Its Colours They Are Fine

by Alan Spence, Janice Galloway (Introduction)

The 13 interlinked stories in this book depict every aspect of life in Glasgow, evoking the slums and their inhabitants, both young and old, Catholic and Protestant, hopeful and disillusioned.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Literary Fiction, Scotland

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Alan Spence (born 1947) is a Scottish writer and is Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Aberdeen, where he is also artistic director of the annual WORD Festival. He was born in Glasgow, and much of his work is set in the city.

Spence is an award-winning poet and playwright, novelist and short-story writer. His first work was the collection of short stories Its Colours They are Fine, first published in 1977. This was followed by two plays, Sailmaker in 1982 and Space Invaders in 1983. The novel The Magic Flute appeared in 1990 along with his first book of poetry, Glasgow Zen. In 1991, another of his plays, Changed Days, was published before a brief hiatus. He returned in 1996 with Stone Garden, another collection of short stories. In 2006, The Pure Land, a historical novel set in Japan, was published by Canongate Books, and is based on the life of Thomas Blake Glover who is immortalised in the story of Madame Butterfly.

Reviews

[Helga · Rating 4 out of 5]

Real, authentic, bleak

I looked up at the sky, trying to lose myself in the shifting of the clouds. I focused on the shapes, willing them to change into something I could grasp. I half-closed my eyes. I could almost see a cross.

This collection of thirteen interrelated short stories, portrays the Scottish working class, focusing mainly on the lives of ordinary people living in Glasgow.
The book is divided into three sections; its stories which are more snapshots than clear and deeply evolved storylines, revolve around the subjects of identity, beliefs and relationships.
The stories themselves are wistful and nostalgic, but the author’s use of heavy Glaswegian dialect made the dialogues very difficult to read.

[Paromjit · Rating 4 out of 5]

An absorbing set of interconnected short stories that gives us a glimpse of Glasgow in the past. It captures life in the tenements, the poverty, the drinking, memory, the sectarianism, and the divisions of the city demonstrated in the two football teams. They speak of hopes, dreams shattered, brutality, hard times and the unremitting forces of change that sweep through Glasgow, the new immigrants that bring in an understanding of a bigger and wider world beyond the confines of the city, expanding imaginations of locals. Spence writes eloquently, bringing the past back to life with his beautiful descriptions and pin sharp characters, with their accents, and of their time. The eponymous story gives us Billy, an orange man, a proddie through and through, convinced God is a Protestant, the lodge and the showing of the colours on the Orange Walk and Rally. The ingrained sectarianism is entrenched with his unwavering support of Glasgow Rangers FC.

A boy, Aleck, waits for his mother at the washhouse, returns home for Christmas decorations and a tinsel garland that never tarnishes. In some of these coming of age stories, with Aleck, friend Joe and sometime ally Shuggie, we get a picture of childhood, Sunday school, crossing ferries to Partick, finding boxes full of football team jerseys, adventures with bows and arrows and the targeting of gypsies and more. There is the anxiety of change as tenements come to be demolished. There is the 'brilliant' time had by The Govan Team and Shuggie as they engage in violence at a dance hall. My favourite stories include The Rain Dance and The Palace. In the Blue, the colour is associated with Rangers FC and for Catholic Maureen, Our Lady. It is the colour of sadness, and at the funeral of a mother, a vision is seen. This is a fine collection of stories, of a particular era, depicting Glaswegian characters and lives with candour and vibrancy. Highly recommended! Many thanks to Canongate for an ARC.

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

A set of 13 short stories, all set in the city of Glasgow, Scotland. The collection was first published in 1977. I didn’t really know anything about the author before reading the collection, but these stories turned out to be a real treat!

The collection is divided into three parts. Part 1 features five stories centred around the childhood of a boy called Aleck, with his two friends Joe and Shuggie (the latter name is a local diminutive for “Hugh”). There are no big events in these stories, no child abuse or major trauma. They feature the everyday events of a childhood, but they are so beautifully written that I was completely absorbed by them. I loved all five stories in this section, but two in particular. The boys live in Govan, a district immediately on the south side of the River Clyde which runs through Glasgow. In The Ferry, they decide to take the aforementioned transport across to Partick which lies on the opposite bank. Despite being separated only by the width of the river, the boys find Partick an unfamiliar, even slightly threatening place. In another story, Gypsy, the boys encounter children from families associated with travelling fairgrounds.

