a lifetime of memories by allan hunter

A LIFETIME OF MEMORIES

Why have I at seventy-two years old, decided to record my memories of these years? Who will want to read this and am I only wasting my time? Jill has been encouraging me for some time to do this because family history has always been important to her so there is one reader who will not feel it has been a wasted exercise. Perhaps Emma will one day find it interesting too because she is always asking me to tell her stories about her Mum and Uncle Martin when they were children. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m feeling slightly apprehensive about starting at the beginning because of feelings I have about my childhood but maybe by writing them down I will lay a few ghosts to rest.

I was born in 1933 in the Raploch area of Stirling which was a council housing scheme for working class families and had a bit of a reputation for housing petty criminals but nothing like the notoriety it achieved in later years. I was the second oldest of seven children but sadly my youngest brother who was born after I married and moved away, died when he was only about eighteen months old. May was the eldest by about two years then came David about two years after me, followed by Nan who was born on my birthday about two years after that. Hugh came probably more than three years later and Flora after another four years when I was thirteen years old and my father had returned from the war. James completed the family six years after that. My earliest memory was when I was about four years old going to a little house by the harbour in Ayr for a holiday with my Granny, my mother, May and David. My father went to Paris much to my mother’s annoyance!!

He was a coal miner working

underground in the most difficult, dangerous conditions, digging for coal by hand in a height of three feet surrounded by water. I was always afraid when there was an accident at the mine (and there were many of them) in case he would be killed. He used to come home covered in coal dust because there were no facilities for bathing then. He was an intelligent proud man who wanted to do better than his miner father before him but in those days there were no opportunities to do so. My mother who was not very intelligent or ambitious was content to have her life dictated to her by my father. This was to cause many unhappy memories for us growing up in a home where there were constant rows usually about money. My mother was unable to challenge my father’s unrealistic belief that the housekeeping money he allowed her was sufficient with the result that she got into debt and when he found out there were violent rows. On one occasion my mother ended up with a bad cut above her eye which left a scar because she never got it stitched. She ran out of the house late that night and said she wasn’t coming back. We were all hysterical and I remember screaming at my father that I knew what he had done. We could always tell when there would be a row because my father’s bad mood always showed on his face and I was always afraid of him when he raised his voice.

At this point I should talk about my grandparents. My mother’s parents lived in a first floor flat in Baker Street, Stirling which had a toilet on the landing shared by all the other tenants. They had four children the eldest being Aunt Nan who was a very dour person, then my mother, followed by Uncle Robert an unpleasant character then Aunt Babs who was kind and my favourite. My grandfather Hugh was the kindest, gentlest person but my granny was the nastiest, bad tempered old lady who dressed in long black skirts and looked like Queen Victoria!! We used to go and visit them every Saturday but it was not an enjoyable time especially after my grandfather died. When we arrived my granny would be having her forty winks in a high lugged chair. She would open her eyes briefly when we arrived and then barked “be quiet” and we had to sit and wait until she decided to wake up. She never showed the slightest interest in us or looked pleased to see us. My father’s parents lived in a ground floor flat at Borestone Crescent St Ninians and we used to walk through the King’s Park to visit them every Sunday dressed in our best clothes. My grandfather, a small thin man was a bad tempered, intolerant bigot who hated catholics and the Royal Family. He threw the radio out of the window one day just because a royal occasion was being broadcast!! My granny was the warmest, kindest person who was about six feet tall and very fat and she always gave us such a warm welcome. She was always anxious if my grandfather was in a bad mood. We used to love to visit her after she was on her own. She worried hysterically if we went across the road to the swing park and insisted that my father saw us across the road each time. There were seven sons and two daughters in the family but the only one I was close to was Uncle Sandy who died when I was about twelve years old and I was very upset because I was his favourite and he let everyone know it. At the funeral everyone got angry with me because I couldn’t stop crying. I was six years old when war was declared and I remember my father who was by now in the Territorial Army being brought up from the mine to enlist as a regular soldier although it would be a few months before he was posted to Aldershot to train for combat The street was agog with the news and worried families wondered what would happen

