John Ferguson 1/12/1929—11/1/2020

John Ferguson slipped me twenty-quid and I went to the Oasis, loosely termed a nightclub, with the cash. He was about five-foot-five tall, and he added an inch or two, with slicked back, wet looking, Brylcreem hair of the fifties rocker. His dark eyed steady gaze met the world when he looked through thick framed, no nonsense specs. The type given free by the NSH used to slide off the end of his wide nostrils. So he’d jerk his neck up and stare at you, as if ready to ask a question, and frown, because he’d forgotten it. Dark eyebrows, and thin lips, he might once have been considered handsome. He favoured dark shiny suits, crisp white shirts and brightly coloured ties. Dress trousers and cotton t-shirts buttoned to the collar combination with shiny black shoes.

In later life, he wore a skip cap. Teeth pulled, he’d a fine set of white wallies kept by the bed and pinking the glass. He grew as wide as he was tall, and was warned off (in no particular order) sugar, because he was diabetic, booze, because he was an alky, and fags because they’re fags. But he was born in Carlton, and Carlton boys don’t take kindly to being told what to do, even by a couple of heart attacks. Any schoolboy in the West of Scotland with the name Ferguson, inevitably, was going to be called, Fergie, as his sons, Ian and Gerry were, but that rule didn’t apply to women. Gerry’s twin, Emily wasn’t nicknamed Fergie.

John was born in early December 1929, a dreich Glasgow, winter’s day as it was when he was buried. A £150 000 relief fund was set up to help fisherman who lost their nets and crippled the fishing fleet in a typical 1929, November, gale-force storm.  Questions were raised in Parliament, blaming the workers for not anticipating God’s wrath and taking out insurance.  The Wall Street Crash, 1929, (like the crash in 2008)  classified as an act of God, marked the start of the worldwide, Great Depression, which continued until the second world war. Death and carnage filled to overflowing order books as manufacturing rocketed and led to a revival in Clyde shipbuilding. 

White wedding, 1952, after John had served his National Service, but still rationing. Sugar, for the cake, and flour rationed by tickets ounce by ounce. A bottle of whisky cost a day’s wages and was almost impossible to get a grip of.  They were arm in arm, staring at the camera. May (Mary McCluskey) his wife was dark haired too, a year young than him, aged 22, and a head smaller. He had a carnation in his lapel and she was clutching a posy of flowers. Smiling to beat the band.  Photographic evidence that John smiled at least once.

A white wedding thirty-six years later, and another growler.  My older brother Stephen—or  SEV, as pre-Banksie, he liked to artistically daub on walls or doors— married his daughter Emily. Or wee Emily. They were much the same age as John and May. I didn’t remember how small she was until I saw her at John’s funeral. Platform shoes of the kind that Elton John wore to play the part of Tommy,  and sing Pinball Wizard , took Emily up to the glorious height of about five-foot (stripy-banded socks optional). She was a gorgeous wee thing, inside and out. She and her twin brother Gerry were adopted, or so I heard, I’m not so sure now, because in many ways Emily resembled her mum. When people say bloods thicker than water, I’ll just say Emily and Gerry were John and May’s children. They had a brother, Ian, two years older than the twins, who wasn’t adopted.

May died of cancer in 2001. She was also in uniform, a clippie, on the Corporation bus, until they were married. She was a bit of stuff in her uniform, hat tilted at an angle, tan leather straps crisscrossing her breasts a leather pouch full of clinking change. An accountant that needs to keep a running total of tickets in her head, make the books balance at the end of the shift with the numbers on the machines that would be checked back in the bus station. Hand dipping in and out of the bag, stinking of nickel, but weighing every coin that pulled at her shoulder more and more as the day went on, and it grew heavier. Pennies, the size of the priestly Host at Holy Communion, were easy. But my da used to wrap and smooth half-pennies with silver paper and pass them off as shillings to the guys taking tickets on the train. She needed to be able to spot the chancers, and the dancers, that swung up onto the back of the bus and took a hurl without paying. The drunks that fell asleep in their seats and dropped lit fags on their seat, or were sick before they got off. Passengers that peed themselves, or spat on windows, or seats, or drooled on each other.  She’d need to be a bouncer and fling off ranters and fighters, and those that took it for granted they could grope a young girl (or boy). She’d need to be help young mothers on and off with their prams and, the rising panic, of the children that went missing, or just got on the wrong bus. In her short heels, she’d need to ring the bell to let the driver know, and above all, she’d need to be on time. Smiling, optional.   

Fergie was her bus driver that in the On the Buses jargon of the 1970’s sitcom, stamped her ticket. He’d the right kind of scowling face for that kind of work. ‘On, or ‘aff’, your choice, pal. Radiators hissing, the size of a man. Public transport was king and Fergie was riding high. Only snobs owned cars, broke down at the drop of a hat, and needed a jump-start.  Then women were expected to leave work to the bread-winner. Full employment was the order of the day.

John worked as a storeman in Upper Clyde Shipbuilding, John Brown’s old yard. Pencil behind his ear of his slicked back hair, he was the man whom time-served professional sent apprentices to for ‘a long wait’, or ‘tartan paint’. Film makers make merry with the stalls and the shared trough the workers shat and pissed in. The newspaper set on fire and sent sailing on its way and burning bared arses. Workmen jumping up in surprise. You’d need to be a lot cuter than that to catch the men in the yards out.

John’s house, half-way up West Thompson Street, across from the High Park we used to sledge down. Their home knocked down and re-built. John and May in their later years had an upstairs house, Glenhead Road, Parkhall, back and front garden.  John moaned that Gerry and the grandkids didn’t come up to see him enough. They lived just a few streets away.

John didn’t moan when he’d phone Gerry to come and pick him up from John Brown’s pub, or ironically, The Pinetrees Hotel, which is now The West Park Hotel where refreshments were served after his funeral. Let’s hope John doesn’t phone Gerry to come pick him up in the near future. Every time a bell rings, John gets his wings. You’d need to ask May about that one. R.I.P.