Saints, Preserve Us!

I've only ever visited the U.S. once. It frightens me to think that my one and only American holiday was 30 years ago this very year. Even back then it was easy to "acclimatise" because of the huge influence America had on British / Scottish culture. My friends and I grew up watching equal amounts of British and American TV series / films, listening to American music and reading American comics and books.

If you've ever seen the Schwarzenegger movie "Total Recall", or read a lot of SF, you'll be familiar with the idea of implanted memories of places you've never actually visited. The average Brit arriving Stateside carries the same kind of mnemonic baggage simply because of the cultural marinade they've been soused in since birth, starting with my own generation of "Baby Boomers".

We don't need a translator for words like "sidewalk", "flashlight", "elevator" or "faucet". We know that "jaywalking" is illegal and, after "Perry Mason", "The Defenders","Petrocelli", "LA Law" and 20 years of "Law and Order" we could probably recite our own Miranda rights for the arresting officer. He'd probably take us down to the Bullpen and run us through the 3rd. degree for being a limey wiseguy.

Rather than heighten reality this false familiarity can make large parts of America seem like a big film set. I made the mistake of timing my one-day visit to New York in the grip of a bad hangover. At one point I actually found myself touching the wall of a building near the entrance to Central Park at Columbus Circle. Such is the nature of hangovers I'm not sure if this was to check whether the building was real or whether I was. Next time I visit I'll be sane and sober, New York demands that kind of respect.

I found most of the Americans whom I met to be perfect hosts, welcoming and proud of their country. They almost all showed an interest in Scotland and a surprising number asked the same question : "Have you ever seen the Loch Ness Monster ?".

It shouldn't have surprised me. To the average American Scotland must seem like a speck on the map. Surely all the natives live within a 20 minute walk of Loch Ness ? America may have been saturated with Scottish influences in the past but the traffic is very much one-way in the present. Tartan Day may be an effort to redress the balance but Nessie is still the best known Scot, with the possible exception of Sean Connery.

At that time I had to admit that I'd only ever visited Loch Ness once and that the monster wasn't for putting in an appearance. Since then I've been in the vicinity a few times but still no sightings. It's strange connection to make but whenever I think of Nessie, which isn't often, I inevitably think of Roger Moore.

No, there isn't a Nessie /famous Scot / Connery / James Bond/ Moore connection going on here. I only wish my mind worked in such a straightforward, logical way. The connection lies in my TV watching past when "The Saint" series was a weekly feature on the Carlin family viewing schedule.

Even as a child I realised that Roger Moore was a pretty awful actor. He was always the least convincing "Hard Man" I've ever seen on the large or small screen though he has occasionally shone in roles were he sends up that very image ("The Persuaders" being a good example). If you think I'm being too severe then take the time to read Simon Winder's sensational "The Man Who Saved Britain". This is the funniest factual book I've read in ages. It does an humorous hatchet job not only on Moore but on the whole James Bond bandwagon. Only someone who was once enthralled by the whole shoddy glamour of the 007 industry could write such a bittersweet, indignant, hilarious cri de coeur. I write as a fellow sufferer who once walked through life with an imaginary John Barry soundtrack playing in the background of my life.

The fact that we stuck with "The Saint" probably had a lot to do with the simple fact that we only had two TV channels to choose from in 1960s Britain. Like most of the ITC series of the time it offered an hour (including adverts) of reasonable, undemanding entertainment. Most episodes were instantly forgettable but odd scenes stick in my mind from two of them in particular.

There was one episode that feature Voodoo and took place in Haiti. We knew that it was Haiti because a subtitle came up on the screen telling us so as some stock footage of a Caribbean harbour cut away to an interior shot of Simon Templar's hotel for that week.

(I suspect that it was always the same hotel set with furniture juggled around. There was little variety in the way that ITC series like "The Saint", "The Baron" or "Man in a Suitcase" established a sense of place.

The subtitle "London" would inevitably feature a shot of traffic in Piccadilly Circus followed by an interior shot of the hotel reception : desk with bell, leather club chair, hat stand with umbrella. With "Rome" you got traffic passing the Colosseum and interior shot : desk, bell, club chair and bust of the Venus de Milo. "Paris" was identical except for a shot of the Eiffel Tower and a quick swap of a plaster Napoleon for Venus.

