Of Ships and Shoes and Scotland

By Denis Gallagher

The author is a Scot from the small (two shop) village of Whins of Milton, two miles south of the Royal Burgh of Stirling. He has always loved the sea and ships, and was master of the first Australian flag anchor handler, operating in offshore oilfields around Australia.

The book covers a wheen o’ topics – growing up in the Whins, then living in Australia, to which he emigrated in 1968 with his wife and family, to his wanderings in the countries of the Pacific Basin. Later, it also makes some comments on Australians, their character and contentment (and pride) as to who they are as a race of people, living under the Southern Cross.

Ships and the sea are never far away. Also part of this story is the Greek Tragedy of the demise of Alfred Holt, the author having been indentured to that heroic and exemplary Liverpool company as a deck apprentice in 1957. The note, Welcome to Country, says it all as to his worldview of Australians, an attitude almost Caledonian in its sense of directness and curiosity, particularly regarding the workings of the vast world which is all around us.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398401723

Denis Gallagher

Denis Gallagher, the author, is a Scot who emigrated to Australia in 1968 from the village of Whins of Milton in Scotland. Of Ships and Shoes and Scotland is a series of notes/recollections on his early life in Bonnie Scotland, in the small, two shop village of Whins of Milton, hard by Royal Stirling, and subsequently his slow northerly progress in Australia between Melbourne, Brisbane and Townsville in The Great South Land. Of Ships and Shoes also relates to his life at sea, specifically the note on the Big Glens, owned by Alfred Holt and Co, particularly Glenartney which lies hard by Benvorlich and Stùc a’ Chroin, his life on a six middy half-deck on Monmouthshire and the circumstances attendant on how Richard Holt, our senior partner, purchased Glen and Shire Line from Royal Mail in the depth of the depression. The book also includes a series of episodes of life in Oz and the Western Pacific Basin. Between 1996 and 2013, his company Ocean Shipping Pty Ltd, owned and operated nine x 5,5000 dwt, geared MPP vessels, plus another three on bareboat charter from SPS in NZ, a total of twelve ships trading worldwide, the great slump of 2008 having an adverse effect on the company, at the time of the derivative crisis and the Lehmann Bros collapse. As such, we departed the world of shipowners in 2013. The highlight of his working career was to serve with Alfred Holt of Liverpool as middy, fourth mate, third and second mate, our closure in 1989 the greatest tragedy, no different in scope to the loss of Ilium, to those who had lived in the ancient world at the time of the Odyssey and Iliad. Denis has a B. Econ, and an LLB. Hons from the University of Queensland. He is now chairman of Hermes Maritime Pty Ltd, preparing to enter the Australian coastal trades with an experienced management team, along with his partner, Captain Steve Pelecanos who is the The Hermes Managing Director based in Brisbane, ex-head of the Brisbane Pilot Service, each team member planning our entry to the intrastate and interstate coastal trades of Australia. Denis was the master of the first Australian flag, deep sea anchor handler in the stormy Bass Strait, operating in latitude 40 South, and further south again off the east coast of Tasmania with an all MUA deck crowd, also servicing other off shore floaters and jack ups around the coast of Australia; later he was the manager of the ANL Container Terminal in Brisbane, which employed 44 wharfies. Based on his offshore and onshore work-experiences at sea and ashore with unionised Australian seafarers and wharfies, it is his conjoint belief that Australians are not only fine seafarers but also intuitive and natural stevedores of a most superior, inventive and hard-working sort, each of them a credit to their country, the Great South Land, and their hard-won and hard fought for principles of solidarity and togetherness. In essence, this is a tale of two countries, Bonnie Scotland, where the author grew up, and Australia, a truly vast brown land of flooding rains, her inhabitants as welcoming of new chums, as those who live in the Lowlands and Highlands of Scotland. The book also relates to the people of Australia, including the work carried out by the author as part of his travels in The Pacific, with the ordinar’ folk o’ The Solomon’s, Vanuatu, Western Samoa and PNG, each country the happiest and most irreverent of places, a series of observations which will hopefully strike a chord with the traveller. No matter, I am a happy man, and one of the luckiest, with the best wife, Chrissie Joy Gallagher, married for twenty-one happy years. As a footnote of sorts, I also served with Blue Funnel of India Buildings, Water St, Liverpool, from deck apprentice to second mate, having had the privilege of serving in the company alongside great men and earth-shakers. During my time with Alfie, I have heard the beat of the off-shore wind, the thresh of the deep-sea rain, the greatest and most sublime happiness that could have been granted to a person such as I, (quite apart from being married to my beloved wife I hasten to add!).

