TheBigYin

TheBigYin id=
Role: Registered User (what's this?

Registered Users can edit pages, add images, and join discussions.

Read more about site and user permissions on this site at Wetpaint Central.

)
Member since: Feb 19 2008, 11:11 AM EST
Friends: 1
Compliments: 4 compliments by 3 members
Great content additions!3
Kudos coming your way...1

James.

TheBigYin (James)
I was born at Stobhill Hospital. I lived in Springburn in the late 60s and early 70s, in Bedlay Street and Elmvale Street. I now live in SE England with my wife and two kids. Although I lived there for less than 10 years, I count my years in Springburn as my formative ones, and I believe it gave me the outlook and attitudes that I rely on today.
The kids have no idea what it's like to 'dreep aff dykes' or 'skite stanes aff puddles' or to 'shout up furra piece oot the windae' Any time I try to describe my childhood home, it sounds like a piece of Victorian polemic against slum housing. But I didn't know they were slums and I wish they hadn't knocked them down.
What strikes me most about my upbringing in Springburn was that we were the last of a breed. My generation was the last one to be raised before mobile phones, DVDs and computers. Only 'posh' people had telephones or baths in their houses when I was a kid. Hardly anybody had a car, and you hardly saw any round the streets - when you did the local stray dogs used to bark and chase them. We only had three channels on the telly, and it wasn't even on during the day! And at night it went off, and turned into a wee white dot.

We were the last generation of children who were shoved outside after breakfast and didn't have to come back home until it started getting dark, and nobody batted an eyelid where we were - and NOTHING happened to us. We would be out collecting Irn Bru bottles, or playing football in the street, or making crossbows out of scrap wood and elastic bands and then having endless battles fitring clothespegs at each other. Or just digging with spoons looking for stones, or climbing and dreeping, and just running about staying skinny, getting dirty, getting cut on rusty metal and not dying.

We were the last.



Latest page update: Feb 20 2008, 11:26 AM EST

Threads

Started By Thread Subject Replies Last Post
peier Bedlay Street 1 Jul 18 2010, 4:12 PM EDT by TheBigYin
Thread started: Jul 18 2010, 12:31 PM EDT  Watch
I lived in High Bedlay Street in the early 70's moved there from Balornock and lived up the next close to my sister who lived in 180.
Have a picture somewhere of my neice on her reins outside the close mouth.
Remember a bad storm when all the slates came off the roofs and I was worried about my car as it was my first car and I used to wash it every second day or so carrying buckets of hot and cold water up and down the stair it was a Vauxhall Viva navy blue. I loved that car, except when it ran out of brake fluid one day at the fire station when I was going to work turning onto Keppochill Rd. good job the lights turned green just in time as there was a double decker in front of me. Left the car in Keppochill Rd. and caught the number 8 to work.
Do you find this valuable?    
Show Last Reply

Friends (1)