Today I am delighted to be featuring David F Ross' Welcome to the Heady Heights, on the opening day of its blog tour. To celebrate, I have an extract to share with you. Before we get to that, here's a little about the book:
It’s the year punk rock was born, Concorde entered
commercial service and a tiny Romanian gymnast changed the sport forever...
Archie Blunt is a man with big ideas. He just needs a break
for them to be realised. In a bizarre brush with the lightentertainment
business, Archie unwittingly saves the life of the UK’s top showbiz star, Hank
‘Heady’ Hendricks, and immediately seizes the opportunity to aim for the big
time. With dreams of becoming a musical impresario, he creates a new singing
group called The High Five with five unruly working-class kids from Glasgow’s
East End. The plan? Make it to the final of Heady’s Saturday night talent show,
where fame and fortune awaits…
But there’s a complication. Archie’s made a fairly major
misstep in his pursuit of fame and fortune, and now a trail of irate Glaswegian
bookies, corrupt politicians and a determined Scottish WPC are all on his tail…
A hilarious, poignant nod to the elusiveness of stardom, in
an age when ‘making it’ was ‘having it all’, Welcome to the Heady Heights is
also a dark, laugh-out-loud comedy,a poignant tribute to a bygone age and a delicious drama about
desperate men, connected by secrets and lies, by accidents of time and, most of
all, the city they live in.
Extract
1
Nine months earlier…
He waited and waited and waited, becoming increasingly
agitated. It was early morning and bitterly cold; the hurricane had now done
its worst according to Michael Fish, but Glasgow didn’t seem to be listening.
The storm-force winds were still battering the boarded-up shopfronts and
rattling the few panes of glass left in the three tenement floors above them.
And the bus was late. And so was Chib Charnley.
He’d observed Chib
hirpling along the street. The wind was behind him, but he still moved like a
man of twice his age.
‘Where the fuck’ve you been? Jesus, Chib!’
‘Ah’m sorry, boss,’ said Chib. ‘It’s my hip.
Man, it’s absolutely heavin’.’
‘Aye, well.’ Wullie Dunne sighed. ‘Get it
looked at properly then.’
Wullie found it
hard to lambast Chib Charnley. He’d taken a bullet for his boss, after all, and
although that had been more than a decade ago, Wullie would always look after
his minder. It was the least he could do. He wasn’t going to be like other
bosses, who went through hired muscle like Richard Nixon went through tape
recorders.
‘Finally!’ sighed Wullie as the bus pulled up
for them. It wasn’t a recognised stop, but the driver and conductor were both
on a modest cut for making the weekly Thursday morning exception.
Things were going
through a rough cycle. Everybody was having to rein in the expenditure, which
was why Wullie Dunne had been using the top deck of the number 61 bus for
‘business meetings’ every Thursday morning for almost a year. It was the route
used by Tollcross residents to get home on giro day. Since he had collections
to make from most of them, it seemed like common sense to combine the two –
saving on the escalating cost of the petrol. The Arab oil embargo might’ve
taken its time in getting here, but it was now well and truly hitting the
streets and petrol stations of Shettleston.
‘Sorry, Mister Dunne,’ said Archie Blunt. He
held out a hand to assist Wullie onto the bus’s back platform, even though Chib
was the one who needed help. ‘Duke Street was blocked off. A Milanda bread van
was on its side. The wind blew it over. The stuff was everywhere, like. Christ,
ah’ve never seen so many seagulls! An’ they’re aw fightin’ with the dossers for
the scraps. Mental, so it was! Just like that Hitchcock movie.’
‘Fuck sake, Ah’m frozen stiff, here! Let us on
an’ gie it a rest with the film reviews, eh? Didnae expect Barry Norman tae be
takin’ the fares this mornin’.’
Amid rasping
splutters and clouds of diesel fumes, the aging Corporation bus pulled way,
chugging through the sideways rain like a glistening Irish tricolour. Archie
held onto his pole, leaned out, peaked cap at a suitably jaunty angle, and
looked ahead. A man he recognised gesticulated at him. It was Bobby Souness. Archie’s
finger was poised over the bell. The bells were rarely used; most drivers
preferred to control all movement by use of their mirrors. Regular crews often
employed coded, choreographed clouts on the ceiling of the driver’s cab. But
Archie’s new driver was still learning the ropes. Archie had the power – the
final say-so on whether or not the bus should make any unscheduled halts. The
bell remained silent. At that moment the bus swerved in closer to the kerb and
ploughed through a large puddle. A comedy spray enveloped Bobby Souness. He
hadn’t been sharp enough to jump back. The young driver hadn’t intended this
outcome, he was simply pulling in to let an ambulance pass, but Archie
applauded him anyway.
‘Ya fucken walloper, ye!’ yelled Bobby
Souness, shivering. Freezing water dripped from his bearded chin, down his neck
and inside his shirt. He heard the triple ring of the bell, and the bus slowed
again. Archie Blunt glared out from the open rear access.
Bobby Souness had
never quite understood why Archie Blunt hated him. As he ran towards the
still-moving bus, he couldn’t recall any slight, deliberate or accidental.
