My friend , Ricky.

Well here we are again, back at the old keyboard. This time I would like to reflect back on my friend Richard T.. The first time we ever met was down in Battlefield gardens. My Father had returned from Canada and purchased a flat, just behind the bank. Mum, Dot,and I were still living over here, and she was selling off the furniture, car,and things, getting ready for the big move back to Scotland. One of many a move, I might add. (We had immigrated to Canada back in 1964 originally, I can remember Dot just a "bairn" in arms and me with a kilt on).

                     So  any ways we were back in Glasgow. I remember sitting outside on the little sandstone wall playing an acoustic guitar. Looking down the gardens, across the red stone chips and through the  holly trees, a figure appeared. Now this was the summertime and this young chap was riding a bicycle with no hands playing a penny flute, with a duffel coat on. Say no more , this person I had to meet!. Ricky Weaver my first  real friend     I ever had , and now to this day can say ,still is. I have never stopped thinking about him over all these years. I remember visiting "The snakepit" for the first time. Ronnie had painted the psychedelic astronaut on the wall with the glint of light on the visor, wow. A purple room , with flags painted on the doors, and  where people all slept in sleeping bags at night. Brother Dave had a drum kit he would set up in the room  and play ; diddle- diddle, diddle-diddle, diddle-diddle, dom. Nice and loud. Nobody complained, and Zahid Mohammed's Dad loved it, he told Ricky and I many times. Dave also had a killer record player with tons of albums, like The mothers of invention, Bonzo dog band,Alice Cooper, and many more, which we enjoyed. Frank Zappa is still to this day one of my all time fav's. The fun and antics that happened in the Gardens, and the people who lived around us , could be a book in itself. Ricky and I knew all the escape routes we needed to know as we were chased a lot of times, by the adults. We really were pranksters.  We did things that probably were not so good at the time, like using nylon thread tied to posts and trees in order to see the fun of tripping people up, or making home made rockets, cannons, gunpowder, and the likes. We even had a tape recorder that we would interview elderly people with , and get their opinions on such things as radio, t.v. and yes, like the Bonzos, shirts. What a laugh. I can recall us going behind the "old vicky" hospital and jumping off a ledge into an enormous pile of coal, we were just covered in coal dust.And the neighbour hood , with the chippy, a damn good one too, can't remember the name though. We would buy our albums around at Virgin records, I still have my first ever record, "Get a whiff of this" by a band called  Juicy Lucy. The  Indian barber shop, where Ricky once went to get a haircut, Mum had given him some money for it,and when the barber asked shall I cut this here, Ricky said "NO",what about here , "NO". Eventually the barber took one tiny snip, and Ricky said perfect. It might have been , till he got home, and Mum more or less took him by the ear back, and he got a proper short back and sides!!!. Well for weeks after , day and night, he wore a balaclava , ha ha ha.

                                My Sister was no angel neither. We had made the mistake of showing her how to make origami Chinese water bottles , which might of been one thing, if it wasn't for where we lived. You see our back court was above Battlefield road, and overlooked  shops and a bus stop. She had no reservations about dropping them on the people below, and she never ran .... like us.

                         
                                             The guys and my girlfriend Rosalind, at the time.

   This is about the time when R, built an ashtray and named it "Charles", it was an enormous sculpted thing that took over most of the room in the snake pit , with the actual ashtray part being no bigger than a jam jar lid. Ricky would wear Victorian shirt collars and asked that he be called "Bix", which we all did. Speaking of the lads, Graham (Smitty), George (Hutchy), Davy McCloud, Donald, Andy Cowieson,( who had a job one time at Slazengers around the corner), Glen Ballantyne.These were some of our crew we knew. Like I said before, ever try to find a MacDonald, McCloud,  or Smith for that matter, over the internet, in Scotland, forget it. It's harder than Chinese algerbra!!!. The photo above was when Ricky was redoing the snake pit, and Ronnie I think you were living on Prospect hill road. I remember that a cat fell out a window, and you had painted yet another mural on the wall over the fireplace.That was a nice place,with the round wall hall where the main stairs were inside the building

down at The Kind Man where they had no ladies room and The boxer barman, Michael Hegarty  who once bounced a midget, and was so proud of it.

                                                   My friend, Ricky.


    We like you Ronnie, would also go camping, not to clear our heads more like befuddle them, sometimes we would even take a tent. Georges idea of camping would be a nice set of clothes,including pointy shoes with the gold tips,our pub duds, and that was it. We would take the boat to Arran, and sleep in pub doors, bus shelters any where we could find till the pubs opened. Don't remember if Ricky was on that trip. He was with us when we went to Myrtle , that was an adventure. The snow had come down the mountain over night and settled on our tent, well covered the tent actually. Ricky said to me later, "I thought you were dead, because you were blue", I replied what did you do then, he stated " Well, I started prodding you with a stick". Very unprepared, our water container, which had to be filled that morning down the mountain, was an old empty El Dorado bottle or something of that nature.And I believe it was Ricky's turn that time, ha ha ha..Yes the good old days.

                                This was a no-no.Pilfering  Mimsie's wine.
        I will have to come back to these thoughts another time, but for now, adieu.