Sweetie Fags
I once worked evenings on an Ice Cream van in Provanhall, Easterhouse, circa mid 1970’s, my alarm call was the chimes of the itinerant Ice Cream van, as it pulled up on my street. This was a signal to all children to start the first of many negotiations with their parents for money. Our home sat right in the middle between two designated stops for my part of the street, and depending on how I felt I would climb into the van at the earlier of the two stops, if feeling charitable, and the latter stop some one hundred yards beyond my house, if feeling moody. Tonight was a particularly charitable night and I climbed into the van at the earlier stop, call it unpaid overtime. Pushing my way past the passenger seat, my passenger seat, I say this as I had to share it with an upright cardboard crisp box. A perfect circular whole punched through from the perforated opening, made a good albeit surrogate waste bin. This seat I only got to use when between stops, and even then there was a tacit agreement that during stops within the same street I would stay in the back ’Guarding the counter sweets’ from harm. Doing this job, well not really a job, more like civilised child labour with perks, as a fifteen year old it was a great excuse to get away from washing the dishes and homework.
I should at this point request readers to acknowledge the use of the word ’Van’ as representing an Ice Cream van, the Ice Cream being somewhat elided, and as they say in legal contracts, ’The Ice Cream van’ shall now be known thereafter as ’The Van’. My work started around six in the evening, working with the owner who drove the van, and raised himself to serve only when there was a sufficiently large enough crowd to warrant another pair of hands. I never understood the measurements or criterion for what constitutes ’A big enough crowd’ since the crowd did not form an orderly fashioned queue in which you could measure it’s length and then say, well that is a crowd which will need serving, No, no, crowds at Ice Cream vans gathered in a variety of shapes and sizes, one obvious unwritten rule was that you should face the front, many places have been lost in Ice cream van queues by not maintaining eye contact with those serving you. This was made a little easier by the evident height difference between the crowd and me serving from the Ice Cream van, wanting to be served required a continuous ’Pitching’ of your intentions. This could take many forms depending on your size, age, and ’Pitching Token’ these include, waving of money, usually notes, waving Lemonade bottles, or Jinger Bottles, you could also use as a method of being served first a carrier bag of Jinger Bottles, this worked as the assumption was that you were about to spend a lot of money.
Arriving onto the Ice Cream van, ready to work as usual. It was always going to be a busy evening, what with the time of year, the hot weather and that it was a Friday, A Friday is discernibly different to any other night working on the van, for some reason everybody had money, children had pocket money, adults bought more cigarettes, and even the Dogs seemed to have money, in that they were given a treat too, Christ even the Dogs accompanied children to the van as if they intuitively knew it was a Friday, for me a Friday just meant a busy night and rolls on sausage the following morning
. The dog’s ’Treat’ came in a ’One size fits all’ product – The Ice Cream Cone, laid flat on the ground allowing the Dog to lick the Ice Cream whilst it gathers dirt and small stones to boot, the Dogs seemed to do this with graceful aplomb, I guess it was a sweeter and more pleasant alternative to licking their own balls.
Straight into work, the owner of the Ice Cream van was already on his feet and saw me come on-board, a quick acknowledgement, no niceties, I opened the glass front window, the nexus of Sweetie Exchange. The van’s chimes had awoke the sugar monsters in the children and the nicotine monsters in the adults. First to the front was a young girl with a love of sweets but never the same ones, serving her was like being a personal shopper, everything had to be displayed, she thought about it, added it to her basket, and continued until her whole 10p had been consumed by a bag of Whoppers, Rainbow Drops, Drumsticks and Dainties. The front counter selection on either side of the serving window was a patchwork quilt of sugar and colour
Arranging this floating rainbow mess of sweet cartons required a good sense of Geometry. MB Bars and Frying Pans could not sit together, not enough depth, MB Bars and Black Jacks however could fit, or even MB Bars and Mojos. The MB Bar was the poor man’s FrysChocolate Cream, with a few subtle differences, the chocolate was more like a plastic veneer which required hot summer saliva, even then under the command of a Childs warm and keen tongue it would not melt, the MB Bar would eventually succumb, however it required the child to breathe through the nose, and let the mouth get to work.
