relentlessly wasting. He would fill old exercise books and scraps of paper with his cartoons and word play and verse. His nonsense sagas, “The Land of the Lunapots,” and “Tales of Hermit Fred,” were passed to Pete Shotton first, then enjoyed wide under-the-desk circulation. “He’d do all these caricatures of the masters,” Pete says. “We’d stick them on bits of cereal packets and make a stall at the school fete where people could throw darts at them. We handed in more money than any other stall—and we still had five times as much in our pockets.”
Often they would cut school altogether. They would go on the bus to see Julia, John’s mother—now living with the nervous waiter the boyscalled “Twitchy,” by whom she had two small daughters. “Julia didn’t mind if we’d sagged off school,” Pete Shotton says. “She used to wear these old woollen knickers on her head while she did the housework. She’d open the door to us with the knicker legs hanging down her back. She didn’t care. She was just like John.”
John, as he grew older, grew more and more fascinated by this pretty auburn-haired woman, so much more like an elder sister than a mother. For Julia did not echo the dire warnings given by Aunt Mimi and Quarry Bank. Julia encouraged him to live for the present, as she did, and for laughter and practical jokes. “She’d do these tricks just to make us laugh,” Pete says. “She’d put on a pair of glasses with no glass in the frames. She’d stand talking to a neighbor and suddenly stick her finger through where the lens ought to have been, and rub her eye.”
Julia thought as John and Pete did, and said the things they wanted to hear. She told them not to worry about school or homework or what their lives might have in store.
Jim McCartney was no stranger to female admiration. During the 1920s he led the Jim Mac Jazz Band, dapperly outfitted in dinner jackets, paper shirt fronts, and detachable cuffs that could be bought then for a penny per dozen. A photograph taken at the time shows a group of girls in silver shoes and stockings, their hair pertly fringed and bobbed, reclining with formal abandon on a dance floor around the Jim Mac drum set. Among them sits the bandleader with his formal wing collar and close-cropped hair, and his so familiar looking big brown eyes.
Jim was a cotton salesman working for Hannay’s of Chapel Street, Liverpool, an old established firm of cotton brokers and purveyors to the Manchester mills. His position, for a working-class boy, was a good one; he had risen to it by neatness, diligence, and a genuine flair for selling, though he lacked the ruthlessness that might have taken him higher. He had taught himself to play the piano by ear, as any young man did who wished for social grace. The Jim Mac Jazz Band performed at socials and works dances, occasionally even in cinemas. Their biggest engagement was providing incidental music for a silent Hollywood epic, The Queen of Sheba . When a chariot race began on the screen Jim Mac and the boys played “Thanks for the Buggy Ride.” During the Queen of Sheba’s death scene they played “Horsy, Keep Your Tail Up.”
Perhaps there were too many of those girls in silver shoes and stockingsaround the drum set. At all events, Jim McCartney went through his thirties as a bachelor, working at the Cotton Exchange, playing his spare-time dance music, content for his family to be the hospitable reflection of his married sisters, Millie and Jin.
At the very point where he seemed resigned to bachelorhood, and the impending war seemed to confirm it, Jim McCartney proposed marriage to Mary Mohin. She, like Jim, was of the Liverpool’s medical services, a slender and gently spoken woman employed by Liverpool Corporation as a district health visitor. Herself in her early thirties, Mary could override the faint objection that Jim did not share her membership in the Catholic Church. They were married in 1941, shortly before
Often they would cut school altogether. They would go on the bus to see Julia, John’s mother—now living with the nervous waiter the boyscalled “Twitchy,” by whom she had two small daughters. “Julia didn’t mind if we’d sagged off school,” Pete Shotton says. “She used to wear these old woollen knickers on her head while she did the housework. She’d open the door to us with the knicker legs hanging down her back. She didn’t care. She was just like John.”
John, as he grew older, grew more and more fascinated by this pretty auburn-haired woman, so much more like an elder sister than a mother. For Julia did not echo the dire warnings given by Aunt Mimi and Quarry Bank. Julia encouraged him to live for the present, as she did, and for laughter and practical jokes. “She’d do these tricks just to make us laugh,” Pete says. “She’d put on a pair of glasses with no glass in the frames. She’d stand talking to a neighbor and suddenly stick her finger through where the lens ought to have been, and rub her eye.”
Julia thought as John and Pete did, and said the things they wanted to hear. She told them not to worry about school or homework or what their lives might have in store.
Jim McCartney was no stranger to female admiration. During the 1920s he led the Jim Mac Jazz Band, dapperly outfitted in dinner jackets, paper shirt fronts, and detachable cuffs that could be bought then for a penny per dozen. A photograph taken at the time shows a group of girls in silver shoes and stockings, their hair pertly fringed and bobbed, reclining with formal abandon on a dance floor around the Jim Mac drum set. Among them sits the bandleader with his formal wing collar and close-cropped hair, and his so familiar looking big brown eyes.
Jim was a cotton salesman working for Hannay’s of Chapel Street, Liverpool, an old established firm of cotton brokers and purveyors to the Manchester mills. His position, for a working-class boy, was a good one; he had risen to it by neatness, diligence, and a genuine flair for selling, though he lacked the ruthlessness that might have taken him higher. He had taught himself to play the piano by ear, as any young man did who wished for social grace. The Jim Mac Jazz Band performed at socials and works dances, occasionally even in cinemas. Their biggest engagement was providing incidental music for a silent Hollywood epic, The Queen of Sheba . When a chariot race began on the screen Jim Mac and the boys played “Thanks for the Buggy Ride.” During the Queen of Sheba’s death scene they played “Horsy, Keep Your Tail Up.”
Perhaps there were too many of those girls in silver shoes and stockingsaround the drum set. At all events, Jim McCartney went through his thirties as a bachelor, working at the Cotton Exchange, playing his spare-time dance music, content for his family to be the hospitable reflection of his married sisters, Millie and Jin.
At the very point where he seemed resigned to bachelorhood, and the impending war seemed to confirm it, Jim McCartney proposed marriage to Mary Mohin. She, like Jim, was of the Liverpool’s medical services, a slender and gently spoken woman employed by Liverpool Corporation as a district health visitor. Herself in her early thirties, Mary could override the faint objection that Jim did not share her membership in the Catholic Church. They were married in 1941, shortly before
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