A long time ago, when I was a young lad, I had the acquaintance of a dog called Seumus. Now Seumus was of, shall we say, indeterminate lineage. There seemed to be a fair bit of black Labrador in there, but it was mixed with some distinctly non-pedigree characteristics, including a tail that curled over his back. When Seumus was feeling full of himself, he carried this high and showed to the world his anal sphincter. I'm sure that's not in the Labrador breed book.

Seumus was, officially, the companion of a certain John Harbottle, a most excellent cove. John in those days worked on the oil in the North Sea. It had just arrived and the streets of Aberdeen were paved with gold...or was it Torry lassie's knickers? It was a long time ago, I forget.

Anyway, John worked for a company called ODECO, doubtless now long gone. His work schedule was 2 weeks on, one week off, which was standard in 1973. But it meant that young Seumus was lodged with us for two out of every three weeks.

So who were we? Oh, well a group of somewhat indigent young men, musicians, students and ...well I'm not really sure what a couple of us really did, you know, but it was fine. We lived in a big flat in Southpark Avenue in Glasgow, at the time the hub of the city's 'alternative' culture. We even had gay friends, imagine that.

Due to a very complex set of relationships which to be frank I still do not really understand, Harbottle slept in the hallway of our flat when he was 'onshore'. Since he was a normal young man, possessed of an urge which some of us have never lost, this made going to the bathroom in the middle of the night an entertaining experience, depending on how lively the lady he was spending the night with had turned out to be. ('Bell's and lemonade; a great leg-opener.' But oh dearie me, how non-PC.)

Because the Bottle -- his nocturnal nuptials done -- returned to his rig after a week, we lads had to look after Seumus.

There was a problem. Seumus was gaining weight.

Now there was another dog in the flat, Foi, who was at least as bad as Seumus even if, being longhaired, white and tan, he was a good deal more poofy-looking. (I always imagined Seumus with a flat cap and a hand-rolled cigarette, his eyes narrow against the smoke. He was a very Glaswegian dog.) Just goes to show you can't judge a dog by his hair.

Foi was of stable weight and the two four-legged lads were on similar diets, but Seumus was ballooning, to the point that Harbottle was protesting. We did rather think that he was less than helpful, since he insisted on taking Seumus out and getting him drunk on beer. But this protestation was lost on Harbottle, and Seumus, well, he didn't really speak English. Especially after four pints.

We lived on the top floor of our block, a position beloved of students, musicians and other wastrels, because flats at that elevation were cheaper. As responsible dog-owners -- or at least, lodgers -- we had to ensure that nature's call could be met by our four-legged friends, so the first person up in the morning (or, not usually, the last person to bed) would open the front door and away down the stairs they would run, to do their business...somewhere else. It was long before pooper-scoopers, you know.

After they came back, we would feed them.

Seumus' expanding girth was a mystery. We cut down his rations. Still got fat. We told all our friends and visitors (of which there were a great many) to stop feeding him sandwiches, sweeties or for that matter anything. He still got fat and we began to dread the berating we would inevitably get when Bottle came back and found his beloved canine boozing partner resembling a black hairy rugby ball.

One Saturday morning we decided that a bit of sleuthing was needed, so we all got dressed before dog-out time. When we let them out, we followed.

We had assumed that they would both head off in the same direction, but no; Foi, the poofy one, shot out to the back green to add to the minefield there, while Seumus, having cocked his leg on a lamppost outside the door, struck off down the hill towards Great Western Road.

We followed.

Seumus was a total star in traffic, and we watched admiringly as he threaded his way between the cars and buses to the other side. When it was safe for less agile humans to do the same, we crossed. He had entered a butcher's shop and was there chomping down a Scotch pie while the butcher patted him affectionately.

'You know Seumus, then?' we asked.

'Oh, aye, Jim, I do. Comes here every morning for his wee pie you know. Is he your dog, but?'

Taking deep breaths, we explained the situation and that in order to please Seumus'; owner, who could not just then be present but had appointed us legal guardians of said mutt, we would most appreciate it if our butcher would stop giving him pies. The good man was most crestfallen, but reluctantly agreed.

While we were doing this, Seumus, having consumed the pie, took off again. We followed. A block further in towards town, there was another butcher, and I am sure it will come as no surprise for you to learn that by the time we got there, Seumus was noshing on a meat pie, wagging his tail and being complimented by this butcher.

We managed to switch off the rascal's access to another butcher -- three in all -- and two bakers, before we lost him. I think he knew what we were up to.

Well it was by then approaching noon and chasing dogs around Great Western Road is thirsty work, you know. So the four of us -- Eddie, Jeff, Dick and I -- decided that we had earned a couple of pints and it was Saturday, after all.

Now Glasgow in those days was a somewhat territorial sort of a place. That meant you were cautious about going to bars frequented by, shall we say, other teams. Our turf was the Three Feathers by Kelvinbridge subway station. (As an aside, the station's sign for years lacked the 'K' and the 'B', giving it the charmingly Tolkienesque pseudonym 'Elvin ridge'. This later became the name of one of our bands...but of that, anon.)

The trouble was, we were by that time close to the end of Byres Road and Kelvinbridge was too far. Now because of that little territorial thing, we would never have entered the place after dark, but in broad daylight it seemed safe, so we decided to go to the Curlers instead. It was much closer to home.

In we went, without any issues; the place was almost empty. We purchased our pints and sat down at a table near the window to review the morning's campaign. We were just beginning to feel that way one does, that all is well with the world, and I was at the bar getting the second round, when guess who trotted in.

Seumus.

To our amazement, the same dog ran straight behind the bar, where he appeared to be the long-lost beloved best friend (ever) of the barman. And more than that, said barman had a glass of slops just waiting for him, which Seumus cheerily began to lap up, while the barman petted him etc etc.

And you know what? The glass had Seumus' name on it. As the man later told us, he came in every day and was a valued -- if non-paying -- customer. Why should he not have his own glass?

So our errant canine was availing himself of at least three Scotch pies, two buns and a pint of beer, every day, before lunch! No wonder he was putting on weight.

We never did get those pounds off him. I think he was just too smart for us. Oh, and lest ye think that this is all mere hokum, a fanciful tale cooked up just to amuse you, it's all true. I have witnesses.

Now my brother was a bit of a character. I’m not talking about my wee brother, Hamish, or the big one I suddenly discovered I had  in 2004 that no bugger ever told me about before (aye, we’ll get to that.) I mean my other big brother, Sandy, AKA Sye.

Now Sandy did things his own way. He ran a car breaking yard—and trust me, there is no more joyous place to spend your school hols than in a place like that—and he lived in a wee cottage in Arbroath, one of those sandstone ones. Sandy’s wife was called Toos and she was Dutch.

Sandy was always coming up with schemes and one of these was inspired by Toos, who told him that people in Holland raised rabbits for the pot.

‘Hm,’ thinks he. ‘I’ll have a dod of that.’ So off he goes and buys a pair of white rabbits from Thomson’s the pet shop in the High Street. Well, Toos just laughed, because they have special rabbits for eating in Holland but Sandy never knew. So he put them is a hutch he’d nailed together in the back yard and waited.

The thing is, rabbits do two things. One is they, you know, like rabbits, and the other is, they eat their way through anything that isn’t metal. They might even do that if they were hungry enough.

So the rabbits had a few clutches of baby rabbits, but they weren’t really big enough to eat, you know. Sandy got bored and turned to other things for amusement. Which I daresay we’ll get to. Unfortunately, the rabbits also got bored and pulled a Colditz out of the hutch, having eaten their way through, and scattered. Like they do in all the best POW movies.

Sandy—predictably—just shrugged his shoulders and went back to fixing whichever car he was up to his elbows in the guts of at the time. Probably a Jag. He liked Jags. And no more was said about the subject.

