At around this time, Alex and Alf met a young man from Yoker called Eddie Hutchinson. Eddie, like Alf and Alex, was a member of the Yoker Tennis Club where the three played for many an hour through the long summer evenings. Eddie was one who introduced a new level of ferocity into the game, venomously thrashing the little white ball around the court. Off the court, he was a different man, with an attractive, slow, easy-going manner. He just went through life at his own pace. This likeable man, whose company Alf found both enjoyable and relaxing, became one of his greatest friends; photographs taken of Alf, Alex and Eddie clearly reflect the happy times the three young men enjoyed during their years together in Glasgow.

Hiking and camping in the hills around Glasgow was another pastime shared by the three friends, often accompanied by other chums, notably Pete Shaw and Jock Davey. Alf’s love of spending days in the hills was just as strong during his college years as it had been throughout his days at school, but now he had to combine work with pleasure. He would frequently take his books with him and set off for several days at a time to do some studying alone; then, his friends, who were working in Glasgow, joined him at weekends. A great deal of his time attempting to absorb the vast amount of material necessary to pass the veterinary exams was spent under canvas.

Favourite camping sites were near Fintry, in the Campsie Fells – rolling, heath-covered hills to the east of Glasgow – and the village of Rosneath on the Firth of Clyde. This village is situated on a pretty peninsula of quiet woods and fields, overlooked by the big mountains of Argyll, and it was here that Alf was able to work in total peace. Although only a short distance from Glasgow, once he had pitched his tent in one of the green fields that ran down to the seashore, he felt himself to be in another world. In later years, a large naval base was constructed near to Rosneath and some of its charm was lost, but even now it is still a most attractive village.

Despite his ambitions to explore further afield, Alf rarely ventured north to the big mountains of Scotland. They beckoned to him from his camp sites at Fintry and Rosneath but he climbed very few mountains, despite his youthful aspirations to do so. He did, however, undertake one major expedition into the Scottish Highlands in July 1938, shortly after having sat and failed his dreaded Pathology exam at the veterinary college. With his good friends Eddie Hutchinson and Pete Shaw, he ‘conquered’ the towering mountain called the Streap, near Loch Arkaig. The effort, in boiling hot weather, ensured that this was to be the last mountain Alf would climb for many years, and was an experience he would never forget.

Alf had been very unfit on that foray into the mountains, having just spent weeks shut away, studying for his exams but, in general, during his college years, he kept himself in pretty good shape. As well as regular games of tennis, he endured his cold baths and exercises most days, and walked miles with his dog, Don.

From the age of twenty, he began to play tennis more regularly, joining the nearby Scotstounhill Tennis Club. Although tennis acted as a great antidote to his hours of study, he took the game very seriously and won a number of key matches in the West of Scotland Tennis Championships. His partner in these matches, and one with whom he practised for hours, was a young man called Colin Kesson, a fine player who taught Alf a great deal about the game. Alf could never get the better of him and would joke with his college chums that, apart from finally qualifying as a veterinary surgeon, his other great ambition was to be able to say that he had – just once – managed to beat Colin Kesson.

More relaxing games of tennis were played at the Boys’ Brigade Camps, usually at St Andrew’s or North Berwick. The Boys’ Brigade was a church organisation of which Alex Taylor and Eddie Hutchinson were also members. Together with other friends, the young men had happy, carefree days walking, bathing in the sea and playing tennis.

Another sport he began to play in his college years was football. While at Hillhead, he had played rugby but, apart from kickabouts in the park with his friends and the ‘gentry of the corner’, he had not played the game seriously, despite being, in common with thousands of other citizens of Glasgow, a fanatical follower of the game. The city pulsated with football and he did not have to venture far to see it. Very close to his home, in Dumbarton Road, was the ground of the local Junior League football team, Yoker Athletic. He was a great supporter of this team and was overjoyed when they won the Scottish Junior Cup Final in the 1932–33 season. Such was the following that this team enjoyed, more fans sang on the terraces of Yoker than on those of the neighbouring Scottish Football League side, Clydebank. Alf and Alex sang and shouted with the rest of the crowd while watching Yoker play teams with singularly Scottish names like Duntocher Hibs and Kirkintilloch Rob Roy.

It was while watching this team that the first ideas of playing the game properly entered his head. Whilst many players in the Junior League went on to play professional football in the Scottish League, Alf did not aspire to play at that level, considering that his studies were too demanding. He decided to play instead in the Juvenile League. Although not playing football to the standard of the Juniors, the Juveniles took their game very seriously, with each team carrying its own dedicated gang of supporters.

One grey February day, Alf made his debut for the Juvenile side, Yoker Fernlea. He scored the only goal of the game on a quagmire of a pitch. The games were fiercely contested, with Alf playing to such calls from the touchline as, ‘Get intae him, ye big feartie!’ or ‘Awa hame, ye mug ye!’ There are references to some of these games in his diaries: ‘Played Ettrick Thistle today – fiasco. Two of our lads sent off and one carried off. We lost 2–1 in front of a big crowd.’ ‘Played Tweedhill and drew 3–3 … got a wallop on the shin which has stiffened me up.’ Conditions could be primitive. With pitches often composed of ash and gravel, sliding tackles frequently resulted in sharp stones being driven deep into the wounds of battle.

The games were watched from the touchline by the ‘support’. This collection of largely unemployed individuals followed the team wherever it went, gleaning great satisfaction from the games by shouting and swearing at both the players and the referee. They were a motley collection, some fat, but most of them thin and sallow-complexioned, usually with cigarettes dangling from their mouths and beer bottles bulging their coat pockets. They could, on occasion, contribute dramatically to the outcome of a match and, more than once, Alf observed the abrupt cessation of progress by a member of the opposing team, brought about by the timely intervention of a leg darting out from the touchline.

Sometimes, however, their enjoyment could be rudely punctured. It was not uncommon for the team to be short of players at the start of a game, leaving only one course of action open to the manager – that of making up the numbers by procuring the assistance of one or two of the supporters.

‘Are we all here, Hughie?’ Alf asked one day before the start of a game.

‘One man short,’ replied the manager. He was a small, dark man with sleek black hair, who looked like a friend of Al Capone – and the club was his life. He was not only the manager, he was the secretary, the treasurer, the physio; in fact, he ran the club almost single-handed. He looked towards the line of shambling characters eagerly awaiting the start of an afternoon of shouting. ‘We’ll ha’ tae strip the support!’ He cupped his hands and bawled in the direction of the assembled supporters. ‘We’re a man doon! One o’ ye, get yer kit on. Come on noo!’