Saturday Night's Alright for Peaches

Saturday Night's Alright for Peaches

‘Back water port, give way starboard!’ I commanded the lifeboat crew from my position abaft the thwarts, hoping to avoid a disaster and save lives. ‘Hello sailor!’ and ‘Thar she blows!’ shouted two middle-aged men slouched on a wooden bench in the public gardens on the shore. Shivering in the midst of dead rose bushes clad in discarded fish supper wrappers, they drank Tennent’s lager from cans decorated with saucy pictures of Kirkintilloch’s top glamour models wearing more make up than clothing. Watching and commenting on a dozen teenagers fannying about in a wee boat was the best entertainment they could have hoped for on a chilly February day. The words ‘Glasgow College of Nautical Studies’ written in black marker pen across the fronts of the teenagers’ bright yellow oilskins may as well have said ‘Please throw stones at us.’

The order I had shouted to my men had been the coxswain’s equivalent of sharp right, and it was action I considered necessary if we were to avoid a collision with one of the stone columns supporting the bridge that carried trains leaving Glasgow Central station for Motherwell, Carlisle and destinations beyond in the Deep South. I hadn’t intended it to be a source of mirth for people out doing their shopping. I’d seen the Alfred Hitchcock film adaptation of John Steinbeck’s Lifeboat and could only shake my head in disbelief at how easy it had been for the nine survivors adrift in the North Atlantic after their cargo ship had been torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat. They had sunshine and they didn’t have to endure bombardment from bridges by roosting pigeons or gobby little raggy-arsed kids.

At Govan, the Clyde became a much busier river. Without admitting it to the rest of the world we considered ourselves a hazard to shipping, so we’d alter course and head back towards the safety and comfort of our davits. From that point another member of our group would take command for the upstream passage and the coxswain from the outward leg could enjoy the remainder of the voyage as a simple carefree oarsman with cold, wet and blistered hands.

In 1978 this was how Merchant Navy navigation officer cadets filled their Thursday afternoons.

***

The fine body of men (plus Shirley who worked in the office) who ran Glasgow College of Nautical Studies had the job of taking spotty juveniles and moulding them into Merchant Navy officers. This was no easy task as the individual shipping lines who had recruited the youths each had a policy of taking on only those who were a bit lippy, fond of a drink and likely to be able to look after themselves in foreign ports. The personnel manager at the company that offered me a contract said that he had done so on the condition that I get three ‘A’ level passes and a tattoo in a painful place. I got my tattoo in Hull.

It was important that college conditions mirrored as closely as possible the life we had become accustomed to during the twelve months of on-board training we had already undergone since leaving school. In this respect, in his role as warden of the hostel directly across the road from the college, Mr MacMicking ran a tight ship. Our single occupancy rooms were referred to as cabins to make us feel at home, though mine was the first cabin I had had with a view from the window that included a car park, a railway viaduct and two large blocks of council flats.

In the evening of our arrival, a welcome meeting took place in the dining room at which we were offered more Fine Fare orange squash and flesh-coloured mini sausage rolls than a salty sea dog could handle, while details of housekeeping and safety were explained to us. The main points were that it was forbidden for us to leave the laundry room until any wash cycle we had started was complete, and that if we were going to get into a fight we should do so during the week because the casualty department at Glasgow Royal Infirmary got very busy on a weekend, as did Mr MacMicking himself who was responsible for our welfare outside of college hours.

Both college and hostel were relatively new buildings constructed on one of the first patches of land in the Gorbals to have had old tenement blocks demolished as part of a slum clearance scheme. Other bits of the notorious estate threateningly remained. We were strongly advised that when leaving the site in our leisure time we should turn left into Thistle Street and proceed along the riverside walkways of the Broomielaw to the city centre. Under no circumstances were we to turn right into the Gorbals.

What Mr MacMicking didn’t appreciate was that on foot it took us almost twenty minutes to reach the nearest pub if we turned left, but by turning right we could be sitting in the Clelland Bar with a pint of heavy in front of us in under ten minutes. This bar was so close to the hostel that it fell right into the centre of the panoramic vista observed from my cabin window. Frequented almost entirely by Celtic fans, the walls were decorated with green, white and brown football memorabilia that had absorbed so much cigarette smoke down the years that nobody was ever tempted to steal it, as to touch any item would cause the thief instant chronic lung disease. The owner was a friendly soul who organised supporters’ buses to the Parkhead stadium on match days, and he even agreed to serve our physics teacher who was a self-confessed Aberdeen fan and in desperate need of a drink at the end of days spent trying to teach the likes of us about the particle model of matter.

