Death of old Pat

Command forms in writing are written with an exclamation mark. Keep out the boozer! Old dogs bite too! Carpe diem! Fuck there’s old Pat Powell! Drop dead! Yes, he did the last of these yesterday. My brother Bod phoned to tell me. He was going to go up and see him, but like many other things in life something else came up. Old Pat would have understood. They say when people stop eating that’s their time’s up. In old Pat’s case it was probably when he stopped being able to roll his own fags. When he could no longer go out and about gallivanting. He liked to know other folk’s business. But when old Pat could no longer make it out and about the world came to him. That’s a kind of popularity most folk would envy.

I got to know old Pat through, young Pat, his son. Later I got to know Martin through fitba.  Young Pat turned up sleeping in the space between my bed and Bod’s. He was Bod’s best mate at the time and he’d been flung out of the house. Remember Kajagoogog daft hairdos like flock of seagull’s shit? Well, young Pat had one of them and his head was full of the same nonsense. And he wasn’t too shy shy hush hush eye to eye about drinking wine either. Like son like father. Sometimes they never saw eye to eye.  

Look at pictures of old Pat and you’ll see rocky head and King Edward potato face sans wallies. Old Pat spoke out of the side of his mouth and he’d look up at you to see if you were listening, and he was a bit blind and never wore specs, so it really seemed as if he was interested in your view and he’d add ‘you know whit I mean?’ so that every conversation you had with him was a conspiracy.  

His other great expression was, ‘I’m just no’ puttin’ up with it – you know whit I mean?’

That was usually when somebody tapped him for money. Pat always had an open house. All the waifs and strays of Dalmuir at one point or another found in his house a home. Stevie Mitchell, for example, might fall out with everybody in Dalmuir, fall out with his mum and dad and want to kill his brothers. But he never fell out with old Pat. Old Pat, was for many folk, the da that they never had. He wasn’t one to judge. He’d been there himself, breaking out - going on the drink. Hirpling into the pub on his one leg. And I’d say to Mary, ‘fuck there’s old Pat!’ And he could and did cause fights in an empty pub.  The thing about old Pat was he never thought he was old. He always thought he was young. Even to the end he’d have that glint in his eye. He couldn’t dance. He couldn’t sing. But old Pat would make you believe he could do anything. When Billy McNeil went up to lift the European Cup in Lisbon in 1967, old Pat would have you believe he was standing behind him ready to pull the trophy from him and deservedly get his shot of lifting The Big Cup.

Old Pat was straight to the point. ‘Voddy for the body,’ he’d say. Then he’d tell you there was nae point in giving him a fiver. ‘Just give me twenty quid.’ He’d throw back his drink and peer at you. ‘You know you’ll get it back. Right!’

And he always did pay it back. Dalmuir Credit Union had a good friend in Pat. I’m sure Still Game got many of their ideas about Navid from old Pat. He used to go into the corner shop and, old Pat being old Pat, soon he wangled his way behind the counter having a cup of tea with the local Navid. He’d tell you ‘he’s screwing that bint that helps him out. Maybe if I play my cards right I’ll get my leg over myself. Right!’ Well, wrong. It didn’t stop Stevie Mitchel from stealing a bag of potatoes on display outside and selling them to old Pat to make his soup. Stevie’s deid of course now.

Pat’s latest friend, I heard, was Fiona the Hun. The one that threw her husband out the window and got charged with murder but it- wasn’t-really-her-fault Fiona. Old Pat didnae mind that. She was forty years younger than him; he was still trying to get his leg over.  But he didnae like her being a Hun.

Pat liked people. That’s why he was liked. That’s why he’ll be missed. He always had a story to tell. And the old bugger always knew what was happening to some mug before they even knew it themselves.

Rest in peace. Right!