A few months later I was round at Sandy and Toos’ house. I think it was a Saturday. Anyway I looked out the kitchen window and was pure amazed to see a thick covering of snow on the ground. I mean, I know it was Scotland, but it was the summer holidays.

Somewhat startled, I looked more closely and realised that the snow was moving. True. Moving snow. Except this snow had long ears and red eyes. There were hundreds of rabbits in the yard. Well, 92, exactly. I’ll tell you how I know later.

The problem was that even though Sandy’s yard had a stone wall round it, the rabbits just dug tunnels under and pretty soon he was getting it in the neck from everybody in the street. Hannah Street, it was called. Anyway the neighbours were kinda het because where once there had been green and lush wee gardens, all set out neat, now it was scorched earth with droppings and mobile snow as far as the eye could see. Kinda like the Somme on a bad day.

After a while of this, Sandy got fed up of Toos nagging him about the moaning neighbours. So he decided Something Had To Be Done. Well. Sandy had a right straightforward view on life…

(Voice off: Like youse ya mean? Big lunk.)

No, I am not going to respond to that, not just now anyway. Just you hold your wheesht and I will go on with the story. Decorum and dignity and all that.

Anyway, Sandy had a direct take on life and he lived about 100 yards from the port, so off he goes and chats up a couple of his fishermen pals, which involved an hour or so in the Ship. Inn, that is. And then, when it came to flinging-out time (the pubs closed at 2.30 in the afternoon in those days) all the three of them hied back to Hannah Street with a couple of dogs and a great big net.

The rest of the afternoon was filled with dogs barking, men swearing, not a few flying tackles on running rabbits, and a couple of hundred spectators cheering it all on, with their heads sticking over the top of the wall round the garden like Mr Chad; it was an away day for Arbroath and there wasn’t much for entertainment, you know.

Toos, on account of my tender age, wouldn’t let me take part in the procedures, which were basically three pissed men falling about, but it was mighty good fun to watch.

In the end, they got all the rabbits into the net—not all at once, like—and then into tattie sacks and up to Fleming the butcher (no relation) where they were exchanged for beer vouchers. That’s how I know there were 92.

I think they got turned into potted haugh, well, the rabbit equivalent.

Now if you think that’s a load of (rabbit) baloney, then listen to this. Some thirty years later, when we were moving back from a sojourn in France to the sunny climes of eastern Scotland, I researched haulage companies in the old town of Arbroath. I found one actually not far from Sandy’s old house — which had been demolished decades before in a classic example of Planning Blight. I introduced myself and told the gents there what I needed, but I couldn’t help but notice that one of them was staring at me kinda funny like.

Eventually, he spoke up. ‘Fleming, you say?’ quoth he. ‘Are you Big Sye Fleming’s son?’

As it happens, this was not so implausible but but I’m not, so I laughed and said ‘No, I’m his brother.’

‘Ah,’ came the reply. ‘I remember him. And all those bloody rabbits!’

True story, seriously. Lest you doubt me, just ask anyone at the Fit o’ the Toon. Sandy was a legend.

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First published at Rod Fleming’s World

Childhood diseases in the sixties were real. There were no vaccines, no MMR. You had Diphtheria, Smallpox and later the BCG but the regular bouts of measles, mumps, chicken pox and so on were just a part of life. We endured them with little emotion, except to savour the few days off school they’d buy us.

The one we didn’t joke about, though, was Scarlet Fever (scarlatina). This is arguably less deadly than measles but it was not seen that way back then. Other than the dreaded tuberculosis, which we didn’t even talk about, this was the most feared of the lot.

So, naturally, I went and caught it.

A month off school

The first thing I remember is waking up in my mother’s bed and realising that the white shape I was looking at was actually the ceiling. From over by the window I could hear voices but I couldn’t move my head enough to see who was speaking. Any attempt was searingly painful. I recognised the voices, of course, my mother and father and our doctor, Dr Stuart. They were speaking in hushed tones and I could tell my mother was upset.

Both my parents grew up in the era prior to Penicillin being available and my mother herself had nearly died of a poisoned finger that spread. They had a really healthy respect for diseases and it was clear that Dr Stuart was doing his best to settle their minds.

‘The Penicillin will cure it,’ he was assuring them. ‘It’s the best for this sort of thing. But he’ll have very high fever and you need to try to keep his temperature down. And after he’s recovered, the whole house will have to be fumigated.’ My father grunted at this; he was averse to having his domestic routines upset.

‘How long will he be off school?’

‘I can’t say, Mrs Fleming. Maybe a month. He has to be completely clear before he has any contact with other children.’

A whole month off school! And it was already May! Roll on the summer! This was definitely worth suffering a little for!

Actually, the suffering was intense enough to make me revisit that opinion. I seemed to go through days of constant vomiting interspersed with raging fever that caused abstract hallucinations. I did not know these were hallucinations, so they appeared completely real to me, but I wasn’t really able to feel fear. I think if I had died – and people did – it would have seemed like a weird fairground ride, a hall of mirrors sort of thing. When I wasn’t vomiting or completely spaced out, I was unconscious.

The Tiger Moth

One day I woke up, still in my mother’s bed. There was a noise outside, a noise I recognised. Looking out of the window I could see the familiar yellow fuselage of a De Havilland Tiger Moth performing aerobatics above the house.

This wasn’t unusual. The plane was one of the trainers from RNAS Condor outside Arbroath and regularly flew in our area. I loved to watch as the pilot pulled loop-the-loops. It always seemed, as it climbed vertically, that the plane would not quite make it but just when I thought it must stall it would roll over the apex, dive down and start again. Often I would stand in the lawn and wave and once or twice the pilot had flown low over the garden and saluted me with a waggle of the wings. Quite the uplift, especially as I was a big fan of Biggles then.

This time was different. The pilot was waving to me. He seemed to want me to go outside. I did, without knowing how I did and made my way to the field behind the garden, through a gate in the hedge. The Tiger Moth had landed! The pilot had jumped out and was swinging the tail of his plane round ready for take-off. He turned to me.

‘Want to come?’

I looked back at the house and then at the magical flying machine. I nodded.

The pilot swung me up into the front seat, strapped me in and adjusted my helmet and goggles. Then he took the Instructor position in the rear seat.

‘Hang on!’

We took off

Saying no more, he launched us forward. There was a steep slope ahead, where the land fell away to a river valley, but there was always an updraught there and it lifted us, up up and away (as they say).

All around me I could see my fiefdom, the Angus countryside of my home, laid out. There were the hills where we walked and there the quarry where we hunted quartzes. Down there was the burn where I went guddling for trout and over there the wood at Hunter’s Path. To the south west, the smudge of Dundee and behind it the Lomond Hills. South, the land sloped down to the Tay Estuary and beyond that the coast meandered away, past Tentsmuir Forest, St Andrews, on towards Dunbar. The view was incredible.

‘Ready?’

I nodded and as I did so felt my tummy sink as he pulled back the stick. Up we went, up into that beautiful blue sky, so lovely the tears ran down my cheeks. And then we pitched over and were hurtling earthward, soon again to feel the g-force as he bottomed out of the dive and began to climb again.

All too soon it was over and we were bouncing across the grass field towards the hedge. The pilot lifted me down and removed my helmet. I was still wearing my pyjamas but I wasn’t cold.

‘Did you enjoy that?’ asked the pilot

‘Yes! I mean, thank you, yes, sir.’

‘No need to sir me, lad. You better get back to bed, I’ll be on my way. Stand back now!’

He jumped back up into the cockpit and roared off, waggling his wings as he climbed into the azure sky.

I woke up freezing

I woke up on the lawn outside the house. I was on my back. There was no sign of the Tiger Moth or its enigmatic pilot. I could hear my mother screaming my name. She was running towards me. ‘Call the doctor, quickly,’ she yelled to the girl. ‘And get a blanket for goodness sake, he’s freezing!’