We felt safe in the Clelland as there was never even a sniff of trouble. A few months after we had finished our time at college, a bomb planted by the Scottish Battalion of the U.V.F. (Ulster Volunteer Force) destroyed our old haunt. Fortunately, no lives were lost, but I heard from a friend that Mr MacMicking lost his shit.  

***

On nearby Ballater Street a lovely woman called Janet, who was as old as the Trossachs and had a smile on her like a Shettleston cat, ran a wee shop stocked with just about everything a young navigation officer cadet could ever wish for. Her emporium was affectionately known as ‘Janet’s wee shop’, at least by us. On Friday dinnertimes we’d wander over there from the college to buy bottles of Irn Bru and KitKats for health reasons. She knew exactly why we were doing this and proudly referred to us as her boys, squeezing our hands as she gave us our change.

Barr’s Irn Bru was said to be ‘made in Scotland from girders’ but it also contained enormous amounts of sugar and consequently it was also claimed that it had been scientifically proven to be the perfect hangover cure. Its big problem was that it was really fizzy which made it difficult to swallow in large quantities. To get round this we’d take our Friday dinnertime bottles to our hostel cabins and remove the caps so that by the time we were in need of such medical assistance it had gone completely flat and would glide down our throats on Saturday mornings as easily as the McEwan's Export had on Friday nights. The consumption of a Friday evening pre-drinks KitKat would line the alcohol abuser’s stomach so that only one bottle of Irn Bru was required per hangover.

Close to Janet’s wee shop was a branch of the Clydesdale Bank. On our Irn Bru run we’d pop in there to cash a cheque to withdraw funds to finance our weekend’s fun. People often joke about the ink still being wet on new banknotes but at the Clydesdale this really was the case. To demonstrate that people responsible for driving big ships all around the world were still capable of acting in an immature way, we’d take great delight in rubbing the notes between thumbs and index fingers to smudge the face of Robert the Bruce dressed up in his heavy metal suit of armour in the pictures that graced both sides. The bank clerks who had dispensed the cash would give cheeky smiles, suggesting that they’d have loved to have done the same themselves but had been warned against it by their boss.

In 1978, ten Scottish pounds were generally considered to be sufficient to see a Merchant Navy navigation officer cadet through a wild weekend, but read on!    

***

In my head I’d always hear Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street playing (iconic saxophone riff and all) as I walked down Jamaica Street towards the river and Glasgow Bridge at the end of a solo Saturday morning shopping expedition. Baker rhymed with Jamaica, Gerry was a local boy, and his classic song was in the music charts at that time, so it seemed like the perfect tune to be humming.

I’ve never been fond of city centres during the hours that the shops are open so I only ever went there to stock up on essentials, such as large and small vinyl records by the punk bands that were becoming ever more fashionable. This was a time-consuming exercise requiring great dedication as Glasgow had so many record shops. I might have also invested in a Scotch pie or a Rezillos tee shirt before popping into Lewis’s on Argyle Street to make use of their very popular in-store branch of the Cooperative Bank. There I could top up my supply of weekend spending money that had become strangely diminished, even though the weekend had been underway for under a day. To my knowledge it was the only bank in the whole of Britain that was open for business on a Saturday afternoon, and cash machines set in walls were still only the stuff of dystopian novels, so it became an automatic port of call and lifeline for the section of the city’s population that had both a job and a liking for a few bevvies on a Friday night.

On my way back to the hostel I’d call in at the Cathadhmara bar (more commonly known as the Cath) in Dunlop Street for a cheeky pint. Members of the seafaring fraternity would call such a drink a livener.  On the days that I was trying hard to be sensible I’d leave this stage of the proceedings until as near to the three o’clock closing bell as I could as there would invariably be somebody in there that I knew from the nautical college. Such people would always be cheerful and jolly and hellbent on talking me into doing something that wasn’t really a good idea when I had nautical studies related studying to be getting on with. Ship Stability was a difficult subject to digest and, if any progress was to be made with it at all, it was quite important that I was relatively stable myself in both the physical and mental senses of the word. The Cath’s customers’ list of tempting titbits on offer would include having a second pint, having a second and third and possibly fourth pint, going to a football match, going to a cinema, or going to Janet’s wee shop to buy a bottle of Irn Bru for Sunday morning recovery purposes. Quite incredibly, the Irn Bru option was generally the least damaging as it would include a period of civilised behaviour for a few hours until the pubs reopened in the evening.

***

In 1978, Saturday night fun was restricted to the hours between six and eleven-ish, except for those who had something better to do than to go to the pub. My friends and I had bad reputations to keep up, so it was the pub for us every time. Not wanting to appear desperate for a drink, we’d delay our arrival until five minutes after opening time and only stay for half an hour. Then, as Glasgow was coming to life and we were out in it, we’d spend the next half hour in the next pub, and so on until someone had become so full of the strong drink that they’d suggest we move on to a night club.  