next Air raid shelters sprung up in the back gardens of the tenements which were blocks of four houses and we lived on the first floor. We were issued with gas masks in boxes which we had to carry with us at all times. When a siren sounded we had to make for the nearest shelter and put on our masks which were uncomfortable and made it difficult to breathe. Hugh was just a baby and he had to lie in a special mask but my biggest worry was that my mother had to keep pumping air into it all the time or Hugh would have suffocated.. Hugh’s birth was a difficult one for my mother because he weighed 13 pounds and was born at home as we all were with the help of the same midwife who had delivered us all. My father who was as bigotted as his father about catholics was worried that the catholic midwife would, if there was a risk to mother and baby, save the child as directed by catholic principles. However Hugh was born without any risk but my mother was quite ill for two weeks. May, David, Nan and I were sent to our grandparents who by now had moved to a modern first floor flat in nearby Morris Terrace. What a miserable time we had. We were afraid that our mother might die and there was no kindly granny to reassure us. Her discipline was harsh and on Sundays we were not allowed to leave our room except for meals and were not allowed to speak. We had to amuse ourselves as best we could. We were so happy when we went back home. My father’s departure from home during the war caused many changes in our lives mainly because my mother found it difficult to manage without his support. The army pension was very small and she was not able to budget for food, heating by coal, clothes and pay the rent. The result was we were often in rent arrears. By now I was seven years old and I was aware of the mess we were in and I used to look at the rent book to see if she had been paying it and I was worried we would be evicted. We had to cope with ration books for food and clothing coupons for clothes. Again because of my mother’s inability to manage we had lots of food on a Monday but hardly anything to eat by Sunday. I remember going to the Co-op one Monday morning to get the week’s supply and I hadn’t had anything to eat. I fainted in the long queue!! A lady took me home and

I wasn’t allowed to go again. Things got a bit better when my father came home on leave regularly at first but when he was posted to Germany we only saw him once before the end of the war. This meant he was away for about three years. It must have been a nightmare for my mother coping with five children in a small flat which had a living room with a kitchen range for burning coal, heating the house and for some cooking because we only had a small stove in the kitchen. There was a bed recess in the living room where my parents slept, a small bedroom for David and Hugh and a slightly larger one for May, Nan and I. At one point we had a soldier, his wife and baby daughter renting our big room to give us some extra cash so the girls moved into the boys’ room and they slept with my mother while my father was away. This arrangement lasted for a few months and it was chaos!! It was difficult to refuse an opportunity to have some extra cash because there was no help for families except from the Red Cross which invited families every so often to visit their premises to see if any secondhand clothes which had been donated were of any use. This is the reason why I will never wear secondhand clothes. The other nightmare for me was that my mother insisted when buying my sisters and I shoes that she bought boys ones because they lasted longer!!. I was so embarrassed to wear them. My mother was a french polisher before she married and she managed to earn a little extra by going to people’s houses to repolish furniture but it almost ended in tragedy because she kept a bottle of polish stripper which was a kind of acid for removing old polish in a lemonade bottle on a shelf in the kitchen and one day when my father was at home I was feeling thirsty, saw the lemonade bottle and reached up to the shelf for it. My father happened to come into the kitchen and grabbed it. There was a terrible row and no one in our family ever stored any thing but lemonade in bottles after that!! I was really jealous of May because being the oldest she got everything new and I had to wear her castoffs. She got a new bike for her birthday when she was about eight and wouldn’t share it with me. She always insisted on her sixpence pocket money each week even though she knew my mother was short of money. I had to go without since I was the one who didn’t make a fuss because I knew how precarious our money situation was.

I resented the fact that May never cared or thought about the struggle my mother was having. The resentment because of her selfishness continued throughout my life at home. We were never really friends and she never acted like a big sister.

