[North 15] A walk through the city

She slid herself off the edge, remembering at the last minute to bend her knees like Arkel had taught her when they were climbing in the caves. It still hurt though, and she'd scraped all the palms of her hands. She got shakily to her feet and stumbled to the corner. She heard Arkel's voice muffled in the doorway, and then it fell silent. The street was dark, so she shuffled forward, feeling her way along the wall with her sore hands outstretched. The doorway was even darker than the street, and she hesitated before stepping into it.

"Ow!"

She stood on something moving on the ground. The thing stood up. The face was at the same height as her own. She looked into the eyes of her double, and saw frightened recognition there.

"Why are you following me around?" It hissed.

Sundays at school; a class rebellion; school in wartime

'Our sunday walk at Wellington, sunday afternoons, was either around to Belleisle Conservatory and back along the beach, or the other way. When we were older we were allowed to go ourselves. We used to go to Rozelle House for our Guide activities. I joined the Guides during the war, so I never got to go camping. '

'Sunday night was when we all sat down to write our letters home, to our parents. Miss Garret the music teacher -'Gertie' - was the vice-principal, or 'second in command' - she took all our letters unsealed and read through them, for spelling, punctuation, and to check that we weren't saying anything derogatory about the school or teachers.'

'And when we were fourteen, we thought it wasn't fair that our letters should be read, so we - a group of us - went to Miss Carter, the headmistress, and asked her if we could seal our own envelopes. Miss Carter hadn't known that our letters were read, and told us to send them up next week sealed. It got to the next sunday, and we sealed our letters, and Gertie said "Girls! Who told you to seal your letters?" "Miss Carter" we replied, and Gertie wasn't very pleased.'

'Only one time, I remember, during the war, we could see a great glow in the sky in the distance from the dorm room window, when Clydebank was burning. That was the only time we spent down in the big hall, during the bombing. Four nights we spent down there. We lay on our matresses on the floor. It's quite a big entrance hall, once you go up the steps and through the door. I think most of us were in the hall, all cuddled up with one another. But some might have been in the dining room, all the big downstairs rooms. But wartime never really touched this part of the country. Oh we had false alarms and all the rest of it...'

'I  remember one time I'd been to the dentist, and I was sent home to rest because I was feeling a bit woozy from the sedation. I was in my bed, and I saw a plane over the sea, out the window, so I got up to look. I thought 'that plane's not flying right', and it got lower and lower and one wing tip just dipped in the sea, and the plane tumbled over and was down. It was over the weekend and they tried to lift it, but they couldn't, not til the monday. The pilot was still in the cockpit when they found him.'

Churches, maypoles, and the dangers of lochs - stories from my grandma

'The parish church that we went to when we were at school had box pews. You would go into the pew and you could shut the door. Each pew had its own door. No one could see what you were up to! Well, I suppose the rector could have, when he gave his sermon, so we never played up when he was there. There was the remnants of a - I think it must have been a bishop - in the church, 300 years old, at least that's what we were told.'

'The last year of school, we were allowed to go and help decorate for the harvest festival. That was how we got up on the roof, and to see the priesthole - it was on the way up to the roof. It was so small. You climbed up a wee stair in the church, into what was the priesthole. And then I think you must have gone up the stairs, further up the stairs to the roof.'

 'It was a lovely day and you could see for miles and miles. I don't think many people were allowed up there. We only got up because we were with the school and helping with the harvest festival.'

'I remember one or two May Days in the village, with the maypole, and the dancing. They don't have them very much now. That was way back in '44 or '45. But they had the maypole up, on Astbury Green - the village green. And we watched the kids dancing around the maypole, winding in and out of the ribbons. As usual they had - they called it a rectory down there, but it was just a church manse really - as usual it was as big as they could make them!' [the implication being that rectors always had large families.]

'It was a lovely old church. I presume it's still functioning, but who knows in this day it might not be. There's so many old churches closing.'

'I remember one half term I went home with this girl called Casey Gant. She lived in Nottingham, and we thought it would be fun to go out on the river in a rowing boat. Casey's father spotted us on the river, the river Trent, and we were in trouble. We didn't realise we were in trouble, [but] there was a wier approaching. Casey's father was in his factory office, and saw us, and sent a motor boat to get us, and Casey got in trouble for taking us on the river.'