Exotic locations like "Marrakech" featured ceiling fans and a potted palm as part of the decor. "Port au Prince, Haiti" would be much the same with the addition of mosquito netting at the window. Exotic hotel sets also ditched the club chair in favour of a high backed rattan chair.)

Not surprisingly, I don't recall many details of the hotel in Haiti but I do remember that this episode introduced the word "zombie" to my vocabulary. Back in those more innocent days zombies weren't as ubiquitous as they are today. I recall that I found the idea of the "living dead" more than a little unsettling having not yet reached my 10th. birthday. Nowadays I find I take them more in my stride. They're generally quite placid as long as you don't get between them and their methadone or Buckfast.

It was the other memorable episode that surprised me by leading to some unsettling thoughts more than 40 years later. This one was set in Scotland, in a hotel on the banks of Loch Ness. Not similar to London at all : reception desk, bell, leather club chair draped with a tartan shawl, hat stand with 3 umbrellas and a stag's head mounted on the wall.

Most of the plot escapes me but, in a nutshell, the Loch Ness Monster appears to be going on the occasional, nocturnal rampage. Several badly mauled bodies have been found near or in the Loch with monster-sized paw prints nearby. Simon Templar and several other guests are staying in an isolated hotel asking, "Who'll be the next victim ?". Even in the 60s the country house mystery had been around for a long time (Agatha Christie was still alive and well) but to an 8 or 9 year old most things are new and exciting. Especially when a monster is thrown in for good measure.

The big climax is what really impressed me. The murderer is revealed to be one of the guests. He had been using fake, plaster monster claws on the end of a couple of heavy poles to literally cover his tracks. He tries to make his escape in a rowing boat as Simon Templar pursues him to the water's edge.

The Saint is left helpless on the shore as the triumphant villain vanishes into a convenient bank of fog. Out of the darkness there is a sound of bubbling water, a man's scream and a loud splash... and something else. What was it ? A distant fog horn or a monstrous roar from some great, reptilian throat ? Time for a close-up as Roger Moore cocks a quizzical eye brow. (By the time he was playing Bond ten years later he had widened his dramatic range and could manage to be quizzical with both. Alternately.)

I know that this all seems incredibly naff now that I've written it down. Nowadays the viewer would be left in no doubt about the baddie's demise. The budget would be bigger and we'd get a close-up shot of a CGI leviathan chomping down on an actor laden with exploding blood bags and prosthetic limbs ready to snap off as the computer generated jaws converge on him. Perhaps it's my age, because I would never have imagined myself writing this in my younger days, but SOME THINGS ARE BETTER LEFT TO ONE'S IMAGINATION !

Sometimes imagination can be a little too powerful as I discovered a few years ago when I found myself staying at Fairburn Lodge near Inverness. I was taking part in a work-related event but really enjoyed the facilities and great walking opportunities there. During the day. Night time was a little different, especially since this was Northern Scotland in late January. In the Summer it's great to live in Scotland, though it does tend to rain a lot. In June / July it can stay light until 10 o' clock at night. The flip side of this is that it can get really dark really early during the Winter. As dark as the Earl o' Hell's waistcoat as some colourful local might say, if he,or she, wanted to unnerve you.

As I made my way along a forest track for an after-dinner walk I didn't have or need the help of a colourful local. I managed to put the frighteners on myself. Half a mile away from the lodge I realised that I wasn't going to get a break in the clouds to allow me to stargaze. No streetlights, no moon, no stars; there was just a powerful wind gusting through the trees. Naturally enough this was when my mind decided to do a little wandering of its own.

What did I find myself thinking about as I picked my way along that rutted path, hemmed in by tall trees creaking their branches overhead ? Was it tropical sunshine, golden beaches, potted palms or exotic rattan chairs ? You won't be surprised when I write the following word : no.

