Marabou Stork Nightmares Read online

  The old boy, John, had got himself engaged to another woman. This proved that there were at least two crazy females in Granton in the early sixties. They were due to be married when my Ma, Vet (short for Verity), reappeared in the lounge bar of The Anchor public house. As Dad was to remark often: Ah jist looked acroass n met yir Ma's eyes n the auld magic wis still thair.

  That was that. Vet told John she'd got the travelling out of her system, that he was the only man she'd ever loved and could they please get married.

  John said aye, or words to that effect, and they tied the knot, him taking on the two Italian bambinos whom Vet later confessed were from different guys. I was born about a year after the wedding, followed about a year later by my sister Kim, and my brother Elgin, who arrived a year later again. Elgin got his name from the Highland town where John reckoned he was conceived.

  Yes, we were a far from handsome family. I suppose I got off relatively lightly, though I stress relatively. While my own face and body merely suggested what people in the scheme would, whispering, refer to as 'the Strang look', Kim and Elgin completely screamed it. 'The Strang look' was essentially a concave face starting at a prominent, pointed forehead, swinging in at a sharp angle towards large, dulled eyes and a small, squashed nose, down into thin, twisted lips and springing outwards to the tip of a large, jutting chin. A sort of retarded man-in-the-moon face. My additional crosses to bear: two large protruding ears which came from my otherwise normal-looking mother, invisible under her long, black hair.

  My older half-brothers were more fortunate. They took after my mother, and, presumably their Italian fathers. Tony looked a little like a darker, swarthier version of the footballer Graeme Souness, though not so ugly; despite being prone to putting on weight. Bernard was fair, slim and gazelle-like, outrageously camp from an early age.

  The rest of us took 'the Strang look' from the old man, who, as I've said, was an Al basket case. John Strang's large, striking face was dominated by thickly framed glasses with bottom-of-Coke-bottle lenses. These magnified his intense, blazing eyes further. They had the effect of making him look as if he was coming from very far away then suddenly appearing right in your face. It was scary and disconcerting. If you were in possession of a Harrier Jump-jet, you could have chosen either his chin or forehead as a landing pad. He generally wore a large brown fur coat, under which he carried his shotgun when he patrolled the scheme late at night with Winston, his loyal Alsatian. Winston was a horrible dog and I was glad when he died. He was instantly replaced by an even more vicious beast of the same breed, who also rejoiced in the name Winston.

  I later had cause to be less than pleased at the first Winston's demise; the second one savaged me badly. I was about eight, and watching a Superboy cartoon on the television. I decided that Winston Two was Krypto the Superdog and I tied a towel to his collar to simulate Krypto's cape. The dog freaked out and turned on me, savaging my leg so badly that I needed skin grafts and walk with a slight limp to this day . . . only now I don't walk at all.

  I feel a spasm of hurt at that realisation. Remembering hurts.

  — Dinnae tell nae cunt it wis Winston, Dad threatened and pleaded. He was terrified in case they took the dog away. I said it was an unprovoked attack by some of the strays which congregated on the wasteland adjacent to our block. It made the local paper and the Tory council, who hated spending the snobby ratepayers' money on anything to do with our scheme, grudgingly sent an environmental health van over to round up the savage pack-beasts for extermination. I spent four months off the school, which was the best part of it.

  As a kid I did the normal things kids in the scheme did: played fitba and Japs and commandos, mucked about on bikes, caught bees, hung around stairs bored, battered smaller/weaker kids, got battered by bigger/stronger kids. At nine years old I was charged by the polis for playing football in the street. We were kicking a ball around in a patch of grass outside the block of flats we lived in. There were no NO BALL GAMES signs up, but we should have known, even at that age, that as the scheme was a concentration camp for the poor; this like everything else, was prohibited. We were taken up to court where my mate Brian's dad made a brilliant speech and embarrassed the judge into admonishing us. You could see the polis looking like tits.

  — A fuckin common criminal at the age ay nine, my Ma used tae moan. — Common criminal.

