Shoes Were For Sunday (5 page)

So we saw nothing to cause a raised eyebrow when we chanted as we ran through the closes:

A hundred and ninety-nine,

Ma faither fell in the bine,

Ma mother came oot wi’ the washin’ cloot,

An’ skelped his bare behind!

One which caused us great hilarity because of the cheeky wee soldier’s behaviour in church was:

Ma wee laud’s a sojer,

He comes fae Maryhull,

He gets his pey on Friday night,

An’ buys a hauf-a-jull.

He goes tae church on Sundays,

A hauf an ’oor late.

He pulls the buttons aff his shirt,

An’ pits them in the plate!

And there was one we used to act, just showing our heads out of the staircase window, as though we weren’t properly dressed and daren’t lean out farther:

Ah’m no’ comin’ oot the noo, the noo,

Ah’m no’ comin’ oot the noo.

Ah’m very sorry Lizzie MacKay, for disappointin’ you.

Ma mother’s away wi’ ma claes tae the pawn

To raise a bob or two.

An’ ah’ve juist a fur aroon’ ma neck,

So ah’m no’ comin’ oot the noo.

In our songs it was the wives who left the husbands, for there was something funny in a man being left to look after the house.

There was a lilting one which went:

Ma wife ran awa’ an’ left me,

Left me a’ ma lane.

Ah’m a simple chap.

Ah widnae care a rap,

If she hadnae run awa’ an’ left the wean.

And a slower chant, which we sang in a slurred tone as if we’d had a wee bit too much to drink:

Wa’s comin’ wi’ me?

Ah’m oot on the spree.

Ma wife’s awa’ on the train,

Ah hope ah niver see her again.

Ah’m havin’ the time of my life,

Plenty of L.S.D.,

I’m off the teetotal,

I’ve ta’en tae the bottle.

So wha’s comin’ wi’ me?

And a nice one for singing with a sob in the throat was:

Ah’ve got the dishes tae wash,

An’ the flairs tae scrub.

Nicht an’ day ah’m niver away

Fae the washin’ tub.

She
does whitever she likes,

An’ ah dae the best ah can.

Jimmy McPhee can easily see

Ah’m a mere, mere, man.

These were the Glasgow back-court songs which we added to our repertoire of the games played all over the country at their appropriate season. ‘Queen Mary, Queen Mary my age is sixteen’, ‘Broken bridges falling down’, ‘The Bonnie bunch o’ Roses’, ‘Down in yonder valley where the green grass grows’, and ‘Water water wallflower, growing up so high’. We moved delicately through the movements, oblivious of mothers and grannies who occasionally glanced our way from their tenement windows, self-absorbed and transported into a graceful mannered world.

We were merciless on those who couldn’t or wouldn’t learn the movements fast enough, and who spoilt the rhythm, and we’d pounce on the hapless novice and put her through it again and again until she got fed up. She’d stalk away from us and walk to the middle of the back court and address herself to an upper window, ‘Mammy, throw us ower a piece.’ We pretended to ignore her and our own dawning hunger, and she went on repeating her monotonous chant till a window was thrown up, a head appeared briefly, disappeared, and then a paper bag sailed earthwards, to land on the baked clay of the back court with a most satisfying smack. It was a lovely sound to our ears. A sound which meant cut fresh bread spread with margarine or, in odd moments of affluence, butter, or, favourite choice of the entire back-court children, a delicious layer of home-made raspberry or strawberry jam.

When the hungry one returned to the group the sight of her drooling jaws sent several more strolling to the centre of the back court to take up the cry, and before long only the most dedicated girls were acting out their fantasies in the singing games – the others had abandoned themselves to the enjoyment of their jeely pieces.

I don’t know what other mothers thought of this behaviour, but my grannie felt it was extremely vulgar (we both knew the word now, and it could be applied to many things). She sternly forbade me to indulge in it. Only if I could plead that I was actually starving, say
on my return from the swimming baths, did I dare find courage to raise my voice and give vent to the familiar cry.

