Monday 6 February 2012

Back Court Cat Chaos

One of my older relatives, USA (Used tae Stay in Anderston), tells the story, that when he was a lad in Glasgow during WWII, he was sat at the kitchen table having breakfast one morning, when all of a sudden, there was a loud 'Crack!' followed by a short interval and another 'Crack! Crack!' sound. They opened the kitchen window in their tenement and looked around to see where the noise was coming from. To their great surprise and amusement, the upstairs neighbour, Big Hammy, was hanging out of the window, with a Lee Enfield .303 rifle, shooting at cats in the back court, the neighbours were diving for cover from the ricochets bouncing off the walls and cowering behind the middens, while  the cats high tailed it out of there. It turns out that Hammy was considered to be a bit slow on the uptake and was disqualified from joining the regular army, so in their great wisdom, the draft board decided to place him with the local home guard unit, who promptly gave him a gun complete with a pocket full of buckshee bullets to take home with him......and Hammy being Hammy, had seen no harm in testing it out in the middle of the city. It has often been said that the home guard were more dangerous and terrifying than the guys who were dropping the bombs on us at that time and after hearing the story, I'm inclined to agree.......

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