  It's only in retrospect I realise that she was fucked up because the auld man was away at the time. She used to say that he was working, but Tony told us that he was in the jail. Tony was awright. He battered me a few times, but he also battered anybody who messed with me, unless they were his mates. Bernard I hated; he just stayed in the hoose and played with my wee sister Kim aw the time. Bernard was like Kim; Bernard was a girl.

  I loved catching bees in the summer. We'd fill auld Squeezy detergent bottles with water and skoosh the bee as it sucked at the nectar on the flower. The trick was to train a couple of jets on the bee at the same time and blast it to fuck, the water weighing down its wings. We'd then scoop the drenched bees into a jar and then dig little prison cells for them in the softer material between the sections of brick at the ramp at the bottom of our block of flats. We used ice-lolly sticks as the doors. We had a concentration camp, a tiny Scottish housing scheme, for bees.

  One of my pals, Pete, had a magnifying glass. It was great getting a shot of it. I used to like to burn the bees' wings, making them easier prisoners. Sometimes I burned their faces. The smell was horrible, the smell of burning bee. I wanted the glass. I swapped Pete an Action Man that had no arms for his magnifying glass. I had earlier swapped the Action Man fae Brian for a truck.

  I was embarrassed when any of the other kids came roond to the hoose. Most of them seemed to have better hooses than us, it was like we were scruffs. That's how I knew the old man was in the jail, there was only my Ma's wages for doing the school dinners and the cleaning. Thank fuck my Ma did the dinners at a different school than the one I went to.

  Then my Dad came back. He got work in security and started daein the hoose up. We got a new fireplace with plastic coals and twirly things inside a plastic funnel which made it look like heat rising. It was really just an electric bar fire but. My Dad was awright at first; I remember he took me to Easter Road for the fitba. He left me and Tony and Bernard and my cousin Alan in my Uncle Jackie's car ootside a pub. They bought us coke and crisps. When they came out they were pished from drinking beer and they got us pies and Bovril and mair crisps at the fitba. I was bored with the fitba, but I liked getting the pies and crisps. The backs of my legs got sair, like when my Ma took us tae Leith Walk tae the shops.

  Then I got a bad battering fae my Dad and had to go to the hospital for stitches. He hit the side of my head and I fell over and split it on the edge of the kitchen table. Six stitches above the eye. It was barry having stitches. The auld man didn't understand that it was only clipshers I put in Kim's hair. — It wis jist clipshers, Dad, I pleaded. — Clipshers dinnae sting.

  Kim just gret and gret like fuck. She wouldnae stop. It was only clipshers as well. Just clipshers. It's no as if it was bees. They have these pincers at the back, but they dinnae sting. I think Devil's Coach-Horses or Earwigs were their real names.

  — Look at hur! Look what yuv fuckin well done tae yir sister ya silly wee cunt! He gestured tae Kim, whose already distorted face twisted further in contrived terror. The auld man thumped me then.

  I had to tell everyone at the casualty that I was mucking aboot wi Tony and I fell. I had headaches for a long time eftir that.

  I remember once watching my Ma, Vet, scrubbing the tartan nameplate on the door of our maisonette flat. Somebody had added an 'E' to our name. Dad and my Uncle Jackie went around the stair cross-examining terrified neighbours. Dad was always threatening to shoot anybody who complained about us. Other parents therefore always told their kids not to play with us, and all but the craziest ones complied.

  If the neighbours were terrified of my Dad and Uncle Jack
ie, who was really just Dad's mate but we called him 'Uncle', they were also pretty wary of my Ma. Her father or grandfather, I could never remember which one, had been a prisoner-of-war in a Japanese camp and he had gone slightly loopy; a direct result, Vet claimed, of his cruel incarceration. She grew up indoctrinated with tales of Jap atrocities and had once read this book which contended that the orientals would take over the world by the turn of the century. She would scrutinise the eyes of my few friends, proclaiming them unsuitable if they had what she considered to be 'Jap blood'.

  I think I was about nine or ten when I first heard the auld man mention South Africa. It seemed that no sooner than he mentioned it, we were there.