Up would go the window, and Grannie’s outraged face would appear between sill and sash. ‘Wheest, you limmer, haud yer tongue. If you want a piece you’ll have to come up an’ get it.’ And the window was slammed down. This was real strategy on her part, for she knew I’d have to be really hungry to climb four flights of stairs and face her irritation at being stopped in the middle of her housework. And nothing short of real hunger would let her encourage me to nibble between meals and put me off the real food she was preparing for my growth and enjoyment.

Usually her ruse worked, and I’d turn despondently away, kicking the stones and pretending I didn’t care, while the others jeered at me, their mouths stuffed with bread.

Sometimes, however, when she was in an indulgent mood, Grannie would spread two pieces of thin white bread with fresh margarine or, if we were having an extravagant week with my mother’s overtime money, a thin scraping of fresh butter, which was as rare as caviare on our budget, wrap it in a white paper bag and send it plummeting towards me. The thrill of sharing the ‘piece’ with the other children invested the food with a sort of magic, and never did bread eaten at a prosaic table taste so satisfying or delicious. Like the ‘chittering bite’ eaten at the baths, the back-court piece
had a flavour all its own, which was never recaptured elsewhere.

The height of luxury was reached when on rare occasions we were given two tea biscuits pressed together, with fresh butter squeezing through the tiny holes, making a most agreeable pattern. It was no trouble to climb the stairs for this treat, for if they broke in their flight from window to back court the artistic effect of the smooth disc of buttery points was lost, and I enjoyed looking at it nearly as much as eating it.

Once, in a flight of exotic fancy, somebody put half a bar of cream chocolate between the bread and butter, and we watched her with awe as she bit through this splendid mixture. I tried it myself at the very first opportunity, i.e., when I could bring myself to use fourpence from my savings as a birthday treat, and I shivered with delight at my extravagance rather than with pleasure at the flavour.

In the same field of gourmet experiment was ‘a piece on chips’. Dieticians would have shuddered at all this starch, but to our palates there was something at once filling and exciting about the flavour of the deep fried potatoes which melted the butter as they were pressed between the slices of buttered bread.

Another great treat was ‘a piece on condensed milk’. Sickly, sweet, but different in the most acceptable sense of the word. And, of course, ‘a piece on sugar’ or ‘sugar and oatmeal’ was delicious, although some spoil-sports warned us that it would give us all worms! I never knew
anybody who had worms, although I’d often seen worm-cakes in the chemist, and a spice of danger was added to enjoyment as we dipped buttered pieces into wee paper pokes of mixed meal and sugar.

‘A piece on black treacle’ was a rare delight, but this had to be eaten quickly, before the treacle seeped into the bread and turned it a horrible fawn colour which ruined enjoyment. Golden syrup made a lovely piece, and caraway seeds a strange one which I tried hard to like because Grannie ate hers with such obvious relish.

We never aspired to a sandwich in the true sense. We never dreamt of meat, or cheese, or eggs, or fish. They were real meals, to be eaten at dinner-time or tea-time, and not lightly to be consumed for fun. No, for between meals it had to be sweet and simple spreads, and all that sugar and treacle and syrup seemed to give us boundless energy for the dozens of thrilling, absorbing games which filled the endless leisure hours.

The Cooperative Store was the hub of our shopping activities. How else could working-class people shop on credit, and earn a little dividend at the same time? It always seemed to be packed with customers. In all the years I ran the messages for Grannie I never remember the shop being empty. Along one side ran the long mahogany counter with female clerks perched on high stools, whose job it was to write down our orders in our ‘store’ books. Along the opposite side ran the long wooden counter attended by the serving grocers, usually male. In the territory in between there was
constant movement as customers moved over to be served, where boys barged back and forth with huge baskets balanced on their heads, filled with ‘delivery orders’, and men staggered in under heavy loads of steaming bread, and where customers finally tottered out with their filled shopping baskets.

