RickMcD

I enjoyed walking into my local club at teatime last night to see a crowd of guys bedecked in green crying into their pints of Guinness. I didn't gloat much. Honest!

I enjoyed walking into my local club at teatime last night to see a crowd of guys bedecked in green crying into their pints of Guinness. I didn't gloat much. Honest!

I enjoyed walking into my local club at teatime last night to see a crowd of guys bedecked in green crying into their pints of Guinness. I didn't gloat much. Honest!

I enjoyed walking into my local club at teatime last night to see a crowd of guys bedecked in green crying into their pints of Guinness. I didn't gloat much. Honest!

I do a bit of writing and this is a little piece I wrote for my writing club which covered some of the gang mentality of the 70's. Some of you will hopefully find it interesting. The theme was it happened on a Sunday which is why it is structured the way it is.
The Christmas you get you deserve.
 
It happened on a Sunday in November 1975 when I was 14 years old. I had survived High School in Paisley which was no easy feat in those times. I can’t speak for every high school in Paisley but mine was a warzone. Gang culture was fairly prevalent and it was part of the High School playground education. Kids were enrolled into the tiny teams before progressing into the young teams and many graduated to become full blooded gangsters. Piggy Pickett, Speccy Boyd, Basil Burns, Dopey Cochrane and Goofy Doherty may have sounded like characters from Disney movies but they were learning to make real life horror productions. Like many others of that era they honed their talents in the High School playground gaining the extortion, intimidation and violence qualifications which would enable them to build multi-million pound empires of violence, misery and death.  High School was about learning to survive in a violent and hostile world where education was about much more than academic achievement. Avoiding getting slashed, stabbed, maimed, bullied, robbed, pregnant, arrested or belted was just as important as gaining qualifications.
I had spent my 12th and 13th years at high school being one of the bright kids. I wasn’t classed as a ‘swat’ or a ‘poof’ but many destined to stay in the High School system deemed I was too smart for my own good. What they had meant was debatable but it translated into me suffering several fat lips, black eyes and a broken nose. Being too stupid to keep my mouth shut or relinquish my dinner money was not a trait encouraged by the system but I was daft enough to survive without my reputation, health or finances suffering too much and clever enough to make it out. The statistics proved I was one of the top 10% academic achievers in the high school system and I was thrust into a world where nothing was as important as qualifications.
That Sunday night in 1975 would have been my fourth month at Grammar School. I hadn’t seen a single fight in the school playground, nothing had been stolen and the gang uniforms of Doc Martins, turned up jeans and Crombie coats had been replaced by Barathea Blazers, Brogues and baggy trousers. The atmosphere was completely different but just as intimidating. Academic discipline was far more powerful than the law of the jungle. Shielded behind tradition the teachers were invincible. They didn’t need a strap of leather to keep their pupils in check. They had Latin, gowns, colours and school songs. They had rules, goals and symbolic achievements. They had Shakespeare, Pythagoras and Prokofiev. The idea of standing at an assembly in the High School singing the school classical song about the Oriflamme would have been laughable but at the Grammar they did it with great gusto because that was what was expected. Expectation was what drove the whole school. They were expected to work hard, gain qualifications, go to university and then run the family business or build on their family’s success. The only pressure exerted was peer or family pressure and the teachers didn’t need the belt or threats of violence to keep order.
That Sunday Tom Browne revealed the song order on the Sunday night Chart show and confirmed Bohemian Rhapsody had reached number one. Freddie Mercury had gone all Rock Opera and whilst I quite liked the song it just reminded me of all the pretentious presentations at my new school. The Oriflamme and Bohemian Rhapsody were as far apart as Grammar school and High School but in my mind they both represented a change for the worst. In High School I had seen the devastation caused to the school bus the last time a piece of classical music had topped the charts. Simon Park’s orchestral production of Eye level had gone straight to the top of the charts in September 1973. The idea that the theme tune from the Dutch detective series Van Der Valk should take up the slot reserved for the Sweet and Ballroom Blitz had enraged the Crombie coated, Doc Martin brigade so much that when it was announced on Radio one at 1pm on that fateful Tuesday lunchtime they had blitzed the school bus slashed the seats, smashed the windows and set fire to a first years jacket. I think the first year was still in it. The idea of a Rock opera topping the charts struck a chord in my educational aspirations meaning I suddenly missed being in the top 10% of the brainless and resented being thrust into the dumbest 10% of the intellectual elite. Second top class, 2B to the bottom class 3G was a long way to fall and the Grammar Oriflamme vision with its bright beacon seemed as dark as the “mamma, I just killed a man” version of High School.
That Sunday was the beginning of the rebellion. Greg Lake’s I believe in father Christmas was number two in the charts and I saw it as an anti-Christmas song. Whether it was or wasn’t, was irrelevant as I twisted the lyrics to suit my vision and ‘the Christmas we get we deserve’ became my put down to anyone who didn’t get what they wanted on their own merit. I knew then I didn’t want to follow the path of a Grammarian. Without their connections and wealth, I needed another route to success.
I survived another four years but never really attained my academic potential at Grammar School. I left it behind and followed my High School instincts. Each and every year thereafter I progressed and got the Christmas I deserved. I never had any complaints.
This Christmas had a little twist in the tale.  It was Roy’s fault. He was trying to turn a perfectly normal Paisley High School activity, namely alcohol abuse, into a cultural, academic, abstract poem. He was trying to shine the Oriflamme onto his university drinking days using a classical piece of music. His reference to Lieutenant Kije left me oblivious enough to earn my allotted place in the dumbest 10% of the intellectual elite because despite my Grammar School Education I had little knowledge of early Russian Screenplays and their scores. It was only when Roy mentioned Greg Lake had stolen it from Prokofiev to form the back bone of his Christmas Hit that I realised I had been done. The bastard had sold me a dream of Christmas that had been a complete fairy story and I never saw through his disguise. All those years and I didn’t know I’d been humming a Russian Screenplay. As if that’s wasn’t bad enough the news was broken by a poet, in a poem and poetry just reminds me of Grammar School. I felt like Scaramouche having fandango’s danced all around him.
So that was that. Greg Lake had stoned me and spat in my eye. It was okay, I had attended High School in Paisley. It wasn’t the first time something like that had happened. I had been educated to avoid being the victim.
Shortly after Roy’s revelation, on 7th December Greg Lake died and I can’t help thinking, ‘did he get the Christmas he deserved?’ Funnily enough Christmas fell on a Sunday that year. Prokofiev wasn’t Bohemian but maybe someone from my old high school had a Czechoslovakian relative who knew someone in the Russian Mafia who was now confessing “Mama, I just killed a man.”
 