The stories don’t specify the period setting but that first section has a late 50s/early 60s feel. In the next part we have moved on a few years. The title story features Aleck’s Uncle Billy, who was briefly mentioned in the first section. The story records his participation in an Orange Walk, an annual march to celebrate the “Protestant Ascendancy” within the UK. Membership of the Orange Order is frowned upon within polite circles in Scotland, but the story illustrates (without endorsing it) how those on the lower rungs of the ladder gain a sense of status and belonging from their participation. The city’s sectarian divide features prominently throughout the collection.

The next story, Brilliant, is on a similar theme. The character of Shuggie reappears as a young man, now a gang member. I had to smile at the beginning of The Rain Dance, which opens with a description of a Glasgow hen night. I lived in Glasgow between 1979-85, and well remember my first encounter with one of these! Newly arrived from the Highlands, I was unfamiliar with the detail of the local custom!

The next story, The Palace, is one of the very best, both funny and poignant. It introduces a change of feel, with the remaining stories told from the perspectives of unnamed narrators (although in one story the narrator seems to be Aleck, now an adult). They are on all a theme of memory, with memories of places being important. They are still good although I found the theme got a bit repetitive. The stories also increasingly feature characters with an interest in eastern mysticism. These last few maybe lowered my overall rating to about a 4.5, but I enjoyed this collection enough to round up rather than down.

Song is obviously very important to the author. Songs, and song lyrics, feature frequently.

One thing I ought to highlight is that the spoken dialogue is in strong Glaswegian dialect, and might be a problem for someone who has English as a second language.

For me, a really excellent collection!

[Iain · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am biased towards this book, being a romantic love song to Glasgow, my home city where I was born, raised and still live. If anything, it over-romantisizes the nastier elements of the city - the sectarianism, the sporting and religious divide and the violence, but every place name and familiar snippet sparks a fond memory from my childhood.

[SueLucie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve not read any of Alan Spence’s poetry but I can tell from the way he has written these short stories that it would be of the first order. Some memorable images and atmosphere are central to the collection, stories loosely linked by characters and places, giving both a visual and an emotional impression of a Glasgow past and present. I have taken away from them a sense of a tight community (the first section of five and particularly the title story ‘Its Colours They Are Fine’) dispersed with the redevelopment of the riverside tenements into housing estates and tower blocks on the outer reaches of the city. I was especially moved by the poignancy of my favourite ‘The Palace’ - a middle-aged man who has lost his wife and his job, reduced to living in a room divided in half, clinging to a ‘precarious dignity’, yearning for more from life yet nostalgic for the safety and certainty of his childhood, spends an afternoon in the Botanic Garden and feels at one with the diversity to be found both in modern Glasgow and in the great big world he has never visited. Memories are key, too, to ‘Auld Lang Syne’, remembering Hogmanays past, snippets of conversations, song lyrics, childhood rhymes.

To walk along these streets is to stir so many memories.
A streetcorner. A shopfront. The texture of a stone wall. The way a girl’s hair hangs. The pattern on a dress.
Everything brings back moments, trivial in themselves, beautiful and funny and sad. Bits and pieces. Fragments in a dream.
Sometimes I feel I know everything that has ever been, and will one day remember it all. All the fragments will make one great timeless whole. Then these moments remembered, this restless déjà vu, seem part of an endless awakening, to something more.

The Scottish dialect used in dialogue here made reading the stories slow-going for me but, as I got used to it, I began to appreciate its rhythm and how it reflected the personalities of the characters.

Originally published in 1977, the images of loneliness and loss of community here remain relevant today and I am delighted that Canongate has chosen to bring out this new edition and allowed me the opportunity to read an ARC.

