the other side of the Clyde. This applies to all classes of Glaswegians. South Siders, in particular, attach some sort of magic to living south of the Clyde. Several South Siders, interviewed when they had returned to the south after a short sojourn in the north, complained about the ‘different air' on the north of the Clyde. A middle-class house-wife confessed she felt ‘unwell' all the time she was living in North Kelvinside. When she returned to Pollokshields, her health improved immediately. A Glasgow journalist, accustomed to living in Ibrox, said that he was ‘unsettled' when he had to reside in Hillhead.

The North Siders do not seem to worry so much about the change of air. Few North Siders have had to make the change to the South Side. The North Siders' attitude, however, is well exemplified in the case of the Citizens' Theatre. Most of the entertainment of Glasgow is situated north of the river. The only theatre on the other side is the Citizens'. Many North Siders say they will not go to the Citizens' Theatre because ‘it's so far away'. In actual fact, it is just across the Clyde and is well served by bus routes from the north and the west. From the centre of the city – Central Station, for example – the Citizens' Theatre takes less than a minute longer to reach than the King's Theatre, near Charing Cross. And you can get to the Citizens' Theatre more quickly than you can reach the Empress Theatre at St George's Cross. This has been pointed out many times to North Siders, particularly by the management of the Citizens' Theatre, but they still talk about the ‘distance' to the theatre, and the ‘difficulty' of getting there. South Siders, in the main,
must
cross the river to get their entertainment, and they do not appear to object to this. North Siders make exceptions, by the way, of the Plaza Palais de Danse and Crossmyloof Ice Rink. They never refer to ‘difficulties' with getting to these two places.

In Glasgow there is the customary feeling between East Enders and West Enders, but it is by no means as strong as the ‘differences' felt by South Siders and North Siders. This is partly because Glasgow originally spread to the East. The move to the West did not take place until nearly half way through the nineteenth century. By that time there were many well-established district communities in the East. The result is that, though, very broadly speaking, the West End is ‘well off' and the East End is ‘working class', the East Enders do not envy or look up to the Glaswegians of the West. It is in the East End particularly that the vestigial remains of ‘village' life are still to be found. Most of the districts of Glasgow that existed up to the First World War retain an independent ambience. In the East End, for example, inhabitants of adjacent districts like Shettleston and Tollcross are annoyed if outsiders mix
them up. Two brothers, well known Motor Rally drivers in Britain and on the Continent, expressed their exasperation at being referred to in newspaper reports as ‘Andy and Chris Neil of Shettleston'. They pointed out in the strongest terms that they did not come from Shettleston. They came from Tollcross.

BUD NEILL, 1958
Clifford Hanley

Originally from Partick, William ‘Bud' Neill (1911–70) moved in infancy with his family to Ayrshire, where he grew up. He first began to draw cartoons while working as a bus driver in Glasgow. In 1944, he started contributing to the
Evening Times.
His subject was Glasgow in all its mad and perverse idiosyncrasy. Neill's most famous character, and the one with whom his name is inextricably linked, Lobey Dosser, made his debut in 1949 in th
e Evening Times.
A Lobey Dosser in the Glasgow patois is a lodger who, not having the wherewithal to rent a room, must sleep in the ‘lobey', i.e. the lobby or hallway. Lobey is the bearded Sheriff of Calton Creek who strives to maintain law and order against the forces of evil, in particular ‘Rank Bajin'. There is a bronze statue of Lobey Dosser in Woodlands Road across from the Halt Bar, featuring Lobey and Rank astride El Fideldo, who is to Lobey what Rocinante is to Don Quixote
.

Bud Neill came of a comfortable Ayrshire family, but according to various stories he told me in my cups, he spent the first seven years of his life in Tibet, as a husky dog. Later, when doubts were cast on his ability to pull a sledge, he left Lhasa in a fit of pique, fitted with a two-stroke engine, and crossed the Sahara Desert in a cement-mixer.

‘That was before I joined the
Record
,' he explained. ‘From the Dalai Lama to the Dalai Record, ha! You didn't know that, boy, did you?'

‘I did,' I muttered thickly. ‘I was the second dog on the left.'

‘That's ma boay!' he shouted.

I met Bud while I was writing an unsuccessful radio series for Stewart and Mathew, the husband-and-wife comedy dancing act who graced the old Dave Willis Half-past-eight shows at the King's Theatre and are stars with the famous Fol-de-Rols. Charlie Stewart was a boyhood friend of Bud Neill, and also incidentally of Eric D. Clarke, another Ayrshire character who came to Glasgow to do his comic artist turn
and has been doing it and getting more and more boyish with it for over twenty years. Bud turned up in the King's Arms one afternoon when I was having a drink with my stars and mulling over the murderous notices we were getting in the
Evening News
. The artist was already a kind of cult among all social and intellectual strata in Glasgow.