Uncle Bill

As I remember them.

Another incident involved my Uncle Bill who was married to my father’s youngest sister, Mildred.  In a newly opened jar was chrine, pickled horseradish shredded and steeped in a red liquid which I suppose was either beetroot or more plausibly ground Mexican chilis.  

“Smell this,” he said, and I stuck my nose into the newly-opened jar at the same time that he  jabbed the back of my head so that my nose came out covered in the stuff.  Well, jesus, I’ve never had a sensation like that again.  Think of snorting Carolina Reaper through a rolled-up dollar bill.  While everyone howled and laughed I ran to the sink and found that I couldn't quite reach the faucet. To all my male cousins they were bastards.  How that was resolved I can't remember, but I'm sure that the lining of my left nostril has been permanently sauteed.

Uncle Bill was the entrepreneur of the family.  His brothers-in-law held him and his enigmatic dealings in awe.  He really shook the tree, always seeming to have his hand in various dealings and wheelings.  

Whiskey was no problem at Christmas time.  He had crates of the stuff in a van ready to sell wholesale to pubs and friends.  The van he may have used could have been from a bakery he worked for, making deliveries around Glasgow.  I went with him a few times, careening around the streets with stands of bread falling about at the back.  (No one in the family went short of bread or cakes at this time.)  

He also had something to do with Rentokil, a firm that made fly spray and rat poison.  Inspired by a lack of money and the need to work for it, I applied for a job there.  There was a look of disgust on the face of a manageress when I faced her at the interview: "You've just had a cigarette!"  she spat at me.  True.  I was a smoker and I'd just had a cigarette. Her tone assured me that I wasn't getting any job in Rentokil.

I then worked for a boutique in a fashionable street in the town.  That lasted half a day when I was caught having a fag in the toilet instead of straightening the sleeves of the tie-dyed kaftans on the hangers. Cigarettes were the bane of my life those days. 

Bill's greatest venture was his dry cleaning business.  Having a flair for what was new and Glaswegians having a penchant for anything American, he opened a laundrette with four enormous Bendix washing machines and took in people’s washing by weight.  My cousin Michael and I stood in wonder at these monster machines, watching the clothes spiral round through the glass door.  Uncle Bill gave us each a bundle of posters to put through local doors in the neighbourhood, an innovation in advertising that was a first. We left half of them in a phone box exhausted by the effort of climbing three sets of stairs in every close.  Our pay was ten bob (10/- or ten shillings -50pence).

Uncle Bill and Auntie Mildred  bought a house in Brunton Street or Terrace off the Clarkston Road in Glasgow, a semi-detached bungalow costing them about £3500 pounds at the time.  Around five or six year’s wages in those days.  In the living room was a beautiful radiogram with a record player on top.  Auntie Mildred would play some jazz; and I especially liked the mellow tones of Nat King Cole and and the mellifluous voice of Ella Fitzgerald.  Watching the stacked records dropping one by one was another seeming miracle of the early 60's in Glasgow.

For some reason, my father had me wearing a little kilt, Royal Stewart tartan it was. Whenever I visited my grandparents in Abbotsford Lane there was always someone lifting it up to see what I was wearing below.  I could never understand this at the time. In fact, lifting up the kilt of a 4 year old to expose his devoloping three piece suit is something I still feel uncomfortable with.  

I refused to ever wear a kilt again.