Bob Servant (12 page)

I had to act fast and I did. I begged Cruncher to work one last week, which he agreed to, then I went and tracked down Buckets Bennett. I told him that ‘a man from Aberdeen' wanted to buy my round so I had just come to wish Buckets all the best. It worked a treat. He got angry and said after all our pow-wows he deserved the right to make an offer for my round. I said ‘No bother, but the boy from Aberdeen is paying £17,400'. I only said £17,400 because Dundee United had just paid £17,400 for that Brazilian boy
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and we'd all wondered if it was a funny number because of exchange rates.

Buckets gave the classic I'm Not Scared look more usually associated with washing machine repairmen and said he'd pay £17,401. I said, ‘Buckets, you're a good man, you're a Dundee man, and you've got a deal.' The next day I went back with Cruncher and picked up the cash, had one of the best handshakes of my life with Buckets and went and found the boys.

I told them it was only the End of The Beginning and handed them all a month's wages even though none of them had a contract. That's the sort of man I am and they responded well. Cruncher said it would pay for the first issue of
Mumblings From The Margins
, the
Monifieth boys said they'd open a shop in Monifieth selling imported luxury brands and Frank said he was going to go and visit his cousin in Coupar Angus.

So that was that. The Bob Servant window-cleaning round passed into folklore, the team went off and did their own thing and I, well, I got myself into a bit of trouble.

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45
Pawns, presumably

46
He doesn't.

47
He isn't.

48
See
The Dundee Courier
, 20 December 1979 – ‘
United Swoop For Samba Star
(“This is a dream for me. Growing up in las favelas our currency was dreams and the bravest dream I ever had was that one day I would play for Dundee United with Davie Dodds.”)'.

The Gin Crisis. My God, where to begin? Well, after I'd sold up to Buckets Bennett and paid off the boys I wasn't too sure what to do with myself. I thought I'd have a bit of time off, enjoy a couple of drinks and the next thing I knew I'd slipped into a living hell where it was just me, shouting, confusion and gin. It was a washout, a complete gin nightmare and I'm very lucky that I managed to claw my way out the other side.

I remember once watching Eric Clapton on
Wogan
when he talked about how hard he found it when a tour ended. He was used to life on the road when every day's an adventure and suddenly he had time on his hands and had to make his own sandwiches and brush his own hair and he got a sad feeling. I watched Clapton tell that story to Wogan and I smiled in that sympathetic way you get a lot from swimming pool lifeguards and said to the telly, ‘I've been there, Eric, I've been right there.'

When I was one of the leading window-cleaning figures in Dundee I used to walk into Stewpot's and it was like someone had turned on a tap marked Respect. Boys would ask me how the round was going, and how many customers I was up to now, and if Frank had done anything funny that day. Skirt would be watching me out the corner of their eyes and giving me the Pretending Not To Care stuff and Stewpot would be wanting to talk to me at a businessman-to-businessman level.

But after I'd sold up I went in there and it was like a morgue. I got nods and hellos of course but nothing of any great substance and it was like someone had shaken all the magic dust out of my clothes and hair. I needed to gee myself up a bit, make myself feel like the big man again and unfortunately I found that in gin.

The great irony is that I knew the damage that gin could do. I'd seen Frank's aunt knit him jumpers with an extra arm. I'd read about the gin fan in Whitfield who strangled his neighbour's pet rabbit because he thought it was making withdrawals from his bank account and saying stuff about his wife.
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I knew these stories and more and yet I still took a 9.5 double-pike swallow-dive into a great big puddle of gin and it took me a year to come up for air.

I remember the first gin I had very well, which is unusual. It was a particularly quiet afternoon in Stewpot's and I was getting absolutely nothing from anyone. Not even much in the way of gestures. I said to Stewpot, ‘I think I'll try a gin please, Stewpot,' and he gave me one of those Oh Oh Here We Go looks so beloved by deep sea divers. He poured me the gin, I drank it and I'd found the answer to all my problems.

