Glasgow (48 page)

Two foot soldiers from the Salvation Army were hawking their newspaper the
War Cry
. ‘I'll give,' said Catherine, ‘but when I'm giving I want to make sure it's going into the weans' bellies, not to the maggots. They're lining their pockets with thousands of pounds.

‘Look at the way things are going. There's nothing for us. My granda sweated to build them ships. My granda worked for eleven and six a week. Now they've closed the yards. The great cranes along both banks of the Clyde are gone. The yuppies have moved in. I'm greetin'. There'll
be anarchy, and I'll be honest with you, I'm for the anarchy, I hope there'll be trouble. I'm all for a revolution, there needs to be, to renew, to start again.

‘The lottery is our only hope. The working classes need hope. Surviving is not enough! The only industries we've got left here is football and rock. And I'm no spending me money on lottery when they're giving £58 million to opera, to the fuckin' toffs. I'll pay for half a ticket, and I begrudge even that.'

Christine fetched a birthday cake that had been held behind the bar. Everyone sang ‘Happy Birthday' and Patricia was about to start greetin'. ‘I feel a bubble coming on.' As Patricia cut into the cake, Catherine told me, ‘My first birthday cake was at forty-five. My da had a dumpling for my birthdays, and I've not yet been to a pantomime.'

Double-jointed, rail-thin Little Frances took to the pub floor and did an erotic snake dance, then used one of the pub's concrete pillars as a tango partner. We laughed so hard we nearly split our sides. Helen, Little Frances's sometimes partner, started to greet from helpless laughter. ‘She's got no teeth, but she's shit hot.' And she was.

We all tumbled out of the pub at closing time. ‘D'ye fancy a curry?' asked Christine.

‘Yeah.'

‘Right, c'mon.'

Christine, Patricia, Olive and I walked home. We passed a group of ten- and eleven-year-olds too busy skinning up on the steps of the Social Services to take notice of us. We ordered our curry at the Chinese takeaway which, like much of the neighbourhood, had been daubed with the words: WILLIE LYLE IS A GRASS.

I slept fitfully. As the sound of the traffic died down I could hear the children playing outside. Tin cans were being kicked, skateboards were being used to hurdle the curb. The night air was still, making the sounds all the more raw. A child screamed and another started crying. I lay there turning it over and over in my mind. How old could the child have been? Five, six, possibly seven years old. That child's bleating continues to haunt me.

Next morning I woke to the clatter of the police helicopter. It hovered over the tenements like a gigantic bee, moved this way and that, the beat of its rotor blades chopping against the sandstone walls. It hovered again, and eventually moved away – it had either found its prey or had moved on to another quarry.

Christine cooked me an enormous breakfast. There was a knock on the front door. ‘That'll be Alistair coming to apologise for last night.'

Alistair stood in the hall, his emotions playing volcanically on his face. ‘My giro! Where's my fucking giro!'

‘Alistair,' she tried to reason with him. ‘The post hasn't come.'

‘You were out drinking in the pub last night.' Alistair accused her of talking to a man. ‘Do you remember your marriage vows?'

‘Yes,' Christine started to smile, but she daren't relax. “‘Till death do us part.” So there. You're father's dead.'

‘But you're not dead.'

2001–

BLOW UP

SMEATON AS SUPERMAN, 5 JULY 2007
Lawrence Donegan

In the first terrorist attack on Scottish soil since the Lockerbie bombing in 1988, two men crashed their Jeep Cherokee loaded with propane canisters into the glass doors of the terminal of Glasgow International Airport. Among the first to react was John Smeaton, an off-duty baggage handler, who set about one of the terrorists with selfless zeal, for which he was awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal. Later, he reflected: ‘If any more extremists are still wanting to rise up and start trouble, know this: We'll rise right back up against you. New York, Madrid, London, Paisley . . . we're all in this together . . .'

When asked if he had a message for the bombers, John Smeaton, the baggage handler who helped thwart Saturday's 4x4 attack on Glasgow airport, said, ‘This is Glasgow. We'll just set aboot ye.'

The city of Glasgow's marketing department, which has spent 20 years trying to obliterate Glasgow's ‘No Mean City' reputation, might have winced at the sentiment. But the rest of the world was enchanted, and Scotland – and the internet – had found a new hero.

Smeaton confronted one of the men from the 4x4, who was fighting with a police officer. ‘I got a kick in,' he said. ‘Other passengers were getting kicks in. The flames were going in two directions . . . You know when you're younger, you put a can of Lynx [aftershave] on the fire, and it's like a flame thrower.' And: ‘Me and other folk were just trying to get the boot in and some other guy banjoed him.' (To banjo is Scottish slang for to hit someone as hard as you can.)

Another day, another paean to the man: yesterday's contribution came from Michael Kerr, whose own efforts at tackling one of the would-be terrorists were rewarded with a couple of smashed teeth, a broken leg and a supporting role in a worldwide phenomenon
henceforth known as Smeatomania. ‘I flew at the guy a few times but he wouldn't go down. Then he punched me so hard he knocked my teeth out and sent me flying so hard I broke my leg,' Kerr said with a commendable lack of machismo. ‘I landed next to the burning Jeep and thought it was going to explode. That was when John Smeaton dragged me to safety. He's a hero.'