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About the Author

Denis Gallagher, the author, is a Scot who emigrated to Australia in 1968 from the village of Whins of Milton in Scotland. Of Ships and Shoes and Scotland is a series of notes/recollections on his early life in Bonnie Scotland, in the small, two shop village of Whins of Milton, hard by Royal Stirling, and subsequently his slow northerly progress in Australia between Melbourne, Brisbane and Townsville in The Great South Land. Of Ships and Shoes also relates to his life at sea, specifically the note on the Big Glens, owned by Alfred Holt and Co, particularly Glenartney which lies hard by Benvorlich and Stùc a’ Chroin, his life on a six middy half-deck on Monmouthshire and the circumstances attendant on how Richard Holt, our senior partner, purchased Glen and Shire Line from Royal Mail in the depth of the depression. The book also includes a series of episodes of life in Oz and the Western Pacific Basin. Between 1996 and 2013, his company Ocean Shipping Pty Ltd, owned and operated nine x 5,5000 dwt, geared MPP vessels, plus another three on bareboat charter from SPS in NZ, a total of twelve ships trading worldwide, the great slump of 2008 having an adverse effect on the company, at the time of the derivative crisis and the Lehmann Bros collapse. As such, we departed the world of shipowners in 2013. The highlight of his working career was to serve with Alfred Holt of Liverpool as middy, fourth mate, third and second mate, our closure in 1989 the greatest tragedy, no different in scope to the loss of Ilium, to those who had lived in the ancient world at the time of the Odyssey and Iliad. Denis has a B. Econ, and an LLB. Hons from the University of Queensland.

He is now chairman of Hermes Maritime Pty Ltd, preparing to enter the Australian coastal trades with an experienced management team, along with his partner, Captain Steve Pelecanos who is the The Hermes Managing Director based in Brisbane, ex-head of the Brisbane Pilot Service, each team member planning our entry to the intrastate and interstate coastal trades of Australia. Denis was the master of the first Australian flag, deep sea anchor handler in the stormy Bass Strait, operating in latitude 40 South, and further south again off the east coast of Tasmania with an all MUA deck crowd, also servicing other off shore floaters and jack ups around the coast of Australia; later he was the manager of the ANL Container Terminal in Brisbane, which employed 44 wharfies. Based on his offshore and onshore work-experiences at sea and ashore with unionised Australian seafarers and wharfies, it is his conjoint belief that Australians are not only fine seafarers but also intuitive and natural stevedores of a most superior, inventive and hard-working sort, each of them a credit to their country, the Great South Land, and their hard-won and hard fought for principles of solidarity and togetherness.

In essence, this is a tale of two countries, Bonnie Scotland, where the author grew up, and Australia, a truly vast brown land of flooding rains, her inhabitants as welcoming of new chums, as those who live in the Lowlands and Highlands of Scotland. The book also relates to the people of Australia, including the work carried out by the author as part of his travels in The Pacific, with the ordinar’ folk o’ The Solomon’s, Vanuatu, Western Samoa and PNG, each country the happiest and most irreverent of places, a series of observations which will hopefully strike a chord with the traveller. No matter, I am a happy man, and one of the luckiest, with the best wife, Chrissie Joy Gallagher, married for twenty-one happy years. As a footnote of sorts, I also served with Blue Funnel of India Buildings, Water St, Liverpool, from deck apprentice to second mate, having had the privilege of serving in the company alongside great men and earth-shakers. During my time with Alfie, I have heard the beat of the off-shore wind, the thresh of the deep-sea rain, the greatest and most sublime happiness that could have been granted to a person such as I, (quite apart from being married to my beloved wife I hasten to add!).

Dedication

To my wife of twenty-one happy years, Chrissie Joy Gallagher.

Copyright Information ©

Denis Gallagher 2022

The right of Denis Gallagher to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398401716 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398420724 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781398401723 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

To all my friends scattered around the world, particularly Mark Leese as a second trip middy on my first trip on Jason, a friend when I was in trouble with Captain Hole, and Michael Grey who helped and encouraged me in my work and wrote the foreword.

My Glenartney, 1957

From the logbook of second trip middy Mark Leese, who sailed with the author on Jason, on his first trip to Australia. Mark’s first deep-sea ship was Glenartney in 1957.

Foreword

By Michael Grey, Master Mariner and journalist, formerly editor of Lloyd’s List and Fairplay, International Shipping Weekly.

Denis Gallagher is just one in the great diaspora of British seafarers who have spread all over the world since the implosion and disappearance of the world’s biggest merchant navy. Like so many who had been in this workforce, his subsequent career has been one of variety and interest, and in this series of autobiographical accounts, he offers the reader some insights into his life. What makes Denis rather different from the run of the mill ex-mariner, is his ability as an acute observer of both people and place with the facility to recollect incidents in perceptive detail, but recounted with a seaman’s sense of wit and humour.

