Something New

We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.  

“MY GORBALS LIFE” by Allan Gilfillan McLachlan (published by Sheena Ross Publishing, $NZ30); “ADVENTURES OF A COUNTRY VET” by Rory Dean (published by Harper-Collins, $NZ39.99)

            What exactly was (and possibly is) the Gorbals? It was the poorest, roughest, most deprived part of the city of Glasgow, a slum of slums. They were not unique in Britain. Think of the awful tenements in Dublin that Sean O’Casey used to write about. Think of Arthur Morrison’s A Child of the Jago, Jack London’s The People of the Abyss, and George Orwell's Down and Out in London and Paris and The Road to Wigan Pier (all reviewed on this blog) which deal with awful slums in London, up North and Paris. But the Gorbals really seems to have been the pits. 

            Born in 1938, Allan Gilfillan McLachlan (he had the same name as his father and grandfather) must now be in his mid-80’s. He tells us of his life from birth to the age of about 10, so this is mainly in the war years, but it is also a story of childhood. And he sets out by telling us in detail how bad the Gorbals was. His family lived in a one-room tenement which had one only tap for water and one gas-mantle to give light  (later they changed it for one single light bulb). The only lavatory was outdoors and shared with the near neighbours. Soot and smoke from near factories smothered the area. Rats were all over the place and often had to be hunted in droves. Middens (rubbish heaps) were communal, collected erratically by the city’s municipal horse-drawn garbage-men. Not at all a healthy place - indeed downright unsanitary. In one chapter he writes about how common it was for children to get boils and the primitive ways their parents dealt with it.

Yet soon in his story he tells us “Although we lived in what was probably one of the toughest neighbourhoods in the western world, if not the toughest at that point of time, the majority of tenement dwellers were decent folk, who lived a blameless and industrious life, fighting hard to keep their homes clean, despite major difficulties, and doing their best to ensure that their families grew up, as untainted as possible by the awful living conditions , which everyone had to contend with on a daily basis.”

As it was the time of war his father – a labourer – went off to war in 1941, by which time young McLachlan had two younger siblings and his mother was left to look after the bairns. The father was apparently a bit of a brawler. In the army he was first a private then promoted to sergeant, then demoted to private again for insubordination, then promoted to sergeant again, then going through the same process a number of times etc. A rough diamond to say the least. But he was good to his wife and bairns, so a good father even if he drank too much and never earned much money. Meanwhile, McLachlan’s home was dominated by women, his mother and a tribe of grandma and aunties [who lived in other tenements]. McLachlan emphasises the community spirit there often was, not to mentions the bawdy songs that even the women sang. But it was wartime and their area was bombed (the Luftwaffe were aiming at the nearby factories). Half of their roof was smashed in and took weeks getting mended. Then there were the inadequate bomb shelters, crowded and badly constructed. Down the streets, railings were pulled down to give the iron for military use.

Most of what follows, though, is about how the Gorbals’ kids amused themselves – most often in street gangs, having fights where they acted out the type of things they saw in the local tatty picture-theatre which showed westerns and adventure stories and serials of Flash Gordon etc. (The kids would riot and almost smash up the theatre if the film was a soppy one). There were some accidents and emergencies about a hand that than been badly crushed. The only reason McLachlan sometimes went to Sunday School was to get some badges to wear; and later he went to the Band of Hope (a Christian meeting for children) only because the kids were rewarded with a bun. Most often McLachlan tells us how much he came to hate church and God (sounding to me a bit like Billy Connolly). Anyway Hogmanay was more important than Christmas. We also hear of both the good and the bad teachers he had as a kid – one being a tyrant and one a sweety who encouraged him, especially because he was the youngest boy in his class.  Things changed a bit when Dad returned after the war – when he became a bus conductor  - and there was the sad story of the one pet dog they had for a short time, which got sick and had to be put down.

It’s also clear that there were happy times in more salubrious places. Once they holidayed near Loch Lomond. He had a nice rural break staying with his grandmother at Dumfries. And his school sent him for three months to a health farm where the air was fresh and the lakes and trees were exciting. All this is interesting to a boy with plenty of scally-waggery and boyish .

A highly readable book, if a little repetitive. I do have some quibbles though.  McLachlan writes in standard English, but when it comes to dialogue – when parents and kids are speaking – then we get thick Glaswegian Scottish, which sometimes has to be decoded. More important, though, as he is recalling things that happened when he was very young, how much are things he writes of are family legends or things that he really saw? Did her really have an uncle who was a con-man and was able to steal the winnings of a gambling game? Was he really one of the kids who broke into a Home Guard Shelter and steal live bullets? How well do you remember things that happened when you were four, five or six? I wonder.

  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *

 

After the Gorbals, it’s a breath of fresh air to read something about the fresh outdoors – literally - not that I’m belittling the tales of grime and urban poverty you’ve just read about. Rory Dean’s Adventures of a Country Vet is subtitled “True stories from the horse’s mouth”. Rory Dean is also a Scot by birth and raising. He studied  to be a veterinary surgeon  at the Royal School of Veterinary Studies in Edinburgh. For six months he came to New Zealand to learn field work in Canterbury, but did much of his early practical work in rural England, especially around Somerset and Devon. In 2015 he settled in New Zealand for good. He now lives in Kaipara, in Northland, with his dogs Scrappy and Alfie.

When I picked up this book, I immediately thought its title was pointing to the kind of  comfy James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small thing that we used to enjoy on television. But Rory Dean was ahead of me. Early in his book, he admits that when he was a youngster, he was delighted by Herriot’s tales of being a vet in the Yorkshire Dales. But real work as a vet is not always that comfy. Yes, there are funny moments and moments when things go wrong, but there are also tales of hard work and loss.

To give you the nature of the book, the best I can do is to give you examples of the types of difficulty Dean had to face.  Helping a cow to give birth outdoors in a snowstorm. Having his faithful dog Scrappy – a fox-terrier - saved from nearly being blinded by battery acid. And later having to pull out a hook embedded in Scrappy’s mouth when the dog had eaten some of a fish Dean had just landed. On a night-time dash, having to help right a car that had rolled over with two drunkards in it. In England he was required to test herds of cattle for signs of tuberculosis. This was a chore. But in one case he was about to anaesthetize a cow which was apparently mortally sick – but which turned out to be as robust as normal, and happily stood up and walked away to eat more grass. In New Zealand a hunter’s dog was gravely wounded by a wild pig. There was fear that the dog’s central organ was ruptured; and it took two separate careful bouts of surgery to recover the dog’s strength. Getting head-butted by a deer when he was in the process of removing its antlers. Up in Northland, Dean had to deal with a wounded dog belonging to a rather shady couple. He suspected that the dog had been injured in a fight with another dog that had been brought in by the couple’s drug-dealer, but he had no certainty about this. And of course there are tales of pregnent cows that just wouldn’t couldn’t push that calf out. There are many, many more stories more that I could list.

Dean’s style is breezy but he never pretends that being a vet is easy. Often he reminds us of the stench of poo in barns and other places where animals need to be healed or helped or put down. As for the methods vets use, the drugs and skills that are required, Dean is far more explicitl than Herriot ever was.

The blurb on the book tells me that some proceeds from the book go to the Rural Youth and Adult Literacy Trust. Working in rural areas, Dean often learnt that there were many people who had skipped how to read when they were skipping school. The Trust is there to help them.