Monday
Got told first thing that he had died from a massive heart attack last week. Tony was my best friend from when we were about fifteen till we were about twenty.
I started hanging about with Tony after looking for someone to go to dances with. You needed to be a pair. Girls danced in pairs. You couldn't split up a pair on your own. I asked about among folk at school, because I really wanted to start going to the dancing, and it turned out Tony had been to dances twice before. So he'd know the score about dances.
Sometimes we went to dances on a Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday nights, but our major locale was the Bellshill YMCA on a Saturday night. Then Tony started going out with this girl from St Margaret's in Paisley when he was in the first term of sixth year, and I went out with her best pal. We used to get the bus into Glasgow and meet them at the Kenco Coffee Bar.
We went through the A stream of the selected, single sex Catholic School together, but when it came to studying time, Tony just didn't. He wouldn't study for his exams. This was something I could not understand. He just didn't study. So everything was fine until we got the sit our Highers. Tony was brilliant at English and that was the only Higher he passed over two years. This was quite an unusual result for someone from our class!
We went and worked in Butlins in Ayr for two months and shared a chalet in 1969. I was with Tony when I saw the first man walking on the Moon.
So he stayed on to do a seventh year while I went to university. By second year, Tony had landed up in Napier College studying journalism, and we shared a couple of bedsits during our second year. Tony was skint. He required a parental contribution and didn't get it. He got a loan of five pounds a week from one of his tutors to keep him going.
The only tricky bit of the journalism course was learning to take shorthand. Tony did not learn to do this. I hustled him to learn this and told him I'd practise with him, but ... he failed the shorthand part of the course.
Then he got a job with the Haddington Courier and we started parting then. He got married and lived for a while in Peffermill Court, a towerblock down in Craigmillar. I used to see him then since I worked in Craigmillar Library. When he moved to the Borders, we lost touch.
When I saw him later on in life, I was always really surprised to see that he was baldy. When we were going to the dancing while still at school, a comb was never out of his hand.
I know more about this person from when he was fifteen till he was twenty than anybody could. I know more about him than his mother. I could write a book. I knew him then inside out.
His grandparents on his mother's side lived with the family in Laburnum Road down Viewpark. They lived till they were really old. I saw his parents when they must have been in their seventies. He didn't smoke and didn't drink. Heart attack. Dearie me!
14 comments:
I'm sorry to hear you lost a friend.
But your story about him is lovely. Thank you for sharing it.
Marie! All yesterday memories of him were running through my head. Couldn't think of a bad thing about the guy! Hotboy
I say!
I'm so sorry to hear about your chum.
You must surely now be about the last old codger of your generation still standing?
MM III
Mingin'! My generation are about twenty years older than me since they do no yoga and never get the bliss! Hotboy
Tony's refusal to study sounds like it could have been the inspiration for the hero in Alma Mater.
Around the same time, some people at our school frequented the Kenco, but we preferred the Waterloo, which was better constructed for watching the door and spotting teachers in time to stub the fags out.
Dazzle was based at a nearby table, though I never met him till Edinburgh. That cafe nurtured many smoking careers.
Getting a loan from the tutor is a coup. You'd have to be a promising student or with the gift of the gab.
I seem to recall a bedsit on the corner of Causewayside and Grange someting, in easy range of Halls for walking back stoned.
I'm guessing the heart attack was brought on by work stress. I remember him as someone with a strong sense of social justice. And his free concerts for old folk, with Rock Bottom and The Crocodiles, suggest a strong sense of social duty. So maybe he worked hard in his job. That must be why the rest of us are going to live forever. It all balances up.
Write the book about the two school chums.
Tony once lined me up a date with a poor catholic lass who had just been jilted. He sold the idea to me as a bit of freelance social work.
I'm not surprised he went bald. The wild Baltic beard would have exhausted his follicles early on.
PS If you see Frank at the funeral, give him a baldness rating.
Albert? Frankie of the red hair? Saw him a while ago. Bald as a coot! Hotboy
No, I meant wee Frank who used to share a flat with Ollie just off Leith Walk in the bus driving years. Played in band with Tony.
Albert? Frank from Ratho? Most folk at these gatherings now are baldy and grey, the ones my age anyway! Weddings, funerals, just the same! Hotboy
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