My Brother

Who put salt in the sugar bowl?

Who put fireworks in the coal?

Who put a real live toad in the hole?

MY BROTHER!

Who put jam in mother’s shoe?

Who made real caterpillars stew?

Who locked Granddad in the loo?

MY BROTHER!

This Terry Scott novelty hit from 1962 was popular with my brother Stuart and myself when we were small children, lobbing the lyrics back and forth at each other across an imaginary tennis net.  We were similar in many ways and in others oceans apart. Not, I’d wager, all that unusual an experience in most families.

We had no other siblings. I was the elder by exactly one year and five days and that proximity in age ensured that our early experiences in life were much the same. Later we would joke about our closeness in age. I would say that when I was born my parents took one look and said ‘great, we ought to have more like this. Pronto.’ then after his birth ‘it’s gone wrong this time. Better stop now.’ His riposte was always along the lines that my birth ‘hasn’t turned out right, we need to fix this right away’ and his ‘that’s it. No more. Can’t get any better than this.’

My father with new-born Stuart outside our prefab home 1957 Click to enlarge

I’m not pretending our childhood was idyllic – it was far from that – but I’m acutely aware that although I’m writing this primarily for myself and that it will be read by precious few others, nevertheless it’s accessible to approximately 4.5 billion internet users worldwide.  I want to give a sense of our lives together but not to wash our dirty linen under the gaze of any random passer-by.  This is catharsis for me. I’m writing off the top of my head and mentally redacting as I go.  I want to give the essence, not a warts-and-all portrait.

Other than my starting both primary and secondary school a year earlier we were in each other’s faces almost 24/7 until Stuart left school at sixteen. We were both still at home but he was at work during the day. I left home a year later, aged eighteen. That kind of closeness doesn’t lend itself to sitcom happy families and we would often fight, both figuratively and literally. Though hell mend any outsider who tried to interfere.

Stuart with my mother circa 1960. On holiday in Aberdeen. The other people in the photo are from a Paisley family we befriended. Click to enlarge

The nature v nurture debate is never-ending and I suspect will never be resolved for despite our identical upbringing we quickly developed as many separate interests as shared. In the latter we had a love of movies, trains, toy soldiers and above all else football.

It was an early Saturday evening ritual from a young age (I’m talking around nine and eight respectively) to go to the cinema on our own. I’ve never wanted to be one who claimed things were so much better when they were children.  They weren’t and anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is a liar. These were the days of the Moors murders and of Aberfan. Children the same age as Stuart and I had their lives cut short through acts of brutal savagery or manmade disaster.  We ourselves received parental warnings as to which adults to be wary of (usually on the basis of rumour or gossip, not as a result of any court convictions), to never accept lifts or take sweets from strangers. Yet at the same time it was considered perfectly normal and safe for two children to travel by bus or train without adult accompaniment, cycle for miles  - often on main roads – or walk for hours through the local glen.

So the cinema was a weekly treat. Movies aimed squarely at kids our age – ‘Help,’ ‘Batman’ - or for a slightly older audience ‘Alfred The Great,’ the ‘Carry On’ series, Norman Wisdom and Morecambe & Wise offerings. Pictures aimed at adults but rated okay for unaccompanied children – Bond movies, westerns, war films – and some that went right over our heads – ‘The Ipcress File,’ ‘2001 – A Space Odyssey.’

It was a ritual regardless. There was always something that had a ‘U’ certificate. Either at the George in Troon or the Plaza and the Regal in Kilmarnock – all now long since gone.

Barrow boys. Stuart on left, me on right Click to enlarge

So too were those other rituals we thought of as our own naughty secret but were being repeated by thousands of children all over the country at the same time – opening the cinema fire escape to let in your pals, hiding in the toilets to try and catch the film a second time.  And, I’ll admit, the petty crimes so many indulged in. If we’d been to the matinee instead of the early evening the shops would still be open before we caught the bus home. Stuart would distract the shop assistant in RS McColl’s in Portland Street Kilmarnock opposite the old bus station while I shoved a bundle of American comics down my jumper. Or I would dither over what I wanted while he filled his pockets from the sweets counter. If we were spotted, it was a mad dash across the road and onto the waiting bus. Everything timed just right for our getaway.

A regular Butch and Sundance. Or so we thought.

Trains. Ah, trains. Drybridge station was open in those days – it closed in 1969. I remember the horrified look on my parents’ faces when Stuart told them he had met a ‘nice man’ at the station who said he and I could visit any time we wanted but had to ask parental permission first. My parents marched straight to the station – around 1.5 miles from our home in Dundonald to have it out with this guy, only to find he was an old friend of theirs from way back. Yes, I know this guarantees nothing but at that time the idea that an acquaintance could be a threat to children was never a consideration. ‘Stranger Danger’ was what we were told to be aware of.

After that the station became a regular haunt. Stamping tickets for the (very few) passengers before they boarded, being allowed to wave the flag and blow the whistle as trains departed and, for Stuart, the special thrill of his own little stationmaster’s outfit.

