It is unfair to describe my upbringing as bad, because I had the most wonderful, loving and amazing parents. They were very much of a different time (I was a late bairn) (you can use another word for late.....like the A in A&E) and their methods of parenting were that of a bygone era. In essence, Mum did most (all) of the day-to-day parenting whilst Dad would say very little mid-week until "Hogmanay", (every Friday) when he'd return from the Hydro/Whitfield/Joey's/Burns clubbee full of 80 shilling of a weekend night and energetically, loudly and with great passion give me a lengthy lecture on my infractions from the prior week. Some weeks they lasted a couple of hours, but that would be a good week. I had two brothers, one of whom buggered off to join the Royal Marines as soon as he could (16 - but he needed consent of my dad which he didn't get, so he lived with my aunt in Bristol - more of that to come). So, whilst mum n dad enjoyed their weekends playing bingo and drinking 80 shilling at either the Whitfield/Joeys/Burns or Hydro clubbee, they'd leave me in the safe pair of hands that was my middle brother - Ian.
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| Whitfield 1970s |
This is potentially where my adventurous side was developed, stick with me here you'll see where I am going with this. My middle brother was a local-king-pin in the late 70's drug scene and no sooner would my mum's words of "make sure Kenneth is in bed for ten" be echoing around our modest maisonette in Whitfield than the letterbox would be clattering with Ian's mates and customers coming to spend the night with "babysitter" Ian. I could tell you stories of stuff that went on, but to be honest I was there and I don't believe significant parts of it happened, so little point in me relaying to you the sheer madness of a house full of junkies in 1977/1978 when I was but an 8 or 9 year auld kid. But to put it mildly weekends with my brother were the epitome of madness. Thankfully,
mercifully, I had Ian's girlfriend Anne who took pity on me and sort of protected me from the maniacs that were now resident of my parents living room floor.
My middle brother's life of drugs would come to a sudden and abrupt end on the 3rd of January 1979, when aged 18 the drugs lifestyle and took its inevitable toll, he'd be with all the wrong people, doing all the wrong things until one day it ceased. It was a horrific time for my family, but I view it differently. It is beyond any shadow of doubt a tragedy that in the 70's drugs (proper drugs, not the light recreational stuff that is so in vogue) were so readily available. Police resources and understanding of drugs amounted to frequent visits to our house to read the riot act, my brother would spend significant parts of his youth locked up in a young offenders institution and then was awaiting sentencing to go to big-boys-prison when he died. Tragic for all concerned, however, here's what might have been - my brother's drug-addicted-best friend would go onto become a local "celebrity" (notoriety) in the paper for one machete attack or another GBH/attempted murder, regularly featuring in articles you read which only happen to other people. He was not a nice man. In fact, he was someone to give a wide berth at all costs, and my brother was worse. There was and is a profundity in his death, something I only realised much later in life as his death played a significant hand in keeping me away from any substances not available 'over-the-counter' at RS McColls or Oddbins, To this day the only drugs I've partaken in are tobacco and alcohol. Not even Viagra.....yet......but that's another story for another blog.
During the 80's the same estate would descend into deeper unpleasantness with stronger even more readily available drugs, the uprising of the glue & petrol sniffing
fashion, petty crime, serious crime and it became a bit of a no-go-zone for anyone not of the area. Those around the estate at the time will understand what I mean. Of course, there were far
(far) more good people than bad but as is the way of life those rotten apples and their influence and various addictions made for a real den of iniquity.
My mother and father both worked (and worked bloody hard) so I wanted for nothing, they
probably absolutely spoiled me given they had a little more disposable income from their jobs and given the tragedy they had faced with their middle son, but our family holidays would always be to my dad's sister. Ironically, my mum had a zillion sisters and a half-zillion brothers, and indeed that zillion-and-a-half all have 300 kids each, I think I am related to more than 70% of Dundee. However, the one sister we would always (
always) visit was dad's only sister, Auntie Christine and her husband Uncle Vic in sunny and exotic Bristol. (Oooo arrrrr)
I can recall with great horror, borderline terror, the drive to Bristol during the school holidays in my dad's clapped out Vauxhall Viva (a delightful shade of erm....blue/grey. Imagine the sky when it is miserable...that sort of colour). This is way before the motorway network in Scotland was anything like a motorway network, but off we'd venture on our 17 hour ++ voyage. Sometimes 4 sometimes 5 and indeed, sometimes more than that all piled into "the Viva" for the "worse-than-economy-seat-on-Ryanair" discomfort to dad's sisters. Still, mum would always make a
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| Dad &the VIVA (and a dog in this pic - see it?) |
packed lunch, sandwiches with only the finest Princes's ham (2% pig), boiled eggs (ripe), coop own-brand-crisps and an indeterminate brand of diluting orange juice with .05% juice and 99.95% water. Such was the way, my mum and dad had money but every penny was a prisoner, my mum would make dad drive from one end of town to the other because milk was 1p a pint cheaper in Lochee than it was on Albert St. Bizarrely, my father never once complained about the cost of the fuel to get there and back, so long as mum was happy with her cheap milk....the things you do for love eh?