By the time Dr Stuart arrived I was back in bed with a cup of Horlicks. He did the usual, checked pulse, pupils. ‘I hear you were outside.’

‘Yes, I went in the plane, Doctor. We did loop-the-loops. Can I go again?

He smiled. ‘You mustn’t. Not till you’re really better.’

He turned to my mother. ‘What’s this about a plane?’

‘I don’t know. He said he went through a gate in the hedge into the field and there was a plane there. He says he went flying in it. There’s no gate in the hedge and there’s been no plane here. He’s scaring me.’ My mother’s voice was shaking. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

Dr Stuart nodded sagely. ‘Well, I don’t think you should panic, Mrs Fleming. I think he’s had a hallucination, maybe like a lucid dream. They’re common in high fevers. They can be intense but they’re ephemeral, you know, they pass quickly. He might not even remember it, tomorrow. But the good news is, I think his fever has broken. I’ll give him a wee sedative to calm him. Best thing for now is sleep.’

That pilot never came back- but who sent him?

I didn’t forget either the pretty yellow aeroplane or the pilot, but he never came back to fly me up into the clear blue sky. I thought about it often and certainly, the good Dr Ian Stuart was right, it was a hallucination, a lucid dream. But I have had another like that, when I was on the brink of death and my girlfriend resuscitated me. It had all the same clarity, the same sparkling vision and it concerned the same place, the house where I grew up – even though, when it happened, I was thousands of miles away from Scotland.

It also featured the lawn and the garden chairs, just as they had been all those years ago. My mother was there too. But most of all, I was searching for that gate in the hedge, which – in this reality – was at the end of the path that led past the fruit garden. I think that gate has significance but today, old and tired as I am, I am afraid to step through it. I fear what might be on the other side.

I wonder sometimes, who that pilot might have been. I am persuaded by my dull adult rationality that it was all a hallucination, a kind of dream, as Dr Stuart said. But it was so real, to me, as real as the sun and the sky, the Scottish landscape, as life itself.

Whatever he was and whomever sent him, if anyone did, I believe he saved my life, just as Sam did, so long after. Perhaps he was my guardian angel, with flying goggles on, in a yellow bi-plane. Who knows? The Goddess has mysterious ways and it is not good to question them too deeply, I think.

The 1960s was an interesting period. Famous for music, the good life and style, the era was powered, to a large extent, by a new phenomenon: Hire Purchase. This was a system similar to modern car leasing, where the customer paid a weekly or monthly sum to hire the vehicle, which became his at the end of the plan. Sometimes a final lump sum was required, but a deposit or down payment was always needed.

In that era many people still did not have bank accounts and those that did usually had deposit-book savings accounts. Cheques were rare and there was no such thing as a guarantee card or even a credit card. The nearest we had was American Express and Barclaycard, which were both debit cards. These accounts could not be used to borrow money, so the HP companies had a field day, even though the amount of interest they charged was really eye-watering.

Amongst the things that could be had on HP, usually known as the ‘never-never’ (because you never finished paying and you never really owned the item you were paying for) were cars, motorcycles, guitars, white goods, garden power tools, house furniture and much else, even suits.

Hire Purchase — the Never Never

My father was a Ford Main Agent which meant he was also a Hire Purchase and Insurance Agent and it was from these, technically sidelines, that he had a significant amount of his income. Car dealers always prefer to sell on HP or the modern equivalent, especially if they are the Agents, because the commission is healthy indeed. This persists even today, when you will so often find sales people pushing ‘store finance’ rather than bank loans or even cash.

I confess that I did not understand this for many years, until my mother, also an Agent, explained chapter and verse. I was quite shocked. There seemed something a little immoral in persuading people to take a form of finance that would actually cost them two or three times as much as borrowing from the bank. However, there is no doubt that my parents did very well out of it.

By the way, if you are buying a car, never discuss how you plan to pay for it until the very last moment. The sales will throw in all sorts of reductions and incentives, based on the assumption that you will be taking credit. When you’ve negotiated the best deal you think you can, get the sales to write it down on headed notepaper – and then say you’re going to pay in cash. You will be hated but you will get a better deal.

The problem, for first-time car buyers, was always that pesky deposit. A person who owned a car, even on HP, could use that as the deposit — as the infamous ‘trade-in’ — but those who were buying their first had to find it. There was not a lot of liquid cash in the economy in the 1960s – a robber Government saw to that – but people did have things to sell. Especially in the country areas, the old houses were full of stuff, mouldering and dusty. Even in the 1990s, I saw house auctions where truly remarkable treasure was up for grabs, from Old Masters to more silverware than you could imagine. As a result, my father became a sort of pawn broker, taking anything of value in against the dreaded deposit, which at that time was usually one third.

This in turn meant that the house and its outbuildings became a store of the weird and the wonderful, the fantastic and the bizarre, from stuffed moose heads to wood lathes, boats, paintings and yes, an awful lot of silverware. Anything, in fact, that Dad thought he could make coin on.

The Purdeys

We could always tell, with my father, when he had turned a particularly sweet deal and so it was, one evening when he came into the kitchen, just after six as usual, bearing a strange, long black leather-covered case in his hand. My mother, who was just as nosy was we were, quickly asked, ‘What’s that?’

‘Aha,’ said my father, enigmatically. ‘You remember that holiday in Italy we were talking about, Gladys? Well, this is it.’

So saying he placed the case on the kitchen table and flipped the catches. Inside were two shotguns.

‘Guns?’ queried my mother.

‘Not just any guns. These are Purdeys.’

Today, to let you know, a brace of Purdeys in the original case will set you back well over a hundred thousand pounds. In the early sixties, they represented the kind of money that most people would never see, let alone hold in their hands.

‘How did you get them?’ asked my mother, who understood she was looking at a fortune’s worth. The guns on that table might have paid for a decent-sized house.

‘Well, this bloke came in looking for a new car. Wanted a Zephyr Six. So we did the paperwork and then told him that the deposit would be four hundred pounds. He said he didn’t have it, but would we take his father’s guns instead? The old boy’s been dead for a while. It was the bloke Mathieson, lives up in the big house at Arbeg, you know?’

Mum nodded. Mathieson was a well-known eccentric, what my father called a ‘toff’. But despite any dislike he might have had for the landed gentry, he was never shy to take their money.

‘And,’ she inquired.

‘Well I said yes. Four hundred quid for a pair of Purdeys? He had all the paperwork, letters from Purdeys – look, I’ll show you, here. Headed notepaper, see. Purdey of London.’ He grinned. ‘So you get down to Thomson the travel agent tomorrow morning and book that holiday. Three weeks, this time, not two. I’ll be taking these up to Gow’s in Dundee first thing. Before Mathieson changes his mind.’

He turned to me and smiled. ‘Do you want to hold one?’

He gave me one of the guns; it weighed a ton, at least to me, but it was beautiful, with incredible engraving. The metal on the side-plates seemed to be alive. I handed it back with a sort of reverence. I have never since held so much value in my hands as that.

I know Dad took the Purdeys to Gow’s but I don’t know how much he got. It would have been a trade sale, that is, half the retail value, but I remember clearly that we did have three weeks in Rimini that year and no expense was spared.

Fancy shotguns were not the only exciting thing that passed through my father’s garage. Everyone wanted a new car and all that old stuff was just junk, to most people. It was the sixties, time to modernise. Perhaps they associated the old stuff with the terrible time of the war and didn’t want to be reminded. In any case, the contents of houses all over Angus ended up in ours, or rather, in the sheds and outbuildings. It was remarkable.