[Erin Cassidy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wld recommend to any Glasgow dweller

[Karen Mardahl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book years ago, and was immediately taken into the Glaswegian universe with the story "Tinsel" that begins in the local steamie - the wash-house where women did their laundry and not in electric washing machines! I picked up the book recently and re-read it, glad to visit the different people in this world of Glasgow 40 to 50 years ago. The different short stories fit perfectly into my short work commute. Sometimes it took a couple of commutes to finish the story, but the characters stayed in my mind both during and after. Hmmm. I have a really hard time finding any words to describe what I read. These are small glimpses into various stages of people's lives. There are hopes and dreams, and broken hopes and broken dreams. I found them all very moving due to some common, universal human thread throughout despite my not knowing first-hand what many of the characters had experienced. Alan Spence brought everything to life and brought it all close to me. Thank you.

[Stuart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite extraordinary read, having been born and raised in this area up to the age of twelve the stories brought back so many memories for me of situations and conversations that I heard during that period of my life

I laughed out loud a few times at the Glasgow way of saying and doing things , the observations were absolutely spot on

They say there are 3 things to avoid speaking to strangers about in Glasgow - football, religion and politics, reading these stories reminded me again that this is a great piece of advice

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic collection of short fiction from one of Glesgae’s most underrated talents. Surprisingly gentle touch considering Spence covers sectarian bigotry, illness, tragedy and death. Mentioned in Lanark.

[Charles Cox · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've had for many years a misconception - really, more like a gap in my knowledge - about how countries outside the United States respond to crossing cultures, tight borders, and the invariable necessity in tenement housing of sharing a toilet with a stranger.

Spence's "Colours" had a lot less to do with strict Scottish survivalism and more on multicultural tensions raised in Glasgow, a city with a broader spectrum of cultures than I had first thought. (I should have probably guessed, it is the third-largest city in the UK).

This isn't a world tour by any means - the primary characters are Scottish or Irish, and primary divisions are along the infamous Catholic/Protestant faultline; expect plenty of taunts and football hooligan beatings in this regard.

But slowly, as the memoirs inch forward in time, the change inevitably comes. Folks from India and South Africa plant the seeds of escape in the main character's head, hinting at a world larger than the tiny slice of Glasgow prospect housing he has inhabited since birth.

Ultimately more human than historical, the book's exaggerated accents in dialogue are addictive enough that you find yourself testing your own Scottish accent out loud at the Glasgow street kids, Rangers fans, and factory workers in the pay line, while the stories themselves, largely of growing up and pushing against the social and economic bars of the Glasgow working-class cage, remind you of what it was to get by when the world was new, big, and frightening.

[Jack Deighton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Called “A vivid portrayal of Glasgow life” in the title box on its front cover Its Colours They Are Fine is divided onto three sections – each itself made up of five, five and three connected stories respectively.

Section One illustrates the young life of Aleck, growing up in the crowded conditions of Govan before the slum clearances. Tinsel relates the boredom of a pre-Christmas trip to the Steamie and contrasts it with the fulfilment of putting up seasonal decorations. Sheaves finds Aleck at the Harvest Festival at his Sunday School, one of a crop of souls destined for Christ. The Ferry deals with the exoticism and fear of an adventure across the Clyde to Partick. Gypsy tells of the delights and otherwise of the Kelvin Hall carnival and the mutually mistrustful relationship of Govan folk with those they call Gypsies, the people of the travelling shows. Silver in the Lamplight describes life in the back courts and games such as KDRF (Kick Door Run Fast.)

Part Two is more diffuse, featuring episodes from different stages of life. Its Colours They Are Fine recounts the anticipation of and satisfaction from taking part in an Orange Walk. Brilliant repeats this for an evening out, tribalism - of a more parochial sort – being again in evidence. The Rain Dance relates the immediate precursors to and the events on the day of a “mixed” wedding (ie between a Catholic and a Protestant.) Neither family is best pleased. The Palace sees an older man, now jobless but with little prospect of new employment, make a human connection in the Kibble Palace. The chimes of an ice-cream van in Greensleeves lead a retired widow living on the twenty-second floor of a tower block to reflect on her isolation.

Section Three is the most elegiac in tone. In Changes a man returns from a New Year spent in London visiting friends pondering on the fullness and transitoriness of little lives. Auld Lang Syne describes the events of a quiet Hogmanay (for the narrator) but one who is still bound by the traditions attaching to it. All meanings ofBlue, as in the colour of Rangers shirts, and of the Virgin Mary in Art, its associations with sadness and a patch of sky caught between clouds, resonate in the narrator’s memory of the day his mother died.

