LITMIR.BIZ

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and adults having fun. They would string a sheet across a door and then someone would flash a leg from behind it, and the rest of the family would have to guess whose leg it was.

      Gregor, not yet five, excited by the family nonsense, bouncing off walls, was looking for Cis. He went running into a room where Jim Fisher was, with a woman. Later, the child learnt that she was Jim’s new wife, Flora. He has a fragment of memory as sharp and scary as a shard of glass.

      ‘“Where’s Mum?” I said.

      ‘Flora leant forward, took my arm and looked into my eyes.

      ‘“I’m your mum,” she said.

      ‘I remember feeling freaked out because I thought, “Shit, she’s going to take me away from Cis, my mother.”

      ‘“No, no, no, no, you’re not his mother, I’m his mother,” said Cis (it was her way of saying, try if you dare).

      ‘I remember a bad atmosphere after that. None of them were child psychologists, were they? It wasn’t the time, those weren’t the days. I remember my little red-haired mother getting angry. Looking back, there was obviously some kind of power struggle between her and Jim’s new wife, though that makes it sound more dramatic than it was.’

      Years later, Cis’s daughter Una told Gregor that Jim and Flora had arrived in Neilston at one point and said they had come to take him back. There was a big silence. ‘Mummy wasn’t happy. She said, “Well, I think we’ll just keep him because you’ve got enough on your plate, haven’t you?”’ Una recalled. Jim was not very pleased but Gregor stayed with Cis. She didn’t want to let him go. After that, Gregor didn’t see much of his father.

      Not that he was bothered. He had better things to do, like going out to play with his friends. It was the kind of childhood where, at weekends, he left the house on a Saturday morning at half past seven and didn’t get back until night-time. Nobody turned a hair then; it’s what kids did, nobody fretted about where he was. From an early age, Gregor and his gang, full of nonsense and mischief, would be raking about the village, building dens, climbing trees or catching up on the goings-on in Sherwood Forest.

      The old lady across the road, a retired matron, had a television set. Gregor was allowed to go over and watch Ivanhoe or, his favourite, the actor Richard Greene, in the black and white series of The Adventures of Robin Hood. The signature tune is imprinted in the minds of anyone born in the 1950s: ‘Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen, Robin Hood, Robin Hood, with his band of men, feared by the bad, loved by the good, Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Robin Hood’. Greene, the handsome, charming hero, starred in 144 episodes between 1955 and 1960; the Sheriff of Nottingham was a humourless villain; Maid Marian, one of the boys rather than Robin’s girly girlfriend, put on her tights and mucked in with a bow and arrow instead of sitting around in a long gown, waiting to be rescued.

       ‘There, that was the site of the Pavilion!’

       I’m negotiating a roundabout on the outskirts of Barrhead. I haven’t heard him so enthused.

       ‘The cinema, the local fleapit, but as far as I was concerned it was the manifestation of heaven on earth. In the foyer there was a little booth, where the woman punched the lever and a little ticket came shooting out. It was 9d for down the stairs and 1s 3d for the balcony; I went for the balcony. The children’s matinees, we’d all stamp our feet when the curtains parted and that famous tadadadadadadadadadadaa Pearl & Dean jingle started.

       ‘And all those silly adverts, where people with English voices from another planet would announce, “MacDiarmid’s Garage, Barrhead, East Renfrewshire, faw all yaw motoring requahments”. And everybody’s saying, “MacDiarmid’s, whozat? Whit’s that, y’now?” I mean, you could handle it if it was Kia-Ora or some other thing, but the local garage … “faw all yaw motoring requahments …”

      ‘We’d watch anything, it didn’t matter what; usually on a matinee there’d be something cut out for kids, fairly gory stuff like Three Hundred Spartans, where everybody ended up dead. There was a lot of that Greek thing going on then – Jason and the Argonauts, with lots of sword fighting and skeletons.’

       He’s lost in the dark: a small boy, wide-eyed at the big screen.

      ‘Circus Boy with Micky Dolenz, later of Monkees’ fame … and sometimes some not terribly funny British film, Swallows and Amazons, which involved a lot of posh kids on a boat, saying things like, “Let’s go home and have some cocoa.” What are they talking about? Who are these people?’

       I’ve pulled in at a lay-by. Outside, an old man crosses the road and ambles into the bookies.

       ‘He probably went to the Pavilion with you,’ I say.

       But Gregor’s not listening. He’s too busy doing the important maths those Saturday afternoons demanded.

       ‘Cis gave me two and six, half a crown. One and thruppence got me into the cinema. If I walked down to Barrhead, that meant I had one and thruppence on my tail. I didn’t do that very often because usually it was raining. So, it was thruppence down on the bus and thruppence back on the bus, so how much did that leave? Ninepence – and that was spent on crisps and chocolate. Smith’s crisps, thruppence a packet, with the little blue bag of salt, and a chocolate bar, not a very big one, it has to be said – they were obviously on the make.

       ‘There was an old guy at the door – everyone was older because we were so young – saying, “Get your crisps and chocolate before you go in now. Get your crisps and chocolate before you go in now.” Even that in itself was thrilling – all the little rituals that happened when you went to the pictures.

      ‘I never quite recovered, you see, from when I was first taken to the cinema by Aunt Jean, who wasn’t really an aunt but a great pal of Cis when they were young. We visited them and she took me on a special treat on a bus to a cinema in Dumfries and the first film I ever saw was Swiss Family Robinson.

       ‘It was fabulous, I couldn’t believe it – I’d never seen a film in my life. And I must’ve been quite wee – six, seven, eight, something like that. Anyway, fabulous!’

       I’ve never seen him look so happy.

      Some Saturdays, Gregor would get up and head for his best friend’s house. Johnny Monaghan lived in the smart part of the village, down a pot-holed private road with a selection of big houses. ‘Funny,’ the boys from the other side of the tracks thought, ‘that rich people should have such a rough road.’ The Monaghans lived in a house called Barnfauld and Johnny went to private school – Belmont, and then Glasgow Academy. Johnny had lovely toys and – oh, bliss beyond dreams – a Scalextric set. Money brought other subtle class differences too. They had a drawing room, not a sitting room. And central heating – Gregor couldn’t quite figure out what that was. Great clunky old-fashioned radiators, with a metal thing on top that you moved to let the heat out, and a boiler … and the best bit of all, an oil tank, which he found quite exotic. To have an oil tank of your own, that was like owning a garage. He thought it was pretty special.

      Gregor and Johnny had been close since they were five years old. The first time they met, Gregor had gone to Johnny’s house with another friend, Andrew Robinson. But Andrew had to go home for lunch and then Johnny was called in to have his. Gregor stood outside the imposing door, a very small boy in cheap plastic shoes, not quite sure what to do, thinking he’d better clear off. He remembers a woman coming out, Johnny’s mother; remembers the posh Glasgow accent.

      ‘“What’s your name?”’

      ‘“Gregor.”’

      ‘“Well, Gregor, you’d better come and have some lunch then.”’

      ‘So, I went in for lunch and I was a feature there every weekend for years to come.’

      Those

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