Ra Pailis

Sunday 10:00 p.m.
There's five big rooms in this flat and only me. Two of the rooms I'll never go into. No wonder the world is full of homeless basturns!

When I was about seven, we moved from Mossend to Bellshill. This meant moving from an upstairs downstairs with three bedrooms to a one of four flat with four bedrooms, round the corner. There were nine folk living in this council house. We moved because my sister with the MS needed a room on her own. There was another sister so that was the second bedroom gone. Then the maw and da had a room. The fourth bedroom was for us, the five boys. I'm number four son.

This was on the ground floor. One night some poor unfortunate drunken creature came into our front garden and climbed in through the window into the bedroom I shared with my four brothers.

My three elder brothers had all attended the boxing gym run by Joe Gans, Walter McGowan's da, at some point. Walter ended up being the Flyweight Champion of the World and his da had been a booth boxer. Joe Gans was a kid-on name. Thank God Joe Gans wasn't running his boxing gym when I was a teenager because I would have probably attended this gym and I would have been quite good at boxing. Boxing is not a good thing to be good at. Well ... I could qualify that, but sometimes you can take too many punches to the head.

Walter might have dementia now. Ah could have been a contenda, Charlie. Walter McGowan was much better than a contender. Walter McGowan was the best boxer I ever saw.

When I was teaching kids to box at a school in Falkirk, I did something my brother Grizzly told me about from Joe Gans gym. Walter was obviously wonderful so he would stick two sparring partners in with him at the one time. You're not allowed to hit from the back. This does sharpen you up!

In one of the Alien movies there's a bit where some joe or josephine realises that they're standing in a nest of monsters as they uncurl from the walls, etc.

So the drunk man is standing in the middle of the darkened bedroom. My three elder brothers are all in their late teens or early twenties. I wake up due to the racket and this guy is standing there in front of the fireplace. It is a commotion in the darkened room. My brother Silvest was a very good amateur boxer, but it was Grizzly who banjoed the boy. The boy's head bangs off the wall; he collapses. By this time me and my wee brother have our heads well poked out the bedclothes.

The old man had a motor so we could take my sister out. They seem to have discerned that the unconscious person was from the Pailis, known officially as Bothwellhaugh, a derelict ex-mining village half way to Hamilton. They put him in the motor and left him lying out on the pavement down the Pailis. I think Grizzly wanted to find out where he stayed, but my brother Silvest, row of forty medals on his chest, big chest, wanted him dumped.

Where the Pailis was in now under a pond in Strathclyde Park.

My auld maw told me the reason why I don't have more brothers and sisters is because of Adolf Hitler who caused the old man to go shooty shootying for six years. It's great to be part of a big family, even if they're all flatheids!