For me, the initial shock and sadness of his loss is giving way to memories of all the good and happy times we shared - over close to half a century!
I will be forever thankful that Gina and Deirdre were colleagues in the X-Ray Department of the Southern General, from which our friendship blossomed. Happy Days.
Jimmy and I were pals. True friends. I loved him like a brother.
On Glasgow Fair Friday, Jimmy would stop work early to allow us to embark on a ‘pub-crawl’ along Dumbarton Road. We were young and fit in those days, and fortunate to have understanding and supportive wives! HIs work was often physically demanding, so it was not unreasonable, we thought, to mark the forthcoming holiday with a few pints.
Jimmy was always a good tradesman but even he couldn’t carry alone a new cast-iron bath to the top floor of a tenement.If he needed an extra pair of hands, he would call me, especially during the school holidays.
In the early days none of us had a lot of money. When Gina and I got married, to save cash, instead of buying a fancy sink unit, we bought a stainless steel sink for which Jimmy built a frame for it to sit on.
Jimmy was equally creative in his and Deirdre’s flat in Fulton Street.
When we moved to Quadrant Road, he installed our central heating. This was the first time he had done it but there was a merchant where, if you bought the materials, they would draw up the plans without charge. Jimmy didn’t know about the electrical side of things, so on the strength of my first year university physics course, I did the wiring.
Our next door neighbour was Gina and Deirdre’s boss at the Southern - Wilson James. He wasn’t too happy about our plans, counselling us that it would be better to get in the’ experts’.
We didn’t tell him that when it came to switching on the system, we tossed a coin to see who would do it and who stand in the street and watch.
It all went like clockwork and ran without a hitch for some 35 years. Wilson’s experts were regularly called to fix his heating!
Jimmy taught me to make ‘Yorkshire coupling joints and to use a spring to bend copper pipe. I still have his spring, which is on of my treasured possessions.
In those days I did my own car repairs and would answer Jimmy’s distress call, as a quid pro quo.
It wasn’t all work. We spent many a happy hour at the Scottish Squash Racquets Club in Maryhill. or watching ‘footie’ in the front room at Clarence Drive - with a case of Tennents lager.
It was a sad day for me when Jimmy and Deirdre announced their intention to emigrate to the States, though for them undoubtedly it was a no-brainer choice. I am glad it all worked out so well for them
Jimmy was a good man, a valued pal, and a dearly loved husband, father, father-in-law and grandfather
Happily were still able to meet up from time to time, and we both agreed that when we did it felt as if it was the previous day that we had last met.
To me that is the sign of true friendship.
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