Once I'd recovered from the
torture drive to Bristol, the holiday itself was always fantastic! Auntie Christine and Uncle Vic (Bristolian with the most peculiar sense of humour) had a massive 3 bed semi with a separate dining room and everything. You know, like they were super-loaded....Uncle Vic always had nice cars too, and I recall with sheer awe and genuine excitement when he got his gold Ford Granada 2.8 Ghia X which had both electric windows
AND a sunroof. I shizzle you not, as an 8 or 9 year old laddie used to clapped out old Viva's, this car to me was like a spaceship. Who the F knew you could press a button and the widows would open? AND a hole in the roof.....no no...in the ROOF! I recall getting a proper row for flattening the battery with the magic window button. Turns out much later than a great deal of my uncle's wealth came from the back-of-a-lorry. Now, I know that is normally a euphemism for some ill gotten gains, but in this particular case the term is entirely accurate as he was a long-distance-truck-driver who used to steal more than he delivered. He would regale us of his
mischief .... erm....
misdemeanors .......errrr tomfoolery...yeah, let's stick with that! He would regale us of his
tomfoolery many years later once he'd had one too many OVD & Coke's during New Year
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| I can recall, vividly, my excitement sitting in this spaceship |
celebrations at my parent's house in Whitfield. I'd be a grown-up by then (well, as grown-up as I can be) and would laugh at how everyone was on the take in the 70's, and they wonder how industry in the UK went tits-up! But I digress, I was telling you about the holidays to Bristol. They were actually great! We'd get to go to clubbee's with the grown-ups, day trips to Weston-Super-Mare, Clevedon and Longleat Safari, all the while the weather was roasting. I'd go out to play and be told "come haime before it is dark" and off I'd pop to the local park and meet up with these weird sounding Bristolian kids.....funnily enough, we had a lot in common - I sounded weird to them too. One of my abiding memories of all those holidays, over all those years, was that when we got back to Dundee (we'd leave Bristol at 07:00 and get home 20:00) mum would always get us a fish supper from Borzoni's. Well...that's not strictly true, dad got a fish supper whilst me and mum would 'share' one. Mum; "Kenneth, you'll no be that hungry after your sandwich and 2% ham + ripe boiled egg + coop crisps right?". It was a rhetorical question, I never replied until I was a surly teen......
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| Montpelier House back in the 80s |
Before I'd go to high school, I used to go to a "community centre". How to explain this to those below the age of 35.....hmmmm. It was a local authority owned building which was staffed by local authority personnel and volunteers. The idea was to "keep the kids off the streets", you have to remember we only has 3 channels on telly and they all went off around 23:00. So, the community centre in Whitfield was called "Montpelier" after the French city. It was an old mansion house which they'd converted, downstairs would have a pool table and table tennis table on the left and a big room on the right which held discos every Thursday & Friday. Upstairs was a kind of moving goal post, sometime a room for painting, sometimes a room for board games....but upstairs was shit, it was all happening downstairs, only the wee swots went upstairs to "paint". pffff... So, Montpelier thought it was a great idea to have all these relatively impoverished council-estate kids take up a sport. Have a
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| Oh how we laughed..... |
guess what sport they went for. Remembering unemployment in the area was well over 50%, loads of DSS (welfare) tenants in the area and the great & good of Montpelier thought of a proper working-class, easy-access and cheap sport. That's right, they went for SKI-ING! You know, at the time I didn't question it at all, just went skiing to the local dry-ski-slope and then in the mini-bus to Glenshee with my hired skis & boots. But FFS, one of the most elitist and expensive sports in the world introduced to us bunch of ne'er-do-wells with our arses literally hanging out of our What Every Woman Wants jeans. We'd take to the slopes not in any of that fancy airy-fairy-jackets and weird looking trousers though, people parading around in bloody puffy-PJ's and dungarees, weirdos, nah we'd ski in our jeans and 'winter' school jackets. The swotty children would wear gloves and hats....pfffff.....(Lord, Glenshee -9000° on a warm day whilst wearing WAW'S jeans!)
