ART, MUSIC AND SCULPTURE JOURNAL.

GOOD DAY.
   Hello there! I,m sulking today! My cigar box guitar is refusing to cooperate with me! Cant keep her in tune for some reason, But I love her so she is safely back in her box. But before she took THE HUMP = mood  With me I managed to practise in the sitting room, Songs I,ve written as well as songs that The keeper of the awesome sideburns wrote or helped me with! Strathmiglo 3 chords in my rendition on the cigar box, Hawkers bundle! Daddy why,d you kill my puppy ??? led onto " Who killed Billy the flying Badger? written by my late fathers childlike labourer in the mines I,m going to call him Tommy Mc Cormack, At the moment on the guitar I,m approaching a level of mediocrity that thrills me! I can get all the way through a song now without it falling apart because I,ve became aware that I havent FKED it up! So I,m singing and the wee man is watching Charlie and Lola and I see his wee lips moving! He,s singing the moronically catchy chorus with me! Then an odd thing happens! My eyes flood with tears and my throat constricts I put the instrument down and go to the restroom / toilet lest the little boy notices ! I pull myself together.
     I met Tommy a few times! Even heard him sing his definitive version of Billy the badger ..As a baby in my pram my father told me how he met Tommy one August 63 day in Airdrie when I was a couple of weeks old and the fact that the burly man wouldnt look at me until he could bust a ten pound note and place the 5 pounds of it in my shawl! A lot of fking money in 1963. Tommy lived with his elderly mother and never married and treated her like a queen! semi literate he almost broke my fathers heart as he haltingly read out the cause of her death on the death certificate !! Malnutrition, the kindly man struggled with the word ! Childlike  he never knew that she might need food other than the best cuts of butcher meat  and Ayrshire potatoes that he bought and carried home and clumsily cooked for her! She never starved! Just didnt get food she could properly eat.
  Tommy loved to sing ! But couldnt sing or remember words , So my father, A great singer himself who knew many songs, told him and maybe unwittingly gave him a wonderful gift in the process " Sing your own songs Tommy! then no one will know when you forget! I heard the badger song and when Tommy forgot his words he would simply bellow " OOOOOOHHHHHHHHH " until the elusive words returned. His workmates laughed with him. Then my mind turned to a grimmer tableau. Four men in a dark and damp coalmine , one bleeding out in a pool of blood ,gore and hydraulic fluid as he was trapped 45 minutes without morphine while bits of his feet were strewn behind him, Paramedics and mine firemen worked as quickly as they safely could to cut the injured miner from the coal conveyor chain that he had been dragged 40 or so feet in ! Tommy holding my fathers hand, rocking back and forth on his heels as he did so , the other calloused hand over his eyes at the sight of horror in front of him, Inarticulate with a grief he would have been unable to express Tommy would have swapped places in a heartbeat with the father of two still young boys ! another miner I,ll call Jack Connolly, a tough man from the town of Bellshill! rubbing his forehead against my fathers and  like a buddhist mantra repeating over and over " Dont you dare fking die Jigs, my fathers nickname ! " dont you dare fucking die! His own tears soaking my fathers face  " You die and I,ll fking kill you! the fourth man nicknamed " Flipper " was traumatised and half drunk, the other men tolerated and covered for him as he was a good man, Just not a great deal of help down a coalmine! This man was my fathers only witness! And had raised the alarm and fetched the other two men.The pit supervisor would take a garbled and shocked witness account from Flipper and use it as gospel to deny my father compensation for 7 years! Flipper died before the case came to tribunal. Seven years that brought my mother to the edge of a nervous breakdown if not for the help from neighbours who I will name as they were and will always remain giants among human beings! Eddie and Sheila Mcmanus, Freddie and Margaret Harper and last but never least John and Margaret Coulter Jimmy and Janette Carson!  I love every one of you and will never forget your kindness towards two frightened bewildered little boys and their frantic mother . If I named everyone who helped I,d be here all day.
    By and by my father made a great recovery. Tommy stopped singing after what happened to his auld pal who never took advantage of his shortcomings! He did say he would sing when Jigs got back on a Pit bus! 1982 his wish came true when helped by friends my father indeed stepped back on a pit bus! Tommy saw his pal and his eyes lit up and according to my father belted out the most " Fking awful " It made his three remaining toes curl LOL version of " Who killed Billy the flying badger ????? apparently there wasnt a dry eye on the bus that afternoon.
   Dont count on ever hearing this song performed live after this morning.
DAVY..