LONELINESS, EMOTIONAL AND PHYSICAL NEGLECT, AND SEXUAL ABUSE
by Alison Young   

It’s not Janey Godley’s life story that’s almost beyond belief, it’s that she’s still alive and kicking, and not drugging and drinking. Comedian, playwright and now author of her autobiography, Handstands in the Dark is the story of growing up in Glasgow under circumstances that should have turned her into one of the city’s many drink or drug casualties - some of which were family - whom she tells of acquainting in her time as a pub landlady in the East End.

The themes are as dark and grim as the landings of the tenement in which she was raised in Shettleston in the Sixties. Despite the poverty, those tenements are not necessarily always places of despair and heedlessness; much depends on “the mettle of your mammy.” Janey’s mother, troubled and inadequate, can’t provide the care and protection that her child needs, especially one in such an environment; her father has a drink problem.

So this is no story of an in-face-of-all-the-odds, happy and close knit family with jeely pieces descending from heaven into the back court. Janey's story is one of loneliness, emotional and physical neglect, and sexual abuse, this latter at the hand of her uncle Percy. Eventually telling her mother of her uncle's crime, she is scolded to never speak of it again, lest she might break-up the family... it's no small wonder that their feral family dog seems more trustworthy than the adults in her world.

In the Seventies, smart but ashamed of her shoes, she walks out of  full-time education and into a job at an East End gangster’s discotheque, where she meets and marries one of his six sons, Sean. While Sean attempts to distance himself from his family’s criminality and they begin running a pub in the Calton, he isn’t without his own problems, and Janey regularly finds herself running away from his violent temper. Janey’s mother is found dead in the Clyde; her brother becomes a heroin addict and is diagnosed with HIV. By now Sean and Janey have a daughter, the main tie that binds them.

Since all this embitterment and tragedy, Godley has left all the degradation and filth of her past in an attempt to start over. Part of Janey’s new life has been to bring about the prosecution of her abuser, David Percy, and to see him imprisoned for his crimes. She has also kick-started a career as a stand-up comedian, and has been writing plays for schools about the dangers of heroin addiction. A very important part of her healing has been to waive the right to anonymity in Percy’s prosecution, to have written this book, and to refuse to be shamed by the actions of others. Most of all, she’s put her heart into bringing up her daughter with the love and security that she herself never had.

Janey was the kid that other mothers would warn their own young ones - those “with the clean socks and pants” - against associating with, in case they got nits. This was no euphemism; in the tenements it was accepted shorthand for a home that was out of bounds. Her fireside memories are of picking the lice out of her hair and throwing them on the fire to hear them crackle and pop. Her mother laughed, her father turned his head away.

Written with less gloss-it-over Glasgow patter than might be expected, and with an astonishing generosity towards so many, this is a disturbing, moving and authentic book, which can demand to be read in one sitting. Janey Godley’s story is of someone who didn’t turn her head away; someone who tried to laugh more than cry; the story of someone who still misses her mammy.