'So between that and Loch Lomond it's lucky I'm here at all! Oh that Loch Lomond was a terror. I think I was only about sixteen at the time (don't put that down! - well, if you must...). We'd gone up to Inverbeg. Inverbeg was quite a big place for the Youth Hostel Association and things like that. It was a beautiful calm day, and the lady I was with, her husband was a captain in the navy, and she was left at Inverbeg with the wee boy. And she said to me, 'Jean, can you row?' I said, 'A wee bit.'

'So we rowed over to Inverdenham, and we had afternoon tea. And between times a storm had blown up. I'll never know how we got back over to the river at Inverbeg. We had to go right up the side and back again. Boy was I glad to see the river at Inverbeg!'

'So that's why I have a fear of the Scottish lochs.'

across the fields for afternoon tea - stories from my grandma's photo album

Darvel, Aug. 1933

"That was taken at my grandmother's house. She was Jean --Jeanie. Mum's name was Annie, and she hated it, she hated the Annie, so she changed it to Anne and it stuck. She was called after her Aunt Annie." 

"Grannie had a wee greenhouse at the back, you know - a wee lean-to against the wall at the lane. Oh, I used to go up the hill at Darvel, what we called the Pond Brae --there was two ponds for curling and skating right up the top-- I used to go up to get tomato plants for my grannie. There was a nursery up there -- little thinking of my future with greenhouses and tomato plants!"

"These two were my mum and dad. That's when they were on their world tour -- they were away for about six months. I stayed with grannie."

"Now that was Prestwick shore. We came down to there for a month in the summer. We stayed in a hotel beside the station, near the golfcourse. That's me walking down the golfcourse side with an ice-cream. Now that doll came from Japan. It had a wee stand. And those dresses were from when we had dancing displays [at school]."

"We had picnics at Loudon Hill. Can you see my wee dog there? A wee black scotty dog called Exya. I called her that because she was born on the day of the Glasgow Exhibition opening. She was a lovely dog."

"That's Dickie - she was the head girl of the school --Great Moreton. Her cat was called Tito, after the Yugoslav president at the time. That's Mirelle, Jessie and myself --we were all around sixteen. I was wearing my winter coat from Great Moreton. It was a big country house. It had been made into a school. I went there from Wellington in 1944; I was there for two years. It was a nice school. But shortly after I'd left, Mrs Butterworth moved the school to Robie Hall. There's a big picture upstairs of the whole school. There was a tower, and the last year, four of us slept in the tower, and nobody bothered us because there was quite a narrow stair to come up. There was an empty room above us, and we would sit up there and smoke --and the odd glass of sherry!"

"Old Moreton Hall is a National Trust building now. On a sunday the prefects were allowed to walk across the fields to have afternoon tea in the dining room. When the rising bell went we had to get up and ring a bell around the dormitories to get all the other little horrors up. It was an actual bell --a handbell."

"Once we had a 'spider dance' --don't ask me why it was called that-- in a part of the building round the corner from the entrance, and the headmistress was asked, probably the last term we were there. We were all walking back round the path...this bedroom window went up and Ms Paton the maths teacher, she called out: "Girls! What are you doing up at this time of the night?" And a small voice was raised from the middle of the crowd: "It's alright, Ms Paton. I am with the girls." It was Ms Butterworth [the headmistress]. And SLAM, down went the window. She cracked the glass! I don't think we were very popular with Ms Paton after that..."

"That's Margaret Macfarlane and me, and Ms Jeffrey from Wellington. She was an awful clever girl. Anything she touched, she was good. That must have been before I left Wellington. We were doing our Saturday shopping in Ayr, but we had to have a teacher with us."

granny came to meet us - stories from my grandma's photo album

"Mum started that [photo] album for me when I was knee high to a grasshopper. I don't know who that first one is, on the beach. I never got around to asking gran...your great gran."

"That's Lizzie the maid, and me. That's me and my grandmother - at grannie's back door. I still have that pram cover; used by all of our three, and you. These were all taken at grannie's back door in Darvel. We stayed with granny for a while. I don't know much more about Lizzie. We had her with us for quite some time. She came to help more or less with me. She was a maid and she was my nanny. Maids in those days all wore uniforms, like that. If you were a maid in a house, that was your uniform."

