Around 1975/6 I was building a house in Bridge of Weir in Renfrewshire, a few miles west of Glasgow. To generate money to finance this project I decided to drive a Glasgow taxi for a couple of years as I was told that it was a very well paid occupation at that time if you worked hard.
I sat the topographical test (known among London cabbies as ‘the Knowledge’) and to my amazement I passed it first time. Driving a Glasgow ‘hack’ was both challenging and exhilarating. From picking up drunks in the Gallowgate and taking them to Easterhouse, then taking a family to the airport, there was never a dull moment.
By Tom Johnstone
I drove the taxi night-shift from 6pm to 2am usually, but later at the weekends. During the day I returned to my building work.
To complicate matters, I was a member of the Rolls Royce Pipe Band which had evolved from an amalgamation with the Clan MacRae Society. The Pipe Major was Jim Henderson who was very experienced and a great character, but he left suddenly for family reasons and I was chosen to take over. This was the last thing I needed whilst trying to build a house!
(To help with the brickwork and blockwork I brought in the late great Eddie McLellan, bandsman and piping tutor extraordinaire, who was an experienced slater/plasterer and brickie. He did a fantastic job.)
Whilst driving the ‘two tons of black scrap’ as the hackney carriages were affectionately known around Glasgow, I met another taxi driver who was a piper and we used to meet up in the early hours of the morning in the Universal Garage in Alexandra Parade, not far from the city centre, and have a tune or two on the practice chanter.
This other driver was from Skye and his name was Bob McSween. After a few months we got to know each other pretty well. One night when we met for a tune he told me that he had been approached by another cabbie who had asked him, ‘how much is a set of pipes worth?’
He was intrigued and said he would need to see them before he could suggest a value. The guy didn’t mention where he got them.
Round about this time my grandmother had a home-help who came in once a week. The carer was the mother of some pipers I knew – John and Finlay MacLennan, formerly of the 214 BB and Red Hackle.
Mrs McLennan told my grandmother that one of the boys had taken a taxi home one night and had left his pipes ‘as security’ in the back of the taxi while he went up to the house to get money from his parents to pay his fare. When he came back down the taxi, pipes and all, had gone.
This story filtered back to me through my grandmother and parents and I immediately knew where this driver had got the pipes that he wanted valued. I met up with Bob McSween and we shared our indignation at what had happened. We knew the culprit and hatched a plan…
Bob was to meet the ‘how much are pipes worth’ driver and issue him with an ultimatum – ‘You will take the pipes back to this young man or you will be reported to the police. You will lose your taxi licence, your job and your livelihood unless you do so within the next 12 hours.’
Bob carried out the plan to a tee. The next thing we heard was that this driver had returned to the MacLennan flat which address he remembered, knocked on the door, handed over the pipes and said, ‘You left these in the back of the cab!’
Thankfully a happy ending but due entirely to a series of lucky coincidences. Pipers, keep your pipes with you at all times!
- Tom Johnstone is veteran of several pipe bands including Muirhead and Sons, British Caledonian Airways and Rolls Royce. During his playing career he was also a successful solo piper. He is currently a regular judge at solo piping competitions and is the Scottish Organiser for the Festival Interceltique in Lorient.