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| Dundee Airport |
Nevertheless, it was Montpelier which first got this eager-eyed young laddie on an actual PLANE! Mum and Dad weren't big on foreign holidays ("why do I want to go on holiday and eat ah that foreign muck and end up on the lavvy for a week?!" was my Dad's rallying cry whenever Mum would mention Spain) so I'd never been on a plane, or in an airport. I sort of think I knew planes existed but with Dundee having an airport less advanced than Trumpton, I don't think I really knew planes were real and tangible things that mere mortals used as a mode of transportation. Nevertheless, Montpelier wrote out to all the mums and dads of Whitfield and asked if they'd like their kids to go on a subsidised trip skiing to Italy. By sheer luck I took to skiing no problem, whilst all around me were falling on their rear-ends on that bloody lethal toothbrush-dry-slope stuff, scuffing their knees, hands and arses, I was poncing around like Franz Klammer (Google him) giving it "hey, this is easy"! I was not present during the conversation with my mum & dad about me going to Italy, but it was agreed by the parties involved that I would go to Sauze D'Oulx with Montpelier. Me, Kenneth McLeod would be going on an actual PLANE to an actual other place that wasn't Bristol....without my mum & dad! Memory banks not what they were, but I am sure from the dates that I would have been 11 years old, 1980.
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| Still marvel at planes taking off |
Between the ages of 11 and 22 I would be on 3 planes. Yes, three. One to Sauze D'Oulx, one to Mount Bergamo (skiing with the school circa '83/'84) and one when I was 22 to go on honeymoon to Orlando! What I can tell you about all three was how truly magnificent I found the whole experience. The excitement at 11-years-of-age even
seeing a plane was remarkable. Remember, I thought my uncle's Ford Granada was from outer-space and now here's me looking at these spectacular feats of engineering which really do FLY! Also take into account that my dad's Viva was timed getting to 60MPH using a sun-dial. Getting to the airport and simply seeing planes was true and unadulterated joy, but that initial impression would soon be confined to a file unreachable by my mind as I boarded for the very first time an aeroplane. The day I first sat on an aircraft one of my strongest memories, I had no idea what to expect, I'd never seen a plane let alone got one one, never mind actually sat in one. But here was me full of wide-eyed wonder at the row and row of seats, looking at the people who ran the plane in their weird army like uniforms and then sitting....sitting and I got the window seat! YES, .....better than a pools win. The other two beside me were trying to negotiate 'shifts' in the window seat as 'that was only fair', they were told, in no uncertain
I had the windee seat, so bugger aff. Then once everyone got on (which seemed like 40 days) the plane would push back and taxi out to the end of the runway. Again, I had no idea what was coming next. Zero. I couldn't exactly Google "what is a plane like" because ... you know why...it was 19 feckin 80! But what was to happen next would stay with me forever. We're at the beginning of the runway, the two dipsticks to my right are still bitching about wanting the window seat, I've completely zoned them out as I am quivering with anticipation as to what is coming next.
"HOLY SHIT!" as Captain Kirk (made up name) lets off the hand-brake, spools up the jet engines and we're accelerating to 100mph in what seemed to me like 2 seconds
. The roar from the engines, the speed, the pushing back in the seat was all just totally bonkers and whilst everyone
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| Just off my Rio flight.... :) |
around me giggled as we took off, I remember roaring with laughter, not a nervous laughter at all, but one like "WHOOOOAAAAHHHHHH" ....then the butterflies in tummies and little bits of wee in underpants as the nose pointed skywards. That take off changed my life, I was hooked on speed and hooked on travel, not that I knew at the time of course, but looking back it is clear to me that on that particular flight to Sauze D'Oulx my on-going and deepening love affair with travel was born.
There are things which happen in your life journey which impact you and of course, people who come into your life some for the better some for the worse, but the experiences and the people go on to become formative to who you are. I have been incredibly lucky (incredibly lucky) that the things and people I know as fact have impacted me have allowed me to change my career direction and make a livelihood. My love affair
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| Nigel majestically leading Monaco 1984 |
with F1 began in the late '70's and was cemented during the 1984 Monaco Grand Prix which Nigel Mansell led in the stunning JPS Lotus. Anyone who knows me knows my memory is shocking, but I can remember, vividly actually, watching this on BBC2 late one Sunday night (mum & dad would be at The Clubbee and I was 15, ergo, more than capable to look after myself!) whilst smoking away on my pack of JPS and thinking "oh meh Goad, Nigel is finally going to win"....he'd then go onto bin it...and in typical Nigel style
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| White Lines - don't do it |
blamed the white painted line. HA! True story, this was when my obsession with F1 began, the following year BBC would show more live races, then '86 more again....so whilst I'd watched F1 in the past I wasn't what you'd call....obsessed. I tried to think of another word to describe my involvement with F1 but that one more or less covers it. F1 has been in my life for as long as I can remember and my love for it has never waned, my excitement for it has not decreased. I've watched a variety of drivers come and go over the 40 years or so that I've sat looking at cars go round and round but little did I know that my love of this sport would have such a profound affect on my entire life.
