I've just started reading Jimmy Barnes's biography, Working Class Boy. I had been looking forward to reading it becausevI thought I would relate to his childhood. Like me, he grew up in a working class family in post-war Scotland. I hadn't got past the first few chapters before I realised we could have been brought up on different planets.
Yes, there were similarities. We both grew up in tenement buildings and suffered the food shortages that followed the war in Britain, for example. Jimmy grew up in a rough area of Glasgow; I lived in Blantyre just a few miles away. He talked about the gangs and the fighting while I can only remember that we were able to walk to and from school with no problems. He could only remember that it was always cold; I recall playing in the park and visiting holiday places like Rothesay and Largs.
But it was in the attitude of our parents that the real difference lay. My parents were ambitious for us and determined that we would have a productive life. Jimmy's parents were feckless, more interested in their social life than anything else. Above all, my father didn't drink. Drinking is the Scottish disease and Jimmy's father was an alcoholic. Every pay day saw him in the pub drinking away all that he had earned. There was never enough money to provide for the normal needs of his family.
Jimmy was only 5 years old when he arrived in Australia so you have to question the validity of his memories but certainly his stories reflect a real element of Scotland at the time. The fact that he came through it is a credit to him; you wonder how many didn't survive the traumas of the sort of childhood he describes.
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