The title of this sounds a bit like one of these – usually awful – jokes starting ‘Have you heard the one about….?’. However, this is not a joke, but a true story of Sheila in her early twenties, when she met a Professor and spent a summer in Jail.
Away back in the mid sixties, when only about five per cent of school leavers went to University in Scotland, I think it fair to say that bright girls who were channelled to university were often encouraged to take general degrees or degrees in school subjects in which they excelled. Teaching was seen as their ultimate destination, which fitted in with getting married, having children and following one’s husband in his career moves. Boys were possibly pushed to be a little more focussed on what their ultimate employment might be, but Sheila arrived at Glasgow University, perhaps a little uncertain about what she would do. Halfway through she discovered Social Sciences and immediately became a late convert.
During her last year at uni, Sheila did a short course in criminology. At the end of the course, the Professor teaching it said that if the class was interested in a visit to see Barlinnie Prison, he would set it up. At that time Barlinnie was a very notorious prison in Glasgow housing many infamous career criminals, including the gangland murderer, James Boyle, who subsequently held a “dirty protest” there, became a renowned artist and wrote a book all about it (described on Wiki as: Jimmy Boyle (born 1944) is a Scottish sculptor, novelist and convicted murderer)! Sheila organised for about a dozen students to visit the prison with the Professor. During the trip the Professor mentioned that he was looking for someone to do some research work for him during the summer, if anyone was interested – and Sheila perked up her ears! She and Stewart were getting married that summer, as soon as they had graduated. Stewart intended to further his career by doing post-graduate research at Glasgow University and the summer job would be within walking distance of the flat they had already lined up in which to start married life.
Even before she had graduated, Sheila had contacted the Professor, demonstrated her interest in having a summer job and started work as his research assistant.
This was one of the eras in which Glasgow gangs flourished. The gangs were very territorial, with members usually in their teens, rather than the more mature men who had been in the renowned gangs of Glasgow in the nineteen twenties and thirties. And it was before drugs became a big part of gang culture. In some ways, for non-gang members, Glasgow was still a relatively safe area to move about in. But if a gang member ventured into the territory of a rival gang, then they were lucky to escape with anything less than a ‘good kicking’ (can kicking somebody ever be good?) or a slash or two, usually fairly superficial and treated by gang members as a badge of honour. They also decorated any bare wall with gang slogans, pretty crude and not anything like the art form of Banksy. This was the professor’s area of interest.
The downside was that all the records of gangs, old and new, were held in the cells of the Central Police Station in the middle of Glasgow. And this is how Sheila landed with a summer in Jail, actually locked in one of the cells with the records she had requested for that day. She told me that she often had to shout for quite some time to be let out for loo and meal breaks. However, it did have its upside: she so impressed the Professor, that he employed her for the next two years and acknowledged her hard work in the credits of the book she helped him with.
If you are still reading this, you might well wonder what this has to do with Sheila’s family trip to Kilimanjaro. Well, I do remember my brief from Sheila – ‘write about anything as long as it has something to do with the trip’. I think the ‘Jail Incident’ shows early manifestations of what made Sheila rise to the 3G Kili Climb challenge and what she will need in buckets to get to the top. She had the imagination to defy convention and set her own target; having done that she showed great forbearance when the situation turned out to be less idyllic than she had bargained for. With all of these characteristics, can Sheila fail to make the summit?