"I never knew my grandfathers: my grandfather or my step-grandfather. That's why...my granny had two names...she was Mrs More, and then she was Watthews. He came from Nottingham actually, from the lace industry. And in those days...I think he wanted my grandmother as a sort of housekeeper to live in, and in those days a lady didn't stay with a gentleman unless they were married - so they got married!"

"This one's in Hendon, 1929. I was one then. I can still remember the name of the house in St Albans - that's it there: Tregenna. That's a clothespole with a kangaroo tied to it - a plastic kangaroo. I don't know why - probably my toy. I couldn't tell you how long we stayed there for, probably about a year."

"That's on the beach in San Francisco. We had to wear sunhats, oh yes, everyone wore hats. The girl is June Prince - she was the daughter of some friends' of my parents in San Francisco. She looked after me, oh she was a good bit older than me obviously."

"That's the patio of the house in Sausalito. And that was the garden. Yes, I had a [peddle] motorcar! That was my motorcar. I think it was green. That was a lovely pram, the wicker one. Dimples was an American doll. I must have been about two years old when I got her. When we came back from America, we got off the train at Kilmarnock...Granny came to meet us. The porter handed Dimples out the train and granny was quoted as saying, "Annie never telt me about this yin!" She thought there was another [child] she didn't know about."

"That was when we were coming home on a boat called the Annie Johnson, crossing the carribean sea. And that was me in the swimming pool on board. Not like the posh ones you have nowadays. There's a picture of me with two sharks in the background, which the captain said had to be overboard by the following morning. I don't know who caught them - one of the crew probably. That's the purser with me. I'm chewing a sweetie in my cheek -probably he gave me a chewy caramel."

"I'll tell you something. I loved that pool. They would come to get me out, and I'd paddle over to the other side - I was naughty! The pool was about 6 feet deep, I couldn't touch the bottom. I don't know where my mother was, but probably the purser came and got me out - eventually!"

"That's the garden at granny's house, and that's the factory behind the greenhouse, the lace factory. My grandfather was a lace designer. I used to go into the factory, nip up the stairs to his room -he had his own office- and he would fling me a bit of the special squared paper saying, "Draw me a design, Jean." And I had a great time colouring." [Jean McCallum, March 2016]

a mad god's dream

"But Edinburgh is a mad god’s dream 
Fitful and dark," - Hugh MacDiarmid (1892–1978): “Edinburgh”

So I travelled to Edinburgh. Every time I visit my capital city, I step up out of Waverley Station and think all this is only two hours away from me, and people travel halfway across the world to see it...

I love Edinburgh, and I particularly love the quote above by Hugh MacDiarmid. It describes Edinburgh perfectly, and I like to tramp about the city, the words curling around in my head, imagining myself walking through some marvellous and bewildering landscape. Despite it being October, the main streets were still full of tourists, and I was glad to escape to Leith, where the doors are guarded by lions and foxes, and ghostly tailors still advertise their wares above modern shops. I soon found my destination, about half-way down Leith Walk, and I was welcomed into the flat by Hope, and a large, white, wolf-like dog. I was offered a glass of beer by Hope's flatmate, Anouk, and sat down to rest my feet and admire the kitchen. There was a big black stove, a window looking out onto the garden, a rocking chair AND a rocking horse. Yes, a proper rocking horse, with real horse-hair, leather straps, and bright paint.  I'm so jealous.

Artistic, imaginative, and more than a little quirky, the flat decor suits both its occupants down to the ground. Hope is a journalist and writer, who is currently working on her first novel, and Anouk crafts fantastically beautiful fabric dolls. I've linked to both their blogs so you can go and see their work for yourself. It was lovely to sit chatting about art, books and creative things, while listening to music and eating plates full of spaghetti, slowly getting sleepier and sleepier. The next morning, (which was lazy and full of croissants, honey and tea) I headed off to a photography exhibition at NMS. On the way, I found this chap setting up the stall for the Edinburgh Tool Library. They can be found at the Leith Walk Police Box on Croall Place, every Saturday, from 9am -1pm.