No. Carlin's thoughts, in their own inexplicable, unpredictable way had meandered towards memories of the Saint standing on the banks of Loch Ness and a hideous bellow echoing in the darkness. What made it worse was that my"interior vision" of Loch Ness was 40 years distant in mind while the real thing was a few scant miles away just beyond those dark, groaning branches. I can remember giving myself a metaphorical shake at this point and saying what all we supposed adults say to our "inner child" at times like that : "Don't be so stupid!"

I didn't quite get to the point where I was whistling to convince myself that everything was OK as I found my thoughts creeping towards even more creepiness.

What was the other scary connection I'd always made with Loch Ness ?

Oh no !", I thought, not wanting to acknowledge it, "Boleskine House".

That wasn't the type of place I wanted to be thinking of on a cold, wet Winter's night. You may never have heard of it but Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin certainly had when he bought this secluded estate back in the 60s during his "occult period". It had once been owned by Aleister Crowley, the self-proclaimed magician, 60 years before. All sorts of terrible rituals and hauntings are supposed to be associated with it and, of course, it's built near the side of Loch Ness. For all I knew it could have been right around the corner.

I wish I could say that I gave a manly guffaw and continued on my post-prandial perambulation

like a true, British adventurer. Suddenly I came to the decision that I'd had enough of muddy tracks for that particular evening. It's amazing how quickly you can find a path back to light and warmth when you really want to. My inner dialogue went something like this:

"Move it, move it! Don't dare think of that scene where Dana Andrews is walking through the woods in "Night of the Demon"

""Night of the Whaaa..?"

"You know, that old black and white film based on the MR James story "Casting the Runes" ? The one with the big, glowing devil crashing through the trees?"

"MR James ? Didn't the BBC do all those Christmas ghost stories based on his work ? Most of them set in the middle of Winter.....? Oh, Mammy!"

"Did you just cry for your Mammy, you lady boy? Just shut it and keep those legs moving, Fat Boy. I think I can see electric lights up ahead."

That's how I found out that I'm only a good sceptic on a sunny afternoon in my own house. I also discovered that it's possible for an "inner child" to beat up a grown man of 50 and shove his logic and deduction where the sun doesn't shine.

During the Scottish summer there's usually a Nessie sighting or two. It's funny how that coincides with the tourist season. Sadly, the only recent story is about how two local Monster centres resolved a legal wrangle.

Oh, for the days when the "Fortean Times" was able to point out that the scientific name coined by the late Sir Peter Scott for the monster: Nessiteras rhombopteryx is an(unintentional?) anagram. Shuffle the letters and you come up with "Monster hoax by Sir Peter S".

Maybe St. Columba's "exorcism" of the monster back in the Dark Ages has finally worked. I wish I'd remembered that on a certain cold, windy night. What is it with those saints and Loch Ness ?

The long view from Daniel Pike.

I have a habit that annoys the Hell out of my wife. (Only one ? That's probably a very conservative estimate.). Reading one book at a time isn't enough for me. This also annoyed my family even before I got married but it's just something I've always done. I'm also very relucatant to get rid of books. Add that to the list of things that irritate Anne.


In any one week I've probably got anything up to 5 books on the go. Most often they're of different genres but this week, in addition to Stephen Budiansky's "The Truth About Dogs" (non-fiction), Martin Walker's "Bruno, Chief of Police" ( a charming, laid-back "police procedural" set in rural France) and "Germania" by Simon Winder (history / travel and humour in one entertaining package) I'm also reading two "private eye" novels set, unusually, in my own fair city of Glasgow.


The first is "Lennox" by the excellent Craig Russell who has also written the very enjoyable Jan Fabel police series set in modern Hamburg. This is a departure from police procedural territory and follows a traditional P.I./ noir approach. The first person narrator is the eponymous hero, a Canadian who finds himself employed as an "enquiry agent" in 1950s Glasgow.


"The Stone Gallows" also references the hero's name in the title. Cameron Stone is a washed-up ex-cop who is struggling to pull his life back together after being involved in a car chase which resulted in two deaths. He has gone down the route of booze and anti-depressants but finds hhimself running errands for a private detective agency.


