This is a new feature where I invite friends to confess to their secret love of uncool songs (from the late 70’s or 80’s). If I have a personal memory relating to the song, I will write something around it.
First up is Alan Gaskin. He writes from Glasgow to say: “I really liked A-ha and I still do. Some of their tracks still hold up well today.”
Well Alan, I’m not sure about that. It's a struggle to get to the end of this video but the song takes me back to 1985 and my first proper job. I use the term loosely as work involved a forty-hour week including most Saturdays for a pittance of pay on theYouth Training Scheme – twenty seven pound thirty I got or thereabouts. Why it wasn’t a more rounded figure remains a mystery. Perhaps we were supposed to celebrate with a bag of Monster Munch or two when the week was over.
I was working in a supermarket and went once a week on day release to college in nearby Elgin. The classes took place in a function room in the Gordon Arms.
Occasionally, these classes provided an opportunity to meet up with one or two schoolmates I’d said farewell to just a few months before. Robbie Scott was also working in a supermarket somewhere. All the youngsters had placements in supermarkets or grocers in the Moray area; apart from Craigie Mac who was an apprentice panel beater in a garage somewhere out Dallas way. That’s Dallas, Moray, not Texas. They have little in common.
It didn’t trouble Craigie Mac that he was in a class talking about retail chains, customer services, shelf-filling and queue reduction at checkouts. Maybe it was a pleasant enough change to sit in a warm hotel instead of rubbing down car bonnets and inhaling paint fumes. He ploughed on with his day release for a few months, perhaps thinking that it was as relevant to his vocation as most of what he had been studying at school before summer.
Craigie Mac and I soon struck up our old school friendship due in the main to our mutual interest in cranking pipes and bevvy sessions. He was more skilled in the former and myself in the latter.
It wasn’t that easy to find classmates who were up for a good drink on a Tuesday afternoon. Most hadn’t yet lapsed into such bad habits and maybe even wanted to learn the rudiments of retail, but for me the arrival of the panel beater on the scene was a godsend.
One dinnertime, we crossed the humpback bridge over the railway line and headed for Fine Fare’s carry out counter. I might have just turned sixteen but rarely had a problem purchasing alcohol and was well versed in asking for it in a matter of fact way and in showing great surprise and looking a little offended if I was ever asked my age.
We then had to down the Scrumpy Jack as fast as possible, so it was thrown back in the car park and then a furtive pipe was partaken of under the humpback bridge.
By the time we arrived back at the hotel centre we were both struggling a bit. Not only that but the regional training manager had decided to put in an appearance. Kerr enjoyed a good confrontation. Only weeks prior to this he’d phoned my parents to check I was genuinely ill after I’d missed a couple of days college and the odd day of work. I really was sick on the day in question with a bad stomach bug. My dad didn’t have much time for his manner either and informed Kerr that if he still had doubts he was “welcome to come to the hoose and hae a look at the shitey drawers in the washing basket”.
Kerr was trying to joke with the other trainees as we tumbled in and took our seats. He asked us where we’d been. A smoke always made me go quiet and introverted but Craigie Mac was buoyed up by the cider and did the talking.
“Having a slash.”
This pissed Kerr off as it got a bigger laugh than any he’d managed so far.
“Think you’re funny, do you?”, asked Kerr, adjusting his glasses and sweeping back the dyed black hair on his head in a fashion that suggested he thought he was as cool as Morten Harket.
“Funnier than you probably.”
Robbie Scott let out a loud snigger. Then apologised and pretended to blow his nose. Kerr looked at him then turned his attentions back to Craigie Mac.
“Oh, is that so? And where do you work?”
“Dowles,” said Craigie Mac.
Kerr looked puzzled.
“Where’s that?”
“Dallas,” the trainer said. “He works in Dallas.”
“Dallas? I don’t think we have anyone in Dallas. Is there a supermarket in Dallas? Which store do you work for?”
“Beel’s Garage,” said Craigie Mac.
Again, that got a louder chuckle than Kerr’s supermarket gag.
“What do you sell in this garage?”
“Nothing. I’m a panel beater.”
“A panel beater? It hasn’t occurred to you that you might be in the wrong class?”
He turned to the trainer. “How long has MacGilvary been coming here?”
“A few weeks, I think” said the trainer, consulting the register while her face turned as red as her hair.
Kerr frowned then clasped his hands to his mouth as if in despairing prayer. Meanwhile, Scrumpy Jack fumes were invading the room.
“Are you drunk son or are you just thick?”
“Fuck you, ya old dick,” said Craigie Mac. “I’m oota here.”
He threw his desk up in the direction of Kerr and they dragged each other out of the room. We listened in amused wonderment as they exchanged words and blows in the corridor.
It was Craigie Mac’s last day at the college. I don’t know if he went on to become a successful panel beater but judging by the shiner Kerr wore later, Craigie was pretty handy with his fists.
