is supposed to be good for you but that stuff nearly put me off fish for life. It wasnât until much later that I started to like fish oil â when I discovered caviar. A much better delivery system, I think.
The fish oil probably helped in the fight with the cold too. It was an ongoing battle, especially during winter. Life was tough in the summer but it was brutal in the wintertime. The snow brought another set of challenges. It was beautiful to wake up to a blanket of clean white snow covering Glasgowâs usual dull, depressing shroud of grey. We would look out the window and laugh and get ready to go out and play in it. But with holes in your shoes and not enough warm clothes the novelty would soon wear off.
Quite often the snow was so high that no one could open their front doors and we couldnât get out even if we wanted to. Sometimes Dad would have to jump out the window from one or two storeys up and dig his way to the pub.
Then the pipes would freeze and there would be no water. Waiting for deliveries of coal was always a worry. If the truckscouldnât get through a lot of people got very cold. I heard stories of old people and young kids freezing to death in winter. Living in Cowcaddens in that sort of climate was not like it would have been if you lived in a quaint mountain village somewhere. There were no fondues, marshmallows, skis or toboggans where we came from. When the weather turned bad, parents all over Scotland had to work really hard to keep their families warm, lying clothes along the bottom of the doors to stop the wind blowing through. Lighting small coal fires made the difference between freezing or not for most families. For a place that was so sooty, coal was not that easy to get. It cost money â money Mum and Dad never had.
At least we didnât have to drive in the snow, because no one could afford a car. None of my family or their friends had a car. I remember seeing them parked in the street sometimes but not for long. No one wanted to get back to a car that had no wheels or the aerial and the mirrors ripped off. The cars I did see were wrecks or they looked quite funny. There were some that looked like bubbles with one wheel in the front and two at the back, a kind of enclosed golf cart. Iâve never seen them anywhere else. But Iâm sort of glad that no one had cars when I think about it. That would have been something else to knock people to the ground with. Driving drunk would have been the norm and in the winter it would have looked like some sort of demolition derby on ice.
When the snow thawed, the street sweepers would come through and clean up the slushy black mess it left behind. A mixture of water from the melting snow and dirt and soot, mixed up with broken glass and blood from the gutters outside the pubs. Apparently no matter how cold it got, it was still warm enough to drink yourself into oblivion in Glasgow, and if you were still conscious when you left the pub you could be punched, kicked and stabbed on the way home. That particular sport went on allyear round. Glasgow â it was beautiful one minute, a bloodbath the next.
There was a lot of drinking in the house, and with that came a lot of violence and abuse; not necessarily directed at us, but every punch and threat that Mum and Dad threw around hit each of us as if weâd been thrown against the wall. The sound of bottles being opened and voices slowly getting louder always sent us into a panic. Sooner or later a fight would break out and we would hide under the beds and in cupboards, crying and praying it would all stop. Often weâd be dragged out of the house in our underwear, freezing cold, to the sound of Mum and Dad swearing at each other, using us as bargaining chips or hostages. The next day all would be forgiven and the cycle would start again.
The whole world seemed to have a drinking problem. How come the children didnât eat well or have nice clothes or nice
Frances and Richard Lockridge
David Sherman & Dan Cragg