It may sound like the routine basis of many other hard-boiled PI stories but this one has a particularly good grasp of Glasgow culture and geography. In places it bubbles with black humour. One scene set in a hospital and describing a nurse's routine on a rather strange night shift rang a lot of bells for me. It's pitch perfect and I wasn't surprised to read that the author, C. David Ingram ,after legal training and being involved in the debt collection business, works as a nurse. There's a good, short interview at Books Monthly. Future entries in the series will be a must for me.


Pretty typical, you wait years for a hardboiled, Glaswegian P.I. to arrive then two come along at once. Just like the local buses. Both made me think of the first Glasgow-based P.I. I had the good fortune to encounter : the meteoric legend that was Daniel Pike.


Pike was created by the great Scottish author and playwright Eddie Boyd. The character was introduced under a different name, Daniel Britt, in a BBC series called "Menace".This showcased thrillers and dramatic pieces in the same way that "the Beeb's" more successful and better known "Comedy Playhouse" ran pilots for comedy shows.


The "Menace" pilot, a story called "Good Morning Yesterday", was successful enough to launch a series. I don't remember much of the plot but one scene sticks in my mind. Britt and his client are about to take a beating from a group of local gang members ( the "young team" as they're "affectionately" known) when a wee Glasgow "wummin" wearing a headscarf scatters the gangsters with a bash from her shopping bag. She also lets them know that she'll be telling their mothers about what they've been getting up to.


When the spin-off series arrived it was called "The View from Daniel Pike". Britt had been transformed in name only. There's more than a few honourable precedents for that. Philip Marlowe had a prototype called John Dalmas and Ormond Sacker went on to get his MB/ChB as well as a more renowned, though plainer, alias.


One of the advantages of Daniel's new surname was that it allowed him to make his regular rejoinder when someone would ask how to spell it: "Pike. Same as the fish".


Roddy McMillan, who played Pike, was one of Scotland's great, popular actors. He was also a playwright and had great success with "The Bevellers". Among Glaswegians he's probably best remembered for the long-running comedy series "The Vital Spark" based on the stories of the unforgettable Neil Munro.


Among my own memories of Roddy McMillan is a haunting piece he did for one of BBC Scotland's New Year (Hogmanay) shows. Usually these shows try to be "traditional" in an excrutiating way ,like a shortbread tin stuffed with whisky-soaked haggis and wrapped in tartan ribbons. McMillan was allowed to break the mould by reading a short story called "The City Collector" direct to camera. I can only presume that he wrote the piece and I wish that I could find a copy. It was based on a whimsical,but chilling,notion ; "What if the City Collector ,a title that appeared on bills sent out by Glasgow Corporation, was actually an entity that collected long vanished streets and people?". Like so many of the things that impressed me on TV and in the cinema as a youngster it was heartbreakingly simple and superbly well done.


I was in my mid-teens when "The View" made its debut just as I was discovering the likes of Chandler and Mickey Spillane. T.V. was pretty much saturated with detectives at the time but here was one based in the Dear Green Place. At school we talked about the shows with relish and some of the lines stick with me to this day.


Pike (to an inhospitable barman) :"I know how you could sell more beer in this pub.".

Barman : "Oh aye ? How's that then?"

Pike: "Fill the bloody glasses".


McMillan carried it all off with style. He was a tough guy of the same stripe as James Cagney or Humphrey Bogart but Pike was obviously sophisticated. He had a girlfriend who sang in a cool jazz club after all. The exterior of the club was mocked up in Park Circus and I'm still enough of an "eastender" at heart to feel that I'm visiting another world when I visit there on Mondays for my German class.


Funny how writing things down can jog the memory. I must dig out the novelisation of the series, actually a collection of 5 or 6 novellas, written by the late , great Bill Knox and based on Boyd's teleplays. I have a fair idea of where it is but maybe I should leave it there for another few weeks. Three PI books at once would be excessive, even for me.

