Post by Waverley on Jul 14, 2009 14:25:54 GMT 1
I wrote this wee story several years ago on the Glesca Pals site when it was in its infancy and when I was a regular contributor to that site. It was erased from the site when the board went down due to a technical hitch and unfortunately no one had kept a printed copy of the original..
On my recent trip over to France for my annual Pilgrimage to the Somme battlefields yet again I broke my journey by staying at the Grand Burstin Hotel at Folkestone where I have stayed on many occasions over the years either for my own personal use or with groups from my elderly day centre in Glasgow’s east end.
I began to think of the people I had stayed with in the hotel and some of the characters who are far too numerous to mention in this short story. I did however begin to reminisce about one individual whom I had the pleasure of taking on holiday with our wee group on several occasions. His name was Alex McDermott and this is his story and how he touched not only my life but also the many people who had the pleasure to work with him over the years.
Alex was an orphan who spent most of his childhood and adult life in Lennox Castle until he was put back into the community in Supported Accommodation in Bridgeton back in the mid 1990’s.He had learning difficulties and probably had the mental age of a seven or eight year old as did the other residents of the house he shared with his two friends Mhaira and Jessie.
I first met Alex about 15 years ago when he first came to our Day Centre for the elderly in Calton Parkhead Church in Helenvale Street. Despite his childlike mannerisms he was always smiling and forever gabbing to everyone who came into the Centre whether they be service users , staff or social workers etc., He would sit at the entrance to the centre like some ‘man at arms’ defending his castle and always enquiring after visitors ‘Who do you want. Are you looking for Charlie, he is the boss, he’s in his office’.
Alex had a thing about bunnets and skip hats and had a massive collection of hats which he seemed to change everyday and was forever enquiring after people ‘do you like my bunnet’. He also had a wee liking for the Celtic and was always noising me up if the ‘Gers were beaten at the weekend or the Celtic had beaten them and he was probably the only person I never wanted to punch his lights out for calling me a ‘Big Hun’.
Anyway on one particular holiday to Folkestone and France I had to take Alex and another character Davie into my room as Davie was prone to drinking too much whisky and Alex was unable to take off or tie his shoes.
Alex loved nothing more than to sit in the bar of the hotel and order up a half pint of heavy, a half and sit and smoke a cigar and this was his ritual every night when we were on holiday before I took him upstairs and made sure he got into his pyjamas and into his bed. He would normally be asleep whenever I left the bar at shutting time and sneaked into our bedroom and into my bed. He would tell me in the morning if Davie had been supping from his half bottle or smoking in bed and their craic was hilarious at the breakfast table as they both slagged each other off. Davie would simply call him ‘a grass’...which amused him no end.
One Sunday on holiday there was a open air market on the esplanade at Folkestone and everyone would spend sometime there trying to pick up a bargain before we went home on the Monday morning. Alex not to be out done wanted to visit the market to get sweeties for Jan and her fellow workers who looked after him in his house. The trouble was he was rather slow on his feet and he needed assistance but he would always refuse to sit in a wheelchair and insisted on using his tri-pod walking aid. I agreed to take him to the market in order to kill a couple of hours before the pubs in town opened at Sunday lunch-time. So off we went to the market and Alex excitedly spoke of how he was going to buy everyone a present back in the centre which meant about thirty service users and about ten staff members. The thing was he had no idea of the value of money and would pull out a couple of hundred pounds to hand over for something valued at a tenner or hand over twenty pence for something worth about fifty pence. I eventually talked him out of buying all and sundry a gift and he settled for four bags of mixed sweets and rock for Jan’s four kids but all the while asking me what I wanted as a gift to which I replied ‘Nothing pal’.
Anyway after trumping around the market with Alex for about two hours I decided we should go back to the hotel as it was wet and windy plus it was getting a wee bit near opening time. As we walked back he began to moan about the pace I was walking at and told me ‘Haw Boss, will you slow doon’ so we sat on a small terraced house garden wall whilst he got his breath back. As he sat on the wall out came the wee packet of cigars and he sat puffing away until his heart was content and lording it over all he perused. Once again he asked me want I wanted as a present and I still said ‘Nothing Alex, besides what could you possibly buy the guy who has everything’. He looked at me rather puzzled and then said ‘I know what I’ll buy you...I’ll buy you a bunnet’. I started to laugh and soon pointed at a small MG sports car that was parked in front of us and I said ‘Feck that Eck , you can always buy me one of them’. Yet again he looked at me in bewilderment and then stared at the car and then back at me and uttered the classic words ‘ Your a fecking con man McDonald...you don’t even drive’. Aye the wee man wasn’t that daft and we both burst into fits of laughter much to the amusement of passers-by who were wondering what was so funny and why the tears were rolling down our faces. Alex of course took great delight in telling everyone in our party the story about me not wanting a bunnet but a motor and how an MG was no use to me when I didn’t drive so I would be better off with his offer of a bunnet.