The Gin Crisis had begun. The afternoons weren't too bad. I'd be in Stewpot's delivering jokes and telling stories and although sometimes my words seemed to get their order mixed up, you could see that people were getting the gist of what I was saying from the way they looked at me. The evenings are a bit hazy. I remember something about a dog or wanting to be a dog but whatever it was I paid the money so no-one can point the finger on that one.
⁵⁰

After that, through no fault of my own, things slipped out of control. I can remember bits and pieces. Frank came back from his cousin's but said he didn't want to drink gin with me because of what happened to his aunt and I said that was selfish and we had a bust-up. Then I met some guy from Carnoustie on the bus and I told him about my bust-up with Frank and he said that he was a gin fan as well and he pointed down and I noticed that he had a bottle of gin with him on the bus and also that he was wearing one normal shoe and one welly.

I started seeing a lot of the gin fan from Carnoustie and then for some reason I was living with him. He had a small house in Carnoustie but from memory I was living in a tent in his garden which seems strange because it must have been yards from his
house and I've never been one for the camping. Apparently I was in Carnoustie for nine months which seems unlikely because these are my only memories –

Stewpot's dad has a Bed and Breakfast in Carnoustie and one day me and my pal had drunk all our gin and were going to buy more when we spotted Lee Harvey Oswald up on the roof of Stewpot's dad's place. We ran back to the house and the Carnoustie gin fan stole an air rifle from his neighbour's son then we rubbed mud into our faces and ran back to the Bed and Breakfast. Sure enough, there was Oswald, walking about up there like he owned the place and obviously hoping the Prime Minister or Idi Amin would drive past so he could sniper them.

We counted to three then stormed the Bed and Breakfast in a pincer movement. I shouted ‘You've shot your last Political Big Shot, Oswald!' and my pal sprayed the Bed and Breakfast with the air rifle. Stewpot's dad came out and said something about the police and how the guy was a builder. I was worried he'd recognise me so I ran off and it took me a few hours to get back to my pal's house and the weird thing was we never spoke about Lee Harvey Oswald – we just had a singsong instead.

The two of us were charging through Carnoustie giving it the big one and then there was some issue with my leg and my gin pal found an old pram and he pushed me in it while we had a singsong and it was a decent atmosphere.

I can't remember exactly what happened at the end between me and the Carnoustie gin fan but we were both very angry. He accused me of hiding gin and I accused him of being a liar and also that he was hiding gin. I got a bus back to Broughty Ferry and he tried to throw a brick at it but tripped over a wall and I fell asleep until someone woke me up at Dundee Bus Station.

The man that woke me up at the bus station looked exactly like Tom Baker. We got off the bus and I walked beside him saying that he looked like Tom Baker but then he started running even though he wasn't dressed for it. I ran with him for a bit to keep him company but I couldn't keep up so I stopped at a pub and they let me use their phone to call Frank.

The next thing I remember was waking up in my bed at Frank's and he was saying that he'd poured out all the gin and Stewpot wasn't going to serve me any either. Obviously I went straight for his neck but he'd tied my hands to the side of the bed using United scarves, which was unusually quick thinking from Frank.

For the next few days he fed me sandwiches and gave me tea through a straw. Once I'd got back my strength and my marbles he finally untied me and I got on with the job of piecing my life back together. When he talks about it now Frank always says that I came back from Carnoustie looking like I'd been in the Falklands and I say I wish I had been in the Falklands because at least then I'd have come home with a medal and God only knows I deserved one.

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49
See
The Dundee Courier
, 6 June 1978 – ‘
Life's Not Funny For Whitfield Bunny
'.

50
See
The Dundee Courier
, 27 March 1980 – ‘
Broughty Ferry Terrorised by “Werewolf”'
, and
The Dundee Courier
, 28 March 1980 – ‘
Broughty Man Fined'
.

