Free The Real James Herriot by Jim Wight Page B

handful of people, everyone was under the impression that he had written nothing about those days apart from the section in the introduction to
James Herriot’s Dog Stories.
This is far from the truth.
    In the early 1960s, when he first began writing in earnest, he wrote a series of stories, some of which were based on his experiences at Glasgow Veterinary College and which he pieced together into a novel. The abandoned typescript, which lay forgotten for many years, has been very valuable in nudging my memories of the veterinary college experiences that he so often recounted to us. In this novel, which was written in the third person, he called himself ‘James Walsh’.
    After only three weeks at the veterinary college Walsh knew his life had changed. He had thought that learning to be a vet would be a kind of extension to his schooldays with the same values holding good and the same scholastic atmosphere. True, it would be rather a slummy extension because his first sight of the college had been a shock: a low, seedy building covered half heartedly in peeling, yellowish paint crouching apologetically amongst grime blackened, decaying apartment houses. In Victorian times the district had been the residential quarter of the prosperous city merchants and many of the houses had imposing frontages and pillared entrances but now, it was a forgotten backwater, the haunt of broken down actors, purveyors of dubious trades and pale, stooping women.
    It was rumoured that the college had once been the stables for the horseswhich drew the first tram cars and there was no doubt that the outside appearance of the place lent weight to the theory. A single arch led into the yard around which the classrooms and laboratories were grouped, rather like a lot of converted stables and it was under this arch that Walsh first met his fellow students. His first impression was that they did not look like students at all, at least he couldn’t see any fresh faced young men with blazers and bright scarves around their necks. Later, he found that many of them were countrymen, farmers’ sons, some from the valleys of Forth and Clyde and a large sprinkling from the Northern Highlands and it probably explained the tendency towards dun coloured hairy tweeds and big, solid boots. Two turbaned Sikhs provided an almost violent contrast and the first year intake was completed by a solitary, frightened looking little girl.
    There were no frills. No cool cloisters to pace in, no echoing, picture-lined corridors, no lofty, panelled dining hall. There was a common room with a few rickety chairs and a battered grand piano which was mainly used as a card table and a hatch in the corner which served tea, meat pies and the heaviest apple tarts in Scotland. This was the social nerve centre of the whole building and all functions were held there.
    But still, Walsh gradually became aware of a pulsing life, warmer and more vivid than anything he had known before. The dilapidated little college was an unlikely stage for the host of colourful characters who thronged it but they were there all the same: rich, vital, outrageous and beguiling.
    The college was indeed full of fascinating and often unruly characters. In 1949, it became affiliated to Glasgow University, but in Alf’s day it was not answerable to such a high authority – a fact displayed more than adequately by its high-spirited students. He appeared surprised at the character of his fellow students. A few weeks after he began his veterinary education, he went to the college ‘smoker’ – a kind of introductory welcome for the new boys – and wrote about it in his diary. ‘The boxing was a new experience and very interesting. The lightweights were especially natty. I was a bit amazed at the character of the various songs and anecdotes which were rendered on the platform. There was a good violinist doing his stuff. They are a queer crowd here, all types and kinds, but decent enough.’
    Up until this time,