EAT YEH

Chained outside McGinlay’s coal yard—a dog called EAT YEH, the size of a small bison. Howling, choking and mad eyed to get at you. EAT YEH had a purpose in life. To strip your arse of flesh like an oil company setting up a rig on pristine forest. Squeezing blood from your pain in a frenzy that left you marked for life. This was where McGinlay laboured mightly.

McGinlay’s coal yard was on the lower tier. Footpaths on the canal, up above it. The tunnel from Singers Road that runs underneath the canal, took you onto Trafalgar Street. Older tenements on Dumbarton Road ran parallel with the yard.

Yards had spiked fences, or broken-glass parapets, or both. McGinlay’s yard was no different. Some had barbed wire. They all had a hut or cabin with a window you couldn’t see through, even if you wanted to look.

McGinley, a young guy that went to work in the morning when it was dark. Came back when it was dark. And it was always raining. Bags of coal rolled on and off his shoulder. Sooty—not, yet bloom of fat—face. A bit of patter for the better customers that would slip him a few bob. Only his white eyes showing in daylight.

His speciality was Al Jolson and singing Mammy, how I love you, how I love you…How I love you, my sweet old Mammy. His heartstrings tangled around Albammy.

But that was only after a few drinks. McGinlay looked at drink the way EAT YEH looked at our arse coming closer and closer followed by a flock of lambs.

McGinlay lost his bite. His hair went the same way. Lost his height. Thread veins purpled the bridge of his nose and gouched his cheeks. His stomach went travelling to Bermuda. Shirt and tie hung in the faded slack sack of a pinstripe suit. Shiny black shoes and a gumsy smile.

He patrolled the pavement between The Club Bar, Mackintoshes, and the bookies. Like the Bermuda Triangle, and the b’roo, he made men disappear.

My Uncle Tom, in particular, with his slicked-back hair, would regularly be reported missing, possibly abducted. Days and weeks, unsighted.

My da went out with a fiver. Unfortunately, there were no magnetic anomalies that made him crash, never to return. No alien abductions. His feet never touched Atlantis, which sucked him inward. The way the Atlantis Bar at the top of the hill could, and infrequently, did. Piracy was on the decline. People were too busy sitting on the couch with a can of lager and their fags watching Bruce Forsyth and The Generation Game. Time warps and vortexes that transported men to other dimensions or time periods was on the other side and on the slide. ‘Beam me up, Scotty.’

Much like the shine on McGinlay’s shoes going out of fashion, even the Dalmuir triangle lost its lustre. He was reduced to crumbs. Watching DCR playing at 10am on the gravel park adjoined to St Stephen’s Primary School. McGinley won a trophy for the first time in his life. Supporter of the year awarded in a pitch-side ceremony to DCR’s only supporter. Even a gumsy Eat Yeh would have turned away from the panting and posturing around the ref on the pitch and tried to climb the nearest tree and flung himself off. But McGinlay was always game for the underdogs. He had a trophy was a trophy to stick on the mantelpiece for Nan to polish the plastic until it didn’t shine.

Prime Minister Edward Heath made a dramatic, last-minute telly appeal to Kwai Chang Caine or David Carradine, or whatever long-haired Shaolin monk was wearing the pyjamas, to come and Kung Fu the miners, who were always on strike. Climb the ladder of modernity. Even the firemen went on strike. But seismic activity in the Dalmuir Triangle began to pick up until there was a firestorm.

McGinlay noticed the signs. People he wouldn’t normally expect to see being sucked into the vortex weren’t avoiding him, but bumping gums and sidling up beside him. Asking him about this horse they’d heard about. And did McGinley know how to fill in a bookie slip?

Murder it was. That’s what the bookies called it. Red Rum spelled backwards. When it wasn’t romping home as winner, it was coming second. Only a fool wouldn’t back it each-way.McGinley had the ability to make a fiver into a week’s wages, fifty quid. I even think my dad smiled. Glory Alleluia