The speedboat

Another I remember clearly was a speedboat. This was a beautiful wooden launch, I guess about sixteen feet long, with an inboard petrol engine. It came on a trailer and was immaculate, its mahogany bright-work appearing almost liquid under the varnish. Unfortunately, my father really didn’t like boats; he was one of life’s perpetually seasick. He just had to look at one to go green. So he lost no time in selling it. Fortunately for me, because even at that tender age I already had salt water in my veins, he sold it to my big brother Sandy, who also had brine in his system. I believe the deal was based on a pre-War Austin Ten that Dad had fancied for some time. Anyway said Austin was soon polished up, gracing the showroom.

Sandy and I had a lot of fun on that launch until he sold it, for some reason I don’t know. He was probably short of money, that being no uncommon thing with him. I think a certain understanding that nothing is permanent came to me in these years and so pleasures had to be indulged in while they were there. It’s probably common to the kids of traders everywhere. You have to remember that the first motor dealers were actually horse-traders who moved with the times and they were famous for buying and selling anything – whether or not its title was absolutely sound. Fantastic, sometimes mysterious things would come into our home and then, a few weeks or months later, be gone again. It was the way of the world, as far as I, knowing no other life, could see.

This understanding of the ephemeral nature of things breeds a certain fatalism, I think, but also something that might not really be courage – I don’t consider myself to be brave – but a certain disregard for risk. Everything passes anyway, after all.

I remember growing up in rural Scotland during the 1960s with great fondness. But it wasn't all playing in the woods and guddling trout at the House of Ten Thousand Dreams, you know. We had our chores to do.

What they were depended on the season. In the cold part of the year – which in Scotland is from October to May and beyond – my first chore, after I got back from school was to light the fire in the living room. This was not straightforward. Firstly, I had to ensure that there was enough kindling wood, which there usually wasn't. I also had to fill the coal-scuttle.

So it was out to the coal shed, which was near to the house. Unfortunately, the coal shed had no lights, which, in view of its leaky roof, might not have been such a bad thing. But it did gravely hamper the procedure. The other issue was the cats. As you might remember we had a floating population of these, often a dozen and a half strong, who used the coal shed as their easement. They also used various other locations, giving me a certain hostility towards the feline race to this day.

Things were easier in the lighter months. While the evenings were 'lichty', there was enough light admitted through the open door, but in dead of winter it was usually dark by the time I got home.

Dad had some sort of deal with a local joiner and always had plenty of pine matchboarding which some gentle soul had sawn up into eight-inch lengths. All I had to do was to chop these into narrow sticks using the ancient hatchet that hung on a nail on the back of the door. This was a task that became increasingly fraught – with attendant risk of involuntary dactylectomy – as the 'nights drew in'. Around mid-October I would have to begin using a storm lantern or a torch.

With a small pailful of kindling wood duly chopped in one hand and a full scuttle of coal in the other -- and not too much cat poo on my shoes, if I were lucky, I would make my way back to the house.

We had a warming oven in the kitchen stove and in winter this was used to dry the kindling. So I would take out what I needed for the day and replace it with the wood I'd just chopped. This is a smart move, by the way.

The living-room, the scene for my daily fire-lighting, was invariably cold as a morgue by that stage, so, shivering, I would first rake out the ash in the fire, setting aside any unburned coals. I would crumple newspaper and set the dry kindling on top. I could tell when it was dry by the noise it made when I tapped a couple of sticks together. Finally, I would first place the unburned coals on that, then fresh coals from the scuttle on top.

Then it was time to light the paper and hope I'd got it right, and that the coals were not too wet. If all was well, the paper would catch, then the kindling, the part-burned coals from the night before and eventually the new ones.

Unfortunately this rarely happened – or at least, quickly enough – so I had to use the time-honoured standby. To tell the truth, this was the most fun in the whole procedure but I had to be sure Dad wasn't home yet, since he had a dislike of chimney fires. The trick was to set a hand-shovel on the front grate of the fire so that it would lean on the breast above the aperture. Then one spread a newspaper, usually the Courier and Advertiser, over this.

This fire was a 'Baxi' which meant it drew air from a vent outside the building, on the other side of the wall. That made the fire more efficient and drew less air from the room. Well, with the Courier spread in front, the draught was immense and in seconds the fire would be roaring. If all went according to plan, in a a couple of moments the most stubborn of coals would be alight and I should have triumphed.

If all did not go to plan, the Courier would catch alight and launch itself up the lum like an avenging Lucifer; I would jump back, hoping not to hear the deep rumbling roar that signified that we did indeed have a chimney fire. To my credit, I only managed this once. My mother's words? 'Whatever you do, don't tell your father.' Luckily he was late home that night and so did not see our lum squirting flames into the night sky like a Roman Candle.

Hestia

With the fire lit and Hestia propitiated, I could relax, usually, unless I had extra homework. I would sit as close as I could to that fire, without actually igniting and try to recover some warmth. I'd switch on the television and watch some of the children's shows, like Fireball XL5 or Supercar. Then came The Magic Roundabout, just before the evening news. Usually by that time the living room was nice and cosy and when my father arrived he would smile and note the excellent fire, then take his seat to watch the News.

Lighting fires was not my only task, however. Country life is busy and was probably even more so in the sixties than it is now.

In the mornings, my first chore was to go down to the hen-houses and collect the eggs. I really enjoyed this.

My father had a sideline at his garage, selling fresh produce. Wartime rationing had been in place in the UK until 1954 and I was born in 1956. The memories of war and hardship were still close and one of them was rationing. In principle, all farmers and large-scale food producers had to register with the Government and the sale of their produce was controlled. Many items could only be purchased using 'coupons' from a ration book and those who tried to circumvent this could suffer severe penalties, including prison.

However, the Government, under the 'Dig for Victory' scheme, enthusiastically encouraged individuals to grow their own vegetables, to keep hens for eggs and to raise rabbits, pigs, sheep, goats and even cows. None of this was rationed and so smallholdings were set up all over the country. People turned their back gardens into allotments that could easily feed a family, with surplus to spare. Councils across the nation had for years been renting out allotments, something that had been going on, at least in England, since the 1600s and had spread. Typically, a council allotment was roughly the size of two tennis courts or about one twentieth of an acre.

If you've ever done it then you know that smallholding life is one of feast and famine. For months, the garden produces nothing, then all of a sudden, one is awash with courgettes that are rapidly taking on the scale of barrage balloons. Even the Government recognised that it was pointless to punish people for their success in doing as they had been asked, so a healthy 'garden gate' economy developed and thrived, even after the war had long ended and rationing itself was a thing of the past.

My father never had a 'garden gate' shop, but he did have a garage with petrol pumps and plenty of passing trade. So he sold eggs and seasonal vegetables out of the office. I'm fairly sure some jobsworth from the Cooncil would have something to say about that now, but then we still had that 'pulling together' attitude and anyway, half the Cooncil were customers! Any fruit and vegetables that didn't sell were dropped off at McKnight's the greengrocer by my father on his way home in the evening. This led to a number of other deals being made – ah, the webs we weave – which we shall discuss presently.

Anyway, back to the eggs. To collect these I had to venture down the path past the old garden tool shed, past the little orchard and down a narrow lane behind a beech hedge. Here were the henhouses, three of them, twenty by forty feet in size, though by that time we only used one.

In the summer months, when the sun had risen hours before and the world was all crystal light, this journey was a pleasure; in winter, when it was still dark, freezing cold and the paves on the path treacherously slick, it was not. But arrival at the hen-house made up for it.

Unlike the coal shed, the hen-houses had electricity. I was never quite sure of the logic behind all this. But at least I didn't have to use a torch to find the eggs.

The hens were what might be called 'semi free range'. They lived in the hen-house but in boxes around the walls, while the floor was covered in deep litter. This was made of sawdust and hen droppings and generated a lot of heat, so that even on the coldest January morning the place was positively tropical. There was also a pungent odour, which I can still smell now, fifty-five years later. It was not unpleasant, though.