There are thirteen accounts here, which might be thought of as individual flagstones on the path of a life well-lived. He begins where he began, recalling the ambience of the Scottish village, Whins of Milton where he spent his childhood growing up in the forties and fifties, which if you think about it, is as remote from the life lived by modern youth as somebody living on another planet. Without necessarily getting unduly political, he describes the sort of Scottish education that was once renowned throughout the world, but which has been lost under the 21st century dispensation: ‘where all must have prizes.’ He may not have admitted it at the time, but his considerable ability with words surely owes a great deal to those unbending, brutal teachers of an earlier and more traditional period, and a system which delivered a thorough and well-rounded education to generations of Scottish children (Michael himself was educated in Bonnie Scotland at primary school, his father being in the Andrew.)

Maritime readers of a certain age will warm to the account of his final semi-hysterical interview with his headmaster, appalled that Denis had elected to go to sea rather than Glasgow University. If nothing else, it demonstrates the startling ignorance of even well-educated landsmen in a so-called ‘maritime nation’ of the debt they owed the British merchant service, which had saved the country from starvation at a horrendous cost of lives lost, only a few years earlier. Denis was accepted as a midshipman with Alfred Holt’s legendary shipping company and with one brief interlude was to serve through to second officer aboard Glen Line and Blue Funnel ships. Latter-day readers may marvel at the sort of training which was given by a shipping company as it developed its young officers, something that has all but vanished in the accountant-infested world of 21st-century shipping.

He provides some wonderful pen-portraits of the masters-under-God with whom he served, the deck apprentices, mates, engineer officers, cooks, stewards and boatswains, Chinese and Liverpudlian who populated Alfie’s Welsh Navy. In what Denis might suggest were lesser shipping companies, we used to make fun of Holt’s singular methods from navigation to cargo-care but they didn’t lose ships, and managed to keep them full, with fast passages at least until the end. He recounts some of his scrapes and self-inflicted problems, caused perhaps by a boisterous personality that emerges in these pages.

The accounts as to his new life in Australia are similarly perceptive, as Denis embraces the business of becoming an Australian with enjoyment and energy, no whinging pom here! The enthusiasm for football which was once demonstrated in the bleak ground of Stirling Albion, is transferred to the mysteries of Aussie Rules. It is clear he hugely enjoys his new country as he brings up his three children in a Brisbane suburb, with the nuances that make Queenslanders different from the folk ‘down south’ and its metropolitan elites made eminently clear. We have affectionate portraits of those staples of life, the pub, the beer, the sport and the rebellious characteristics of the Aussie at his best, carefully portrayed, albeit by someone who hasn’t forgotten his Stirlingshire roots and Blue Funnel upbringing.

As a shipowner and marine consultant, Denis found himself travelling around the Pacific islands, trying to make sense of the special needs of these amazing places, and his accounts of this chapter in his life introduce us with great affection and lots of laughter to the people of these remote communities. One gets the impressions that Josef Conrad would have found himself very much at home in these surroundings. Here are voyages aboard unsuitable inter-island ships, learning something of the dilemma facing people whose dependence on shipping is total, but whose ability to afford the sort of safety and standards enjoyed by developed industrialised countries, is just not within their price range. Somehow, they make light of their troubles, and Denis can write about all this with great sympathy. He shows the reader some of the problems faced by people making a living in New Guinea, the remote-north of Queensland and the islands of the Torres Strait with their marine infrastructure designed for an earlier age and largely unsuitable for modern ships. The author introduces us to local politicians, and larger-than-life characters who dominate these communities. He also has a lot of fun, and can communicate this to his readers admirably.

This is a book that can be enjoyed at several different levels. Old or contemporary mariners will enjoy it for its reminiscence and a pleasing lack of nostalgia for a way of maritime life which has passed, lost because of containers, communications and cost-accountants. But anyone who enjoys literature and can appreciate the pen and eye of a craftsman, will find it difficult to put this book down as they walk over the thirteen flagstones of Denis Gallagher’s life.

Part 1: Early Days in Bonnie Scotland

Whins of Milton

The unremarkable village of Whins of Milton straddles what used to be the main road between Glasgow and the north, lying two miles south and east of Stirling. The Whins is a working-class village, my mother having four brothers, Patrick, John, James and Hugh – Pat a miner until the Pirnhall pit closed, Hughie a labourer, James a spray painter employed by Alexander’s Bluebird buses, and John a collar and tie bus inspector, pinched of face and not too dissimilar in appearance to Blakey of On the Buses fame. Eighty-five years after they were built, the council houses in our scheme are of the two and three-bedroom two-storey type designed in the grimness of the Depression, subsequent newbuilds being little changed, due to the soundness of the initial design and the exacting construction standards demanded of those who built them. Other variations were subsequently trialled on later housing types established on the road to Bannockburn, Orlits and prefabricated post-war stopgaps known as prefabs. The Orlits survive, the prefabs have gone, our insistence on building to the highest standards, simple testimony to the rock-solid belief that the working classes of Caledonia had to be provided with houses that would last for a hundred years.