Hammett's Double Joke

Writing about the "Thin Man" novel and films made me think about Dashiel Hammett again, particularly the urge that some American commentators have to "clear his name", fallout from the McCarthy era accusation that he was a Communist. When called to appear in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee he refused to co-operate. Since then a number of crime writers, notably the late, great Robert B. Parker, have seemed a bit embarrassed by the fact that Hammett's political affiliation isn't clear. (Which in turn reminds me that there is a very good article on Hammett's Pragmatism at the always excellent "Thrilling Detective" site.)



Much as I love a great many things about America the fact that words like "liberal" and the politics of the Left are often met with such vitriol leaves me feeling uneasy. When it comes to writing then an author should be judged on their work. Knowing about their politics shouldn't be a factor.



(Digression time again : I once had to struggle to finish a private eye novel by an author whose name escapes me. The first person narrator, an ex-cop turned security guard / P.I., kept coming out with the most amazingly right wing discourses. I almost flung the book at the nearest wall when he discovers that a towel has been used as a weapon in a case of murder by strangulation. At this point the P.I. hero goes off on a diatribe about gun control and how the Liberals are wrong: guns don't kill people. people kill people.



"Anything can be used as to take a life !", he declaims.



Well, "D'uh! Glad you told me that,Pal, but the crux of the matter is when is someone ever going to go postal in a mall or a high school while potential victims run away screaming: "Oh, no! He's got a beach towel!"?



The guy must have been a helluva storyteller because I actually went on to finish that book.)



To me, Hammett is one of the greatest American crime novelists of the 20th. century. Full stop. That's all I need to know. Maybe that's part of growing up in Glasgow from the mid '50s to the early '70s. This is a city where one of your uncles could take you to see a John Wayne film in the afternoon while another took you along to see the Red Army Choir on tour in the evening. Seamless and without any dichotomy, you could take in the entertainment without having the faintest clue about any underlying political philosophy.



Part of the appeal of the classic private eye, at least for me, is the underlying humour that goes along with their cynicism and worldweariness. In Hammett's writing humour is there as an undercurrent, in spades (if you'll pardon the pun,Sam.). But Hammett's best joke ever is this one:



In Football, or Soccer as Americans call it, one of the best tricks a skillful player can perform is to slip the ball through the legs of an opposing defender and carry on with their run. This is known as a "nutmeg". Hammett manages the literary equivalent of this feat twice in "The Maltese Falcon".



In the days when Hammett was testing the limits of the field editors were alert to any sign of sexual innuendo in a writer's work. At one point the young ,would-be tough guy working for Caspar Gutman, better known as the Fat Man, is referred to by Sam Spade as a cheap "gunsel". Today the word is synonymous with a hired gunman simply because Hammett slipped it past the censor's red pencil. It's actually a Yiddish word meaning a "gosling" or young goose. Legend has it that it was also used as an underworld term and among hoboes to refer to a "kept man" who was "looked after" by an older partner. As a former Pinkerton man Hammett would certainly have known this as he nutmegged the editor.



He works the trick again later in the book when Spade, with surprising erudition, calls the same charcter Gutman's "catamite". Check that out in any dictionary and the meaning is unambiguous. It means exactly what "gunsel" implies; it just doesn't sound as dirty.



Even if he wasn't a giant among crime writers Hammett gets a lot of smartie points for taking the time to slip these "naughty" words past the censor. It marks him as a man with a playful sense of humour with an eye for the ridiculous. I dare you not to smile when you next read a novel or see a film where some supposed hard-case is referred to as a gunsel........

Time, Gentlemen, Please !

I've always said to my children, both now fully grown and fine young adults ,"One day I'll write a book about good decisions I made when drunk. It'll be the shortest book in history consisting of blank pages."

To this day I've got to restrain myself from going anywhere Amazon UK when I've had two or more beers. The shopping cart is too easy to fill when judgement strays. Some time in the near future,however, I am going to buy a boxed set of the "Thin Man" films and I'll be sober when I do. Nick and Norah Charles (pictured above as played by William Powell and Myrna Loy) were created by Dashiel Hammett in the novel "The Thin Man".