The floor was just packed earth, with the litter on top, and so the hens constantly scraped around for worms, which came up from below. This was an excellent place to find the much sought-after 'brandling' worms, which had bands of yellow and pink on their bodies and were well known to be the best worms of all for fishing – a property I often made use of.

With the hens – Rhode Island Reds – clucking around my feet, I would make my way along the walls, lifting the lid of the boxes and taking the eggs. Sometimes I got several dozen in a day. When I'd done the tour, I'd carefully set down the basket by the door and then check the feeders. If any were empty I had to fill them from the sacks kept in one of the unused hen-houses, using a bucket kept for the purpose. I'd check that the water troughs, hen sized, were working – they were fed from the mains and only once can I remember them having frozen – and put 'grit' in the bowls. Hens use this in their gizzards to help them digest food. Then, all done, I'd switch out the lights and make my way back up to the house. Some of those eggs would quickly be on the table!

Mowing the Lawn

The other major chore, at least in summer, was Mowing the Lawn. Our lawn was not huge, about sixty feet square, but it was big enough. My father liked to see it nice and neat, with those laid stripes. Mowing the thing with a hand mower would of course have been impossible, especially for a lad of eight or nine, but we had the technology!

Lurking in the new garden tool-shed (to distinguish it from the old one) was the perfect remedy. This shed was not a traditional stone one like the other, but a corrugated iron construction that had once been a car garage. So it was about sixteen feet wide and twenty-four long. Here was kept all the machinery we used in the garden, some of which was arcane and bizarre, like for example, the weed-killing flamethrower (seriously). I'm sure things like that must be illegal now. But it was also where we kept the doughty Ransomes motorised lawnmower.

Now this was not a lawnmower as you know it. Although it bore the legend 'Gazelle', there was nothing light, delicate or dainty about this thing. It was so big that I had to peer over the handle-bars and it was powered by a Villiers two-stroke engine of one hundred and twenty-five cubic centimetres. I wrote that out in full just to convey some of the awe which this thing inspired. That's as big as a learner motorcycle in Britain today.

The Gazelle had a twenty-four inch cut and a huge back roller, which provided the drive and also was responsible for those nice lines that my father liked to see. It weighed a ton, at least to an nine-year old boy.

Starting the Gazelle was a ritual, as was usual with implements of that era. First I had to check the fuel level and top it up if necessary. This I did from the two-gallon can of two-stroke petroil mix kept under the bench. If this were empty I was supposed to go and tell someone, but after a while I figured out how to make the mix and did it myself. Nobody seemed to notice.

With the fuel tank topped up, one then opened the petcock itself and 'tickled' the carburettor. This meant pushing down a tiny plunger on the float bowl till mixture ran out. Then one carefully wrapped the starter cord onto the drum and pulled. Usually, unless the spark plug had fouled from idling too long, it would start on the second or third pull.

The Gazelle had two controls on the handlebar. One was a throttle, which I usually kept about half way, since any more meant I should have to run. The other was the clutch which, unlike a car's, was engaged only when pulled in. This was a 'safety feature' and as far as I can recall, the only one. It at least meant that if for any reason the operator let go, the machine would stop. That this worked had been proven to me when poor Jim, our gardener, dropped dead behind it and the Gazelle waited patiently, as if it imagined he would get up; but of that, more anon.

Finally, one had to attach the grass-box to the front, to collect the cuttings and then, with the engine roaring, one pulled in the clutch and off we jolly well went, hopefully in the right direction, scattering all before us.

Actually mowing the lawn took about an hour and a half, I think, although it's hard to remember. Far worse was having to do the 'edging', which fortunately only needed to be done once a month or so.

My father was an inveterate collector of mechanical gadgets and it was not so very long before he decided to add to the collection of arcane equipment in the new garden tool shed. One day I came home from school and there it was, parked out in front of the house: a shiny new, two-tone metallic green British Anzani Lawnrider! Oh joy! The gardening gods must have taken pity on me, after seeing me running around chasing the Gazelle. This thing had a seat!

Needless to say, after a quick read of the instruction book, I had figured out that this was not so very different from the Gazelle. It had a Villiers 150cc two-stroke engine which was easier to start than the Gazelle's, as it had a recoil starter rope, but otherwise was similar. The cost of one of these in 1963 was £115, or just over two thousand pounds in today's money.

The Lawnrider was basically a tricycle, with the engine, blades and drive wheel replacing the front wheel and the essential roller (for making those lines) supporting the seat. This used the driver's weight to get more perfect lines. Clever, huh? It was steered through a pair of handle-bars and on these were the familiar throttle and clutch levers. The difference was that this machine had a clutch lock so the driver could relax his death grip. I noted that the manual said, in big letters, that the clutch lock should not normally be engaged as it over-rode an important safety feature. But I was nine.

The machine had a lever which raised or lowered the cutters to it could travel to the work area on paved ground and the usual screws and so on for setting the height of the cut.

Come Saturday and my father gave me a demonstration of how to use the beast, proudly mowing half the lawn. But that was all he needed to satisfy himself with his shiny new toy. He left the rest to me and went off to potter in his wine-making shed – of which more later.

The Lawnrider was not just a bauble for my father to impress his friends with, it was, for me, my chariot. I would roll across the lawn (at two miles per hour) waving my sword or sometimes my lance. But whereas operating the Gazelle had been pretty hard work, especially for a boy, and I had to keep my wits about me to avoid scalping the lupins, the Lawnrider was...well...too easy. It was kinda dull, like. One had to be careful at the edges of the lawn, to avoid allowing the front drive wheel to drop into the decorative borders, but otherwise...

I pretty quickly forgot those admonitions about not engaging the clutch lock in normal use and so I was basically just sitting there with the engine droning away, only stopping every second pass to empty the grass box. Once the thrill of charging (at two miles per hour) across the lawn with a bamboo pole tucked under my arm wore out, it was all just a bit...dull.

I was not different from any other little boy my age and so soon I began to scheme up mischief. No, I didn't plan to mow my father's roses or anything like that, because even then I was not that daft. But there were other ways to have creative fun, n'est-ce pas?

A feature of Saturday television in those far-off halcyon days before the Internet, was Saturday afternoon scrambling. For those who don't know, this is the time-honoured sport of taking large motorcycles, stripping off all the unnecessary weight, putting on knobbly tyres and chasing each other around empty fields. All good fun and something every boy should enjoy. But between the races there were often trick motorcycling demonstrations, including routines like the Human Pyramid and so on. One particularly intrigued me, where the rider turned in flight, as it were, sat on the handlebars and piloted from there, while another pilot jumped on the seat and stood there with his arms out. Now this was intriguing.

I tried sitting on the handlebars on my bicycle but I fell off. 'There must be another way' I mused. 'Oh I know, what about that Lawnrider?' After all, it didn't fall over, or at least it never had. Far better platform to try this sort of thing on.

I imagine that those of you who are parents might guess what happened next. The following Saturday came along and it was time to mow the lawn. I think it must have been September, because it was a little cool and I was wearing a thick sweater. Anyway, after I'd got about half the lawn mowed, I put my plan into action. I engaged the clutch lock, lifted myself up, swung my legs round the seat and hoisted myself onto the handlebars. And there I was, travelling backwards, mightily proud of my acrobatic abilities.

I had forgotten that there was a bit of a bump where a tree root came close to the surface.

Now usually this did nothing more than cause the handlebars to twitch a little and that is exactly what it did. But it caught me completely off-guard and the next thing I knew I had tumbled backwards into the grass-box. That was not in itself so bad, but the impact of my fall caused the box to unhook from the machine. So now I was being pushed along the ground with my torso and head in the grass-box and my legs kicking at the mower, trying to keep it off.