The noise grew in direct correlation to the number of people crowding in front of the van waiting to be served, I felt some compulsion to serve only two kids in succession before acknowledging an adult, the kids had the best places as they could wriggle their way through the crowd right to the front, however experience tells you when it is time to lift your head up and acknowledge a waiting adult, as if accepting a bid as an auctioneer.’Twinty Kensitas tipped and a bottle of Irn Bru’ he proffered his five pound note between finger and thumb over the heads of the children like a crane , his change returned and off he went. This Quota system seemed to work well, it was as if in the words of Miss Jean Brodie one serving is okay, a second is acceptable, a third however was questionable, and that is how the service and rationing of sweeties and fags was managed.
Being a Friday, and having good weather, we had a run on the Ice Cream, not just Cones and Ice Lollies but also Oysters, Single Nougats and even the occasional Double Nougat, these were luxuries that were by their prohibitive price, items for Fridays only, the Double Nougat being the king of all possible imaginable ice cream selections, or so it was until this day, Friday 23rd June 1976, and the arrival of the ’Big Cup’ the Big Cup was nothing more than a plastic beaker with Ice Cream, then a Chocolate marshmallow snowball, then more Ice Cream, topped with Raspberry sauce and a flake. For children of a certain age it was more than a tub of glucose, it was a visual status symbol, having one of these says you have money, the balls to spend all your pocket money on one ’fuck off ’size ice cream, and of course it was up to the minute
. .
The crowd weakened, and left just a few late comers needing served, I took care of this and Jamie the driver took to his seat, like a pilot going through the curtained cabin to the cockpit, started the engine, and began to prepare for take-Off. From the corner off my eye I saw four little dirty fingers searching for attention, I leant forward and saw a little girl, no more than four years old staring with deer like eyes, hair matted, I did recognise her, but not from this street, she slipped slightly forward into the front of the van as Jamie began to pull away ’Christ, Jamie stop!, stop!’ I said. I reached out and took the girls hand and the note attached to it ’Wait there hen’ I said, no reaction, I was not expecting one. I uncrumpled the note and read what a shaky hand written note from her mother was; I know this as I had served her before but not on this street. The note was asking for Five Singles a term used for five cigarettes in a white paper poke, we did not sell packets of Five Cigarettes, but did ’Break Open’ packets of twenties in these circumstances. The girl was holding out her other arm, and in her hand was a stack of cigarette coupons bound with an elastic band, You need twenty coupons with each coupon having a face value of ten points, giving a token value of two hundred points, the price of Five Single cigarettes, I counted the coupons, there were only seventeen coupons – not enough.
Jamie was telling me to get a move on, and the girl was standing waiting, just waiting. I split a packet of twenty Embassy tipped, counted five into a small paper poke and handed them to the girl, her face showing no expression. I suddenly thought what if she thinks they are sweets and starts eating them, I grabbed the first thing on the counter that came to hand and, it was a packet of Sweetie Cigarettes or as we call them around here Sweetie Fags
The little girl grabbed the packet from my hand turned and headed off back up through the close at N0 18 Balcurvie Road, everything dripping, dripping eyes, dripping nose, even dripping hair. We shuttled our way a hundred or so yards up the road chiming Green sleeves once more and did the whole thing all over again
It was not long before some of the kids that missed the van at the previous stop had caught up, and staggered out of breath swaying from side to side, this a combination of a steep accent on the street and a diet of chips, egg and beans and fizzy drinks, Fresh tap water was for washing the dishes and making tea for your parents, and fresh fruit was consumed as often and seen with the same distain as medicine from the doctors. Fresh fruit was only ever seen in ’Still Life’ pictures or as plastic fruit in await for it- Fresh Fruit Bowl! . A ’Stop’ which is the place where you pitch the van, covered a diocese of about three to four blocks of houses, this may not sound like a large catchment area, however there were six houses to a block and on average six children in every family amassing forty eight people for every close!, and over fifty if you count the Dogs.