It's a book filled with snappy patter that stands up well today. Sadly, it's also Hammett's last novel. Published in 1934 it's set during the Prohibition era (which only ended the previous year). Booze, naturally, plays a big part in the backdrop but it was the hinted at "open marriage" between Nick and Norah that led to some editors calling it "amoral" and refusing to serialise it. Regardless, it was Hammett's most commercially successful work. The movie followed hot on its heels and went on to spawn 5 sequels between 1939 and 1947. A radio series also ran for 9 years with a TV spinoff in the late 1950s that ran for 72 episodes over two years.


There's an interesting review of the first film (on the Film School Rejects website) that actually makes a case for it being one of the earliest examples of a "modern film". I think that this has a lot to do with Hammett's ear for dialogue. The 1941 classic "The Maltese Falcon" was the third adaptation of the original novel for the big screen. Legend has it that Howard Hawks advised John Huston to simply "film the book". It's probably the greatest directorial debut of all time (with the exception of "Citizen Kane"). I had the pleasure of seeing it as a young man shortly after reading the book. The dialogue is lifted verbatim and the film is all the better for it.


Growing up in the 60s I didn't realise until much later that DC comics' characters Ralph (the "Elongated Man") Dibny and his wife Sue were based on Nick and Norah. I suppose the idea of a stretchable detective / superhero being named after the hero of the "Thin Man" was the literary equivalent of a knowing wink from series creator John Broome.


By the time David Niven and Maggie Smith were playing "Dick and Dora Charleston" in Neil Simon's affectionate send-up of the classic mystery "Murder By Death" (1976) I had read the original and picked up on the jokes straight away.


As for the films, their very success may have played a part in ending Hammett's career as a novelist. As royalties rolled in and "easier" Hollywood jobs were offered it would have been hard to keep motivated. More about Hammett anon.


The most amazing thing about how Nick functions as a detective and manages to trade quips with Norah is that he does so while afloat on an ocean of booze. At the moment I'm studying languages with the Open University. On the evenings when I do manage to make time for study I have a strict "No Alcohol!" policy. (The same goes for blogging time, believe it or not). After 2 pints of beer I've got trouble fitting my house keys into the door let alone fitting the German accusative case into a sentence.


Deduction and witty repartee just don't go with booze. Still, that's the great thing about detective stories. We suspend our disbelief. We believe that Inspector Morse can thrive on cryptic crosswords and real ale and that the more obscure Nick Noble, created by the great Anthony Boucher, can still solve intricate mysteries through a fog of alcohol. Sadly, I now enjoy crime fiction best when I settle down to read with a nice cup of tea.

Demon Drink part 2

Third post and I haven't really got round to talking about crime fiction but alcohol is important in Scottish culture and much of the popular fiction produced here is soused in it.

There are all sorts of theories about how Robert Louis Stevenson came to write "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde". Recently it's been claimed as a commentary on Darwin's theories (Hyde being a regression of modern, civilised Man back to an ape-like state). In a literary sense James Hogg would have been a huge influence.

Local knowledge of the story of Deacon Brodie gives a simpler explanation. Stevenson must have been fascinated by the "dual nature" of the dour, Scottish Presbyterian character; all outward respectability with seething passions below the surface. But where does the transforming potion fit in to the story? For me it's about "the Drink". Anyone who has ever been out for a boozy night with the boys (or girls) knows all about how personalities can change under the influence of ethanol.

Strangely enough there's another Billy Connolly link here. He played the good (/bad?) deacon in a TV film from 1997. As I recall, it really played up the boozy aspects of Enlightenment Edinburgh. Strangely enough Deacon Brodie's Tavern carries on this same tradition on the Royal Mile to this day.

Of course there's another newly famous pub in the same city, made so by Ian Rankin and Inspector rebus. Sad geek that I am I have to admit that I try to drop in to the Oxford Bar for a pint whenever I visit Auld Reekie. Nothing better on a crisp, Autumn evening. (I'm also sad enough to try to fit in a visit to Picardy Place for obvious reasons quite apart from the pub across the road).

There are a host of excellent Scottish crime writers on the scene at the moment but one of the most important doesn't consider himself part of the group. A case could be made that William McIlvanney started the literary crime wave back in 1977 with "Laidlaw". Beautiful, lean prose that is poetic in places with a smattering of laugh-out-loud dialogue. It captures the essence of Glasgow patter perfectly.

