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Date: 17th November 2024
Mr. McTominay with his head, heart and hands…
Helensburgh, 25 miles north-west of Glasgow, facing out towards the sea with the Gairloch to one side and the Hill House behind him, Mr McTominay looks out with fish and chips in one hand and ice cream in the other.
He’s not often back here given that it is not really his home but his father’s, but he likes to come back now and again in order to remind himself where his roots were, where he came from and his father’s side.
It’s not like some bizarre episode of Who Do You Think You Are?
But Mr McTominay, born in England, qualifying to be a Scot through his da, is back home looking round to see if the place that in his father’s head and in his father’s heart is a place that he wants to be. Mr. McTominay with his head, heart and hands wants to belong…
Placing down the fish and chips and finishing off the ice cream because he didn’t want a deep-fried Mars bar, Mr McTominay turns round in order to get back into the town. He is here, this time to see if there’s anybody there who can remember him or his da.
Picture the scene…
It is a cold November Saturday morning.
Mr McTominay has arrived in Helensburgh by train.
Walking out of Helensburgh Central Station, he made a beeline towards the pier, which he knew is surrounded by places where he could indulge in the delicacies that he’d been told many a time by his faither’s knee, tales of wonderful ice cream, fish and chips.
Mr McTominay had recently moved from Manchester and Lancashire out to Italy and coming back into the United Kingdom was something he did as regularly as he possibly could, often finding himself running about in Glasgow chasing ever-decreasing circles in an attempt to embellish a career that had already given him, many prizes.
But seeking the opportunity to be back in a town that his father called home, where he was told that Helensburgh people absolutely adored his father for the things he did for the town was a new odyssey.
As the sea air lashed against his face, and he remembered the healthy lifestyle that he had undertaken in, Italy, he put down the fish and chips, hardly touched because the amount of grease in them was something that he felt his arteries were beginning to give him emergency room signals. But the gelato, the ice cream, given it was an Italian delicacy brought from those very shores out to Scotland a century ago, connected and he scoffed the lot.
Then off, he left the pier and went off to the Scottish Submarine Centre to see if there was anything in there that would be marked as being his father’s.
He got to the front desk and introduced himself as Mr. McTominay, the son of the famous Mr. McTominay, who used to live in Helensburgh.
People were perplexed, looked at him up and down, gave him his ticket and nodded sagely saying, “Oh aye, did he aye?”
Quite clearly the McTominay name was not being recognised there, so he spent a 10/15 minute tour round what was, then decided to try somewhere else. Clearly Mr. McTominay with his head walked, heart saddened and his hands seeking other things…
Thinking that perhaps his father perhaps was as famous as Charles Rennie MacIntosh, he went to the Hill House in order to see if the people there would recognise the name.
On the way in, he smiled sweetly at the lady behind the desk and asked for a ticket to go and see the house. Having recently been refurbished and reopened, the girl behind the desk made a number of important health and safety points to Mr. McTominay, prior to being interrupted by a very eager man wanting to hear about his father. After listening intently to what he was saying, the lady with a quizzical look in her face put a gentle hand upon his arm and said, “son, I don’t know who you’re talking about, but I’m quite sure he sounds really important to you. If there are issues that you want to be dealing with, I know somebody who can help you.”
McTominay looked her up and down and thought, do I want to go in now? Do I want to go and have a look round here? Do I want to go for it?
He then realised that perhaps not, nodded at her kindness with his head, felt his heart heavy and made his hands wave in defeat as he turned and left.
Taking the walk back into the town, the long walk down towards the shorefront, he decided to just simply leave.
Calling an end to his quest and also his passion for finding out just exactly what he meant and his family meant to those around him, he found himself back at the railway station.
He noticed a man standing there on the platform.
Recognising that the man was close to age with his father, Mr. McTominay approached him gingerly, this time not wanting to boast about the great things that his father claimed he did in the town, but just wanted to find out if there was at least somebody who he’d remember who his father was.
He struck up conversation with the gentleman, hoping that this was going to be the point at which your man realised that his father was a big deal.
When he told the man his name, the man looked at him, this time quizzically, in a different way. Instead of being suspicious, he looked as though there was some memory at the back of his mind that he was trying to grab, but not coming to the forefront of his mind.
He eventually said, “McTominay? Unusual name that. I knew a McTominay when I was at the school. He was a young lad, left, went down south somewhere at the end of his time here.
Mr. McTominay smiled, sat back and said, “aye, that’s my father.”
Two hours later, with a number of trains already having been passed and listening intently to the gentleman he had found at the railway station, waxed lyrical about the things that his father had done in the school and outside in the community with all his mates, Mr. McTominay realised that it may not be a smaller world, but sometimes the significance you have on the people around you is more important than the big things that you are going to achieve. Perhaps Mr. McTominay should not be in the shadow of anybody and should have what he is doing in his own head and his own heart to become the most iconic person within the work that he did, so that people absolutely adore him for the things that he does, rather than chasing past glories.
And at the end of his conversation Mr McTominay got on the train to get back into Glasgow, with his head held high, his heart soaring and handily placed for his next challenge – some Croats to conquer…
Whilst the author asserts his right to this as an original piece of work, there is no evidence that Scott McTominay has ever been to the submarine centre in Helensburgh, unless you know differently, so this is clearly a piece of fiction.
The fact is that Scott McTominay has moved to an iconic club where Diego Maradona was the icon. It is something he referred to this week when asked about the change to his playing as he prepared to meet Croatia for Scotland at Hampden. In is BBC interview it was reported that, “Scotland midfielder Scott McTominay says he has had Diego Maradona “in his head and his heart” as he has made an instant impact at Napoli… “When I walked into the stadium, it was a surreal feeling knowing he’s an icon of the game and an absolute legend of football. The people absolutely adore him for the things he did in Naples. It was obviously a big decision,” said McTominay. “There’s no denying that. But you just have to say ‘do I want to do it and go for it?’ There’s no looking back.
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