My uncles and aunt still stayed at home, but my dad was living elsewhere with my stepmum. There were only three bedrooms upstairs so I was probably sharing a room with my grandparents as I was only five and wouldn't have taken up much space.
With our own private front and back gardens, I would kick my football about without disturbing anyone, although my grandad wasn't a keen gardener and often the grass at the back was waist high. Across from our house there stood a block of flats, four storeys high (now gone) where I would play with a new friend I had made. Every week I would go over to watch The Lone Ranger at his place and we would re-enact the episode we had watched.
At home, there was the novelty of sliding down the bannister, which was a new experience, or sliding down the stairs on anything that would act as a sledge. It was all good fun and contributed to the hub of noise that was ever present.
Drylaw, like Pilton, was a large sprawl of council houses that had began in the post war era. The council started moving the population out of the centre of the city into peripheral areas as part of a re-housing programme. As part of the development, there were lots of parkland areas provided, but there was very little in the way of swing parks or activities for children. But my uncle Jack would often take me along to one of the parks to play football.
Jack was a live wire, always cracking jokes through his handlebar moustache and, with his brother, winding me up and playing tricks. I was mesmerised by his trick where he placed some cigarette ash on the palm of his hand which he blew off, only to appear on the back of his hand. Both Jack and Murdo, unfortunately, had their father's hair and they were already showing signs of receding hairlines in their twenties. As was common at the time, the swept over look was popular with big, thick plates of side burns. They both smoked like chimneys, as did gran and grandad. In fact Jean was the only one who didn't smoke, but that didn't stop the house making you feel like you were in a constant state of smog.
Grandad was a small, bald-headed figure, with a distinctive hooked nose that both his sons had inherited, who seemed to remain permanently fixed to the armchair passing the hours away participating in his favourite past-time of watching the horse racing on the black and white coin powered television. He would sit with his tin of roll-up tobacco on the arm of the chair, his nicotine stained fingers rolling another, and a cup of tea, studying the lists of horses in the coming events, contemplating and calculating who to put his money on. Any work he did was manual and though he may have been considered working class, there was no strong ethic of work running through his veins.
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| Drylaw in the 60s |
"Hey, heid th' ba" he would bark at me, right up to my teens, followed by any range of demands or remarks from making him a cup of tea to being quiet so he could watch his programme in peace. His favourite drinking den was the Doo' cot, a local pub nearby, on Ferry Road, which was conveniently close to the bookies round the corner on Groathill Road North. If I ever had to find him, I knew there would only be either of these two places to look (or the newsagent for tobacco and newspaper supplies). As a teenager, and on regular visits to see them, I would often be required to venture down and pass on a message or get him to return home. The pub was nearly always full, a layer of smoke hanging in the air, working class men sitting round playing dominoes, pints of ale or nips of whiskey circling the tables. Others stood by the bar, talking about anything that passed the time. Laughter mingled with the babbling noise. I would poke my head through the door and see if I could spot him and enter sheepishly and give him the message.
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| The Doo'cot |
At home, he would snap open a tin of McEwans Export or Pale Ale and have either his roll-ups or Player's, unfiltered, at the ready and settle into his chair for the rest of the evening. It was hard to see that this was the man who was once a bit of a brawler in the Royal Mile. Lucky if he was five foot five, but age and a hard living had already stated to take its toll. Supposedly he played for Hibs in the 20s, so he must have been in good shape at one time. He was also a doorman at the King's Theatre and had met, however briefly, Laurel and Hardy, and had managed to get an autographed photo of them. It stood proudly on the mantelpiece for all to see but he would make fair of the occasion.
My gran, was made of the same stuff as my grandad. A hard drinker and heavy smoker, she was the voice of authority. She wasn't the most domesticated mother. The house always appeared cluttered and in good need of a clean. The meals were fried, out of a tin (Fray Bentos steak and kidney pie out of a tin was popular) or obtained from the chip shop. The kitchen work tops were ingrained in small particles of grease remnants, stains on the cooker and sticky linoleum flooring. It was no surprise we were always on the look out for mice in the kitchen area. It seemed easier to get a cat than keep the place in some sort of order. Like her husband, she wasn't educated and had spent her life working in unskilled jobs. She had originally lived in Aberdeen, where my father was born, but moved down to Edinburgh later. Life, like most working class at that time, seemed to be more about survival.
Murdo, by all accounts, was an extremely clever man. Well read, on books about politics and history which was a favourite of his, he worked in engineering and was highly regarded by his employers. A tall, wiry figure, his Achilles heel was alcohol, which resulted in late starts at his work or sometimes not bothering to go in. He was supposedly so good at his job that his employers put up with it to ensure he stayed. But he seemed to lack the ambition to enrich his life with new experiences. He would remain living with his parents his whole, and short-lived, life. He would never experience going abroad, even if it was only some package holiday. His life would revolve around the pub, the home and the workplace.
Often I would waken him on a Saturday morning, not too early to annoy him, and bring him a cup of tea. In the dusky bedroom, he would sit up against headboard and get me to put his dartboard at the foot of his bed, so we could have a game, while he lit another cigarette. Even after me wakening him up and playing, he still wouldn't rise from his room till late in the day, and when he did, it was in preparation for going to the pub later in the day.
As a young kid, there were limited options in having some money in my pocket. One means was a Pouroot. It was common, at the end of a wedding ceremony when the newly weds were leaving the church, that the couple would through coins across the pavement for the kids to grab. As soon as anyone got wind of an upcoming wedding they would hang around like cash vultures waiting in trepidation for the ceremony to end. At that moment when the coins were dispersed, we would scramble on the ground trying to gather as many as we could, in competition with the other kids. Screams of joy would erupt as the money flew into the air, arms entwined and reaching out for anything close at hand as the children gathered in the cash, cheers and laughter from the adults as they watched events unfold.
Although my dad and new mum had been living elsewhere during this time, by 1968, whatever the arrangements were between my parents and grandparents, it was time to move on. Gorgie, on the east side of Edinburgh, awaited.
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