I read it when it first came out and was blown away by the depth of research McIlvanney had done. In one chapter he describes the casualty department in Glasgow Royal Infirmary and a journey up to the respiratory intensive care unit The description and details are perfect. I had "insider information" because I worked there at the time. The writer had obviously gone over the ground and made notes. To me this was awesome because he obviously didn't have to include such depth.

My friends and I were part of Glasgow's Science Fiction fan group (the "Friends of Kilgore Trout"). We read a lot of SF but would pass around any book that interested us. McIlvanney became an instant favourite. We even made our way out to East Kilbride library one evening when we got word that he was giving a talk. It was terrific and he came across as one of the "good guys". Someone suggested that we ask him to join us for a pint after the talk but we hesitated and missed our chance.

There are references to drink all through "Laidlaw" but the one that stands out for me is a snatch of conversation the detective overhears. He passes two men in the street heading home after a night out. One of them describes his wife's negative attitude to his drinking : "It would put tits on an adder".

I don't know what the hell that means but it sounds right and it still makes me smile. I suspect that my wife feels much the same way on the (increasingly rare) occasions when I overindulge.

Drink and the Devil......

Ironic that I should end my first post with the word "cheers". I grew up in Easterhouse, a sadly notorious part of the city then and now, and the youth gangs carried alot of the blame for the problems that people encountered on a day to day basis. They weren't innocents by any means but we're talking here about guys aged 16 or under.



I used to see a lot of "gang fights" from the safety of a tenement window. Most involved ritual drawing of lines, running back and forth and occasional, inaccurate stone throwing. They usually took place during the summer school holidays in the late evening (I'm typing this at 10:20 p.m. and it's just beginning to get dark).In many ways they were as well regulated and as enthralling as a cricket match.



What was really interesting was the sight of the older guys (16+) coming home from the pub. I don't use the singular lightly. For a long time there was only one pub to service a housing scheme (that's Glasgow council-speak for "estate") with a population nearly equal to the city of Dundee (100,000 or so). Like all Scottish pubs at the time it was only allowed to sell alcohol between 11a.m. and 2:30p.m. and then in the evenings from 5 until 10.



About ten minutes to ten the barman would ring a bell for "last orders".This provoked scenes almost identical to the Oklahoma land rush so often depicted in the Western movies ("Cowboy Pictures") so beloved in Glasgow. As a general rule no wagons or steers were involved but carnage was common as everyone leapt for the bar and ordered anything up to 3 rounds each all at the one time. It was accepted wisdom that at least one of these drinks should be a spirit. Let's face it, in Scotland we're talking whisky, here. Unfortunately, given such a sudden boost to blood alcohol levels and a leisurely drinking up time of 10 minutes we're then talking gibberish.



The pub (the "Brig Bar") was about 3/4 of a mile away from Easterhouse proper on the other side of the Monklands Canal (now the M8 motorway). If you positioned yourself strategically near the main road you could look down the hill and see the "Brig" discharge its customers into the night. I suspect that George Romero may have ripped off the scene to use in "Night of the Living Dead". Men would be bouncing off lamp posts or zig-zagging across the road thinking that they were still talking to their pal who had rolled down onto the canal bank.



The more street-wise kids would mooch for money which the jollier drunks would pitch in their direction. Discarded cigarettes would be scooped up and puffed into life again by 8 year olds trying to look tough. (We all watched Jimmy Cagney and Humphrey Bogart movies. Perfect for our black and white TVs)



The women who had spent their evening ironing or using the mangle in the kitchen/laundry/dining room (all actually the same cramped space) would face the return of their husbands with a mixture of emotions, none of which was joy. Looking back and piecing together the clues that were too obscure for a child to pick up on I know that some of them were having a hellish time of it.



A lot of them used humour to leaven the situation.It was a friend of my mother's whom I first heard talking about her husband as the "incredible rubber man" because of the way he would stagger around when drunk ( he was vulcanised most days). The term is common parlance now because Billy Connolly used it in his early days on the comedy circuit. He also wrote a terrific song which still holds true to-day for Glasgow.