The next day as we travelled the 500 miles or so back to Jockland we passed the time with a sing song and a few games of bingo on the bus’s long weary journey home. Alex’s favourite song was the Roy Orbison classic ‘Penny Arcade’ and we sang it for him about three time. At one stage my boss and director sat down and spoke to Alex and asked him about his family to which he told her he didn’t have any family other than me whom he referred to ‘Big Charlie’s ma boy’. My boss came down to talk to me and she was nearly in tears at his story and couldn’t help but comment how grateful he was for everything that I and my staff done for him at the centre.
Anyway not long after the holiday one of his fellow residents Mhaira had to be taken into long term care as she was manic depressed and was a potential danger to Alex and Jessie. Alas shortly after she went into care tragedy struck and Jessie was diagnosed with terminal cancer and died soon after...the wee man’s world collapsed as they had been friends for years and he just couldn’t understand why she had died.
If that wasn’t bad enough within a couple of years the wee man developed bowel cancer and was soon hospitalised and he was forever telling everyone that' I am going to be with Jessie in heaven’. Now this created a personal dilemma for me as I don’t normally visit people in hospital unless I really have to as over the years practically everyone I have visited in hospital has died. This has included my young brother , my granny and other relatives and many close friends plus some of the members of my centre and when I finally decided to go and see the wee man the next day, he died during the night. Needless to say we were all absolutely shattered is an under statement and it was quite emotional for us all to attend his funeral in his local chapel the Sacred Heart in Bridgeton.
As per usual I always sit at the back when attending a Catholic funeral service as I am no great lover of the Roman Catholic funeral ritual but that is a personal opinion and has no place here in this story. As fate would have it we, my mates and I, sat halfway down the chapel in the pews which has you in the end of the row of pews in the middle quarter of the chapel. As we sat there we were approached by the pass key guy of the chapel and asked if we would do the ‘offering’. Well you could well imagine my face and my three mates were in stitches at the very thought of it as I was allocated the job of doing it in the absence of any relatives of Alex’s being in attendance at the funeral.If my theological conscience was already going into over drive at the idea of taking part in a Roman Catholic funeral service I had to put my personal feelings behind me for the sake of the wee man.
And if the shock of the offering duty wasn’t already mixing my head up you could never imagine my face when they brought Alex’s body in to the chapel in a GREEN coffin...I thought I was in the middle of an episode of Candid Camera or You’ve Been Framed and expecting Jeremy Beadle to burst out of the nearest Confessional Box. Just as the service was about to start the pass key man came up and whispered that we were relieved of our duties and that Alex’s relatives had turned up and they would do the ‘offering’...the mystery deepened as we all believed he had no family whatsoever.
It seemed that Jan his key worker having feared the worse several weeks prior to his death had contacted the Salvation Army and they had done a search and came up with Alex’s long lost sister whom she had read about in some personal papers in his possession...as he could not read or write he was unaware he had a sister and was never told about her. They were reunited several days before he died. She and her daughter attended the funeral.
We made our way to the graveyard at Dalbeth where he was to share a plot with his old friend Jessie and Alex’s wee social circle of friends who all had mental health problems and learning difficulties had turned up with a massive big ghetto blaster - for what I hadn’t a clue. However, the mystery was soon to besolved. The priest began to shout out the names of the people who were to lower the coffin into the grave and then I heard him call my name...I stepped forward in a trance. As we lowered the green coffin into the ground I couldn’t help but think ‘the wee man must be laughing his heid aff at me’...just as we threw the ropes into the grave the air was shattered with the sound of music from the ghetto blaster as the song ‘Penny Arcade’ drifted over the cemetery. Alex’s pals all started to clap and dance and the look of happiness on their faces was a pleasure to witness and it brought home to me and my three mates that whatever problems and issues we had in our life we cannot compare it with what these folk have and how they get on with their lives despite their obvious disadvantages and disabilities.
We went back to our local, the Clanny, and had a few haufs and smoked a few cigars in Alex’s memory and still trying to get our heads around ‘Whit the green coffin was all about’. It seems that Alex’s favourite colour was green but nothing to do with any affection for Celtic his room was all done in green and when Jan was making the arrangements for his funeral she asked the funeral director if it was possible to get a green coffin and he said ‘yes , we happen to have one in stock’ and on seeing it she just thought ‘that is a must as it is just him’. Alex was also buried with his gun and holster but that is another story which I will tell you about later...to be continued.
