Thursday 6:50 p.m.
We both got jobs working in Butlins after I left school in 1969. I was a waiter and Tony was a dishwasher.
We got arrested for breach of the peace in Glasgow at the beginning of 1970. We pled not guilty and Tony did the witness questioning because he was very good at debating when we were at school. He got off with a not proven and I got fined a tenner or fifteen quid.
We hitch hiked down to the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970. I was supposed to be going to Morocco with this other joe afterwards, but events conspired, so I hitch hiked back with Tony. We slept one night in a London park. I sat under a tree and read the American Declaration of Independence.
We shared a bedsit in Bellvue Crescent at the start of my second year. After the Christmas holidays, we shared a room in Grange Road. After that, Tony went to live in Haddington where he was a reporter on the local paper.
One of my best memories of Tony was the afternoon we dropped a half tab of acid when we were staying in Grange Road. Tony had never taken acid before and I don't think he took any afterwards, but we did have a really good time. We sat in the window space behind where the curtains would be when closed, and listened to Les Sylphides. You could just see Arthur's Seat out that window and the visibly growing tree behind a wall across from us.
The half tab wasn't very strong, so I started working with it. I was staring at his face and trying to make his black beard grow over it. I managed to get this to work and soon everything looked pretty normal apart from Tony looking like a werewolf. So me and the werewolf walked along to Bratissanni's, as you do. I had to try not to look at him while I was getting served because I'd had a few acid experiences in that cafe before and didn't want to burst out laughing. Then me and the werewolf walked back to the bedsit.
He was a really sensitive, talented guy.
Thursday, 7 October 2010
Wednesday, 6 October 2010
Banyan Crescent!/ Tony
Wednesday 9:00 p.m.
I'm a bit distraught. Tony died on the 29th of September, so if I'm going to do some juju for him, that's seven weeks from there. Of course, I don't really believe in any of that, but I'm going to ..what else can you do? Well, I can write about what I knew about the guy. That's what I'm going to write about for the next seven weeks, or maybe just for this evening.
There's a stairway in the school and at the very bottom of the stairs, there is a wee bit further down and down there you can sit on the pipes. Just slightly below ground level and then there are hot water pipes. I started sitting down there when I was in third year probably. Folk from Viewpark sat there. I was thinking today how fit these joes were as kids.
Jim Muir was one of them. Jim went into train at Parkhead maybe a year later. John Doyle ended up playing for Celtic. Peter Longworth was much better at football than any of us, and the paradigm of a well brought up kid, but football scouts look for the terrier in kids, and Pete was a very nice guy. There were a few other folk sitting on these pipes, but I remember those pretty well.
It was called mocking. Taking the piss. It's vocabulary. It's resonance. It's being really smart with your mouth. Sometimes folk would leap off the pipes and retort. These are really joes with the smart rejoinders. Once you lose the accent a bit and start toadying to the evil bourgeois, you won't have that anymore. You have moved on into inarticulateness.
So that's where I found Tony, before we went to the dancing, down there in the slightly underneath where boys were being boys and mocking each other and being smart and taking the piss.
After we'd been going to the dancing once or twice, I visited him in his home, which was in Banyan Crescent. This is right down at the bottom of the Laburnum Road, which goes from the top and takes in the bottom of Viewpark. So you get the bus from Bellshill and walk down the Laburnum Road, and turn into Banyan Crescent. It's kind of exotic. Banyan Crescent. I think a banyan might be a tree.
In the living room were sitting his granda and his grandmaw. His maw and his da were nothing in comparison. They so acknowledged and were so giving to the granda and the grandmaw. The granda had a moustache, a kind of big European moustache.
So, we're going to go out to the dancing and Tony has to get by his granny who is appearing for us in the kitchen. Tony is wearing a white polo neck, bri nylon horrorshow crew neck jumper, which we think it totally cool, but his old granny starts pulling at the front of it and asking Tony if he's wearing a vest. Are you wearing a simmit?
She's a dwarf and the most gorgeous old josephine you have ever met in your life. A cake left out in the rain. So I says to her, what was Lithuania like? She says it was flat and full of potato fields. Every time I saw her, I really fell in love with her. She checked to see if Tony was wearing a simmit. Well, he wasn't. Hmmm? So she told him to go out and find a nice Jewish girl.
