Working Class Boy by Jimmy Barnes Read Free Book Online Page A

FOUR
    a real Glasgow hard man
    I don’t recall spending much time with my grandparents except for my granny, my mum’s mum. She lived a life that I could only speculate; it made my life look tame. The world tried to break her but failed, leaving an old woman with nothing but memories and a broken heart, but she was still standing. She lived alone until she was eighty-something. And she was as tough as nails. The women in Glasgow all seemed to be really hard.
    She helped bring me into this world and for that I thank her. Life couldn’t have been easy for her and even though she could sometimes get a little wild, she was always loving and funny. I have vague memories of her husband, my da, but they are not very clear. They didn’t live in the same house and hadn’t for as long as I was around. My granny and he were friends, but I don’t remember seeing them together. Maybe they didn’t talk at all, who knows. That probably worked out fine for them. Da lived alone, except for his best mate, Jackie the border collie. Dorothy, my big sister, was his favourite but I don’t think he had a lot to do with us.
    I have no recollection of my dad’s mum. I think she died young from a drinking-related illness. My grandparents all livedhard and except for my granny, they all died quite young. In Glasgow, if someone died, you didn’t bury them immediately; you would go around to their house a few days later and beat their liver to death with a stick. They drank a lot. I had an uncle who drank a bottle of varnish . . . he had a horrible end but a lovely finish. Sorry, I had to share that. It’s an old joke but a good one.
    I know I met Pop, my dad’s dad. I have vague memories of him being quiet and a bit scary. Apparently he was a real Glasgow hard man. Old-school hard. He was a bare-knuckle fighter, a champion during the Depression. He would fight for about thirty rounds in the alleys of Glasgow while everyone placed bets on him. Fighting in Glasgow is an art form and he must have been a master and a nightmare rolled into one. He made his money fighting. That was his job – being beaten or beating people to a pulp. My dad told us that during the Depression, when food was really scarce, if he won his fights he would buy the whole street bacon and eggs. When he wasn’t fighting I don’t know what they ate but it wasn’t a lot.
    I tried to track down more about him but no records of illegal bare-knuckle fighting were kept. The boxing officials in Scotland said it never happened after the turn of the century. They obviously didn’t live anywhere near us.
    I met an old guy when I went back to Scotland in 1980. I was in a pub with my uncle and I went to the bar to get a drink. We actually went to the pub at ten in the morning and sat in there all day just drinking slowly until it shut again at night. We seemed to be there every morning. After a while I asked my uncle jokingly if he was just doing this for me because it wasn’t necessary; I could live without a drink at least until after lunch.
    He very seriously said no, that’s just what he did. It looked to me like this was sort of a job: clock in at ten, drink all dayand clock out at closing time. He was out of the house the same amount of time he would have been if he was working. We weren’t alone doing it either, and after a few days I had a whole bunch of new friends. Old and young, male and female, standing around outside the pub, looking at their watches waiting for it to open. It didn’t matter if it was pouring with rain, they were there the same time every day, with coats and hats on, waiting for the click of the lock and the doors to swing open. Then they would pour into the bar, excitedly rubbing their hands together, ready for the first of the day. They looked a little edgy and very thirsty and they were all a little snappy first thing in the morning until they had their first drink.
    Now I like a