  — See us, Vet? Meant fir better things. Me wi aw they security joabs. Nae prospects. Like ah sais, meant fir better things. This country's gaun tae the dogs. Aw they strikes; cannae even git yir fuckin bucket emptied. They trade union cunts: hudin the country tae ransom. Sooth Efrikay, that's the place. Like ah sais, Sooth Efrikay. Ah ken thuv goat problems in Sooth Efrikay n aw, but at least thuv no goat this fuckin Labour Governmint. Ah'm gaunny see aboot gittin us ower thair. Oor Gordon wid pit us up, nae danger. Ah'll take us oot thair, Vet. Fuckin well sure'n ah will. Think ah'll no? Ah'm askin ye! Think ah'll no?

  — Nae Japs . . .

  — Aye, bit git this though, Vet. Thir's nae Japs in Sooth Efrikay. Nane. That's cause it's a white man's country, like ah sais, a white man's country. White is right oot thair, ah kid ye not. Like ah sais: Sooth Efrikay, white is right, Dad sang, all high and animated. His large flat tongue licked at a stamp which he stuck on a letter. It was probably a letter of complaint to somebody. He always wrote letters of complaint.

  —Jist as long is thir's nae Japs . . .

  —Naw bit this is Sooth Efrikay. Sooth Fuckin Efrikay Vet, if yi'll pardon ma ps n qs.

  — Somewhair ah kin git tae dry clathes . . . they Pearsons . . . eywis in the dryin green . . .

  — Eh! Ah fuckin telt that cow! Ah fuckin telt hur! Ah sais tae hur, nixt time ah fuckin see your washin in that fuckin dryin green whin ma wife's tryin tae wash, the whole fuckin loat's gaun doon the fuckin shute intae the rubbish! Fuckin ignorant, some people, like ah sais, fuckin ignorant. Bit see in Sooth Efrikay Vet, we'd huv a big hoose like Gordon's. Dry oor clathes in the sun, in a real fuckin gairdin, no in some concrete boax wi holes in it.

  Gordon was John's brother who had left to go to South Africa years ago. Possibly John's closeness to 'Uncle'Jackie was due to him seeing Jackie as a brother substitute. Certainly at the drunken parties he frequently hosted, when squads of guys and couples would pack into our egg-box after closing time, he seemed at his happiest telling old stories of himself, Gordon and the Jubilee Gang, as he and his hippy-beating Teddy Boy mates used to call themselves.

  — It wid be nice tae huv a real back gairdin . . . I remember Ma saying that. I remember that clearly.

  It was decided. Dad's word generally went in our family. We were making plans to go off to South Africa.

  I didnae really ken whether or no I wanted to go. It was just eftir that that I lit my first really big fire. I'd always liked fires. Boney nights were the best nights of the year in the scheme, Guy Fawkes because you got fireworks, but Victoria Day n aw. We'd go doon the beach tae get wood or find other boneys in the scheme and raid them. Sometimes, though, we got raided ourselves. You would get cudgels and stanes and try to defend your bonfire against raiders. There was always fights with stanes in the scheme. The first thing I learned tae dae was tae fling a stane. That was what you did as a kid in Muirhoose, you flung stanes; flung them at radges, at windaes, at buses.

  It was something to do.

  The fire, though, that was something else. It was eftir the boney. I had a lighted torch and I put it doon the rubbish chute. It ignited the rubbish in the big bucket in the budget room at the bottom of the building. Two fire engines came. Ma mate Brian made ays shite masel.

  — Ooohhh! You'll get taken away, Roy, he telt me with wide-eyed glee at my fear.

  Ah wis shitin it, nearly fuckin greetin n aw that. Brian kept taking the pish, but I'll gie him his due, he never telt nae cunt. The polis came roond every door and asked aw these questions. My Dad said nothing. — Never tell these cunts anything, he used to drum into us. It was the one bit of sense I ever remember him talking. He was really chuffed about the fire as well, because Mrs Pearson from up the stairs had her washing ruined by the smoke. It rose from the budget room to the drying greens above it.

  — Serves the cow fuckin well right, like ah sais, the fuckin ignorant boot. Shouldnae be monopolism the fuckin drying greens whin thir's people wantin tae hing oot a washin! That's what she fuckin well gets!