The Lawnrider seemed upset at me, possibly in a fit of pique and it did not appear impressed with my resistance, as it pressed on towards me. To make a bad situation (I'm sure you'll concur) even worse, my thick oiled-wool sweater got caught in the cutter blades, which immediately began chopping it up and dragging me towards them, presumably with the intent of doing the same to me. I realised that Something Had To Be Done Quickly. Even I am not that slow, you know.

Somehow and with a lot of effort I managed to get my legs down without letting my back fall into the mower and with all my strength I pushed on one side of the Lawnrider's engine housing. To my amazement (and great relief) it turned to the right, allowing me just enough space to get away to the other side, sliding along on the grass-box, which my head and shoulders were still inside.

I rolled out and with a certain cold anger – how dare the beast have so used me – lost no time in jumping up and disengaging the clutch lock, so the infernal monster stopped. And there we stood, for a long moment, glaring at each other. But then I snapped myself back to reality. There was the matter of covering my tracks to attend to and quickly, before anyone came out to see how I was doing.

First I had to reattach the grass box, which fortunately hadn't been damaged. I then had to go over the last two passes again, to straighten out the kinks in the lines that my antics had put in. I might have been shaking a bit, but I did have the presence of mind to realise that my mother had better not see that oiled-wool sweater in the state it was in. It looked like it had been mauled by a tiger. I should have to get rid of it discreetly and make up some sort of story. (I think I said I lost it while out fishing, which was plausible at least.)

I finished the lawn and carried on. I never told either my mother or my father about any of this, in fact I never told a soul. I think many of my activities would have been curtailed if anyone had found out.

Tiamat

Before we move on, from the business of me doing my best to get myself turned into flying mince while my parents were distracted, there is one other denizen of the New Garden Shed that I feel I need to discuss. In case its ghost comes to haunt me, like. The New Garden Shed was in a corner of the garden that was surrounded by hedges and a wall and was the main vegetable allotment. As such it had two large cultivated areas separated by a slabbed pathway to the new garage, where the cars lived. I hope you’re getting this.

Here we grew peas, beans, cabbages, cauliflowers, kale and so on. That took about half of the land and the rest of it was given over to potatoes. (This is Scotland.)

The peas, beans and the brassicas were harvested as they ripened, from late June through to September and then in October it was time to lift the tatties. This was backbreaking work but the heavy part was always done by the gardener, Jim or Janet, or later a hand from the garage making some overtime. I was in charge of picking up the tatties and putting them in baskets. These would then be stored.

This would make for an energetic weekend, but the work was not done with the lifting of the spuds. No, the soil had to be tilled ready for planting. Now less creative types (perhaps those not enamoured with noisy machinery, poor fools) would have got out the spades and double-dug the lot, as I regularly helped my chum Kenny Powrie with at his place. But not for my Dad, that.

Instead, we had the most fearsome beast in the shed, a rotovator. But not just any rotovator; we had a Howard Gem. For eleven months of the year, this monster hunkered on her hurdies at the back of the shed, lowering malevolently at all and sundry. Then would come the time to get her out, clean the plug, and start up.

Now to give you an idea of the scale of this dragon, she was fitted with a six hundred cc JAP side-valve four-stroke engine. Six hundred. There are cars with smaller engines. She was definitely big and mean.

The design was basic enough. There were two large drive wheels in fifteen-inch rims fitted with blocked tyres like a tractor’s. These were mounted on a central axle, fitted behind the engine so that it was just in front of the centre of balance, with the engine itself hanging out before. Behind this axle, on a belt-driven subshaft, were four sets of rotating blades. The shaft was covered with a steel housing and the blades (strictly ‘tines’ but I know you’re all townies) were hidden behind a rubber valance that came down to the ground. This was definitely a Good Safety Idea. At the back of this was a vertical bar with a shoe on the bottom that could be moved up or down to adjust the digging depth.

Because this was a four-stroke, it used neat petrol instead of petroil mixture. The starting procedure was to remove the plug and make sure it was nice and clean, replace it, open the fuel tap on the tank, which was a long cylindrical one above the motor and tickle the carburettor till fresh fuel flowed out. Then there were two actual starting methods. One was to use a cranking handle inserted into the crankcase and the other was the more familiar pull start. This one was not a recoil, so you had to wind the rope every go. I confess I could never master that infernal crank, even though Dad laughed at me and said, ‘Don’t rax it! Let it work for you!’ But I had not his considerable talent as an engineer.

In fact, starting a big old four-stroke single is always the same, and it’s much easier than a two-stroke. Fuel on, choke on. Kick, turn or pull the engine just over compression, making sure the ignition is off so it doesn’t kick back. Then reset the starter, switch on and give it a good swing. With any luck the beast will fire.

With that all done outside the shed, one engaged the drive wheels and opened the throttle. There was a lever just before the operator’s knee and pushing it down lowered and engaged the blade shaft. Then a good handful of throttle, engage the clutch and off you go, like some fearsome rider of a roaring dragon, scattering all and sundry and crying whatever it is dragon-riders cry. ‘Geronimo!’ would probably do.

Tiamat would cultivate the plots in just about an hour, then I’d switch off the fuel, drain the carburettor, wash her down and put her away till next time.

I was only nine and I wondered sometimes what my schoolteachers might have said, had they seen me of an autumn Saturday, steering Tiamat (I should have been quite invisible, hanging off the bars behind her) through clouds of dust as she blatted her way up and down the plots, while I grinned from ear to ear. These days they’d probably arrest my parents; but that is for another time, my dears.

Nobody can say I didn't earn my pocket money, but it’s not really work if you love doing it!

Rewards

These chores and a few others were rewarded every Saturday morning (in arrears) by the payment of my pocket-money. This was a whole five shillings a week (25p) or a little less than eight pounds today. This was not a fortune, though it was substantially more than most of my classmates had. But I worked for it, hard. I can honestly say I have never been a socialist and I think these early experiences taught me that if I wanted something, there was no point in waiting for someone to give it to me, I had to earn and save for it.

Next time we’ll talk about the fun part of money — spending it.

I grew up in the house of ten thousand dreams. It was on a hill, overlooking the Tay estuary on Scotland's East coast. On clear nights I could see the flash and loom of the lights that stood guard along the shore; the Abertay Lightship, the Bell Rock, away south towards Dunbar they marched, sentinels of security and safe refuge. In the estuary itself, some only visible through binoculars, were the flashing lights of the navigation buoys that marked the safe passages amongst the shifting shoals and sandbars that were so treacherous.

In daytime, from my bedroom window, I could see the ever transforming beauty of the Angus countryside, rolling away to the south, towards Dundee. On the other side of the Tay, beyond the city's smoke, there were the rugged whale-backs of the Lomond Hills and, to the east of them, the dark smudge that was Tentsmuir Forest. Beyond that lay the RAF base at Leuchars, which was, in the Cold War -- though I did not come to understand that concept till much later -- constantly active, with Lightning fighters blasting skywards, trailing their afterburner flames like firework rockets, every day.

Closer by was Carnoustie, a few miles down the hill towards the sea and separated from us by the fields but also the Dundee Road, the A92, which even then was a busy trunk road. To the west of that was Barry Buddon army camp, which, almost every day, rattled with small-arms fire from its range. We could clearly hear it from our garden; like the cooing of doves and the cawing of crows, the distant traffic roar of the A92 and the constant clattering of rifle and machine-gun fire were the background music to our idyll.

