Doug St Allan
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THE BARRACK GATES, MARYHILLTHE BARRACK GATES, MARYHILL, GLASGOW
The six of us looked up at the huge cast-iron gates that secured the side entrance to Maryhill Barracks on Kelvindale Road. The entrance was immediately opposite the boy’s playground of Gairbraid Primary School, our school.
It was five minutes before the nine o’clock bell on an ear and nose numbing January morning, 1954.
At seven years old, Davie was the youngest of the morning’s line-up, the usual suspects, and as always he wore woollen gloves to hide the flaking dermatitis that he suffered on his hands and arms. If you sat next to Davie in class you would catch the sickly sweet aroma from the decaying dermis and from the ointment his mother applied daily.
We formed a straight line, held hands and walked towards the gates. I was at one end of the line grasping Johnny O’Hara’s fingers. Johnny was one of the kids that were bussed in from Drumchapel every day. The Drumchapel housing scheme was just being built and the Corporation hadn’t got round to building schools. The poor sod was sporting a new haircut, “the bowl”, “the mushroom”, there were plenty of descriptions for the style and none of them complimentary. The visiting school nurse had inflicted her art work on Johnny’s tousled red hair the previous day when she spotted his head lice during routine inspections.
Johnny had been so shamed by the ritual humiliation that he soiled himself in the playground. The dour school nurse grudgingly scraped the offending mess from his pants but the smell remained. Johnny hid himself in the boys’ toilets and cried his heart out and no one seemed to care.
I grabbed hold of the iron gate with my left hand as did Basil at the other end with his right hand, Jesus what a name for a Maryhiller …………… nothing happened, Davie still had his dermie gloves on.
After some verbal abuse Davie removed the gloves and we stepped forward again to grasp the freezing wrought ironwork. The six con-joined schoolboys immediately began to shake as the electric current passed through our bodies. We could only play this electro-convulsive game for short periods at a time.
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