  It dawned on me that the auld man was probably prime suspect in the lighting of the fire. He was chuffed to have a cast-iron alibi; he was playing in his dominoes league match up at the Doocot when it started. He was so chuffed that I wanted to tell him it was me, but I resisted the temptation. The cunt could change moods quickly.

  Sometimes me and my pals used to go out of the scheme, but it was usually just doon the beach. Me, Pete, Brian, Deek (Bri's brother) and Dennis, we would think aboot running away and going camping, like in the Enid Blyton books. We usually just got as far as the fuckin beach, before getting fed up and going hame. Occasionally we'd walk to snobby bits like Barnton, Cramond or Blackhall. The polis would always come around and make us go hame, though. People in the big hooses, hooses that were the same size as our block, which sixty families lived in; they would just go away and phone the polis. They must have thought we were gaunny chorie aypils or something. Aw I wanted tae dae was tae watch birds. I got an interest in birds, used to get loads ay books on them fae the library. I got this from my auld man, I suppose. He was really interested in birds as well.

  I mind ay askin ma Dad if we would live in a big hoose like the ones in Barnton when we went tae South Africa.

  — Bigger than thaim though son, much bigger. Like ah sais, much bigger, he telt ays.

  The funny thing is that it was in the period when we were preparing to go to South Africa that I have some of the most vivid memories of John, my Dad. As I've indicated, he was a little bit crazy and we were all frightened of him. He was far too intense about things, and got himself worked up over nothing. I worried about the shotgun he kept under the bed.

  Our main point of contact was through television. John would take the TV pages from the Daily Record and circle the programmes to watch that evening. He was a keen nature freak, and as I mentioned, particularly interested in ornithology. We both loved the David Attenborough style nature documentaries. He was never so happy as when programmes on exotic birds came on the box and he was very knowledgeable on the subject. John Strang was a man who knew the difference between a Cinnamon Bracken Warbler and, say, the Brown Woodland variety.

  — See that! Bullshit! A Luhder's Bush Shrike, the boy sais! That's a Doherty's Bush Shrike! Like ah sais, a Doherty's Bush Shrike! Jist as well ah'm tapin this oan the video!

  We were the first family in the district to have all the key consumer goods as they came onto the market: colour television, video recorder and eventually satellite dish. Dad thought that they made us different from the rest of the families in the scheme, a cut above the others. Middle-class, he often said.

  All they did was define us as prototype schemies.

  I remember the note he sent to the BBC, smug in his knowledge that for all the research capabilities he imagined them having at their disposal, their presenter had got his facts wrong. The reply was initially a great source of pride to him:

  Dear Mr Strange,

  Thank you for your letter in which you point out the factual error in our programme WINGS OVER THE BUSH which was transmitted last Thursday.

  While this particular nature documentary was not made by the BBC, as commissioners of the group of independent film-makers who produced the programme, we accept liability for such inaccuracy in our broadcasts.

  Whi
le we at the BBC strive for accuracy in every area of our broadcasting activities, errors will inevitably occur from time to time and keen members of the viewing public with specialist knowledge like yourself provide an invaluable service in bringing such inaccuracies to our attention.

  The vigilant and informed viewer has a key role to play in ensuring that we at the BBC maintain our high standards of broadcast excellence and adequately fulfill the responsibilities of our charter, namely: to educate, inform and entertain.

  Once again, thank you for your correspondence.

  Yours sincerely,

  Roger Snape

  Programme Controller, Nature Documentaries.

  The old man showed every fucker that letter. He showed them in the pub, and at his work with Group Six Securities. He freaked out when my Uncle Jackie pointed out to him that they had misspelled his name. He wrote a letter to Roger Snape saying that if he was ever in London, he would kick fuck out of him.

  Dear Mr Snap,

  Thank you for your letter in which you show yourself to be an ignorant person not spelling my name right. I just want you to know that I do not like people not spelling my name right. It is S-T-R-A-N-G. If I am ever in London I will snap you. . . into small pieces.

  Yours faithfully,

  John STRANG.

  The only things which seemed to give Dad enjoyment were drinking alcohol and listening to records of Winston Churchill's wartime speeches. Pools of tears would well up behind his thick lenses as he was moved by his idol's stirring rhetoric.