One Saturday

afternoon we went as usual to the Allanpark cinema matinee with some other children. The film was a glamourous Hollywood musical which I loved. When the film ended I wanted to stay and see the beginning again but May decided to leave and never left me my bus fare. I left soon after and quickly discovered I had no bus fare home. It must have been Xmas time because I remember all the shops lit up and lots of people shopping. I was panicking and running crying all the way through town to the Back o’ Hill and through the Shell Park which is where the Sainsbury store is now. It was dark and I was so frightened that by the time I got home I was almost hysterical and I expected May to get a row for leaving her six year old sister to walk home on her own. She didn’t!! I got the row for not going with her and of course I can now admit it was my own fault!! It was only when we were in our late thirties that we became close. Christmases as a result of our hand to mouth existence were always difficult for my mother to manage. Earlier ones when my father was at home always provided us with some nice presents. I vividly remember probably when I was just five the year that May and I got a doll with a chinalike face. We excitedly ran down the stone stairs outside our flat to show off to our friends. I tripped, fell down the stairs and my doll’s face was smashed to pieces!! I was utterly heartbroken especially since May was still able to enjoy hers! My mother’s way of dealing with the Xmas present problem when she was on her own was to give to the ones who demanded presents and give me what little was left. In fact one Xmas I got nothing and I was only nine or ten then! The one treat we had each Xmas was a visit to the Regal cinema for a special morning’s showing of films and then on the way out we were given a paper bag with some sweets, a cake and a sixpence. This was paid for by the local Miners Welfare Union for miners’ children. It was a real treat and something we looked forward to. I was doing well at Raploch Primary despite the lack of interest by my mother and my father’s absence. I like to think he would have encouraged me to do well if he had been

there. In my last year I was top of the class and my teacher’s name was Miss Gordon whom I saw many years later at a reception in Edinburgh. I never forgot her face!! I was so tempted to tell her what a vindictive uncaring teacher she had been. She obviously had no understanding of the situation that children in an deprived area like the Raploch survived in. She was furious that I had not turned up at school on prize-giving day and when I attended next day she threw my prize which was a book down on my desk and said I didn’t deserve it!! She never bothered to find out the reason for my absence. I was so ashamed of my shabby clothes that I could not bear to go up on the stage with all the school seeing me. The anger, hurt and humiliation remains with me to this day. I must have been ten years old when I went to the Territorial School in Cowane Street which was quite a walk to and from home to school each morning and afternoon. There was no money for bus fares. The headmaster was much feared by the pupils especially in the line up going into school each morning. He would stand at the door and see if we were looking tidy and that our shoes were well polished. Those who weren’t were pulled out of the line to explain themselves and receive the belt if he wasn’t satisfied with the explanation. I did well at that school too but was scared of the teachers who were very strict. One teacher who had taught May two years before kept telling me I was a better pupil than my sister and that pleased me! She was very encouraging to me and I was determined to do well. One day she said “There is one thing about Margaret Orr she always has a nice smile” Compliments and kind remarks were few and far between in my life at that time so it is easy to see why I remember them with such pleasure. Many years later I told George that story and he always teased me when I was looking gloomy “where is that Margaret Orr smile” It worked I did smile!! I was fortunate enough with one other pupil to win a bursary to Stirling High School which was fee-paying instead of going to Riverside School which was the only alternative. I went there when I was twelve. Going back to when I was eleven two friends ( one called Jean who many years later became David’s sister-in-law) and I decided to have backgreen concert to raise some money for the Soldiers Welfare fund since two of us had fathers fighting in the war. We

were rehearsing one evening while my father was home on leave and my parents had both gone out for a while. Hugh was playing with friends outside then came in and asked for a bandage because he had cut his finger. I ignored him and he found some cotton wool which he wound round his hand and went back to his friends. Unknown to me they were playing with matches and the cotton wool on his hand caught fire. He came screaming up the stairs with his hand alight. I met him halfway up and snatched the burning cotton wool off his hand and took him into the house. I put him to bed and I think I put something on the hand which by now was just red and raw and waited for my parents to return. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think my parents appreciated the seriousness of the burn because it was the next morning before my father decided to take him to the Infirmary. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t remember them blaming me but maybe they realized they should not have left us on our own. It was feared that Hugh would be scarred for life and he might not be able to use his hand again. My father had to leave that day to rejoin his unit but was allowed home on compassionate grounds the next day. Hugh was transferred to the Infectious Diseases Hospital at Kildean because he developed scarlet fever from the shock of the burns. He was in the isolation hospital for one month and we were not allowed in to visit him so we had to talk to him at the window. Fortunately he made a complete recovery and he only has a slight scar on his hand. I was sitting my important exam for entrance to the High School the day after the burning accident and I really did not expect to pass but I did!! Maybe it would have been a good thing if I had not won the bursary because I was not happy in my three years at that school. There were only three pupils in the class who were not fee-paying and we were also the only pupils without the school uniform so we were always different. The work was hard and while most of the pupils had parents to support their efforts I had none and had no one to talk to about the difficulties I was having. I had a very good, kind French teacher who was very encouraging and I did well as a result. The gym teacher was a sadistic bully and I was terrified of her with the result I was clumsy when she was teaching us Scottish country dancing and Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve hated it ever since. She also humiliated anyone who was no good at gymnastics and I used to sit throughout the class before hers absolutely terrified and having no one to tell how I felt meant that things never got better