When you arrived at the shop you dropped your ‘book’ in the slotted box at the end of the mahogany counter, and a quick glance showed if there would be time for a game of peever or ball-beds on the pavement outside before your name would be called. This risk had to be weighed very carefully, for if you missed your turn your book went to the end of the queue again. Ball-beds were a special temptation, as well as a time hazard, for the ‘beds’ had to be drawn on the pavement with chalk, the names of the players put in little artistically scalloped compartments at the top end of the beds, and then we took turns to bounce our ball in an intricate pattern from one bed to another according to the numbered squares, without touching a single line with either feet or ball. You could only chance this delightful time-consuming game if there was a huge stack of books in the box ahead of you. So sometimes it was safer to stay inside the shop and play at ‘guesses’, and as our Co-op only changed its display about once a month, the children playing ‘guesses’ knew the stock better than the grocer. It was well-nigh impossible to surprise an opponent with a new item, so you were reduced to tricks like ‘
SOTF
’ which meant ‘sawdust on
the floor’ – technically this wasn’t allowed, but such infringements of the rules were a great test of ingenuity, and the variations endless.

The grown-ups drove us to a frenzy with their endless chatter with the female clerks as they gave orders. There was an atmosphere in the Co-op unlike any other shop. With books having names and addresses clearly displayed, everyone was known by name, and it seemed to us that getting the messages entered in books and ledgers was the last thought in the minds of women on both sides of the counter. While we fidgeted, not daring to leave because it was getting near our turn, details would be exchanged of the latest wedding, or funeral, or Mrs So-an-So’s operation, or the latest baby, etc., etc. We suffered in silence, for the slightest bit of cheek soon brought a clout on the ear from an outraged adult. All mothers were united in their treatment of impudent kids, and a skelp from a stranger was no novelty in our world. Wild as we were in many ways, we had to keep our place in the presence of grown-ups, and nobody thought we would come to any harm by repressing our impatience.

The only thing that made the gossiping women move, tut-tutting with annoyance, was when it drew near lunchtime or evening closing time, and the ritual of the sawdust-sweeping began. We children loved it, of course, if only as a diversion. Out from the back shop appeared the boy, importantly swinging a bottle full of water with a pierced cork stopper, and how we admired
and envied him as he swung it expertly, scattering the clean shower over the sawdust floor. It was one of my fiercest ambitions to be allowed to wield that bottle, and watch the women jump as the splashes hit their solid legs. When I first saw this operation I imagined it was vinegar the boy was using, for my only other experience of a pierced cork stopper was in the fish-and-chip shop, but even the later discovery that it was only water didn’t put me off.

Having laid the dust expertly, the boy then briskly swept up all the dirty sawdust, using a long-handled stiff broom, and customers who’d escaped the water leaped out of his way as his sweeps grew longer and wider. When all was clean, he reappeared with a square biscuit tin filled with clean sawdust which he deftly scattered over the entire floor. It was as good as a circus, and in our eyes he was the star turn.

When I first started shopping for Grannie I was so wee that I had to stand on my basket to see over the counter to make sure I wasn’t being given short weight, hard bacon or outside loaves. As I grew a few inches, the basket turned over on its side was high enough, and then at long last the glorious day arrived, after a holiday at the seaside, when I found I could stand with my feet in the sawdust and rest my chin on the counter and see absolutely everything without any help at all. It was at the Co-op that I learned to accept teasing about my height and my name. ‘Weir,’ the assistant called out as my turn came to be served. Then, holding up two black
puddings and winking all round, he would say, ‘This is a wee-er black pudding than that one, so I think your grannie would like it better.’ The laughter was good-natured and I enjoyed the joke too.

I loved seeing the new bread being delivered. It arrived in long rows, and as each two-pound loaf was sold, it was separated from its neighbours in most satisfactory clouds of steam.

In the back shop, potatoes were housed in a huge bunker which had a little sliding door in the front, near the bottom, just large enough for the ‘tottie-boy’ to push in his shovel and rattle down the necessary amount, which he’d toss on to a large scale standing beside the bunker. This was another enviable task performed by the sawdust boy. He seldom had to alter the weights, for nearly everybody in our tenements bought a quarter of a stone. If his sharp shovel was careless it would cut into a potato and savagely cut and blacken it, causing Grannie to tut-tut angrily if my watchful eye had missed it. I always enjoyed my glimpses of the back shop, for the bunker and the big shovel, the all-enveloping heavy apron worn by the boy, and the earthiness of the potatoes combined to create an atmosphere very different from the dull ordinariness of the rest of the shop.