Judging by their present-day condition, such estimates of longevity could be multiplied by two, evidence of a country loyal to its Labour Party principles, until a combination of the sheer political fecklessness of what once had been the party of the Scottish worker combined with the independence mantra preached by the Scots Nats, succeeded in turning the place into a hotbed of nationalist fervour, the fashionable cry having now become: independence at all costs! On the debit side of the ledger, our village began to exhibit the overwhelmed look of all small places about to be swallowed up by suburban creep, not dissimilar in aspect to a resigned rabbit, waiting to be devoured by a large snake advancing ever so slowly from the direction of the royal burgh itself. Unlike the threatened rabbit, we Whinsyins knew there would be no place for us to run, it being our adolescent belief that the approaching danger had the potential to change our village idyll, for forever and a day.

Stirling having been designated a Royal Burgh since medieval times, this had allowed the provost to use the honorific, Lord Provost of the Royal Burgh of Stirling, a chest-puffing-out distinction which guaranteed a conga line of his appointees, could (and would) flaunt themselves at the regular Conventions of Royal Burghs held in Edinburgh, and other airts. During these fantastical occasions, those nominated were pumped up by a sense of self-importance and entitlement, a ‘wha’s like us’ mentality which is deeply embedded in much of the provincial Scottish elite, allowing them to indulge in grand-standing of a type which had not been seen in Europe, since the flashily vulgar events taking place on the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Copious imbibing of ‘refreshments’ helped keep these knees-ups lively, leading to the development of a kind of Caledonian bunyip aristocracy, with similar absurdist pretensions to those employed to such good effect by their brother magnificoes in the Great South Land. Both the attendees and the lieges of the town flagged these high jinks through, partly because of the feel-good effect conferred by royal remit, and substantially from the fact that with the Lord Provost living in the community, the ornamental street lamps erected outside his house had a tendency to not only raise property values but the haut ton of an auld and somewhat creaky toon. Double happiness! The five-eighths living down the Craigs or the Raploch also approved, on the reasonable proposition that a rising tide lifts all boats, even those clinker built wee cogly wans wi’ a rowth, the kind you could hire at Largs or Millport during the July Fair Fortnight for half a crown an hour (a florin if you haggled), money up front, cash against oars some said. In all of this excitement, the Whins was the place we called home, where we could prepare for the long adventure of life itself—

Entwined thou art wi’ mony a thocht

o’ hame and infancy.

I was born in the Gorbals of Glasgow in 1940, at a time when this previously violent suburb had morphed into what was arguably the greatest slum in all of Western Europe, some locals taking a perverse pride in its notoriety by adopting measures to heighten the feelings of unease experienced by inbound visitors. Earlier in the 1920s, as if to further secure the drawbridge and ensure the citizenry could lie safe abed of an evening, some had adopted advanced offensive techniques, through the employment of close combat weaponry as dictated by the strict code of (violent) chivalry mandated by the various militias of this no mean city. Out of such mind-sets arose the dread Glesca razor gangs, partisan levies marching into combat without the battle axes and claymore accoutrements of an earlier time, their weapons of choice now cut-throat razors enhancing their all-important speed of territorial advance under the most unequal of odds. Individual platoons were mindful of past glories, ensuring that their knuckledusters were embossed with heraldic devices or clan mottos, razor handles being sheathed in ivory. For those in and of the second rank who couldn’t afford such conspicuous refinement, the use of a nacreous substitute was considered perfectly acceptable, especially with times being tough in mean streets, where enthusiasm and commitment to the common weal were looked upon as much more important than any lifestyle flashiness.

Bottles as per sample were employed as close quarters defensive weaponry, as a substitute for the highland targe, the most favoured being the dark green, India Pale Ale screw-tops, their slightly thicker wall size tending to maintain their jagged contour and transverse strength under close-quarter battlefield conditions, and as such, were considered superior to the scantlings of rival brewers. Naturally the final decision was made by the armourers, an added (visual) consideration being that their green sheen would catch the weak winter light, especially in the peak fighting season and accordingly, after much rigorous product testing, it was felt that the green screw-top should be the close-in weapon of choice, instilling a fear in opposition ranks which was little different to the dread caused by the incoming arrow showers at Hastings. Individual militias were made up of foot soldiers including levies raised from around Brig’ton, Govan Cross and the Toonheid, each detachment entering the lists on Glasgow Green whilst practising their battle anthems, not dissimilar to Millwall’s latter day football hooligans with their cry of defiance, ‘Nobody likes us, we don’t care.’ It was not everywhere thus in greater Glasgow, and due to the instinctive and truly splendid Scottish gift, for ensuring the provision of enlightened and advanced medical care at the point of greatest need, the local Southern General Hospital where I was born was a beacon of light, doubling as a world-class teaching centre as it does to this day. In the midst of crushing hardship exists the greatest and most inspirational hope on behalf of the sick, and to the lasting benefit of long-downtrodden man.