With crews working hard yesterday to restore the fire-damaged terminal, it seems the moment might have passed for building a plinth and commissioning a statue of Smeaton. Nevertheless, some form of official recognition is surely on its way. Scotland's first minister, Alex Salmond, says so, and so does the
Scottish Sun
, which yesterday launched an in-your-face campaign to ‘Give John a Gong'. (Rumours that the airport is to be renamed Smeaton International Airport appeared to be unfounded at time of going to press.)

Still, our hero has plenty of other things to occupy his mind while awaiting the call from the Palace, not least the demands that come with being the latest in a long line of everyman heroes delivered by Scotland to a grateful world, from William Wallace to Sean Connery.

In Australia, his remarks were broadcast accompanied by subtitles – the sort of accolade usually reserved for the likes of
Gregory's Girl
and
Trainspotting
. And on Fox News in the US, Smeaton has received the fawning treatment normally reserved for Dick Cheney.

It is a similar story in cyberspace, where a large corner of the internet is now devoted to the great man. One website gives visitors the chance to put a pint for Smeaton behind the bar of the Glasgow airport Holiday Inn. So far, 1,035 fans have taken up the offer. Elsewhere, the Photoshop enthusiasts have been hard at work. There is Smeato as Superman; Smeato as a Jedi knight; Smeato as Bruce Willis in
Die Hard
; Smeato as the man who made Osama bin Laden say, ‘You told me John Smeaton was off on Saturdays!' Another shows Smeaton midair performing a flying kick with the words, ‘This is Glesga, mate.'

Just one thing, though. The great man is not actually from Glasgow. He is from Erskine, a nice little suburb about 10 miles north of the city. Still, at this stage of the game, who in their right mind would want to argue with John Smeaton?

EARLY CLOSING TIME, 4 DECEMBER 2013
Sunday Herald

Late on a Friday night, a police helicopter crashed into the Clutha Vaults, a popular pub on the north bank of the Clyde, killing ten people and injuring many more. A subsequent inquiry confirmed that the tragedy was due to pilot error. Less than two years later the Clutha reopened
.

The uncle of former Rangers player Steven Naismith became a reluctant hero when he went to the rescue of shocked revellers trapped in the crumbling building. Retired senior fire officer Douglas Naismith helped pull casualties to safety within minutes of the police helicopter crashing on to the pub roof but afterwards was too modest to speak about his actions.

He had been walking past the Clydeside pub with another retired fireman and immediately went to the aid of frantic drinkers who had been trapped when the roof collapsed. A friend said: ‘Douglas just happened to be passing by with another experienced fire fighter. Instinct took over and he went straight into the building to help in the rescue operation and bring people out to safety. It was a brave thing to do, but it just came naturally to him. He definitely helped bring people out and ended up injuring himself by either fracturing his collar bone or dislocating his shoulder. But he took it in his stride.

‘Douglas was a senior fire officer until he took early retirement. He had attended a lot of major incidents in his time. It just so happened he was walking by the pub with another retired colleague when it all happened.'

Former fire fighter Edward Waltham also ran into the pub to help with the rescue effort. He said: ‘I helped grab a couple of people. One gentleman in particular was completely covered in dust, who had very shallow breathing and appeared to be quite badly injured. My initial reaction for him – from my experience – was to try not to move him because he had been in a crush situation. However, as we were lying there, other people were literally being pulled out of the pub and more or less thrown on top of us.'

Reveller Grace MacLean was inside The Clutha at the time of the crash and relived the horror when she said: ‘There was a ska band on in the pub just at the back and it was fairly busy. We were all just having a nice time and then there was like a “whoosh” noise. There was no bang, there was no explosion, and then there was some smoke – what
seemed like smoke. The band were laughing and we were all joking that the band had made the roof come down.

‘They carried on playing and then it started to come down more and someone started screaming and then the whole pub just filled with dust. You couldn't see anything, you couldn't breathe. It was a real testament to the people of Glasgow. Everyone in that pub was shouting “Here's the door” – they were helping each other out.'

Another pub drinker caught up in the mayhem was Brendan Riordan who told how The Clutha had been ‘packed' and said: ‘It was quite hard to move in there with the amount of people enjoying the gig.' He remembered hearing ‘a very loud bang' before a cloud of dust filled the pub and recalled: “I was on the right side of the pub where the band were performing and if you look at the pictures which have come out now, you will notice that the right side of the pub did not collapse. It was more the central bit and the left side.

‘After I exited the pub I saw people coming out covered in blood and covered in dust. There were people quite desperate and just before I left the inside of the pub I noticed that the ceiling had fallen towards the bar. People were not aware that a helicopter had crash-landed on the pub.'

Esperanza, a nine-piece Glasgow band known for its high-tempo ska numbers, were playing when the helicopter crashed on to the roof of the pub. Band members managed to flee the scene unscathed and last night a management spokesman said: ‘The band have made a collective decision not to do any interviews at this time. Hope you understand.'

Newspaper editor Gordon Smart watched in horror as the helicopter plummeted on top of the pub. The editor of the
Scottish Sun
was 250 yards away from the crash scene in a car park when he spotted the helicopter. He said: ‘It was just a surreal moment. It looked like it was dropping from a great height at a great speed.' Smart added: ‘There was no fire ball and I did not hear an explosion. It fell like a stone. The engine seemed to be spluttering.'