Georgie Day 59

Mum had developed a real fit of the giggles and Dad was having great difficulty in putting on his overcoat

This instrument belonged to Dougie, who’d bought it from his mum’s “clubby book” and was paying it over 18 weeks at 19/11d per week. As all decent groups had a drummer, we enlisted the help of Ian Rae, who just happened to have a set of drums and a wee van. I’d like to think we added him for his talent but that might not be entirely true.

Anyway, we rehearsed briefly before getting our first break, playing in the bar at the Inchture Hotel on a Friday night, thanks to PE teacher Gerry Devlin who owned that establishment.

We did well that evening and got a nice round of applause from the six people present. We did one more gig, a Saturday night spot at Blairgowrie Town Hall where holidaying Glaswegians spent the evening kicking the living daylights out of each other. So much for our great set of songs!

The last time we got together was at school for an end-of-year celebration where the teachers asked us to perform a few songs.

We enhanced our line-up by adding the voice of Leng Medal winner Patsy Cosgrove and we chose an eclectic mix of rock and folk, but the audience just sat and listened to the rock and then, thanks to an untimely intervention by Jimmy Chaplain, started to dance to our folk songs.

Bacchanalia

That was very strange for us up on the stage watching school kids shake to “The Wild Mountain Thyme”. And after that, just like The Beatles, we split up.

While the Christmas holidays were a bacchanalia for me and my friends with hardly a sober night to speak of, the momentous occasion of my 18th birthday on February 17 1971 turned out to be unusually quiet for me but a bit of an adventure for Mum and Dad.

Two days before that, we had the unique event of the UK saying cheerio to old pounds, shillings and pence and converting to decimal.

At a stroke Dougie had to start paying 99 and a half new pence for the keyboard lying unused in the corner of his bedroom.

One of my birthday presents in February was one of each of the new coins, although we’d been using the five and 10 new pence coins for a couple of years already alongside the old money, but the wee coins of two, one and a half new pence were a novelty for us all, as was the very unusual seven-sided 50 new pence.

The plan for my birthday celebration was simple: sometime after tea, Mum, Dad and I would go down to the Gaiety Lounge where I’d be bought my first legal drink.

I secretly worried that the excitement would vanish as soon as it became legal for me to drink but being bought a drink by my parents was definitely going to be a “first”.

This made up for the fact that I would receive hardly any birthday cards that year, as a national postal strike was well into its fifth week.

So, that evening, we had that momentous drink together in the Gaiety, but were joined soon after by Dad’s conductor Bert and his wife.

At closing time they invited us back to their flat in nearby Gourdie Street, where they intended to sample some bonded rum that Bert had acquired, while I was sent to a bedroom to play guitar with Bert’s son who was in bed with the flu.

This in itself was a strange turn of events but what transpired was even stranger.

Giggles

When I went back through around midnight to suggest we all go home, it was clear that my parents were unusually merry. Indeed Mum had developed a real fit of the giggles and Dad was having difficulty putting on his overcoat.

Well, walking them home was a nightmare, as I had to link the arms of both of them with mine, as we walked past the playpark and up Craigowan Road.

I left them to put themselves to bed, still a bit shocked to see my own mum and dad in such a state. Mum normally drank very little alcohol and Dad usually stuck to a couple of pints of lager at the weekend, so to see them struggling to walk was a real eye-opener. What had there been in that rum?

Anyway I wasn’t long in bed myself when I heard a thump followed by Mum laughing. I got up, knocked and went into their bedroom.

Mum was lying in bed chuckling away to herself, which I failed to understand until I caught sight of Dad lying on the floor beside his chest of drawers. Silly man.

However, when I moved to help him up I was shocked to see a gash in his temple and blood running down his face. He had tried to get out of bed but his legs had failed him.

So, my 18th birthday finished with me ministering to my inebriated father and the cut on his head, while Mum happily laughed herself to sleep.

The following day wasn’t easy for either of them but Dad did eventually find out from Bert that the rum they’d been drinking that evening was double the normal proof.

That accounted perfectly for why my parents had become so very, very drunk so quickly.

Luckily I never saw Mum or Dad under the influence again.

My last significant moments as a pupil at Lawside came far from School Road in Dundee; more than a hundred miles away in fact, in the Cairngorms.

Teacher Jimmy Chaplain had already established himself as the king of the outward-bound school trip; he had organized a post-examination week for senior pupils in the hostel and Norwegian huts up at Loch Morlich every year since his arrival at Lawside.

Last chance

So when it came time for names to be put forward, as it was our last chance to try out life in the mountains, I signed up along with Dougie, Charlie, Jake, Dodge and the rest of our group.

As Chappy had been our register teacher for the previous five years, he knew us all inside out and there was little chance that we wouldn’t make it on to the final list. And so it transpired.

In late May, with the exams safely behind us, we were driven to Aviemore in two minibuses, then east to Loch Morlich and the former Commando huts where we would stay.

The bulk of Cairngorm rose to the south, with Ben Macdhui, Cairn Toul and Braeriach beyond and the Lairig Ghru between them. This was very different indeed from Dundee, but naturally we, a group of immortal 18-year-old boys, assumed we’d master it in a trice. Oh, the folly of youth!

On the second day we were divided into groups for our first hike, a 15-mile stroll through Glenmore forest around the area of Rothiemurchus.

(More tomorrow.)

By George Burton