Some twenty-five miles to the north east, the Whins of the time was a wondrous place for small boys such as I to grow up in, its southern and western edge butting up against the grassy lowland fastness of the Auchenbowie and Sauchieburn estates, a blessed countryside quartered by small pebbly burns, busy with darting sticklebacks and baggy minnows, the flood tumbling down the escarpment to join the Bannock Burn. After this meeting of the waters, the combined flow empties out onto the broad carse, stretching out around the dark and brooding castle, looming up in the west and massively barring the road to the north and the Isles. My father, a gentleman’s bootmaker having died of rheumatic fever when I was six months old, my blessed mother had to raise my sister Margaret and I in a benefit free, pre-Beveridge wartime world, our survival depending on her wages from scrubbing other people’s floors, including those of Colonel Monroe of Auchenbowie House, the cleaning of schools and other types of unremitting Gradgrind toil which was available to her. The work she did could never have been considered casual in nature, since once my mother secured a position, she could have kept it for ever, her appetite for hard work legendary in a village which considered itself to be the epicentre of unremitting toil, a place which was itself no stranger to hard times; accordingly, my mother became a name over time, friend and beloved retainer (a word now sadly debased carrying with it overtones of medieval subservience and villeinage, in a world now fatally obsessed with unproven concepts of ‘fairness’), in the process becoming the most permanent of permanents. Memories of childhood Saturdays include the sharp smell of Duraglit, black lead and the grainy feel of stookie on the white steps of grand houses, sure fire aids used by our blessed and saintly mother to brighten up the granite mansions of the better off, and in so doing, make a life for my sister Margaret and I out of the proverbial widow’s mite.

As Catholics, we attended St Mary’s Primary School in Bannockburn, followed by St Modan’s High School at St Ninian’s, both within walking distance of the Whins. Sectarianism, that disabling wound which is embedded in the bones of Scotland from the sixteenth century onwards, played no part in the life of our small quiet village, particularly amongst our friends, the Stuarts, Clarks, Macleans, Ferrys, Goodwins, McClumphas, Boyds, Loves, Scotts, Maitlands, Mangans, Mastersons and our three Quigley cousins, names recalled from childhood memory (and in strict council house order) in our Milton Terrace, Milton Road and Milton Gardens streets. All of us were good friends, the Whins a one-in-all-in example of what can happen in small places where in the truest sense of the word, ‘a man’s a man for a’ that.’

The tribal pecking order was dependant on our small boy ability to excel outdoors in what was our second home, rankings assessed by an individual’s football prowess or from scouting skills acquired when exploring the green muffled countryside in summer, or the white Sauchieburn ridge in wintertime. Any boy who couldn’t tackle ferociously, kick with both feet, or leap high in the air to head our heavily sodden and spongiform leather team ball, could never have been nominated for elevation to the purple. Whilst I passed muster in our summer encampments as a somewhat unreliable explorer and gamekeeper avoiding forward scout (and turnip forager as part of my allotted commissariat duties), my shortcomings in the swing park meant that I could never achieve the yearned-for leadership status, no matter my expertise in the countryside, this small boy weel-kent by Baronet Steel-Maitland’s head gamekeeper although never introduced, at least not formally.

As to my fitba’ skills, to this day when I return to the Whins, I am gently reminded by the regulars in the 1314 that at best I was an ‘all-rounder’, a euphemism borne out by always being last or second-last captain’s pick during pre-game football selection. Such recollections are impervious to erasure from the collective memory of Whins of Milton ancients, folk who can never – will never – forget the identity of the wee boy, brushed aside all too easily in the bruising tackles of take-no-prisoners Scottish swing park football. Davie Stuart was our leader and Pat Masterson his deputy, both team captains of an unchallenged and patrician right, each with the special ability to float weightlessly in the air, like the great Carlton full forward Alex Jesaulenko (mark of the century in the 1970 AFL Grand Final), both of them intercepting crosses from either wing in a manner not dissimilar to a humming bird on the hover. Davie was a dedicated supporter of Heart of Midlothian FC, a club with one of the most lethal forward lines in all Scotland, their inside three being (Alfie) Conn, (Willie) Bauld and (Jimmy) Wardhaugh, his hero their crew-cut centre forward and best header of a football in all the world, Willie Bauld, Davie’s inspiration and role model, inspiring him to climb up into our snowy swing park skies, floating in the air for what seemed a lifetime, as it had been previously with Jezza and as of right. My second side after the Bonnie Wee Albion was the other Edinburgh team, Hibernian from Easter Road with an even better forward line, Smith, Johnstone, Reilly, Turnbull and Ormond, and I can never forget the sense of loss when Glasgow Celtic defeated us 2-0 in the Coronation Cup final on a glorious summer day in 1953, after yet another frantic afternoon of (what else) playing swing park fitba’ with our team ball on our field of dreams.

