Andy Meikle: 1946 – 2007
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Sorry for the changes over the past couple of days, but this is where you will find me from now on.
Some bits of news to catch up on –
I received an email from Dee Rimbaud whose pastel drawing inspired my flash fiction piece called Spawning. It turns out the drawing was an actual commissioned illustration for a short story which appeared in a Scotland On Sunday supplement, many years ago.
I also received an email from Insidious Reflections, a magazine I submitted a short story to back in March 2006. They were returning it because the magazine has gone into hiatus and were most apologetic about holding onto it for so long. I actually considered it rejected after not hearing from them for so long. Shame they had to close like this.
The aches and pains that have dogged me these past few days are lifting, though my head feels like it is stuffed with mince, my eyeballs don’t fit and the base of my back hurts. I’m on the mending road, which is good to know, but I called in to work to say I wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. There was something that I had to do today.
I boarded the Glasgow train at Waverly at 12:45 clad in black tie, trousers, shoes and white shirt, then made my way out to Partick in North Glasgow, for the funeral of my old pal, Andrew Meikle.
I arrived at Glasgow Crematorium and met some of the family before heading into the Chapel for the ceremony. Such was the turn out of his friends, I found myself standing outside peering into the proceedings, since the small building was packed to the rafters.
A bit about Andy.
ANDREW MEIKLE was born in Glasgow in 1946. He left school early and did a bit of travelling in between various jobs. He returned home and took an apprenticeship in electrical engineering with Balfour Beatty, learning skills that were to see him ending up working on North Sea platforms and subsequently for oil companies all over the world.
I first met him one Christmas holiday around 20 years ago. He was my pal’s famous practical-joking Uncle, and as we grew up we really came to appreciate his brand of humour, love of music and knack for the absurd.
Andy was a huge fan of Sinatra, Martin, and Fitzgerald, though his favourite artist was Tony Bennett. He had seen them all play live, and as we sat around the table or played snooker, he would tell us about the times when he went to see them play. He was probably as big an influence on my own introduction to that type of music as my own father was. It was Bennett’s I left My Heart in San Francisco that played at the end of the ceremony, thought it was Andy’s own version that rung in my mind as I left the Chapel. He used to sing; “I left my heart, in Drumchapel.†(Non-Glaswegian readers – Drumchapel is a reservation on the outskirts of Glasgow).
He was a great source of inspiration for kidding around as well. He was famous for turning up on the doorstep with all kinds of things, and during the eulogy a famous incident was recalled. He was having dinner over at his sister, Eva’s house (my pal’s Mum). She had forgotten to buy potatoes and was worrying about what to do as the shops were all closed. Andy said he was going to take the dog out for a quick walk and when he returned he had a plastic bag full of fresh potatoes. Nobody asked where he got them from, but a few weeks later when the local farmer called to say he was going to shoot the dog if he caught it digging up his crop again, we all knew.
He was famous for trying to nick stupid things from pubs. There was the time in a posh Glasgow restaurant when after an afternoon on the sauce with Eva and her husband Benny, he got thrown out for trying to sneak out with a five foot tall Yukka plant. Only at Christmas there, he got caught trying to walk out the door with a lamp from the local British Legion. He got away with it once before, but not this time. We should have realised he was loosing his touch.
Andy liked a good drink and he loved to recall loads of stories from the “good old days†with us. He talked about all the pranks he would get up to; dancing in the Plaza Ballroom with a fishing line attached to his ankle, dragging around a fake turd as he moved; crawling into toilets with loo roll wrapped around him panting and begging like the Andrex Dog.
One famous Christmas night I was up at the house drinking with them all, and after everyone else had gone to bed me and Andy stayed up talking and drinking whisky. It was at those times you really got a sense of the love he had for his family – he never married himself – and for the pain that he lived through.
I remember vividly when he told me about his memories of the the Piper Alpha Oil Rig disaster of July 1988. 167 of the 226 men on board burnt to death, and five of them were Andy’s best mates.
It’s with regret that I hadn’t seen Andy for a couple of years. Strange to think that he came to my mind only four days before he died when I found myself in a Glasgow watering hole I used to see him in often. But Partick was where he was born and lived and he loved it there.
A spinal injury forced him into early retirement and he would spend a lot of time with his mates down in the pub, talking about everything and anything. It was in the pub last Wednesday that his time was called, a sudden and unexpected aneurism bringing an end to the life of the man that even I referred to as Uncle Andy.
A lot of the stuff I’ve just recalled only came back to me as I was standing listening to the eulogy being given. It’s true to say he was a character; flawed but with a huge appetite for living, family and friends.
He broke the two sides of the Old Firm down, being a Rangers man in an Italian Catholic family after his sister wed. When he laughed everyone else laughed, joining in with his famous wheeze, bouncing gut and glistening moustache.
That night I stayed up talking with him, Eva got up the next morning to make breakfast at 8am and we were still sitting there talking and laughing. Benny was the least pleased – it was his whisky! But it was that night more than all the others that I will remember most. That was the night I really got to know the workings of his mind, how he saw the world and how he saw his place in it.
He was a simple, working class bloke. He knew what he liked and he could tell a cracking story over a good dram. As you read this you might think, “he sounds like half the guys you expect to find in a pub in Partick“, but Andy was different. The turnout of all his pals testament to that.
Andy was 60 years old when he died, too young in my books for a man of that calibre. My only regret is not having seen him much over the past couple of years, but standing in the chapel today brought back the feelings of the fun that can had got from life no matter what it throws at you. It felt like he was there, and I had a large whisky in his honour at the reception in the Sutherlands Hotel.
It wasn’t until I took off my tie and put on a Tony Bennett CD when I got home, that I shed a small tear at the injustice of death, but the beauty of life.
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February 12th, 2007 at 9:12 am
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