R.I.P. GREG LAKE – 1947-2016
 
“I still like the song.”

I liked this post - but what I really liked was who liked it before me...
Paisley Brazilians... 
 

I certainly don't. It seems that some people think buying a season ticket or paying £20 to see St.Mirren is a permit to use vituperative language against the team, the manager or even individual players. I wonder do they do the same if their wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, significant other or even worse, their children underperform. I suspect some of them do. There does indeed seem to be a thin line between love and hate.

I enjoyed walking into my local club at teatime last night to see a crowd of guys bedecked in green crying into their pints of Guinness. I didn't gloat much. Honest!

I enjoyed walking into my local club at teatime last night to see a crowd of guys bedecked in green crying into their pints of Guinness. I didn't gloat much. Honest!

I certainly don't. It seems that some people think buying a season ticket or paying £20 to see St.Mirren is a permit to use vituperative language against the team, the manager or even individual players. I wonder do they do the same if their wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, significant other or even worse, their children underperform. I suspect some of them do. There does indeed seem to be a thin line between love and hate.

I certainly don't. It seems that some people think buying a season ticket or paying £20 to see St.Mirren is a permit to use vituperative language against the team, the manager or even individual players. I wonder do they do the same if their wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, significant other or even worse, their children underperform. I suspect some of them do. There does indeed seem to be a thin line between love and hate.

I certainly don't. It seems that some people think buying a season ticket or paying £20 to see St.Mirren is a permit to use vituperative language against the team, the manager or even individual players. I wonder do they do the same if their wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, significant other or even worse, their children underperform. I suspect some of them do. There does indeed seem to be a thin line between love and hate.

I certainly don't. It seems that some people think buying a season ticket or paying £20 to see St.Mirren is a permit to use vituperative language against the team, the manager or even individual players. I wonder do they do the same if their wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, significant other or even worse, their children underperform. I suspect some of them do. There does indeed seem to be a thin line between love and hate.

I certainly don't. It seems that some people think buying a season ticket or paying £20 to see St.Mirren is a permit to use vituperative language against the team, the manager or even individual players. I wonder do they do the same if their wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, significant other or even worse, their children underperform. I suspect some of them do. There does indeed seem to be a thin line between love and hate.