St Modan’s High, the only Catholic high school in Stirlingshire, educated students plucked from the surrounding towns and villages, arriving each morning in an armada of Alexander’s Bluebird buses from across the county, each student as self-absorbed as chattering pilgrims on the Haj disembarking from ancient, rust-streaked eastern steamers, lying alongside the wharves of the Red Sea in Jeddah. Over time we learnt to identify student origins by accent – Kilsyth, Cowie, Falkirk, Stenhousemuir, Hillfoots and Alloa pupils, having outlandish dialects to our conservative ears, not really unexpected considering that some lived up to fifteen miles from our home, the Whins considered by us to be the epicentre of the known world. Over time we came to realise it was best to stick to our own, inside our safe, non-threatening, three-village cordon sanitaire of St Ninian’s, the Whins and Bannockburn, some students from Kilsyth ratcheting up this sense of overt foreignness by representing that discount Mars bars could be bought there for less than the retail price of sixpence – aye, right! People fae Falkirk insisting they came from a place called Fa’kirk! Denny and Dunipace students squared this circle of dystopian strangeness by representing that tatties should properly be called totties, something they said should never be forgotten if we wanted to speak right. Totties. Holy moley.

Our school, like the Whins council houses, had been built during the Depression of the thirties, allegedly modelled on the brutalist architectural style of Stalinist Russia, a creed very much in fashion on Red Clydeside at the time, support for such grim design principles being provided by town councils and the bureaucrats of the Scottish Department of Education. Mr McInally, our art teacher, defensively pronounced that our school buildings might indeed have Stalinist overtones but at least they had a sense of symmetry which wasn’t totally offensive to the eye, unlike the abominations designed by ‘the great French fraud’, Le Corbusier. Some suspected that Mr McInally might himself have harboured left-wing sympathies, after all wasn’t he partial to wearing brightly coloured neckerchiefs of a type worn by the better class of tinker, and the avant-garde? His defenders responded by saying we were no more than gossips, peddlers of tittle-tattle and busybodies with nothing better to do with our lives, and accordingly we should all be black affronted. During our senior years, Mr M began to appear in suede shoes, altering the opinions of the embryo apostates who were shoaling amongst us, cynics who could no doubt have out-doubted the apostle Thomas, leading to mutterings that perhaps there might be something ‘gey strange going on here after all?’ A minority put his choice of attire down to his imagined revisionist tendencies, the general sentiment being that he was certainly ‘a wee bit on yon pinkish side.’ Looking back, there is a reasonable probability that our inspired teacher had simply picked up his dress habits from spending his summer holidays in France, where some fantasists claimed that ordinar’ folk put wine on their dinner table throughout the year, not just at Hogmanay and Ne’erday, and would think nothing of dressing up in a garb reminiscent of the clothes worn by French onion sellers. At least Mr M’s suede shoes weren’t blue; who knows down which particular worm-hole of supposition and breathless rumour his bizarre shoe colourings, would have taken us?

Amongst these hardcore professional cynics, were some who said they had proof that the plans of our school were a straight copy of those used for the building of the Lubjanka, the only difference being that our windows were much smaller than those of the dread Russian prison, specially downsized to ensure that only the tiniest and most dwarfish of pupils could escape. The dissident faction went on to declare that the treatment of Lubjanka inmates at the height of the Beria terror, would have been infinitely more humane than that being meted out to us, taking great care to whispering such calumnies to trusted friends only. After all, such overheard commentary could have had serious consequences, resulting in an entirely predictable root and branch pogrom by our polymath headmaster, Mr Foxworthy, tall, gaunt and quick-moving with the knack of conveying a sense of foreboding by his wraith-like ability to stop start and change direction in one fluid glissade, an expertise we felt had not been acquired by one who was born of mortal man. This we truly believed, even amongst the ranks of the dissidents. Here in plain sight stood a noted scholar, classicist and driven ascetic, Enoch Powell sans moustache, obsessed with our educational well-being, hurrying through the carbolic smelling corridors of our lives dispensing Pax Foxworthia, in a gown we were convinced had become an integral part of his persona, billowing out like the well-filled topsail of a hard driving, hard case, fast tracking Yankee down East’er, her spanker set and a powdery forefoot dipping through the starry tropic, in the heel of the north east trades.

Here in my opinion was the noblest and most unbending Scotsman of them all, a modern-day Brutus totally committed to the great and inspirational task which lay ahead of him, a latter-day John Knox or Calvin from the other side of the doctrinal divide, firm believer in the trickle-down benefits of an efficiently delivered, quality Scottish education and its hand-maiden, the iron discipline he deemed essential for academic success in our hard driving and joyless post-war Scotland. At times it felt as if we were merely bit players in his overarching struggle to achieve educational excellence, all pupils shyly sniffing the first zephyrs of personal freedom whilst awaiting the coming of Bill Haley, listening for the break-out signal that would allow us to overwhelm the janitor and escape from the imagined oppression which was all around us. Each of us sensed that Mr Foxworthy was aware of this Weltanschauung effect, making it his life’s work to ensure that when the ‘pupils over the wall’ alarm was tripped, he would know that sufficient resources would be on hand to maintain control of the perimeter fence; once satisfied, he could commence mopping-up operations, the restoration of public order and an assessment of the casualty count, aye mindful of the implementation of appropriate punishment schedules and just retribution for those who had had the nerve to escape, or at least had failed gloriously during the break-out. To those who remained, the most important thing was that some of us had at least tried.