His grandad went back to Russia during the First World War and worked in the salt mines. He came to Bellshill to work in the pits and then went back to ... take my hat off to such a joe!
Sometimes I went down there to visit Tony. We sat in the kitchen. Tony was recording things off Radio Luxenbourg. He had a tape machine and a screw driver. So he's sticking the screw driver into the tape machine and I'm wondering why, what's all that about.
Of course, he listened to John Peel as well. A kind of listening to Radio Luxenbourrg, Radio One when it happened kind of a guy
I'm a bit distraught. Tony died on the 29th of September, so if I'm going to do some juju for him, that's seven weeks from there. Of course, I don't really believe in any of that, but I'm going to ..what else can you do? Well, I can write about what I knew about the guy. That's what I'm going to write about for the next seven weeks, or maybe just for this evening.
There's a stairway in the school and at the very bottom of the stairs, there is a wee bit further down and down there you can sit on the pipes. Just slightly below ground level and then there are hot water pipes. I started sitting down there when I was in third year probably. Folk from Viewpark sat there. I was thinking today how fit these joes were as kids.
Jim Muir was one of them. Jim went into train at Parkhead maybe a year later. John Doyle ended up playing for Celtic. Peter Longworth was much better at football than any of us, and the paradigm of a well brought up kid, but football scouts look for the terrier in kids, and Pete was a very nice guy. There were a few other folk sitting on these pipes, but I remember those pretty well.
It was called mocking. Taking the piss. It's vocabulary. It's resonance. It's being really smart with your mouth. Sometimes folk would leap off the pipes and retort. These are really joes with the smart rejoinders. Once you lose the accent a bit and start toadying to the evil bourgeois, you won't have that anymore. You have moved on into inarticulateness.
So that's where I found Tony, before we went to the dancing, down there in the slightly underneath where boys were being boys and mocking each other and being smart and taking the piss.
After we'd been going to the dancing once or twice, I visited him in his home, which was in Banyan Crescent. This is right down at the bottom of the Laburnum Road, which goes from the top and takes in the bottom of Viewpark. So you get the bus from Bellshill and walk down the Laburnum Road, and turn into Banyan Crescent. It's kind of exotic. Banyan Crescent. I think a banyan might be a tree.
In the living room were sitting his granda and his grandmaw. His maw and his da were nothing in comparison. They so acknowledged and were so giving to the granda and the grandmaw. The granda had a moustache, a kind of big European moustache.
So, we're going to go out to the dancing and Tony has to get by his granny who is appearing for us in the kitchen. Tony is wearing a white polo neck, bri nylon horrorshow crew neck jumper, which we think it totally cool, but his old granny starts pulling at the front of it and asking Tony if he's wearing a vest. Are you wearing a simmit?
She's a dwarf and the most gorgeous old josephine you have ever met in your life. A cake left out in the rain. So I says to her, what was Lithuania like? She says it was flat and full of potato fields. Every time I saw her, I really fell in love with her. She checked to see if Tony was wearing a simmit. Well, he wasn't. Hmmm? So she told him to go out and find a nice Jewish girl.
His grandad went back to Russia during the First World War and worked in the salt mines. He came to Bellshill to work in the pits and then went back to ... take my hat off to such a joe!
Sometimes I went down there to visit Tony. We sat in the kitchen. Tony was recording things off Radio Luxenbourg. He had a tape machine and a screw driver. So he's sticking the screw driver into the tape machine and I'm wondering why, what's all that about.
Of course, he listened to John Peel as well. A kind of listening to Radio Luxenbourrg, Radio One when it happened kind of a guy
Tony
Wednesday 3:30 p.m.
I managed to keep myself together in the crematorium, which is good going for me. Over the past few days, of course, images of Tony and me, and the kind of relationship we had, have been in and out of my head all the time.
All the things I know about him and all the things I remember about him. Millions and millions of things. Although we didn't pal about much after he got married, we were really, really close friends at that time of your life, late adolescence and early adulthood, when you really are developing as a person. It's strange to know so much about someone and not be able to tell anyone about it. I couldn't face the wake.