The crowd grew quicker than we could serve them and inevitably a fight broke out, not over places in the queue, no, that, we could manage, this was over who had found ’A Jingie the Jingie in question is an empty lemonade bottle which attracts a value if returned [Easterhouse was ahead of the game when it came to Recycling and the Environment!] Two boys wrestling with the bottle, for the winner a prize of trading it in to us for an MB bar, or a packet of Fruit Spangles, or a combo of Sherbet Fountain and a packet of Parma Violets, the struggle continued, one of the boys had the cap of the bottle in his mouth and blew it out into the other boys eyes, now pissed off by this he lashed out and swung a right hook from a long way back, the other boy took the blow on the side of the face and staggered sideways taking the empty ’Jingie’ with him, losing his balance but holding still on to the bottle , no chance he would let that go!, he fell to the ground, the bottle finding an unfortunate ending on the ninety degree angled stone Kerb. Both boys cried for the loss off the Jingie, it certainly was worth fighting for, Unclaimed Jingie’s were rare, and nothing matched their allure as a token of getting something for nothing
Crowd dispersed back into their respective ’Closes’ sucking on lollipops or fags as is their want, I close the front glass sliding window and we head off round the corner, ’Round the Corner’ now seems a strange description, as it was actually the same street, Balcurvie road, and yet it was different, it was quieter, fewer kids, the gardens were cleaner and the garden railings seemed more uniform, with the paint still in tact, why did they not have chipped paint, discoloured crisp packets still full of rainwater, like my garden, this could just have been my imagination, but if it was , then why so vivid?. Perhaps it was that their buying habits were different, not for them the Irn Bru of the great unwashed, no Garvies Super Lemon was their fizz of choice. This a quiet stop, and we moved on quickly, passing onto Connisborough Road, or it’s colloquial doppelganger ’Connie’ I noticed the little girl I had served daydreaming her way across the road, sweetie fags in her mouth and tipped fags in her hand, she seemed a long way away from home which I had now remembered as Balfluig Street.
We only stopped once on Connisborough Road, which seemed to me madness as it had to cover so many houses, I sighed as families gathered even before the van had stopped, one woman with a cloth shopping bagful of empty lemonade bottles. you get to know the customers, those you like to serve and those you try to avoid, this woman with the bag of bottles hated me I am sure, unavoidably I took the bag of empty bottles from her, I had to have my ’Game Face’ on as she would try and accuse me once again of cheating her. First I calculated the value of the lemonade bottles, as I placed them one by one into the empty crates, trying not to wretch as my nose then stomach took the full onslaught of the smell of the bag and the bottles, that done we went ’Head to Head’ ’Twenty Captain full strength, sixty Embassy Regal, remember to take off ma bottles, two Mintolas, one Munchies, a Texan bar, two Mini Chips, three Skips, and one Salt’n’ Shake, how much is that?’ The cow already knew how much it was, but she really did not want to know, she wanted to ’Throw me’ and then wades in again, as sure as fate itself as soon as I gave her a sub total she continued, ’Here, eight scoops of Ice cream’ she handed me a soup plate, not a bowl, the soup plate had just been washed as it was still warm and like the bag, stank of chip fat, I scooped up the ice cream into the plate, kept a running total in my head, placed a square of greaseproof paper on top and handed the plate back. ’Right, how much?’ I gave her the total and waited for the same tiresome routine, ’Are you sure that is right, can you get the driver to check it’ by this time she had really lost count herself, she started well, but did not have the stamina. Jamie checked the total, and confirmed I was spot on, what she did not know I had been trained by the SAS of the Counting Game. Both my Ma and my Grandfather had both worked in Betting Shops, and I used to imitate them, pretending to count the slips, and tote up winnings factoring in the odds, stakes, and the difficult part the tax. I won, as I did every time, a quick wash of the hands and we would be off again, just as I closed the glass front, I saw Anne Marie McKinstry arms folded hanging out of her mid level flat window ’I finish about 11 O’clock, meet you up the swings’ I shouted, ’Aye OK, I might be late, I’m going round to Cathy’s for a record session, see ya’ as we drove away she stayed at the window and became smaller, still the same picture in my frame, but Oh, smaller, my first and only lumber, I say lumber as that denotes a local girl, a girl who stays in the same scheme, now a Bird, that was different, she would have to come from a different scheme, definitely outside Provanhall. The boys I admired were the ones who had a Bird, especially if they had an exotic [As it seemed then] name, such as Coleen or Audrey.
