No More Silence. David Whelan

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      The result of Ma’s profligacy was that she was constantly in debt. Hiding from money lenders, the rent man and even the little man who ran the corner shop became a way of life. Ma owed everyone. We would be sent on errands with no money to pay for her cigarettes or other ‘messages’. Ma reckoned shopkeepers would feel uncomfortable turning a child away. She was often correct in that assertion, but when they refused you turned away with a sense of embarrassment that gnawed at you all the way home.

      Perhaps my sense of embarrassment indicated my growing isolation from those around me. I don’t know why, but I was never part of what psychologists would now describe as my peer group. I never became ‘pure Drumchapel’. I remained a novice in terms of street-smarts. It was arguably caused by the time I spent with the middle-class doctors, followed by the otherworldliness of Uist, which had left me with the aptitude of a much younger child. This was exemplified one day by a visit from the dreaded tally man. I was in the kitchen when I heard a knock at the door. This was an angry knock, an attempt to remove the door from its hinges rather the signal for the arrival of a visitor. The rest of the family scattered as I walked into the hall and opened the front door.