I met his first wife, Fran. Tony and I went on a pilgrimage to Lourdes (and Lloret de Mar!) with a group of, mainly, girls from the Saint Columbus parish down in Viewpark at the end of fifth year at school. Frances Crighton was one of the girls.
His brother Frankie was standing in the queue in front of me. Tony, he said, had a totally unexpected and massive heart attack, but it took a few days to kill him. The hospital sent him home and he died there. Alive one week and dead the next. C'est la vie.
It really was the most important friendship of my life. And I'm not going to sit greetin about it here. So off to the pub!
I managed to keep myself together in the crematorium, which is good going for me. Over the past few days, of course, images of Tony and me, and the kind of relationship we had, have been in and out of my head all the time.
All the things I know about him and all the things I remember about him. Millions and millions of things. Although we didn't pal about much after he got married, we were really, really close friends at that time of your life, late adolescence and early adulthood, when you really are developing as a person. It's strange to know so much about someone and not be able to tell anyone about it. I couldn't face the wake.
I met his first wife, Fran. Tony and I went on a pilgrimage to Lourdes (and Lloret de Mar!) with a group of, mainly, girls from the Saint Columbus parish down in Viewpark at the end of fifth year at school. Frances Crighton was one of the girls.
His brother Frankie was standing in the queue in front of me. Tony, he said, had a totally unexpected and massive heart attack, but it took a few days to kill him. The hospital sent him home and he died there. Alive one week and dead the next. C'est la vie.
It really was the most important friendship of my life. And I'm not going to sit greetin about it here. So off to the pub!
Monday, 4 October 2010
Best Pals
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!
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!
Sunday, 3 October 2010
Cyclista!!
Sunday Noon
I didn't get wet on the way to Haymarket station on Friday morning. It started raining just as I got to the station. Then when I got off at Shotts, it was raining alright. But I've got on a cyclist's hat and a bright yellow rainproof jacket and the Nazi bike, so fung the rain. You can get into the rain. And you make an effort in the rain. It pushes you on.
Changed and got the stuff up to dry in the good mother's house. Two hours of intense wonderful bliss out of the three I spent there. That granny asked if I wanted the bike seat wiped dry as I was leaving there and I said there was no point since I'd be soaking in five minutes anyway.
It was windy with the gusts of drenching rain. You were connected more firmly to the air and the roiling clouds. I'm fit enough now to try really hard all the way from Newmains to Bellshill and bikes are fun. The four big roundabouts are fun. I made one poor motorist screech to a halt, just one. I felt as if hoisting the black flag of anarchism. There were no other bikes. Only a loony would be out cycling in that. And oh how I loved it! I felt totally exhilerated. It could have been completely miserable, but due to the synchronicity of certain causes and conditions, it wasn't.
It was sitting in the kitchen on Friday night was three folk I've known for over forty years. My friend from the Wild West was treated to my meal last night. Boiled tattties, fried with onions, a wee bit of fried chard, and lots of salt and tomato sauce. People don't know what to make of me sometimes. Neither do I. Yesterday, I discovered I'm a vegan. I'd rather be a Jedi warrior, or a Vulcan.
I didn't get wet on the way to Haymarket station on Friday morning. It started raining just as I got to the station. Then when I got off at Shotts, it was raining alright. But I've got on a cyclist's hat and a bright yellow rainproof jacket and the Nazi bike, so fung the rain. You can get into the rain. And you make an effort in the rain. It pushes you on.
Changed and got the stuff up to dry in the good mother's house. Two hours of intense wonderful bliss out of the three I spent there. That granny asked if I wanted the bike seat wiped dry as I was leaving there and I said there was no point since I'd be soaking in five minutes anyway.
It was windy with the gusts of drenching rain. You were connected more firmly to the air and the roiling clouds. I'm fit enough now to try really hard all the way from Newmains to Bellshill and bikes are fun. The four big roundabouts are fun. I made one poor motorist screech to a halt, just one. I felt as if hoisting the black flag of anarchism. There were no other bikes. Only a loony would be out cycling in that. And oh how I loved it! I felt totally exhilerated. It could have been completely miserable, but due to the synchronicity of certain causes and conditions, it wasn't.