It took a wee while to properly get over The Gin Crisis. I told Frank not to start any singsongs because they'd become completely wrapped up in my mind with gin, and I stayed out of Stewpots for five long days. After that I pushed on and I'm very proud of the fact that I got over The Gin Crisis by myself. Not that it was rocket science. I'm sure most doctors would say the same to anyone suffering from a Gin Crisis – have a few beers and try to forget about it. Especially if we're talking about that doctor on the Perth Road that got busted last year.
⁵¹

The most remarkable thing about The Gin Crisis was that I had some money left at the end of it, which isn't so much testimony to my budgeting but more that the guy from Carnoustie had been too drunk to ever charge me rent, though what the going rate is for sitting in a tent and drinking gin all day God only knows.

It was also testimony to Frank's honesty I suppose, though he'd always been intimidated by The Cupboard Of Dreams and worried that he'd be blinded by the riches. Either way, I was still nervous opening The Cupboard of Dreams but when I did there was a very decent pile there and I suggested to Frank that I should probably use the money to get somewhere of my own to live. He was a wee bit
funny about it but I pointed out that we were both in our thirties and it must be starting to look a wee bit odd that we still lived together and that could be the reason we hadn't had much skirt recently. He pointed out that The Gin Crisis probably had something to do with it, along with the fact he'd spent most days looking for me, which made me feel sad because I didn't realise he'd done that. So as a reward I didn't give him into trouble for bringing up The Gin Crisis when it was still so raw.

I started looking for somewhere to live and it was a disappointing experience. I suppose I was a bit spoilt living in Frank's mum's big house and the only places I could afford on my own were tiny little places that didn't have room for my clothes or my personality and certainly not both. Then the house next to Frank's went up for sale and it was an absolute cracker with a big garden and a view right up the river. Frank kept asking why I didn't buy that house because he thought it was funny that I wasn't able to buy it even though it was pretty much a direct match to my level of ability.

Things weren't looking too clever and they jumped off the cliff altogether when Uncle Harry phoned from Australia to say that Mum had died. It was a bit hard to get a full grip on the details because he was calling from overseas and had the TV up quite loud at his end but he said she'd passed away a few weeks before. Even though I hadn't seen Mum for over twenty years I was shaken up and asked about the funeral plans and he said, ‘Oh I wouldn't lose any sleep over the funeral, you didn't miss anything there,' and how it was ‘really boring'.

That hit me hard and I asked if she'd said anything about me before she died, even it was just a titbit or a throwaway remark. Uncle Harry said definitely not but there was a time a few years before when they'd been driving in the Outback and they'd seen some little kangaroo and Mum had said that it had reminded her of me. I'm not too proud to say hearing that Mum compared me to a beautiful boy kangaroo while on her deathbed made me feel a bit fizzy and I told Uncle Harry I needed to go but he said he was actually calling about something ‘genuinely important'.

He said there'd been a mix-up with the will. They'd never sold the house in Broughty Ferry and Mum's will said it was to go to me. He said that clearly she'd made a mistake because she liked him a lot more than she liked me and therefore could I sign it over to him?

Hearing that Mum had left me the house as a ‘sorry for not taking you to Australia and by the way you were always my favourite' gesture was one of the best moments of my life. I told Uncle Harry to fuck off, which was a pretty good moment as well, hung up the phone and headed up to the solicitor Pop Wood who dealt with Mum and Dad's divorce. He went through her file and confirmed the house was mine and the two of us went to see it. The house was in pretty good nick (later I found out Uncle Harry's brother had been living there on a sweetcorn
⁵²
rent) and I told Pop Wood to stick it on the market without delay.

I didn't want to move back into the house because my memories of the place were kind of a mixed bag, plus I had a plan. A few weeks later I sold the house and the next day I swooped like a champion prize-winning kestrel and bought the house next to Frank's. You should have seen his face when I told him. He looked like he'd been kicked in the balls by Eric Bristow.

Moving into the house next to Frank's was absolutely marvellous. Thirty years later I'm sitting writing these words in that same house while the boy Forsyth wears my clothes and eats all my food.
⁵³
These days the house is called Bob's Palace because of the work I had done with the cheeseburger money but even back when I first moved in it was a cracking gaff.