Joanna’s in Bath Street was usually the place we’d settle for. It wasn’t very good but for that reason they’d admit our sort, whereas the other nicer places, where you could expect to meet nice people, wouldn’t entertain us. As we piled into Joanna’s it was as if the twenty-odd-stone, scar-faced, shaven-headed, tattooed boneheads dressed in black who enforced the strict door policy were afraid of us. Had they not let us in they’d have been doing us a favour as the drinks were pricey, the music was of the cheesy disco variety (7-6-5-4-3-2-1 Blow Your Whistle, for example) and the young ladies swaying about on the dance floor didn’t look much different to the doormen themselves. But being there (we lied to ourselves) was better than sitting in the lounge at the college hostel watching Starsky and Hutch followed by Dunfermline Athletic and St Mirren on a black and white television.

In 1978 a licence to sell beers, wines and spirits after midnight could only be issued to establishments that served food. To get round this technicality, night clubs would offer some sort of free snacks to their clientele or sell scampi and chips in a basket. In a dark corner of Joanna’s you’d find a Formica-topped table groaning under the weight of dozens of small Pyrex dishes containing Fine Fare peach slices in syrup. Two boneheads temporarily relieved from door duty would gently remind us that if we didn’t eat their canned loopholes we’d be ejected from the premises. My friend Roddy once tried to explain that he couldn’t enjoy them without a bit of Carnation evaporated milk because that’s how his granny had always served tinned fruit for the family on Sunday teatimes in Stornoway. Twenty minutes later Roddy was watching Dunfermline Athletic and St Mirren on a black and white television.

Towards the end of each month, when funds were low, we’d go to the Highlander’s Institute in Berkeley Street because it was cheaper. My Scottish companions complained bitterly about the teuchter music from the Highlands and Islands as people clad entirely in tartan would, under fierce bright lights, dance and sing along to songs like We're No Awa' Tae Bide Awa' or Donald Where’s Your Troosers? But for me this was no worse than the devil’s disco dross we’d otherwise be subjected to at the trendy nite scene just down the road. We never stayed beyond midnight because their idea of a free snack was salty porridge that had been prepared a month earlier, wrapped in newspaper and stored in the dresser drawer.

***

Working on the big ships I travelled the world and visited many a fascinating place, but when I’m asked which was my favourite I tend to say Glasgow. I had the time of my life there, meeting many interesting people, most of whom were absolutely lovely. Roughing it on outward bounding weekends in the Highlands, going to some incredible gigs (including David Bowie, Thin Lizzy, the Skids and the Corries) and trying food and drink I’d never tasted before, all added to the adventure. I lost my heart to a Vietnamese restaurant and its staff who had all fled a village in the Mekong Delta at the end of the war with America to introduce me to good quality French and Italian wine. At the other end of the vintner’s scale, with a friend, I once shared a bottle of Eldorado fortified wine that was very popular with the jakey community and more commonly known as electric soup. In those days there were none of the deep-fried Mars Bars that I’ve heard so much about since, but at the late night takeaway food vans they had deep-fried black pudding, and in St Enoch Square there was a pub called the Mars Bar.

Almost forty years later, I returned for a couple of days. During my visit I was saddened to see that Glasgow College of Nautical Studies had been converted into an adult education centre, the Clelland Bar was a mere patch of grass, the Cathadhmara had been demolished and replaced with a dental implant clinic, the site of Janet’s wee shop had been swallowed up by a Premier Inn, and Mr MacMicking played the bagpipes for pennies in his hat outside Buchanan Bus Station. And I was totally mystified by the fact that Barr’s had launched a new product called Sugar-Free Irn Bru. What use could that be to anybody?

I also saw that Glasgow had a huge gothic cathedral that had been founded in the twelfth century, an imposing Victorian Necropolis, the Willow Tearooms designed in Edwardian times by internationally renowned architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh, numerous museums and art galleries, ornate nineteenth century merchants’ halls, and botanical gardens with an ornate antique hot house at their centre. I hadn’t seen any of those places during the halcyon days of 1978 that I’d spent at my beloved seat of learning. I assumed they must have all been new.

It’s argued that the Saracen Head, established in 1755, is Glasgow’s oldest pub and down the years it has been frequented by such notable figures as Robert Burns, Samuel Johnson and William Wordsworth. It stands less than a mile from the hostel where I’d stayed in Thistle Street, but its existence came as a complete surprise to me on that last visit. As I swilled back a final deoch an dorais in the cosy and serenely atmospheric old bar, my mind was puzzled by how much a city could have changed in under half a century. Or perhaps it was me and my mind that had changed.

Image: My own photograph of the exotic view from my college cabin window.