I certainly don't. It seems that some people think buying a season ticket or paying £20 to see St.Mirren is a permit to use vituperative language against the team, the manager or even individual players. I wonder do they do the same if their wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, significant other or even worse, their children underperform. I suspect some of them do. There does indeed seem to be a thin line between love and hate.

Does anyone really believe that these kind of threads will help us? 

Goncalves is a legend in more ways than one. In April or May 2013, I alongwith another plain clothes cop, were sent to a report of a fight in a flat at Renfrew Village, think it was Mulberry Square. Went to flat, called for back up, heard loud noises within. Adrenalin pumping round body. Knocked on door and muscular, bare chested, black fellow answered door and was looking happy. Could have knocked me over with a feather. GONCALVES. Told him why we were there and invited us in. The flat looked like the end of a Saturday night in Club Slapper. Drink everywhere. Goncalves and 2 Portuguese fellows within. Turns out, Porto (I think) scored last minute goal to secure Portuguese league and the three of them were going mental, celebrating. We all laughed, I relaxed where he then invites me into his bedroom. Started getting nervous as he is a big boy but he then proceeds to open up a set of drawers where there were an assortment of replica St.Mirren strips from cup final, every player was there. All fully embroidered with the match details under our club crest. He then asks me to pick one. I took Thommohawk's jersey, thanked Mr Goncalves for his time where he invited me back to party after my shift where I had to decline. Went back to office, declared the gift and gave it to wee Saints mad boy in my street who burst out crying when he got the strip and it is still up on his bedroom wall today. Sorry for long winded story but good to remember a legend.

Nope sorry bud but this is just more conspiracy theory guff.
You need to ask yourself how many people would have to be in the know for this to be true. It would have to be thousands of people. Something concrete would definitely have leaked by now.
You also need to ask why on earth the pentagon would be attacked.
The Americans seem to be obsessed with conspiracy theories. Probably best to leave them to it.
We have no history of passenger jumbo jets flying into buildings so these experts have no basis for their certainty that something is wrong.

I was in touch with Alastair Macpherson my maths teacher at Camphill who confirmed that Sandy was indeed at Camphill. When Alastair became Depute Head at Johnstone High Sandy was a PE teacher there before he got his dream move back to Campbelltown. Alastair went on to become the headmaster of Renfrew High for twenty years.
Alastair was telling me, and I imagine you will know this FJ, that Sandy developed a nasty eye problem which forced him to take early retirement. Apparently he blamed red bleas. Now, I have to confess when I saw this 'red bleas' written thus, I thought a spelling mistake must have been made. Surely it should have been red blaze? ( Or do I mean rid blaze?) Looked it up and bleas is correct. All these years I've thought it was blaze, despite my classical education at Camphill. I've got wee marks on both knees that I'm convinced are the result of games played on rid blaze (sorry, bleas) on cold winter mornings. Now, am I the only guy on the forum who didn't know it was 'BLEAS'. Be honest. Did everybody but me know that? Don't think I should let Bluto play this game. He knows everything.

Agree completely, Drew. I'm amazed there haven't been questions asked in parliament. I know Freedom of speech is a good thing but I don't know why Dickhead is still allowed to post his shit. I thought you had to at least kid on you like St.Mirren a wee bit. Morton fans have occasionally said  nicer things about our club than Dickson.

Agree completely, Drew. I'm amazed there haven't been questions asked in parliament. I know Freedom of speech is a good thing but I don't know why Dickhead is still allowed to post his shit. I thought you had to at least kid on you like St.Mirren a wee bit. Morton fans have occasionally said  nicer things about our club than Dickson.

Surely I can't be the only person who couldn't give a flying f**k about how many people are on the SMiSA board?
In terms of what they are doing with my zillions of pounds in direct debit payments, so long as it isn't funding the renewal of Trident and Theresa May's next pair of leather trousers, I'm relaxed about that.
 

I'm with you on this one, Oaky, but why have you been awake for the past few hours? Insomniacs are us? I know about the other two.
If St.Mirren can strengthen the squad a bit, of course they can stay up. Plenty time and matches. History doesn't always repeat itself. Oops there goes another rubber tree plant.
 
 

From who?
Put up or shut up.

Hi Div.
Sorry for not responding before now. My son buggered about with my laptop and the problem seems to over. I can like away all I want. Thanks for your input.
As it's the season of goodwill etc. can you ever forgive me for the cardinal sin I committed of posting in the wrong place. Some eejits take a hissy fit. You would think I had murdered a wean!