© 2009 The Glesga Keelies Message Board
On my recent trip over to France for my annual Pilgrimage to the Somme battlefields yet again I broke my journey by staying at the Grand Burstin Hotel at Folkestone where I have stayed on many occasions over the years either for my own personal use or with groups from my elderly day centre in Glasgow’s east end.
I began to think of the people I had stayed with in the hotel and some of the characters who are far too numerous to mention in this short story. I did however begin to reminisce about one individual whom I had the pleasure of taking on holiday with our wee group on several occasions. His name was Alex McDermott and this is his story and how he touched not only my life but also the many people who had the pleasure to work with him over the years.
Alex was an orphan who spent most of his childhood and adult life in Lennox Castle until he was put back into the community in Supported Accommodation in Bridgeton back in the mid 1990’s.He had learning difficulties and probably had the mental age of a seven or eight year old as did the other residents of the house he shared with his two friends Mhaira and Jessie.
I first met Alex about 15 years ago when he first came to our Day Centre for the elderly in Calton Parkhead Church in Helenvale Street. Despite his childlike mannerisms he was always smiling and forever gabbing to everyone who came into the Centre whether they be service users , staff or social workers etc., He would sit at the entrance to the centre like some ‘man at arms’ defending his castle and always enquiring after visitors ‘Who do you want. Are you looking for Charlie, he is the boss, he’s in his office’.
Alex had a thing about bunnets and skip hats and had a massive collection of hats which he seemed to change everyday and was forever enquiring after people ‘do you like my bunnet’. He also had a wee liking for the Celtic and was always noising me up if the ‘Gers were beaten at the weekend or the Celtic had beaten them and he was probably the only person I never wanted to punch his lights out for calling me a ‘Big Hun’.
Anyway on one particular holiday to Folkestone and France I had to take Alex and another character Davie into my room as Davie was prone to drinking too much whisky and Alex was unable to take off or tie his shoes.
Alex loved nothing more than to sit in the bar of the hotel and order up a half pint of heavy, a half and sit and smoke a cigar and this was his ritual every night when we were on holiday before I took him upstairs and made sure he got into his pyjamas and into his bed. He would normally be asleep whenever I left the bar at shutting time and sneaked into our bedroom and into my bed. He would tell me in the morning if Davie had been supping from his half bottle or smoking in bed and their craic was hilarious at the breakfast table as they both slagged each other off. Davie would simply call him ‘a grass’...which amused him no end.
One Sunday on holiday there was a open air market on the esplanade at Folkestone and everyone would spend sometime there trying to pick up a bargain before we went home on the Monday morning. Alex not to be out done wanted to visit the market to get sweeties for Jan and her fellow workers who looked after him in his house. The trouble was he was rather slow on his feet and he needed assistance but he would always refuse to sit in a wheelchair and insisted on using his tri-pod walking aid. I agreed to take him to the market in order to kill a couple of hours before the pubs in town opened at Sunday lunch-time. So off we went to the market and Alex excitedly spoke of how he was going to buy everyone a present back in the centre which meant about thirty service users and about ten staff members. The thing was he had no idea of the value of money and would pull out a couple of hundred pounds to hand over for something valued at a tenner or hand over twenty pence for something worth about fifty pence. I eventually talked him out of buying all and sundry a gift and he settled for four bags of mixed sweets and rock for Jan’s four kids but all the while asking me what I wanted as a gift to which I replied ‘Nothing pal’.
Anyway after trumping around the market with Alex for about two hours I decided we should go back to the hotel as it was wet and windy plus it was getting a wee bit near opening time. As we walked back he began to moan about the pace I was walking at and told me ‘Haw Boss, will you slow doon’ so we sat on a small terraced house garden wall whilst he got his breath back. As he sat on the wall out came the wee packet of cigars and he sat puffing away until his heart was content and lording it over all he perused. Once again he asked me want I wanted as a present and I still said ‘Nothing Alex, besides what could you possibly buy the guy who has everything’. He looked at me rather puzzled and then said ‘I know what I’ll buy you...I’ll buy you a bunnet’. I started to laugh and soon pointed at a small MG sports car that was parked in front of us and I said ‘Feck that Eck , you can always buy me one of them’. Yet again he looked at me in bewilderment and then stared at the car and then back at me and uttered the classic words ‘ Your a fecking con man McDonald...you don’t even drive’. Aye the wee man wasn’t that daft and we both burst into fits of laughter much to the amusement of passers-by who were wondering what was so funny and why the tears were rolling down our faces. Alex of course took great delight in telling everyone in our party the story about me not wanting a bunnet but a motor and how an MG was no use to me when I didn’t drive so I would be better off with his offer of a bunnet.