I've mentioned that Glaswegians had an inordinate love for cowboys. This carries over into an affection for "Country and Western".This little number can be sung to the tune of "it's Crying Time Again":

“Closing Time” - Billy Connolly

Chorus : Oh it's closin' time again you'll have to leave us Yous have got that far away look in your eyes We've got to hose the lavvy down and count the tumblers

And wipe the stoor from off tomorrow's pies

Oh the Scottish pubs they're gaunnae be like England

They're lettin' us drink up an hour late But that’ll no affect the crowd in my pub

'Cause they're a’ steamin' drunk by half past eight

Chorus

You should see the way they come in here at openin'

It's a wonder they're allowed out on their ain

Stone cold sober they come in like Mickey Rooney

Three pints later they barge oot like big John Wayne

Chorus

Oh there's gonna be big changes made in this pub

There'll be topless lassies servin' up your beer

Well I told the boss that's sex discrimination

I've been wearin' topless trousers here for years

Why the square mile ?

Glasgow is one of the great,Victorian cities. Famous for engineering, shipbuilding, science (Lord Kelvin, anyone ?), football and politics (Adam Smith had many a walk through Glasgow Green and the label Red Clydeside is always associated with the 1926 general strike).

Like many big cities that are, or were major ports, it can be quite Bohemian in many ways. The inhabitants of port cities tend to be liberal in their attitudes, working class and welcoming. A friend of mine, a genuine Irish poet, is always convinced that Liverpool, Glasgow, New York, Boston, Dublin and (East) London share a common sense of humour.

It also has a dark side, but what city worthy of the name doesn't? The publishers of all those regional "Noir"anthologies know that good folk like to read about dirty deeds in their own backyards and mean streets. Glasgow became infamous for its "razor gangs" in the 20's and 30's. This "culture" was immortalised in the book "No Mean City" by Alexander McArthur and H. Kingsley Long, a best-seller in its day.

The image was pretty well set in stone and has carried on to the present day. Every so often some bright young thing working for a low-rent production company will come up with the idea of doing a documentary about local gangs and hard cases. Recent examples have been "McIntyre's Underworld" and "Britain's Hardest Pubs" (another jewel in the crown of Murdoch's SKY TV).

Before Glaswegian crime was brought down to this lowest common denominator it played host to 4 of the greatest murder cases to scandalise the Victorians. All took place within a single, square mile just west of the city centre.

The Madeline Smith case made the Scottish legal verdict of "Not Proven" famous throughout the Empire and beyond. She was accused of poisoning her lover (arsenic in his cocoa) but walked free. Blythswood Square, the posh scene of the crime, later went into decline and became the city's red light district.

Then there was the Sandyford Murder involving domestic servants and forty-odd blows from a meat cleaver. Lizzie Borden could have learned from this.

Not to be outdone Dr. Edward William Pritchard (the "Human Crocodile") was also a poisoner and killed his wife along with two other victims.

Finally, another medical man of quite a different stripe was involved in my favourite of these infamous cases : Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He fought long and hard to clear the name of Oscar Slater, a German Jewish immigrant who spent twenty years in jail for a crime he certainly didn't commit. It always amazes me to think that the creator of Sherlock Holmes acted as a real-life detective in a story that reads like a Franz Kafka screenplay for a film noir

Writing that also reminds me that Allan J. Pinkerton, the founder of the world's most famous detective agency, was also born in the city. He seems to have been a real contradiction in terms. Having fled Scotland because his left wing politics drew him to the attention of the law he later helped to break strikes in his adopted country. Local legend has it that his birthplace is now occupied by the beautiful building that is Glasgow's central mosque.

So this blog will give me a chance to write about some of my hobbies and preoccupations. Crime fiction (written or dramatised), some science fiction, humour and all filtered through a Glaswegian lens.

Due credit for the title has to go to the great Jack House, known as "Mr. Glasgow" throughout his many years as a journalist. His book "Square Mile of Murder" changed the way I look at the city. Cheers, Jack !