Harry O’Brien called our headmaster Nostromo, and Nostromo worked to a rigid and formulaic timetable, a combination of pedagogy and punishment, something which the Lubjanka gaolers would have appreciated. At assembly after morning prayers and on a day with time to spare before the first teaching period, there was a short form choreographed roll call of all those who had been marked out for punishment. These unfortunates were directed onto the stage by scurrying monitors marking off their hit lists house by house, in the insufferably self-important manner adopted by all furrowed browed amanuenses, on whose shoulders rests the fate of the world. No matter the demand as with the French Terror at its height, there was always room on the tumbrils for more, and if a student were to offer a protest, even a sotto voce ‘what a shame’ during a particular retribution ceremony on the stage (an attitude especially prevalent when girls were involved), the unfortunate would be tapped on the shoulder and ever so slowly edged towards his or her just reward; the fundamental reason being that it was felt a monitor’s training must never be seen to have caused undue alarm or upset in the ranks, a breach of protocol similar to a man shouting ‘fire’ in an enclosed space, softly catchee monkee being the accepted watchword of the time. Such actions vis-à-vis those who were there were felt to be fair and reasonable, especially as this would give the guilty sufficient time to repent the undoubted error of their ways.

At an early stage in my education at St Modan’s, and in a forlorn attempt to join the ranks of probationer dissidents, I suggested that the desired effect of this take-no-prisoners punishment regime could have been much enhanced by the positioning of a single drummer, ideally in a tasteful ceremonial uniform bought by public subscription, preferably masked to add to the sense of Grand Guignol horror. Warming to my theme, I further believed that perhaps girls of a certain age could be offered blindfolds, only to be reminded by Harry O’s boundary riders shoaling as silently as the Stasi, that this type of smart aleck remark was reserved for senior dissidents, a demographic which certainly didn’t include inconsequential people such as I. Clearly one of the functions of the Harry push was to act as a sort of filtering curia/cum testing house for new ideas and what could safely be uttered in public, and this being so best I bite my tongue until I was elevated to the pantheon, something which the Stasi considered extremely unlikely, especially if I continued carrying on like an attention seeking smart-arse.

Harry O, roman nosed and short with a brilliantly caustic wit, alone amongst his fellows in refusing to wear our mandatory maroon Modos Odens Vanos blazer, held court in the second-floor toilets and washrooms which doubled as his pied-à-terre and smoke room, entry strictly by invitation. There were those who said his blazer exemption had been winked at by the blackmailing of our headmaster, Harry allegedly having in his possession a photograph of Mr Foxworthy in a paper hat, laughing uninhibitedly as if enjoying himself a glass of jumpabout in his mitt. Could it be? An inscription high up on the toilet wall in scarlet lettering, still there after my grudging and bitterly disputed acceptance into the inner sanctum, shone a light onto Harry’s recalcitrant fame and what the Catholic youth of Scotland were lusting after. The original scrollwork had declared, ‘Harry O has the money and the smokes and the lot.’ Sometime later, an anonymous scribbler had artistically inserted after the word smokes ‘and the sure things’, proving conclusively that no student’s private life was sacrosanct in such a place. Harry led the resistance to the established civil order from his second-floor headquarters, calling the task his via dolorosa, this ultimate free spirit and contrarian who was twice as cool as James Dean, Ché Guevara and the Fonz en bloc, acceptance into his trusted inner circle being more difficult to achieve than nomination to the Bullingdon.

Appeals against the established system of corporal punishment were not possible, either on the assembly hall stage or in the classroom, the accused invariably found guilty as charged, no mealy-mouthed doctrine of due process or appeals to higher authority appearing on our statute books, summary justice and lashings of it being the order of the day. The eponymous Lochgelly was the instrument of punishment, named for the Fifeshire town where they were manufactured in a facility, rumoured to be working flat strap-three shifts a day to keep up with insatiable demand. The factory is long gone, swept away by the same winds of change which have pensioned off the sellers of carbon paper, men’s hats, drip dry shirts and cigarette cases. At St Modan’s, the preferred Lochgelly was a custom-built, flexible, first strike weapon of bespoke Scottish leather, black or brown according to the fashion tastes of its lucky owner, some two inches wide and up to 24 inches long, its scantlings increasing at the strike end where contact forces and associated stress effects would be at their most extreme. Deluxe models came with a lifetime warranty, guaranteed to withstand the rigours of a typical hard driving school year, the genius of their makers such, that inbuilt strength was never compromised even in the face of a growing demand for super slim-line products, each instrument specially contoured to fit under a teacher’s jacket without disturbing the natural line, or drop as all the best Scottish tailors will have it.