The idea is that instead of buying expensive tools that will maybe only get used once or twice, groups or individuals can join the library and borrrow the equipment they need. The organisation will also provide training. After a quick chat and a photo, I continued on my way. Entry to "Photography: A Victorian Sensation" cost me £10 and I could go in and out as I pleased from 10am-5pm. Although  (ironically) photography was not allowed in the exhibition, they did have 'selfie spots' where visitors where encouraged to take photos of themselves and tweet them. Despite not having a twitter account, I made FULL use of the dressing-up facilities and spent rather a lot of time posing in front of the mirror. Funnily enough, after removing the heavy Victorian-style skirt, I felt practically undressed going about in my normal clothes. I'd discovered the exhibition through Joan Lennon's post on The History Girls blog. You should go and read her brief review of the exhibition, and see if it inspires you to go too! I studied the history of photography at uni, making the first part of the exhibition an excellent exercise in what I'd remembered...or forgotten. The part I liked best, however, was looking through all the old photos. Cleverly, although the actual photos were on display in the cases as well, the exhibition designers had provided viewing boxes with the digital images, allowing you to zoom in and out of the photos at your leisure.

 Later, I met up with my younger brother,who is studying at Edinburgh, and he took me to Teviot, his student union. Safe to say, it was far better than MY student union, which was a sixties monstrosity. This one has a restaurant in the old library, with all the books still safely behind the original glass cases. There were leather chairs, and nice corners to sit in, and a twisting staircase that looked like something out of Harry Potter. The food was...as to be expected. Cheap and filling, but nothing to write home about. I had pasta - my brother had 'The Balmoral Burger' (which is a venison and haggis burger to the uninitiated...) After lunch, I marched him along to the museum, on discovering that -despite being in Edinburgh for two years- he'd never been. 

Back at the flat, preparations were under way for a 'Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness' autumnal party. Hope made chocolate brownies, measuring ingredients out in bowls; Anouk made a spicy chorizo stew. We started on the wine. Guests arrived, two little children included, who fell on the rocking horse with glee (the youngest one poking at the horse in confusion, saying 'button...button?' to her mummy. It was gently explained that this toy didn't have a button to make it go.) 

I'm not really a party person, but everyone was so friendly, and I found myself talking to illustrator Joanna Robson and doll-artist Crystal, while tucked in a corner beside the music. It was great to eat good food, relax and chat - but my busy day and walking around the city caught up with me, and I crept away to my cosy little bedroom under the stairs. 

Next morning, I had time for a quick wander around the Out of the Blue Drill Hall, which was running an eco-fair that day. It was full of people: some manning stalls, some enjoying the food at the award-winning cafe, and others standing around chatting - a real buzz in the atmosphere. I particularly liked the selection of locally made artwork available: the drill hall offers studio space, as well as training courses and running a whole hosts of shows and events like this eco-fair. The wall outside was brightly painted too - with these fantastic, shamanic-style murals.

My final stop before catching the train was to grab some refreshments at Artisan Roast on Broughton Street, recommended by barista Anouk, although she wasn't working that day. I ordered a rose petal and black pepper hot chocolate, a blueberry and coconut cake, and headed through to 'the mooch', which is the comfy retreat at the back of the coffee house, with a wood-burning stove (alas, unlit), leather cushioned couches lining the walls, and a guitar hanging up, just in case anyone wanted to play a little music. I found it was easier to write and eat at the same time by sitting on the floor with my back against the couch. No one batted an eyelid. A girl was asleep at the other side of the room. My fellow 'moochers' were a real mix - students, young parents, gently ageing hippies...

In this atmosphere, I managed to write another 500 words of Northspell (which will be appearing soon), demolish the beautifully light and fruit-stuffed cake, and finish ALL of my hot chocolate. I couldn't taste the black pepper as much as I had thought I would, but perhaps it subtly combined with the rose-petal to mellow the richness of the chocolate. All in all - a perfect place to relax, with great sweet treats and hot drinks. I'll definitely be back.

[North 11] a friend of thieves

Irena dipped a hand into the bucket and scattered a handful of the dry sand. "I didn't do anything. At least...I was hungry, so I ate some berries. He said I was a thief, but I'm not a thief. A thief is..." she turned to look at Gia and Arkel, both of whom were staring at her. Gia had her fists on her hips, and Arkel had his arms folded.

"Did you pay?"

"You ARE a thief!"

Gia and Arkel spoke at the same time, Gia with her lip curled scornfully, and Arkel with something like delight in his voice.

Irena dropped the bucket, the sand spilling out onto the stone floor. "I'm not a thief, or a northwitch, or a gutter-rat or a...a... a chicken."