VILLER'S SUN, MOLL'S MIRE AND BOBBY COPE.

Villier's Sun

A pal of mine dubbed Blondie had his hair bleached at the front with peroxide, outrageous for a guy in the early 60s.  Another boy was Eddie Lawnmower, whose middle finger was missing, having lost it on a chain of a motorbike.  From Blondie’s uncle we had obtained an old Villier’s Sun motorbike and took it out to a field near the recreation ground at Hampden Park.  Laying planks over bricks, we succeeded in breaking the chassis and were eventually chased away by residents in the nearby houses.  With the three of us on the bike, we were eventually stopped by the police on the way home and asked for our license.  We got off with a warning and had the prospect of wheeling the bike all the way home.  Instead, we hopped on the bike as soon as the police had left and rode home.

Another incident involved fertilizer, sugar and saltpetre tamped tightly into a can with a lid and bricks on top to weigh it down.  A taper was made from some blue paper and lit and then we scampered away.  This device succeeded in blowing a sizable hole in the side of an air raid shelter.

To the west of our block stood another building dissected by a cobbled lane.  On one piece of empty ground next to the lane, an enormous tree had blown over or toppled with old age and this caused great excitement in the area.  Children stood with gaping mouths at this tangle of trunk and branches.  There was the wonder of being able to see the topmost leaves on the ground and the tip where new leaves and branches were to be formed.  We spent a few days roaming through this jungle, building protective huts against the elements and enemies. 

Smith Street Park where I played.

As we grew older our interests ranged further afield.

A place of interest was the Moll’s Mire and the nearby Dixon’s Blazes, formerly known as Govan Iron Works.  Times past children were told that this was the hell they were going to if they didn’t behave.

The factory itself was in Polmadie to the east of the Gorbals.  Legend has it, and legend is often suggestive of the truth, that Mary Queen of Scots was retreating from the battle of Langside when her horse, Paul, stumbled and fell.  Now various words have been attributed to her.  “Paul ma dee, but ah mun flee”, or from the Gaelic “Poll a’ Mhadaidh”, pool of the wolf.  I like the sound of the latter; the idea of wolves once roaming near where I lived is evocative of a sinister place where violence and evil existed.

Polmadie was once covered in prehistoric forest which eventually gave rise to peat.  Now, the sidings of the 1950s Caledonian Railway Company has been taken over by Virgin Trains.  Too bad!

The Mall’s Mire was where the puggie dumped the molten slag from the ironworks. Imagine a small train trundling along a narrow gauge on a hillside and from each of the carriages tipping red and white hot slag oozing down the slope and settling in a molten pool and the bottom, crackling and sparking and burning to a crisp all before it and sending clouds of steam from the pool at the bottom of the hill.  The dare was to get as close to the slag as one could and we would clamber up the slope with an arm over the face to protect it from the heat.  Crazy really.

The mire was also where I saw death close up.  You can’t forget the sour smell of a rotten corpse.  At the side of the fetid pond lay a decomposing dog covered in flies and maggots.  It was also the place, I’m now ashamed to admit, that I learned from Bobby Cope how to pull tails off of newts.  Not nice!

Malls Mire is now a woodland and wetland and is now the only woodland in Glasgow.

Volunteers at Malls Mire Community Woodland

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Bobby Cope it was, a round tub of lard and basically stupid, whom I palled around  with for reasons that I forget.  His family lived a good distance from our primary school in Cuthbertson Street although there were other schools nearer to his home.  

Once, in his back garden, we were trying to pitch a world war two ex-army tent.  It was a round bell tent to sleep about ten or twelve soldiers with their feet pointing in to the central pole.  There was a tunnel entrance to allow one person at a time to come or go.  Innocently, I elected to go in to the raise the pole at the centre.  I doubt if the tent had ever been used since the 1940s and as I entered there was a choking cloud of dust being stirred up.  As I ventured further into the centre of the tent I suddenly lost my bearings and decided to come out.  I could not find the entrance and panicked.  The more I scrambled to escape the more I panicked and the more dust I swallowed until I thought I was going to die.  Just as I was becoming delirious I found the hole where I could crawl out and emerged white and blinking into the garden.  Fat Bob was holding on to his gut and rolling about on the grass as I gasped for air.

His mother was a gaunt, tall, skinny woman and once invited me in for tea.  As I sat in their house, Bobby’s father came in and sat down.  Without a word being spoken, Bobby’s younger sister went over and lay across his lap.  Her father lifted up her skirt and spanked her as I looked incredulously on.  Bobby’s elder brother Jim stood there and looked on as if this were a normal occurrence.  Nothing was said when he had finished: no recriminations or reasons and no tears.  We silently sat at the table while the mother came over with a frying pan and proceeded to put some grey things on my plate.  I retrospect, I haven’t a clue what they were but they looked like miniature veined small animal penises.  The texture was indescribable, and the taste was foul and bland and coated in sickly oil that cloyed at the tongue.  I could not swallow this food and refused to eat it.  I may be imagining it, but I think I heard the word “tripe”.  Mrs Cope stood there with a frying pan in one hand and the spatula in the other with a hurt look on her face.  Mr Cope didn’t bother to even look up from his plate and scoffed the lot with relish.  Mrs Cope dutifully put my share on his plate, which he accepted in silence.