Over time, the Lochgelly name acquired the rock-solid reputational cachet previously held by Clyde built steamships for over a century. Rumour has it that fast draw competitions were held in the second-floor staff room, Harry O, aka Till Eulenspiegel putting it about that a time clock was activated when the teacher’s arm was in the horizontal full stretch position, sans strap and directly in front of his or her body, designated the resting stance. The clock stopped when the arm had returned to its original position now clutching the dread instrument, known as the fully armed position, Harry O pointing out that female teachers had been offered no start whatsoever in this race against time, in spite of appeals for fairness. Previous requests for a handicap system for the slower and weaker percentiles had been robustly voted down by an unbending phalanx of male staff, demonstrating just how non-sexist and modern St Modan’s had become, in spite of all appearances to the contrary.

Punishment methodology was flexible in line with the enlightened tenor of the time, the beneficiary being given the choice of either facing the teacher with both hands outstretched, one beneath the other, or by positioning himself or herself at ninety degrees to the facing position. With the first option, welts would be sustained on the wrist from any overstrike effect, whereas with the second method, strap imprints might be engraved on the back of the lower supporting hand. The choice was ours, punishment beginning only after the beneficiary had given his or her short nod of readiness, adequate notice being something we had successfully campaigned for as demanded by common humanity, shades of dropped silk handkerchiefs, employed by tragic Queens at equally difficult moments in their lives. For every cowardly withdrawal or separation of the hands in the split second before contact, another strike was added to the total, this being accepted as reasonable under the circumstances, something no rational person could argue against, not even Harry O at his didactic best, imbued as he was with the principle of fairness above all.

From scenes like these auld Scotia’s grandeur springs,

That makes her loved at home, revered abroad.

And yet and yet, many of us realised that our austere headmaster cared for all of us in his own flinty and messianic way, taking an enduring interest in our academic progress through his encyclopaedic knowledge of our individual strengths and weaknesses. We knew he was busying himself with practical steps to improve curricula and teaching methods, adopting methodologies to improve us both scholastically and individually, particularly the stragglers. More enlightened people might say that the preceding observations are no more than a manifestation of SSS, Stirlingshire Swedish Syndrome, the symbiosis that exists between hostage and captor. What would such people know we asked, who had never been there when the whips were cracking? It was thus one small step from the corridors to the classroom for our peripatetic everyman, and whilst we feared him, many of us respected and appreciated his efforts in the rough emotional calculus of the time. Mr Foxworthy knew our strengths and weaknesses, all six-hundred of us, extolling the virtues of a Scottish education and Scotland herself, land of the mountain and the flood, improving our fitness to engage with that vast slavering world, which crouched patiently outside our gates awaiting our final exit. His Jesuitical justification for hard, unremitting toil and adherence to the rule of law was, that with our maximum span under his roof being six short years, only a small part of a life which, if spent wisely, would shape us for the balance of our time on earth, his variation on a theme ‘Give me the boy at an early age and I will show you the man.’ Whilst hardly a promise of good times to come (the concept of happiness in this world playing little part in his philosophy), his rationale was accepted as part of a Faustian bargain, release into the world in return for us doing our absolute best inside his perimeter fence and gates, which one day would open to allow us free passage for the very last time.

Deep down we believed that our headmaster was not always as he seemed, as if yearning to lower his guard from time to time, not too dissimilar to the effect created by Harry O’s imaginary photograph. Proof of this was provided at the annual event, preceding the June exams for the Scottish Higher Leaving Certificate, the Highers, showcasing Mr Foxworthy’s other side. On the week before the first examination, he would announce during assembly and before the morning assize, ‘The exams are a week off,’ before lifting a clenched fist to his mouth to make a wee cough, followed by our polite and appreciative laughter rippling through the ranks at this exquisite bon mot. By our modest tribute, we were showing the world that we had known all along that the great man was indeed of our own flesh and blood, descending on that glorious once-a-year day from his home on Mount Pelion to be there amongst us. Sometime later on northbound Jason in the Red Sea, I had had a similar conversion as a first trip middy, believing that our Blue Funnel Captain, Willie Hole, had at last joined us groundlings in his quest to becoming a human being or failing that, to demonstrate that he had at least developed some redeeming humanoid tendencies. On that particular Red Sea occasion, I came to realise I had been seriously mistaken as to the character and decency of Willie.

In 1956, having achieved a modest pass in the Highers, it was expected that I would accept a place at Glasgow University, adding in some infinitesimal way to the school’s academic count, allegedly of great interest to Archbishop Gordon Gray of our diocese. Clearly the opinion of our putative Cardinal was of the greatest importance