What a chapter sounds like
The same life, told two ways.
One approach asks its questions and keeps the answers. The other listens for what's underneath – and writes it in their own voice.
Sheila, born in Govan, 1947 · “Where I come from”
The opening question“Where and when were you born, and what do you know about your family background?”
The usual way
A fixed list of questions – answers tidied into prose.
One memory that has always stayed with me is a ship launch at Fairfield's, when the whole street turned out to watch her go down the water. I remember thinking he'd helped build that, this great big thing folk had come out to see.
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I was born on the second of November 1947, in Govan, in my mother's room – no fuss about hospitals in those days. My father was Tam Boyd, a welder down at Fairfield's, and my mother was Nan, a Rennie before she married. Govan folk through and through, the both of them.
Home was a single-end – one room for the whole family, with a set-in bed, and we shared a toilet out on the stair with the neighbours. It was damp, and it always smelled of wet wool and coal, but my mother kept that step scrubbed white every morning, rain or shine. You'd never have thought six of us lived in it, the state she kept the place.
Some of my earliest memories are the shipyard horn going, and knowing that meant my father was on his way home, black to the elbows, and my mother's washing mangle, which I was feart to put my fingers near.
My father worked hard at Fairfield's and was proud of it – hands like leather, always black with the graft even once he'd washed. My mother worked in the laundry when we were small, and later became a dinner lady at the school. She was the one who kept us right, kept that step white, kept us fed on next to nothing. Neither of them was soft – you didn't get soft in Govan – but you always knew where you stood with them.
I was the eldest of four, and the only girl, with three brothers – Jimmy, Robert, and wee Alec, as we always called him, even long after he'd grown taller than the rest of us. Being the eldest, I got the running of them whether I liked it or not, and I was forever telling them what to do. I still am, if I'm honest, when I see them.
As a child I loved swimming – I was down at the Govan baths every chance I got, and went on to compete when I was a bit older. It kept me out from under my mother's feet too, which suited us both.
One memory that has always stayed with me is a ship launch at Fairfield's, when the whole street turned out to watch her go down the water. The noise of it, the whole Clyde cheering – and my father standing there with his hands black same as ever. I remember thinking he'd helped build that, this great big thing folk had come out to see. I've never forgotten the sight of it going into the water. That's Govan for you, in one memory.
The Chronicle way
A guided conversation, drafted in their voice.
I asked him once why he never cheered at a launch, and he said, 'That's my work going in the water, hen. You don't cheer your work, you just watch it go.' I did thirty-five years of teaching after, and you don't get a horn and a launch for that either. You just watch your work go, same as him.
Told in their own words. We keep the phrasing and dialect they used, so the book sounds like them, not like us.
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I was born on the second of November, 1947, in Govan, right in among the tenements and the yards, and that's as good a place as any to start, because Govan made me before I ever had a say in the matter. My father was Tam Boyd, a welder at Fairfield's, and my mother was Nan – laundry work first, then dinner lady at the school. I was the eldest of four, and the only lassie, with three brothers coming after me: Jimmy, Robert, and wee Alec, who stayed wee Alec even once he was six foot tall. Being the eldest and the only girl meant I was drying dishes while they were out kicking a ball, and minding them half the time forbye, my mother out at the laundry. I didn't think much of it then. That's just what you did. It's only looking back you think, well, that was a lot for a wee girl.
The whole six of us lived in a single-end – one room, that was the house, no more than that. There was a set-in bed built into the wall where my mother and father slept, and the rest of us were top and tail on whatever there was. My mother had a great heavy mangle for the washing, and the place smelled of wet wool drying by the fire and coal smoke, always. The toilet was out on the stair, shared with the neighbours. You don't forget that smell, the wet wool. I can call it up now, sitting here, near enough eighty years on.
My mother scrubbed the step outside our door till it fair shone, every day, rain or shine, and I used to think, Mammy, what does it matter, it's a tenement stair. But it mattered to her. It was the one thing that was hers, I think now – the one thing she could keep clean and right when so little else was. She never complained, not once that I heard. She'd just get on. I'm probably more like her than I'd care to admit.
My father came home most nights with his hands black, ground right into the creases, and no amount of scrubbing shifted it all. Fairfield's took everything out of a man – his back, his hearing in the end – but he was proud of what went into that water. When there was a launch, the horn would go, this great deep sound you felt in your chest more than heard, and the whole street downed tools and went down to watch, weans and all, everybody still in their pinnies, no time to change. The ship would go down the slipway into the Clyde with an almighty splash and everybody cheering fit to burst. My father stood a bit apart from the rest of us, with the other men from the yard, not cheering, just watching, quiet. I asked him once why he never cheered, and he said, "That's my work going in the water, hen. You don't cheer your work, you just watch it go." I didn't understand that at the time – I was only a bairn. I understand it now, right enough. I did thirty-five years of teaching after, and you don't get a horn and a launch for that either. You just watch your work go, same as him.
There was never much money in that house. My father's wages went as far as they could and no further, and my mother went without before any of us did, though she never made a show of it. You didn't know you were poor, exactly, because everybody round about was the same. It was only once I was out of Govan a good while that I looked back and thought, my god, we had nothing. At the time it was just life, and we never went hungry, whatever else we went without.
The one bright thing that was mine and mine alone was the swimming. I was quite good, actually – competitive, galas and all, down at the Govan baths. The water was cold enough some days to take your breath clean away, but I didn't care. Up on the blocks, for that wee while, naebody was asking anything of me. I was just Sheila Boyd, not somebody's big sister, not the one doing the drying up. I think I've chased that feeling my whole life since, one way or another – the hills with Iain, later on. Just you and the effort of it, and naebody needing you for anything else.
Looking back now at that single-end and my mother's step and my father's black hands and the horn going for a launch, I think what that childhood gave me was toughness, mostly, and a horror of making a fuss. You learn early that greetin' about things doesn't fill your belly or heat the room, so you just get on with it. But there was love in that room, for all it was one room with a shared toilet on the stair. I don't say that lightly. I've had harder things to face since than a cold tenement, and I think that's where I learned how to face them – watching my mother scrub a step that didn't need scrubbing, and my father go quiet at a launch. That's where I come from. I'll no' pretend it was easy. But it made me.
An illustrative example – a composite storyteller, not a real customer.