Later that same friend of our parents would do us a much more lucrative favour. After the station closed he became the caddy master at Royal (then Old) Troon golf course. He knew who was a ‘good bag’ and who wasn’t and he always gave Stuart and I the more lucrative golfers. Shilling (5p) a hole always rounded up to £1 and a little extra thrown in if he (and it was always a he) had a good round. 

Drybridge Station, looking towards Ayr. Indistinct but Stuart is the small figure in the middle on the 'up' (to Glasgow) platform. Click to enlarge

Toy soldiers were a must for boys in the 1960s. When it was wet – which it often was – and we couldn’t play football, Cowboys and Indians or go to the swing park, then battles on a monumental scale raged over sofas and chairs and into kitchens with wars even sometimes ending in the toilet.  There was nothing like strategy involved. Knights on horseback lined up alongside US Cavalry. Second World War bazookas took on bows and arrows and occasionally fists flew in argument as to which soldiers were ‘dead’ or not.

But the biggest shared love of all was football. As the elder I’d already been to some games but to this day I can recall the excitement on Stuart’s face when my father said he would take us both to a Scottish Cup match. Stuart was six, I was seven. The tie was Kilmarnock v Gala Fairydean. Neither of us had heard of the latter so we confidently informed schoolmates Killie were taking on the much more powerful Aberdeen – that being the nearest linguistic approximation to the non-league Borderers that entered our minds.

Victory that day cemented a love that endured for the rest of our lives. The following season Kilmarnock won the Scottish League Championship. My father was working on the Saturday night and we weren’t allowed to go to the title-clinching match at Tynecastle in Edinburgh on our own. There were Uncles and older cousins who offered to take us but our mother put her foot down. Too far, too dangerous. So we listened to the match on the radio with our father and danced in delight on the stroke of 4.44pm on Saturday April 24^th 1965 when the impossible dream became glorious reality.

My father handed us a ten-shilling note (50p) – a week’s pocket money each and we hightailed it to the local shop to await the arrival of the evening papers with news of the miraculous triumph. We were there too at Rugby Park 48 hours later to watch the team parade the trophy around the ground. It was a sight previously seen outwith Scotland’s four major cities only in Dumbarton in the 1890s and Motherwell in 1932. It’s something that has never been seen anywhere since and in all likelihood never will. But we saw it. My brother and I saw the championship trophy and a couple of weeks later we were there when the league flag was hoisted high at Rugby Park.

A shared experience neither of us would ever forget.

The League championship trophy on display at Rugby Park. Click to enlarge

Yet in many other ways we led separate lives, our interests sharply diverging even from a very early age. I would have my nose in a book or a comic while Stuart would be getting his hands dirty. A savaging by an Alsatian at the age of three filled me with a lifelong fear of dogs. Stuart always wanted one by his side. I remember the day he got his first puppy, Billy, a floppy-eared mongrel he loved to bits. Until then our only ‘pets’ had been Sammy and Freddie two short-lived but much-loved goldfish. After Billy came Judy, identical to the former save in one important aspect, as the name demonstrates. She had to be put down owing to distemper and the tears that day threatened never to end. Finally there was Whisky, a Jack Russell who lived to a ripe old age of around seventeen if memory serves. They were inseparable.

Dundonald was a small village, population around 1,000. But as we belonged to what was later known as the ‘baby boomer’ generation around one-third were school-age children. That meant class sizes of around forty so often we would go our separate ways, there being plenty of other boys (always boys, never girls, yeuughh) to play with after school. While I would go cycling with my friends I was still the more cautious one. Stuart was far more adventurous – it was he who told me of the locomotive delights of Drybridge station for instance – and he never displayed that trait that earned the contempt of contemporaries – weakness or being ‘saft.’ This could – and did – lead him into danger. Once he came running home in absolute agony covered from head to foot in wasp stings. Then there was the fearful winter’s day when he – unbeknownst to anyone – decided to go fishing, cutting a hole in the frozen loch. He had, he told me later, been pretending to be an Eskimo!

Merkland Loch, to give it its Sunday name, but known locally as simply ‘the loch,’ is largely overgrown but still treacherous. The ice gave way and he was plunged into the water. Fortunately two older boys were playing nearby and managed to rescue him before he went under. It’s a reminder still of the fragility of life. Stuart’s could have ended there and then.

Whisky, or simply 'the dug,' Click to enlarge

Neither of us refused the almost daily challenge of schoolboy fisticuffs though we rarely started playground fights either. But to refuse to answer when another boy shouted ‘you’re claimed’ was the ultimate in humiliation, something that earned you the tag of ‘saft’ for life. Yet our approach to the looming post-school contest was different. While I would spend the afternoon dreading what lay in store, Stuart would nonchalantly accept it. When the bell rang at 4pm I’d be hoping my antagonist had forgotten all about it while Stuart would stand stoically in the playground waiting to hear another bell – the phantom tone that signalled round one was about to commence.