The next day as we travelled the 500 miles or so back to Jockland we passed the time with a sing song and a few games of bingo on the bus’s long weary journey home. Alex’s favourite song was the Roy Orbison classic ‘Penny Arcade’ and we sang it for him about three time. At one stage my boss and director sat down and spoke to Alex and asked him about his family to which he told her he didn’t have any family other than me whom he referred to ‘Big Charlie’s ma boy’. My boss came down to talk to me and she was nearly in tears at his story and couldn’t help but comment how grateful he was for everything that I and my staff done for him at the centre.
Anyway not long after the holiday one of his fellow residents Mhaira had to be taken into long term care as she was manic depressed and was a potential danger to Alex and Jessie. Alas shortly after she went into care tragedy struck and Jessie was diagnosed with terminal cancer and died soon after...the wee man’s world collapsed as they had been friends for years and he just couldn’t understand why she had died.
If that wasn’t bad enough within a couple of years the wee man developed bowel cancer and was soon hospitalised and he was forever telling everyone that' I am going to be with Jessie in heaven’. Now this created a personal dilemma for me as I don’t normally visit people in hospital unless I really have to as over the years practically everyone I have visited in hospital has died. This has included my young brother , my granny and other relatives and many close friends plus some of the members of my centre and when I finally decided to go and see the wee man the next day, he died during the night. Needless to say we were all absolutely shattered is an under statement and it was quite emotional for us all to attend his funeral in his local chapel the Sacred Heart in Bridgeton.
As per usual I always sit at the back when attending a Catholic funeral service as I am no great lover of the Roman Catholic funeral ritual but that is a personal opinion and has no place here in this story. As fate would have it we, my mates and I, sat halfway down the chapel in the pews which has you in the end of the row of pews in the middle quarter of the chapel. As we sat there we were approached by the pass key guy of the chapel and asked if we would do the ‘offering’. Well you could well imagine my face and my three mates were in stitches at the very thought of it as I was allocated the job of doing it in the absence of any relatives of Alex’s being in attendance at the funeral.If my theological conscience was already going into over drive at the idea of taking part in a Roman Catholic funeral service I had to put my personal feelings behind me for the sake of the wee man.
And if the shock of the offering duty wasn’t already mixing my head up you could never imagine my face when they brought Alex’s body in to the chapel in a GREEN coffin...I thought I was in the middle of an episode of Candid Camera or You’ve Been Framed and expecting Jeremy Beadle to burst out of the nearest Confessional Box. Just as the service was about to start the pass key man came up and whispered that we were relieved of our duties and that Alex’s relatives had turned up and they would do the ‘offering’...the mystery deepened as we all believed he had no family whatsoever.
It seemed that Jan his key worker having feared the worse several weeks prior to his death had contacted the Salvation Army and they had done a search and came up with Alex’s long lost sister whom she had read about in some personal papers in his possession...as he could not read or write he was unaware he had a sister and was never told about her. They were reunited several days before he died. She and her daughter attended the funeral.
We made our way to the graveyard at Dalbeth where he was to share a plot with his old friend Jessie and Alex’s wee social circle of friends who all had mental health problems and learning difficulties had turned up with a massive big ghetto blaster - for what I hadn’t a clue. However, the mystery was soon to besolved. The priest began to shout out the names of the people who were to lower the coffin into the grave and then I heard him call my name...I stepped forward in a trance. As we lowered the green coffin into the ground I couldn’t help but think ‘the wee man must be laughing his heid aff at me’...just as we threw the ropes into the grave the air was shattered with the sound of music from the ghetto blaster as the song ‘Penny Arcade’ drifted over the cemetery. Alex’s pals all started to clap and dance and the look of happiness on their faces was a pleasure to witness and it brought home to me and my three mates that whatever problems and issues we had in our life we cannot compare it with what these folk have and how they get on with their lives despite their obvious disadvantages and disabilities.
We went back to our local, the Clanny, and had a few haufs and smoked a few cigars in Alex’s memory and still trying to get our heads around ‘Whit the green coffin was all about’. It seems that Alex’s favourite colour was green but nothing to do with any affection for Celtic his room was all done in green and when Jan was making the arrangements for his funeral she asked the funeral director if it was possible to get a green coffin and he said ‘yes , we happen to have one in stock’ and on seeing it she just thought ‘that is a must as it is just him’. Alex was also buried with his gun and holster but that is another story which I will tell you about later...to be continued.
© 2009 The Glesga Keelies Message Board