Glasgow life is here to be sure; working class Glasgow life especially. Its attitudes and habits, its prejudices, the odd casual violence, but also the camaraderie, the fellow feeling. The book in total has become something of a series of snapshots of the past though. Many of the circumstances that led to the sorts of lives portrayed here are gone now - though some will remain - but still Spence has peopled his tales with recognisable characters with full inner lives and descriptions of the Glasgow urban environment to match those of the countryside of other Scottish authors. The prose is written in straightforward English but the dialogue is in an uncompromising Glaswegian.

For those of a sensitive disposition note that the word ‘darkies’ is used twice. (In Glasgow in the days Spence is writing about, though, its use was mainly descriptive and usually not meant derogatorily.)

[Don Flynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Big shout-out to the NY Times review that pointed me to this book. Published in 1977, this is a collection of short stories by a Scottish writer I'd never heard of before. They follow several Glaswegians as they lead lives close to the margins. The initial stories portray the adventures of a group of kids; later we see how the adults deal with the sometimes rough existence in the city. Spence's prose is influenced by his poetry. There are often lyrical flights and bursts of song. Two of the stories regard characters who are or have an interest in Buddhism. It's a refreshing twist and made me relate to them even more.

I'd like to seek out more of his work, perhaps a novel next time.

[Ceri · Rating 5 out of 5]

First heard this book briefly mentioned in a literature class I took - I love Scottish fiction so this really appealed to me!
I came across it in a second hand book shop in Glasgow which seemed apt - just had to buy it.
I really loved this book. It’s more short stories that are vaguely interlinked which provide a snapshot of Glasgow working class life.
It js honest, funny, brutal and although it was written in the 70’s some parts are still very relatable.
A brilliant book - would read more from the author.

[Iram · Rating 5 out of 5]

A friend kindly gifted me this book and now I want to pass it on to everyone I know.

This was written over 45 years ago but still describes so much of the Glasgow I know today; the beautiful parts and the sad, and intimidating. There was a reoccurring theme of being apart from oneself, a spectator on your own life, which intrigued me.

I enjoyed all three sections, but particularly the first section, covering the perspective of children living in Glasgow.

As a Glaswegian, the written dialect was fun to read and felt very immersive.

[Hannah Grimshaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've never read a collection of stories which depicts Glasgow so accurately. One that every Glaswegian should read - at all ages. Very interested in the sectarian dimensions of this collection and many of the stories situating themselves in relation to the Troubles in Ireland. Spence is such a talented writer - his command of both Scots and English is wonderful resulting in the stories being simultaneously poetic and raw. Loved it!

5 stars

[Judith · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a newcomer to Glasgow I really enjoyed these interlinking short stories. Gave an insight into life in Glasgow in the past.

[Alan M · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Sometimes it seems the fragments contain the whole; and every moment is eternity, every little thing is infinite. And the moment itself is its own significance, its own meaning.’

I’m generally not a big fan of short stories – I tend to find them insufficient, too lacking in depth, too, well, short. But this collection from Alan Spence, a re-issue of his debut 1977 work, is more than just a series of stories. Each can stand on its own but, as you read through the collection, characters re-appear, phrases echo, images repeat, and the first and last stories round themselves off by revisiting the same family a few years after the first story as the older Aleck remembers a moment from his past.

These stories are a testament to a city and its people, Glasgow in the 1970s and the lives of its ordinary, working-class citizens. Here are moments of childhood fun hanging about with pals, families struggling to put food on the table but living with dignity and community, of family get-togethers (a wedding, Christmas, New Year). Here is a city changing, as the old slums are torn down and its people relocated to high-rise blocks of flats. Some of the dialogue might be a struggle for some non-Scots, but you will get attuned to it. I have to admit to some bias – in that my mother’s family is from Glasgow and it remains one of my favourite cities. And this collection of stories, although certainly rooted in the 1970s with its references and details, still has plenty to say – in its focus on moments in our lives - about now, about how we live, and of how we live with others. They are about ‘all the beautiful sadness of our little lives, the fullness and the transitoriness of it all’. A wonderful, honest and touching collection that deserves to be read or re-read.