Read Chapter 1 from Whose Turn for the Stairs?

A Night for Staying In

A late September evening in 1949. In the countryside just beyond Glasgow's city boundary, a fine mist is beginning to come down. The kind that most folk would look on as being part of that 'season of mellow fruitfulness'. a few miles away, inside the city, the same low pressure and damp air is causing the smoke from a few hundred thousand coal fires to swirl down from the tenement chimneys and mix with this mist. By half past eight, it has turned it into a blanket of throat-catching green fog. A peasouper. The first this year.

The further into town you travel, the worse it becomes. Beams of light from the tall lamp standards barely reach to the pavements. Shop lights shining out of windows become diffused, illuminating the fog and making it worse. Vehicles find their headlights totally inadequate as they bounce off it, seeming to turn it into a solid wall. With visibility down to six feet, Glasgow's motorists do what they always do at this time of year - follow the trams. Long streams of cars, buses and lorries trail back behind every one. Unable to overtake because of the limited distance they can see, they wait patiently as their tram stops every hundred yards or so to drop off or pick up passengers. Almost certainly, tomorrow's newspapers will carry their annual news items on motorists who blindly follow trams all the way back to their depot - right into the sheds.

Dalbeattie Street in Maryhill lies fog-bound like every other street in the city tonight. If it was possible to see the lenght of it, it would appear to be deserted. The residents of number 18 are staying close to their fires. As coal is rationed, these fires aren't very big. Some enterprising lads were round this afternoon, twice, selling coal briquettes from a horse and cart. Everybody at number 18 bought a large bag of these nuggets of compressed coal dust to supplement the meagre ration of one bag of coal per week.

In each of the twelve houses that make up this close, some of the acrid fog has seeped in through gaps in window frames and underneath doors. Every kitchen has a haze round the main light which hangs from the centre of its ceiling. As they sit, hugging the range, most folk listen to the wireless; perhaps a play or a variety programme. A few are absorbed in books borrowed from the Maryhill Library up at Gairbraid Avenue. Children read, for the second or third time, this week's Beano or Dandy.

Because it's such a dismal night, attendances are down at local cinemas like the Roxy, the Star and the Blythswood. Customers are few and far between in nearby pubs and snooker halls. It is, most definitely, 'a night for goin' naewhere'.