Big John Scooby McCabe didn’t die this year but three years ago to this day, so the in-house end of the year obituary for those who died during it looks somewhat out of place.
Yet I am going to write a tribute to this big man for the following reason. He was a great friend and to my regret it was not until the start of this year that I found out he had left us, such is the minimal contact I retain with Belfast. I was gutted to learn during the course of a phone conversation with a close friend from the city that his life was over. I immediately contacted his wife through a Sinn Fein contact in Belfast and she sent me the last remaining memory card which I put upstairs for safe keeping and now can’t get my hands on. But it is safe. Scooby would have laughed. Whenever he lent me a book I told him I would keep it safe and then it would take ages for me to find it again for him.
He loved to read and he had a serious interest in the history of the IRA. Although a former republican prisoner - I had never actually met him in the jail - he never bragged about it. Yet he had this voracious appetite for reading about republicanism. One of the prized books I have here is one he gave me (not one I managed to lose while on loan from him) is an early oral and pictorial history of the Provisional IRA: Patriot Graves: Resistance in Ireland by P. Michael O’Sullivan. It is even more meaningful now that Scooby is no longer with us.
When I met him for the first time it was to do the door in one of West Belfast’s drinking clubs. He was a great man for anyone to have at their back. I found that 18 years ago while being stabbed in the back by a local kid, who was probably more foolish than thuggish. Scooby not working that night but in for a drink realised myself and another former blanket man were having difficulty quelling a disturbance that would normally have been easily managed. He came bursting through the door swinging a snooker cue and saved the day, and spared us a fate I can only guess at.
Another occasion, less than a year later, saw me and him brawling with and battering each other on a bus at Stranraer docks returning from a Celtic match in Glasgow. The rest of the evening we spent drinking on the boat and then in the club we worked in, none the worse for wear. That was John, he would fight with you or fight for you and it wasn’t too long before I concluded that he would readily start more fights in the club than he stopped, once causing a near riot because a teenage girl came into the club in a Ranger top. Now John would take a lot but that was beyond his tolerance level. He cursed me when we banned him for life but there was no way that was going to be stay in place for long.
The big love in his life outside of family was Celtic. I was never a fan but ended up traipsing to more matches with him than I care to remember whereas he hadn’t the slightest interest in going to a Liverpool one with me. I once suggested to him we get tickets for a Celtic match at Ibrox and he recoiled from me as if I had told him I had a contagious disease. He wouldn’t hear tell of it, promising never to set foot in the home of the Hun. To me it hardly mattered, Scotch in Rangers pubs would be just as good as it was in Celtic ones. Not for John. That was against his Celtic religion.
Not that he had anything against the booze: far from it. We loved the drinking sessions. On one occasion how either of us were allowed into the match after a boozing bout that left us legless, still puzzles me. Even I knew I was not upright as I glanced across at Scooby, as we advanced on the turnstiles, who seemed to be all over the place. We could neither walk straight nor speak coherently. Still, we got in. I did however miss the first goal having conked out in my seat.
John didn’t suffer fools gladly. Somebody was messing him about once, so down the road the pair of us headed in the early hours in Johns’ car. He got out and gave the nuisance’s vehicle a new spray of unsolicited paint, stopping mid stream to have a look and a laugh. For John there was no point waiting on the wheels of justice coming around if somebody did him a bad turn. His own wheels took him to his own court from where he administered his own quick justice. And when he did settle scores with his fists he was never vicious with them. He did what he had to do and no more.
Big Scooby, who even in his memory card left us with those words ‘fuck Rangers’, left me many memories. Not a day goes past that I would not think of him, usually when something is raised about Celtic. A better friend it was hard to find. Reliable to a fault, whether getting me to airports on time even when I slept in drunk, or being there for me returning, at my back in a tough situation, or at my front shielding me from any perceived threat. Whatever it was, Scooby was the man.
Mackers,
ReplyDeleteHow poignant to remember him at this time of the year.
I don't think we ever realise what we have in a friend until we lose them.
Those special people who stay in your corner and remain with you no matter what!!
I know you won't entirely agree with the whole sentiment but on the is New Years Eve, Thank God for friends absent and present.
Have a good one!!