Panmure Estate

The house was not huge, although it seemed so, to me. It stood in its own grounds, one of the few like that on what was then the Panmure Estate. The garden was just under two acres in total, but in that space it managed to cram a vegetable plot, fruit gardens, an orchard, a wood and several outbuildings including an air-raid shelter, three full-sized henhouses and three smaller sheds for rearing chicks, as well as garages, workshops and even the 'Shack'. This was a one-roomed timber cottage in the garden that was, officially, a guest room but had become the junk store, where things that were valuable and had to be kept dry, but were not immediately required, were kept. Needless to say, it was a rainy-day treasure-hunting paradise.

There was a lawn and a back drying green, a rose garden and a rockery, along with a hopelessly overgrown shrub garden that we called the 'bush wood'. It was the perfect size for boy adventuring.

To me, this was a place of magic. It was indeed the House of Ten Thousand Dreams, though I did not know its name until much later. This was my Principality, for I was hardly a king, my fiefdom, the place, isolated from the outside world, where anything could be made to happen, any dream realised; all save one.

My first recollections

It is always difficult to be sure what constitutes a real memory of early childhood and what is invented; but there are a number of landmarks to help me. My younger brother was born when I was just turned four and I can clearly remember visiting my mother in the Maternity Ward at Arbroath Infirmary. I remember, too, his first day at home. I had been dressed in my Sunday best, my kilt and jacket, and polished up to look a treat for his welcome-home tea (one did not drink alcohol during the day then, tea and scones, or those strange triangular sandwiches, only).My brother was lying in a cot in what we called the 'living room', probably because it was April and there were only two tolerably warm spaces in the entire house, in those pre-central heating days. Naturally, the room was full of women, most of them fussing over my mother, who was ensconced on the leather sofa with her legs up, 'resting'. These women are but dark shadows now, their faces long forgotten, but it's a safe bet that they were my mother's friends and relatives. I don't remember my father being there.

Other recollection, however, is vague. I remember messing my pants, while dressed in a yellow romper suit, outside the kitchen and then running inside, where the women of the household were, and promptly being stripped and plonked into the kitchen sink to be washed; with considerable good humour although my mother, famously, hated doing it. And I can remember being attacked by a feral cat which I thought had got trapped, in the narrow space between our old wooden greenhouse in the back court and the stone wall behind. Well, I got trapped too, in my mistaken effort to rescue it and the cat made a serious mess of me. I think perhaps it was not persuaded of my good intentions. The resulting mauling provoked a trip to the Casualty Department, as A&E was then called, and the first injection I actually remember -- almost certainly a Tetanus shot. It was not to be my last visit. While I love cats, I have never forgotten that encounter with their race; a hard lesson about cornered felines.

These events, including the arrival of my sibling rival, were traumatic enough to imprint. But other than those, I can't be sure of anything that preceded April 1960, when Hamish came into our world -- and my House of Ten Thousand Dreams.

Knee-Height

The world I inhabited in those early years was populated by a group of figures, nearly all women, whom I observed from knee-height. I was strangely conscious of this perspective, though I could not say I understood it. Everyone towered over me, but they were usually smiling.

My mother, Gladys, was the Queen of this domestic realm. From her, of course, did all things flow; love but also gentle discipline. Her mother, my maternal grandmother, did not live with us -- we were a 'modern' family -- and instead lived in the tenement flat where my mother and my aunt had grown up, in Dundee. But she visited regularly and I remember the long hours these two women spent talking or enjoying the garden, constantly with an eye on me and whatever adventure I was pursuing. By this time, of course, there was always the baby, dressed usually in white, around whom they seemed to revolve.

My mother and grandmother were not the only women in the realm, however. Scottish country houses in those days usually had a 'live-in'. This was what the English call a maid, but we Scots were less high-falutin. Although at the time I did not realise this -- all adults were fantastical, giant creatures to me -- these were young girls of fifteen or so, hardly more than children themselves. Country families then tended to be large, often with seven or eight children and there was little in the way of social support.

Live-ins

Compulsory education lasted only until the age of fifteen, at which time, in the poorer families, boys were expected to get jobs on the farms or in the factories in Dundee, while girls entered service until they were married. Since the lowest age that a girl could marry was sixteen, she was available for work for at least a year, and sometimes, if she were a picky girl (or a plain one) longer. But even plain girls then had ways to lead a lad to the altar, encouraged perhaps, by her strapping brothers and father.

The live-in's room in our house was directly behind the kitchen and shared a common wall with the Rayburn stove, which was always lit, even in summer. This meant that she lived in luxury, since her room was warm, unlike most of the house. It had certain curiosities: it was the only room with bars on the windows and it could only be accessed via the kitchen itself. All through my childhood I assumed these were to stop the girl escaping, as if she were a prisoner, until, many years later, I mentioned this to my mother, who burst out laughing.

'Oh no,' she said. 'It wasn't to keep the girls in. It was to keep the boys out! The girls' mothers insisted on it.' How lucky one was, at age four, not to understand sex or the proclivities of teenage girls keen to find themselves married.

The girls were paid ten shillings a week in wages and had their bus fare home on the weekends, plus, of course, their board and lodging with us. They would leave on Saturday morning and come back on Sunday evening. However, it would appear that they spent the hours away from us doing more than just visiting home.

Indeed, my first understanding of sex -- shrouded in mystery and confusion -- came from whispered conversations at the lunch table, when I would usually be asked to leave while my parents got to the juicy details. They would begin with a comment like 'that girl has done it again' and that a new one would have to be found; at this point I would be told to go and finish my lunch in the kitchen with the very girl herself, my bafflement complete.

Clouds

A certain cloud would come over my mother after these conversations. I think, now, that she formed strong bonds with these girls, yes, seeing them as cousins perhaps, but then, perhaps more. Effectively, when my mother was in the house during the day and my father was absent, she and the girl were inseparable. When we went for a walk, she came too; when we went to explore the nearby hills and look for quartzes, she came and when my mother read the Bible to me in the afternoons, she would be there too, often rocking my baby brother.

I know that my mother became very close to more than one of these girls, who, many decades later, came to her funeral, themselves old women by then. So while my mother certainly understood that the departure of the girl was a blessing, because she would be off to begin her own family, there was also that sense of loss. Fortunately the girls rarely moved further than Tealing or Carmyllie, so they remained in touch with us, regularly arriving to show off their new babies as they appeared.

There would come the sad Saturday when the girl would kiss and hug me more than usual, her face wet with tears, and my mother would have that trying-to-make-the-best-of-it look, hiding her emotions. She would slip the girl a brown envelope, her parting gift and the girl would walk up the drive, lugging her suitcase; and then she would be gone, leaving us to wait for the new girl to arrive. Some months later, she would would appear at the house to show off her newborn, now a proud married woman and mother herself -- at age seventeen.

Warmth and Love

While they were with us, however, these country girls added hugely to the warmth and love that pervaded the house. Really, they were treated like members of the family, cousins on long stay and, in fact, while none of them were related to us, the same families regularly provided live-ins as their broods successively hit the magic age of fifteen and could go out to work. The girls themselves invariably had younger brothers and sisters and were completely competent with children, knowing exactly how to deal with rascals like me and at the same time, how to make me feel loved.

Their duties were not onerous; they had to bank up the Rayburn at night with big coals, then damp it down so that it would not go out in the wee hours; put on the big black kettle to boil water at half past five in the morning; assist in the kitchen and with any household chores where help was wanted, and make the beds; but more complex tasks were off-limits. Mostly they entertained me and my brother and, often, my mother, as she whiled away the afternoons in the living room with us. Making tea was a major part of their lives, it seemed.

Cookie

More responsible culinary duties were performed by our cook, a large, plumptious woman from Arbirlot, some two miles away. Her domain, the kitchen, was the throbbing heart of the House of Ten Thousand dreams: a space given over to women, children and a disparate menagerie of pets, including dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea-pigs, hens and even, from time to time, a pony. I now no longer can recall how many years our cook, always called Mrs Taylor, commanded the kitchen like a warm round Sergeant-Major, never with a scold and always with a smile. I can still see her round face, red with the outdoor life, and her cloud of ringlets just by closing my eyes. She always wore a dark cardigan with the sleeves pulled up and a pink floral pinnie – a pinafore or apron.