We both worked as milk boys but even here our differences were on display. When the delivery round was over I was entrusted with the bookkeeping which meant a shed and a heater. After three hours of delivering milk on a winter morning that was a welcome respite from the snow (I quickly learned to take my time doing the accounting so as to keep warm for longer). Stuart and the other lads would be cleaning and sterilising empty bottles but he got his reward at the end of it. He was allowed to practice driving the float. By ‘float’ I don’t mean a Pat Mustard style three miles per hour electric buggy but a regular Bedford van, three open sides, glass bottles jiggling around in wooden crates across a bumpy field at normal speed. All without spilling a drop of milk, let alone breaking a bottle or dislodging a crate.

That’s why Stuart passed his driving test with flying colours less than a week after his seventeenth birthday and I to this day have never sat behind the wheel of a car.

When he left school Stuart’s first job was as an apprentice plumber. His temperament wasn’t suited to the time-honoured custom of the newest apprentice at any trade – skivvy to the time-served men. On his first day he promptly informed his employer he already knew how to make tea and that wasn’t the purpose of his employment. His toolbox was an expensive affair, purchased from his milk round earnings, and he was proud of it. He could have, he told his boss, saved a lot of money if he’d just bought a kettle.

The job did not, if I recall correctly, last very long.

Stuart with Whisky and our mother. Auchans Drive, early 1980s. Click to enlarge

Shortly after that I left home. For the generation before mobile phones and the Internet, keeping in touch was a difficult affair. My parents didn’t have a phone until after I departed. Letter writing was the usual way to maintain contact and neither of us was exactly prolific in doing so. I would still visit and occasionally Stuart would come down to see me in Middlesbrough. We’d go for a drink. We’d take in a football match. We’d argue like cat and dog. We’d be glad to see the back of each other by the end of the respective visits but we’d still meet up again. Inevitably our lives travelled in different directions and there would be long periods when we didn’t see each other.

Without going into great detail about our personal lives, he married Fiona. They had four children, Claire, Kelly-Ann, Campbell and Michelle. He loved them all without fear or favour (though the first photo he ever sent me of Campbell proudly displayed his new-born son clad in Kilmarnock colours). His job on the railway (inevitable I suppose from the day he first donned his mini-stationmaster’s uniform) took him from Ayrshire to East Lothian. I moved from Middlesbrough to London to Cornwall, to County Durham, to Spain, to Sussex and back to Cornwall again.

Stuart (typically in Killie top), Fiona and my parents, Dundonald Bowling Club circa 1990. No idea who the guy top left is. Click to enlarge 

Some time back we argued. Nothing new in that but this time it felt different. I thought I had been grievously wronged. No doubt Stuart felt the same. We didn’t speak. He was in the wrong as far as I was concerned and he needed to make the first move by way of apology. Knowing my brother, in a way that only those bound to one another from birth can know each other, I am certain he felt exactly the same about me.

We lost touch. It happens. Often. I know many people in identical circumstances. Many times I thought of trying to re-establish contact, to find some mutual acquaintance who might know where Stuart was and for us to do what we’d done as Cowboys and Indians all those years ago and at least sit down and have a pow-wow. But I never made the move. Nor to the best of my knowledge did he. And that is why I find myself today, reminiscing, telling the story of our early days. For the date of this blog post – March 17^th 2019 – would have been Stuart’s 62^nd birthday.

‘Would have been,’ not ‘is.’  I still find it hard to believe that’s now the way I speak or write of my brother. In the past tense.

Stuart died last August.

The details aren’t yours to know or mine to give. That’s a private matter for his immediate family. Fiona, Stuart’s wife. His children, Claire, Kelly, Campbell, Michelle. And his grandchildren too. They are the ones left behind in their grief but also with fond memories of a loving husband, father and grandfather. All you need to know is that just as ancient Spartans killed in battle were supposed to return on their shields or Vikings with swords clasped firmly to their chests, Stuart left this world clad as he had so often been whilst in it, wearing a Kilmarnock top.

Our first photo together, shortly after Stuart's birth. Sadly, we'll never have the chance to be pictured together again. Click to enlarge

All that’s mine to tell is of those early days, of – as A.E. Houseman put it in ‘A Shropshire Lad’ - “those blue remembered hills.”  Shropshire, Ayrshire, it makes no difference. It’s not geography that speaks but time. A time when the great adventure of life stood before us, when the paths to be trodden lay still unknown. When the future was full of excitement and promise. When what beckoned us was the unknown but thrilling journey of life, a journey seemingly without end. As Charles Kingsley wrote in the first verse of ‘The Old Song,’

When all the world is young, lad,

And all the trees are green;

And every goose a swan, lad,

And every lass a queen;

Then hey for boot and horse, lad

And round the world away!

Young blood must have its course, lad,

And every dog his day

My brother’s journey is over. I’m not a person of faith. Who can say if death is the last page of the book or merely the end of a chapter? It’s hope, not expectation, that leads me to finish with words often spoken but for too long unsaid.

See you later wee man.

STUART MURRAY ROSS (1957-2018) RIP