Heading down Connie we took a sharp right turn up onto Whitslade Street, every Ice Cream van in the Housing scheme has a specific number of streets and stops on which to trade, this was the furthest point south we could go, and would head eventually up onto Auchinlee road, and back down to Balcurvie Road and the adjoining smaller streets that made up this part of Provanhall. The Housing Scheme was Easterhouse, but Provanhall was a sub district and it felt so.
It was as if Mr and Mrs Clooney had waited until we arrived onto Whitslade Street with a small but expanding crowd. Their house was mid landing flat directly across from where we stop, this evening, as was often the case in the summer their kitchen and living room windows were fully open, it was as if they were raising the curtain on the Premiere of a theatre production. No one waiting to be served watched, but we all listened, the voices travelled out the window straight into the street, a kind of Surround Sound for the 70’s, usual protocols were observed for the first minute or so, allowing each other the space to shout uninterrupted, then it went right into the Denouement of a Five act play, Plates being slammed and cutlery being thrown. I did not know at the time, but found out later this frissone was over the use of HP sauce, or to be more exact the lack thereof, Mrs Clooney had given her husband Fish & Chips [Well it was Friday] covered in Tomato Ketchup, Mr Clooney always had Brown Sauce. A police car arrived, parked directly behind us; both officers adjusting themselves made their way to the back of the queue, the melee behind them went unnoticed. Once the crowd had been served and dispersed, Jamie started ’Gentlemen, what can I get you?’ ’Just twenty cigarettes please’ Jamie took Forty cigarettes and a bottle of Irn Bru and handed them to the officer, a Five pound note was exchanged, Jamie turned to our little wooden frame of a Cash Till and replaced the Five pound note with four singles and two Fifty Pence pieces, ’Thank you Gentlemen’ and handed the money to the officer. That was the usual drill, but tonight was different, the officers were on a call, and asked if we had seen a little girl, been missing for some hours now, I immediately knew it was her. I explained where I had seen her last, ’Well it’s still light I’m sure we will find her’ said one of the officers confidently.
Up the hill we went, slowly, dodging miskicked footballs, and their miskickers, stray dogs, that had taken their title to heart, manoeuvring we finally found space and permission to land stopped on the widest part of the street, Balfluig Street started off narrow but then opened up with two large quadrants with space for children to play flanked on three sides by four story blocks of flats – The Final Stop
It was now just after ten o’clock in the evening, and still light, a tacit agreement between children and parents that is was OK to stay out, as long as there were enough of you’s. ’Where the fuck yi been?’ he said, no teeth, fag in mouth, and raising his six lemonade bottles onto the counter, this was quite a feat, men did not use carrier bags, you hold the bottles between your fingers, hanging down and using a pendulous motion he settled the bottles down, his tattooed fingers read; Love and Hate. ’Whit, nae Golden Virginia, jist gimme the Old Holborn’ this kind of dialogue was common at the last stop, what was amazing was that folk were always surprised when we had ran out of stock. Being the last stop, the whole street and frontiers beyond the street poured out, all those faces, the events of their day dripping from them, the queue became a free for all, as it always did on a Friday, and once choosy customers delighting on what they might buy were now drooling at the thought of getting anything on their pocket money list. As the anxious became the satisfied, the street lights came on, and what I hoped would be our last customer waltzed his way to the van, it was Alistair Dunn, ’Cannae go tae bed without the babity Boo’ a colloquial reference to Irn Bru, two teenage girls teased him, hugged him, and allured him into buying them ten cigarettes, once they had what they wanted they walked away, ’Am a no cumin wae yis girls’ Get it up yi, ya fanny’ the girls laughed and disappeared, not for the first time, up a Close. That Alistair was drunk clouded the embarrassment for both of us, fags now in top denim jacket pocket and Irn Bru shoved into back Denim trouser pocket and change in hand he staggered in no particular direction.
The little girl reappeared attached by a stretched out hand and arm to her mother, ’Where the hell huv yi been!’ A few tight slaps later the mother lifted the girl up holding her in her arms, caught between wanting to give her a good scolding and a hug, cried and smiled nervously, the child too laughed a mixture of fear and comfort, they both made their way up the close, as one, each with a fag in their mouths, I inhaled, sighed and relaxed knowing both the child and the fags were now in safe hands.
By
Peter Devlin