Bobby was a Rangers supporter, admittedly, but not one of the staunch King
Billy 1690 brigade. And Archie Blunt had never come across as overtly fervent
in his following of the Celtic. It was a total mystery. Out of breath and still
dripping wet, he leaped onto the rear platform as the number 61 slowly picked
up speed.
‘Cunt.’ Bobby
Souness wheezed at Archie. He looked around the lower deck, briefly considering
whether he’d get away with nutting the bastard. Too many witnesses.
‘Prick,’ hissed
Archie as Bobby struggled for breath in front of him.
A grudged handful
of copper was passed over, an equally grudged full adult single ripped from
Archie’s heavy ticket punch machine, and Bobby Souness headed for the top deck.
He sat down without looking up. He checked his remaining match. It was still
viable despite the soaking. It sparked into life and was deployed into lighting
a moist Embassy Regal.
‘They things’ll
kill ye.’
Bobby Souness looked up sharply, his heart
sinking to the bottom of a bowel of digested porridge. The voice belonged to
Wullie Dunne, the businessman bookie. Bobby Souness owed the man known as The
Wigwam – for loans and bets. Two hundred pounds and counting. In his current
predicament, it might as well have been two million. He wasn’t alone in
featuring in The Wigwam’s book of debtors; virtually every East End male Bobby
knew of had a similarly threatened income.
‘Of aw the buses, eh Bobby? Almost didnae
recognise ye there, son!’ The Wigwam was at the other end of the bus, in the
front seats the smaller kids normally dragged their stumbling parents to so
that they could pretend they were driving.
‘Ah was hopin’ for
a wee word in yer shell-like.’ Wullie nodded sideways in the direction of Chib
Charnley, his half man, half granite rockface enforcer.
Chib began to move
towards Bobby. And with Archie inadvertently blocking the stairwell, Bobby
Souness was forced to think fast. Survival instincts kicked in. His eyes darted
about. A dreep out the back of a moving bus on a busy Tollcross Road had its
obvious risks but he’d take them over the ones inside. In one movement he
vaulted over two slashed seats like an Olympic hurdler and hit the release
lever on the rear emergency window. He landed on the road like Olga Korbut. He
still had it: the instinct for self-preservation that had saved him many times
as a younger man. Flat feet planted, Bobby rolled with the forward momentum
through a rippling stream of shallow dirty water. His bunnet stayed on his
head, the fag remained lit and smoking and, as he moved into an upright
position, he ran. Sodden but still with the use of his legs.
‘Fuck sake,’ said Chib. ‘That was a bit ae an
over-reaction, eh?’
‘Never mind, Chib,’ said Wullie, from the
stationary bus. ‘We’ll get tae him later. Bigger fish tae fry th’day!’
Archie’s novice driver shouted nervously for
him to leave it, but Archie couldn’t hear. He gave chase. Another fucking bum
diving out the alarmed back window of his bus. That made it four in a month,
and Archie got a disciplinary every time it happened. Had it been anyone other
than that waster Souness, he might’ve left it. Well, not this fucking time!
My Thoughts
The gloriously hot summer of 1976 holds a particular place in my heart, so I am always drawn to books which are set in the 1970s. To find one which takes place in July 1976 is a bonus for me. Of course, any similarity between life as I remember it and the gritty writing of Welcome to the Heady Heights stops right there! Reading this felt a little like going into a foreign country and at times, I needed a translator for some of the Glaswegian vernacular. The writing drips with the sights and sounds of the period, not to mention the attitudes and that was the aspect which I was most struck by.
There is a dark humour to be got from Archie's exploits and his observations of the hierarchy of society in the city. At times, it feels like a stark message. Poor Archie, always in the right place, but always at the wrong time. Described as ' an unrequited optimist' he seems to sum up the spirit of the city- he can't be kept down for long. The character who I was drawn to turned out to be WPC Barbara Sherman. The picture painted of the attitudes of the police towards women police officers is unbelievably crass. Looked on as an inconvenient aspect of policing, to be largely ignored, it seems shocking that most of the women accepted the not so hidden sexism after the Sex Discrimination Act came into force. Not Barbara however- she sees herself for the outsider she is and sets about her work with a stoic determination.
In short: Shot through with a playlist of the music of the times, a gritty look at Glasgow in the 70's.
About the Author
David F. Ross was born in Glasgow in 1964 and has lived in
Kilmarnock for over thirty years. He is a graduate of the Mackintosh School of
Architecture at Glasgow School of Art, an architect by day, and a hilarious
social media commentator, author and enabler by night. His most prized
possession is a signed Joe Strummer LP. Since the publication of his debut
novel The Last Days of Disco, he’s become something of a media celebrity in
Scotland, with a signed copy of his book
going for £500 at auction, and the German edition has not left the bestseller
list since it was published.
Thanks to David F. Ross and Karen Sullivan and Anne Cater of Orenda Books for a copy of the book and a place on the tour.
Check out the rest of the tour!
Thanks so much for this Pam xx
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