A Political Story of Sorts

Caledonian University, in those days was called Glasgow College of Technology. It was then, as it is now, the city of Glasgow’s third most important institute of Higher Education and it would be the fourth place we would try to go for a jig and a late drink after hiding ourselves in the toilets of Glasgow University’s ‘Men’s Union’ only to be thrown out when we tried to enter the disco through the back stair, queuing up unsuccessfully with our false University diaries at the ‘Queen Margaret Union’ and, finally, standing in the rain for about an hour before being refused entry to Strathclyde University Student’s Union.
So we would all saunter up to the Tech; there would be myself and Bobby with our beads and hair and Douglas and the two Johns with their short back and sides. Now that one of the John’s had actually graduated from being a sort of animal to a sort of political animal, didn’t actually worry me. At the end of the day, we were all boys and boys will be boys and all that we really wanted was a few beers, a jig and maybe a lumber and I wouldn’t even give a thought to the fact that the disco was being run by the International Marxist Group, a mob whose antics would have earned admiration from Ernst Rohm’s SA.
Anyway there we were dancing; Douglas, Bobby, the sensible John and me and there we were just about to get our lumber when all of a sudden there was a crazy commotion and a shrill shriek of, “kill the bastard” and there was our mad pal, the not so sensible John giving the “Deutsche Gruss” and well boys might only be boys but these IMG lads were deadly serious. Our lumber was interrupted when the not so sensible John, managed to skip across the dance floor, tap us one by one on the shoulder and inform us all that, who isn’t with him, is against him and he did have a great plan, which involved a sort of three hundred Spartan, a Romulus and Remus scenario, a plan where the five of us would get to an exit door in a corridor which only ten or so of them could enter at one time, fight them off and one by one make a run for it. We said good night to the girls.