It was sitting in the kitchen on Friday night was three folk I've known for over forty years. My friend from the Wild West was treated to my meal last night. Boiled tattties, fried with onions, a wee bit of fried chard, and lots of salt and tomato sauce. People don't know what to make of me sometimes. Neither do I. Yesterday, I discovered I'm a vegan. I'd rather be a Jedi warrior, or a Vulcan.
Friday, 1 October 2010
Yesterday's photies!
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It was a lovely day yesterday. I went to the allotment for more tatties and a wee meditate in the later afternoon, and took these photies. Today it is forecast to pour. But the mad cyclista will have to whizz about regardless. Allah Akbar!
Thursday, 30 September 2010
Sweet Thursday!
Thursday 11:00 p.m.
"Similarly, the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta (D 16), too, records how the Buddha, after declaring that even he, as an awakened being, has to pass away, admonishes us through Ānanda:
Therefore, nanda, you should live as islands unto yourselves,15 being your own refuge, with no one else as your refuge, with the Dharma as an island,16 with the Dharma as your refuge, with
no other refuge."
This is from an essay by Piya Tan. You can get it on Wikipedia at the bottom of the entry under his name. It's about bad gurus and bad religious friendships. The section on Chogyam Trungpa is riveting.
I keep coming across stuff about the Trungpa guy. Drinking himself to death and behaving in the worst possible way ... Lama Yeshe says in a CD I have that his students loved him because he would let them drink and smoke (and hump each other!!)(and give each other diseases!!), but when he died, he was able to be in samahdi for the whatever number of days. This is the between life and death scene somehow where you don't develop rigor mortis.
I'd like to know how that works!! Maybe it's a great inadvertent teaching... don't crawl up anyone's backside just because they can do the juju. Or, you don't have to be in the slightest bit holy to train your mind though I should think restraint must be a huge, huge help at least in the preliminary stages.
Someday a great buddhist novelist should write a novel about that guy, or based on that story. Unfortunately, it's not for such as me. I don't have that kind of talent!!
The first meditation today shows progress. I'm doing a bit with the symbols and chakras, but not much. As long as I don't fung up completely, I think my mind is moving slowly (because I am not holy or restrained in my habits!!) towards samadhi. Of course, I don't know what samadhi is. But my mind is going somewhere very nice indeed.
The sun is shining. It is a beautiful day. Many times when I was writing during my holidays, I used to watch the beautiful day from where I was typing and have to type on. This morning the curtains are closed in my room. But it's worth it. it really is!
"Similarly, the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta (D 16), too, records how the Buddha, after declaring that even he, as an awakened being, has to pass away, admonishes us through Ānanda:
Therefore, nanda, you should live as islands unto yourselves,15 being your own refuge, with no one else as your refuge, with the Dharma as an island,16 with the Dharma as your refuge, with
no other refuge."
This is from an essay by Piya Tan. You can get it on Wikipedia at the bottom of the entry under his name. It's about bad gurus and bad religious friendships. The section on Chogyam Trungpa is riveting.
I keep coming across stuff about the Trungpa guy. Drinking himself to death and behaving in the worst possible way ... Lama Yeshe says in a CD I have that his students loved him because he would let them drink and smoke (and hump each other!!)(and give each other diseases!!), but when he died, he was able to be in samahdi for the whatever number of days. This is the between life and death scene somehow where you don't develop rigor mortis.
I'd like to know how that works!! Maybe it's a great inadvertent teaching... don't crawl up anyone's backside just because they can do the juju. Or, you don't have to be in the slightest bit holy to train your mind though I should think restraint must be a huge, huge help at least in the preliminary stages.
Someday a great buddhist novelist should write a novel about that guy, or based on that story. Unfortunately, it's not for such as me. I don't have that kind of talent!!
The first meditation today shows progress. I'm doing a bit with the symbols and chakras, but not much. As long as I don't fung up completely, I think my mind is moving slowly (because I am not holy or restrained in my habits!!) towards samadhi. Of course, I don't know what samadhi is. But my mind is going somewhere very nice indeed.
The sun is shining. It is a beautiful day. Many times when I was writing during my holidays, I used to watch the beautiful day from where I was typing and have to type on. This morning the curtains are closed in my room. But it's worth it. it really is!
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