I knew that she had sons and daughters of her own and, indeed, one of the latter was our 'live-in' for a time -- and the house was never better managed than with this pair at the helm -- but other than seeing her at church on Sundays, almost unrecognisable in her best, we had little other contact with her. There was very little mixing of the social strata in rural Scotland then.

My mother would deliver Mrs Taylor to her domain at ten in the morning and then, for two hours, incredible aromas would fill the kitchen, attracting me like a magnet. If I had been good (apparently I usually was) I would be allowed a taste of the stew or whatever meal she was preparing. It was always simple enough fare, but good for all that and a spoonful of her gravy was always like nectar. Her soups were amazing, and appeared every day, come hail or shine -- thick barley broths in winter that 'stuck to your ribs' and thinner ones in summer; though she was never really a one for consommés. Her mince was a revelation, a proper mince of just beef and onions and no fanciful modernist nonsense like carrots or peas.  It was only improved on when my mother was home and added 'doughballs' – suet puddings – to the mix.

Desserts in summer were always ice-cream -- Wall's Raspberry Ripple, for preference, but sometimes the distinctly inferior, to my taste, Lyons' Maid. In winter there would be apple and rhubarb pies and custard, great vats of steaming custard. As an aside, I have often reflected that, even more than warm flat beer, the definition of Britishness was contained in these two things: tea and custard.

Our custard was not the 'crème Anglaise' of the French. No, ours came in a tin, red, yellow and blue, bearing the legend 'Bird's Original Custard'. I am convinced that there is not a Briton of any flavour, persuasion or class who has not just conjured up an image of that very can in his or her mind. This was the only custard my mother would buy, or for that matter, we would eat – and we ate a lot of it.

Custard

Custard was always served, in the House of Ten Thousand Dreams, at just that perfect consistency, not too runny, as the custard at the school 'soupie' always was, because they thinned it, making it ersatz and disappointing – and not too glutinous, either. It had to gloop off the spoon in precisely the correct slow-motion ballet, smooth and sensual. Combined with a nice rhubarb crumble, these were the nectar and ambrosia of the gods, especially on a bitter January day.

There was little trace of 'multicultural' influence, but our food was wholesome and tasty and we ate like wolves.

Mrs Taylor's sons worked on the farms nearby. These lads and millions like them were never better described than by the anonymous couplet

'Here's tae Mither Tamson's ugly bairns,

Great muckle chiels wi' hairy airms.'

Her sons, being unmarried, and her husband, another of the same ilk who could have stood duty as a barn door, would always go home for lunch and so Mrs Taylor would leave us at noon to lay out the meal she had prepared in the dark morning, before coming to work, in readiness for their arrival at twelve-thirty. On the stroke of twelve she would bundle her copious self into my mother's car and off they would go. Occasionally I was allowed to accompany them but usually I stayed with the girl.

The ‘rural poor’?

In passing, it has become fashionable to refer to the country folk as the 'rural poor'. What an insult. There was nothing poor about these families' lives, even if they did have only one set of 'Sunday Clothes', rode to work on bicycles and thought 'wine' was something the dog did when it wanted out. On the few occasions when I was favoured with a lunchtime visit to Mrs Taylor's house, usually when Mum was away at Dundee and the girl was off sick – or to be married – I was amazed, nay flabbergasted, by the sheer amount of food under which that woman's table groaned. Great basins of boiled potatoes, turnips, carrots and a vast pot of stew, emitting an aroma that made a hungry boy weak at the knees. And then they would come clattering in, the men, joking and laughing, wash their hands, faces and necks at the kitchen sink, and eat the whole perishing lot, while their mother and sisters struggled to keep up the supply.

Nicky Tams

By the by, it was on one of these visits, when I, a wide-eyed little boy, discovered what a 'Nicky Tam' was. Naturally, my father, being a Ford Main Agent and a person of standing in the community, never wore such things, but the Taylor menfolk, who were all farm labourers, did. A Nicky Tam – for those who have not had the undeniable advantage of growing up in rural Scotland – is a length of baler twine (you do know what a baler is, no? Don't worry, we'll explain later) which one ties around one's trouser leg just below the knee.

This has two purposes, as one of the behemothic scions of the household explained, kindly, seeing my interest. One is to lift the hem of the trousers up and so, away from the mud – the 'glaur' – which is of course, everywhere on a farm. This helps to avoid that capital social sin, 'trailin gutters intae the houss', for which one were guaranteed to be chastised, usually at high volume. But the other was more intimate, so to speak. It has been known for a rat, disturbed in its nest in the haystack, to run up the nearest man's trouser leg; the Nicky Tam stopped it below the knee and before it could get to more sensitive parts. I'm sure you will appreciate that having an irate rat in one's underwear is a must to avoid.

Dinner, not Lunch

In the country houses then -- and indeed, all the homes -- lunch, always called 'dinner', was the central meal of the day. It might be better to see 'dinner' here as a translation of 'dejeuner' rather than 'diner'. It had much in common with that French institution that I came to know so well when I was older. Work -- and school, as I was later to find out -- stopped at noon or quarter past and began again at two. On the farms, this was determined by the season, the later workday start, in the winter months when it was still dark in the mornings, cutting into the mealtime.

Unlike the French, adults never drank at lunchtime, at least, not other than the never-ending cups of tea, which were taken with milk and sugar. For the children, there was milk and later, soda drinks. My father had a deal with the local soda drinks maker, Robb Brothers, and there was always a crate of their product in the pantry. That my teeth survived this still amazes me.

Our cook would leave food for the girl to reheat for 'tea', the meal we ate at half past five in the evening. Unlike dinner, we always took this in the kitchen, usually with the girl and often my mother, too. Sometimes she would cook the tea herself rather than reheat or have cold. My father never joined us in these meals; instead, when he arrived home from work he would sit in the living room and watch the television news, taking his tea on a tray.

Breakfast!

The other meal of the day, somewhat out of sequence, was breakfast. Again, we always ate this in the kitchen, because the living-room fire was not lit till later and it was too cold there. Breakfast was, on weekdays, cereal or porridge, salted, with no sugar and drenched in the top of milk, which was pure cream. On Sundays we would have bacon and eggs too, before going to church.

My father trusted no-one else to make the porridge, which he prepared the traditional country way, with 'pinhead' oatmeal rather than flakes. This has to be soaked overnight and then brought to the boil slowly, to prevent it from sticking and burning -- which it does with alacrity; and no Scot can thole burned porridge. But, well done and preserving the slight crunchiness of the broken seeds, it is the best porridge of all, especially if a good big dollop of beef dripping has been melted in and stirred through the pot.

Dripping -- the mark of a superior porridge -- brings me to another tale, or many of them. In the yard outside the kitchen was an old wooden greenhouse that was no longer used and had become the home of a floating population of cats, some of whom were completely feral -- as I had found to my cost. You did not, by the way, want to take too deep a breath in there, especially on a hot day.

Every morning, the cats would crowd on to the kitchen window-sill, yowling impatiently and knocking each other off, watching my father prepare his magic porridge through the window. As he decanted ours into a basin on the table, only a couple of feet away from their noses, the excitement would reach fever-pitch and they would throw themselves at the back door, even hanging from the knob. Dad would take the porridge pot and sally forth, braving the furry melee with a huge grin on his face, while the cats threw themselves at him. He would pour what was left into two big enamelled ashets in the greenhouse, leaving the cats to fight over a place at the table.

So that is how you get cats to eat porridge: add beef dripping. It works on kids too.

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