A metal claw crumbles chunks of their grandfather’s Govan school as my boys begin nursery just yards away – I wonder, would he have been glad or angry that his grandsons will grow up where he did? After he ran away to London, and had me there? Are we a snake, eating our own tale? My Uncle Eddie likes the circularity, but my father preferred straight lines. Although two of his last paintings have a frame contained within them, as if he wanted to paint outside it. Perhaps that’s what I’m doing now. I hope so.

The tearing hand is a joy my kids, as it is to me. I tried to mourn the history and sandstone, but could only see the sick-green inner walls, the rotting wooden rafters, and remember how much he had hated them, the bitter men who told him he was nothing. On my walls hang a series of colour shouts against them; and in my pocket, on a silver stick, his songs, to tell them they were wrong.