Looking Back to the Future

As an eighty-seven year old sitting here in Inverness in self-isolation, as a precaution against the threat of coronavirus, it is hard to think of the future. Nevertheless, it is difficult not to cast a thought beyond the present. Looking back on your past is a good way of remembering that anything can happen - especially the unexpected.

For instance, seventy-four years ago I was part of a second year class ostensibly studying ‘Religious Instruction’. Note, ‘Instruction’, not ‘Education’. Miss Smith, our French teacher, who the day before, prior to belting me for not doing my homework, had said, ‘McGinty, you’re a lazy little monkey.’ She was marking some jotters while we read the Bible verse by verse round the class. As the class droned on and on she made no comment. But, after I had read, she looked up from her marking and said, ‘McGinty, have you ever thought of going into the Ministry?’ The class burst out laughing at the thought as I was fast gaining the reputation as a class clown and my performance was at a low ebb. By that time I had failed in everything except English, history, geography and art - scraping through in the latter. French was an enigma not to bother with. And other than arithmetic, mathematics was a mystery to me. As were physics and chemistry. Einstein would have wept.

‘The Ministry? You must be joking!’, seemed to lie behind the merriment. ‘The Ministry’ required University, the thought of which had never entered my head. In the East End of Glasgow, in 1946, such dreams were seldom held. For most of my pals and I our futures were likely to be spent in a trade at best. This is proved when I take a look at my closest friends at that time, all of whom were as just as able, if not more so, than me: Hugh became an electrician; Bob, an ironmonger; James, a waiter and Jackie, a labourer with Allison’s the Demolishers, where he started as a Can Boy. As for myself, I had little thought of what I might do when I left school but University did not seem to be one of my options.

My father was a hard working shoe repairer with his own one man business. From the age of ten I went to the shop every day after school and did the deliveries. I took the shoes to the stitching factory and a wee bit later began to do some of the finishing: painting, heel-balling and then polishing the shoes on the machine. I remember my father wagging his cobbler’s knife at me and putting paid to any thoughts I had of succeeding him in the shop by saying, ‘You’re no coming into this game. There must be something better for you to do.’ At that time, he was unable to see ahead to the illness that would in another year take him away from any future.

When I walked out the school gates for the last time, half way through my fourth year, I popped my ‘report card’ into the wastepaper bin on the lamppost outside. I left without any certificates except one from the Burns Federation. On telling my form-teacher I was leaving, and starting work in the New Year as an office boy in a Chartered Accountants, his only comment was, ‘The best thing you could do.’

Sometimes prophets are found in the strangest places, such as in a second-year class in an East End school. After spending nine years in accountancy, and getting my highers via night school, I began a five year course at the University of Glasgow that eventually resulted in my serving for thirty five years in the Parish Ministry. Maybe that wouldn’t have been my future without that class in ‘Religious Instruction’.