Jimmy Cryans - Once Upon a Crime

G rowing up in Glasgow in the 1950s and 1960s was an everyday adventure for me. There was always something happening and for the most part I had a happy childhood, even though right from as far back as I can remember I somehow felt different from all the other kids.

I was my mammies boy right from the off and it stayed that way until she died in October 2008. She was my best pal and all the good things about me I got from her. Of course this begs the question Then where the fuck did all the bad things come from? All I can do is tell you my story how I remember it.

I was born in August 1953 at 1296 Duke Street in Parkhead in the east end. My ma had all six of her children delivered in her own bed in her own house. Ma didnt like hospitals or doctors. When I made my entry I already had two big sisters, Sheena, the eldest and two years below her Olive, then aged eight. Mas name was Sarah but was known to everyone as Sadie. My das name was Hughie Cryans. The Cryans were a well-known family, originally from the Calton but had lived in Parkhead for years. Mas family the Parks came from Bridgeton.

Ma and Hughie shared a bed recess in the front room/kitchen while I shared the big double bed in the back bedroom with my two older sisters. This was considered absolutely normal for the time and as I got older and went to visit pals I realised that we were considerably better off than most of them, but by any normal standards we were shit poor. The great thing about being a wean a child is that you just accept your lifestyle.

Even though I was struck down by polio at age two I have no bad memories. I was one of the lucky ones. Ma noticed very quickly that I was repeatedly falling over on my right side and rushed me to the doctor. Polio was confirmed and Mas early intervention saved me from a life in a wheelchair. Not for the last time was she to come to my rescue.

I recall my time at Quarrybray nursery school in Parkhead with fondness. I joined my first school at age five, again in Parkhead called Elba Lane Infants. From the start I loved school: it was new and exciting and I had lots of new pals. I can still reel off their names: Bobby McCallum, Jamie ODonnell, Ian Cameron

One day I arrived home from school bursting with excitement. Ma, can I get a pair of those big boots like wee Fitzys got? Can I, Ma? Go on, please! They make loads of sparks when he slides alang the pavement.

No, youre not getting a pair of those parish boots, youll give us all a showing up, said Ma. Parish boots had metal soles that made big sparks and looked like boots I had seen soldiers wearing. Ma explained to me that they were part of a package of clothes given to the very poorest families and arranged by the local parish church. I was bitterly disappointed and went to bed that night wishing that we were really, really poor just like Fitzys family.

We lived at the top end of Duke Street and there were two main focus points for our entertainment. For me the most important was the Granada cinema where I got to know the big Hollywood stars. There were only two guys Glasgow men wanted to be: one was Jimmy Cagney and the other was Frank Sinatra and I think that tells you something about the psyche of the working-class Glasgow man.

The second centre of entertainment was the Palace Bar, which I was never allowed inside. Even Ma would not cross the threshold, but entertainment it certainly provided for me and the other dead-end kids, especially on Friday and Saturday nights. In those days pubs would call time at nine oclock, by which time one of the local married women would have already entered the bar with sleeves rolled up. This would be swiftly followed by a screaming female voice that could have stripped paint at 20 yards. Right, you fuckin useless wee shite gies ma money and get yerself tae fuck!

If we were really lucky the fight would spill out onto the pavement with the wife and her spouse trading punches. But the real highlight of the evening came for us at closing time. Sometimes trouble kicked off inside the bar and a group of men would spew out of the front doors. Best of all was when two men had decided to settle their differences in the time-honoured Glasgow fashion of a square-go: a jackets-off, face-to-face with no weapons involved and nobody else allowed to step in. Outside of these slim rules anything went: punching, kicking, gouging, head-butting (the famous Glasgow kiss) until one of the men would declare he had had enough or was beaten to an unconscious pulp. It may seem repulsive that this savagery could be described as entertainment but for us kids it was just like watching a John Wayne movie at the Granada next door.

I was growing up in a violent culture but thats the way life was and I never saw violence at home. I was loved by everyone and was a happy child. Though I always felt that there was something different, something missing, at this early time it wasnt something that troubled me.