throughout my years at the school. I so envied my friend Eileen whose father was an Army Captain because her family were so close and supportive. I was upset when they moved to Glasgow because they were kind to me. Then I had another friend Fiona whose mother died when she was young and her father was a headmaster but I never wanted to take my school friends home because of where we lived and the poor state of the house. I once took Fiona home when everyone was out but I had spent the morning cleaning the house to make it look better. When I was fourteen Flora was born and I tried to show her the love and affection that I had not experienced with the result that we became very close and she wanted to go everywhere with me which became a bit difficult when I wanted to go out with friends. She was made a fuss of by my parents too at times but mainly when they liked to show her off because she was so pretty with her fair curly hair. My father by this time was demobbed from the army but not before he had covered himself with glory winning the Military Medal for bravery which he was to receive later from the Queen. He had single handedly knocked out a German anti-tank gun. I don’t remember much fuss being made about his actions but I was enormously proud of him. He was in Belgium when the war ended and he made friends with a family in Avelgem so he decided when Flora was 10 months old that he would take her and my mother to visit these people. May was by this time working in Deanston Mill much to my father’s disgust because he had hopes that she would put her secretarial skill from school to good use but to be fair to May there were no office jobs to be had and she wanted to earn some money. I was left in charge of the house, the dog, David, Nan and Hugh and I was only fourteen years old! Fortunately it was the school holidays so I didn’t have to go to school. I was happy to leave school at fifteen with only a lower leaving certificate to show for my efforts. How different it could have been if I could have done what I really wanted to do – to be a primary school teacher but I knew it was impossible because of my family’s financial situation and anyway I hated that school! My life had been pretty boring up till then with the only interest outside home being church on Sundays when I became too old for Sunday School and Bible Class on Sunday evenings. My mother was a devout church

goer so there was no escape. However I met my first boyfriend at Bible Class. Charlie was a tall handsome lad who worked in a local garage and was a keen athlete with much success as a sprinter in amateur athletics. This introduced me to a different world meeting other athletes usually from wealthy backgrounds. Charlie used to walk me home from school in his lunchtime but I soon lost interest because he became too serious for me at fifteen and I got tired of him. Then for a while I went to Salvation Army meetings with my cousins who were true Salvationists but I never was interested in joining them. I was more interested in another boy called Charlie who was learning to play in the band. He was an apprentice butcher in a shop in town who was more keen to learn a musical instrument than become a Salvationist!! But the Captain thought he would make a good officer and were anxious that he would not be distracted by me. We used to sneak off to the cinema which was against the rules and he never became an officer and they blamed it on me so I wasn’t exactly welcomed at their meetings anymore. That little romance didn’t last long but I don’t remember why because I was quite keen on him. The war didn’t cause much disruption in Stirling apart from a bomb that demolished some buildings at the bottom of the Craigs. We could get rid of the dreaded gas masks and the shelters in the gardens were used for other purposes before they were demolished many years later. My father was back home and we were getting back to some normality. I had left school and I didn’t have to go my grumpy old granny’s for a snack at lunchtime. Looking back over my childhood if it ever began and ended with my leaving school I could not think of a time when I had been really happy and carefree or had felt part of a close caring family. I suppose less sensitive people would not be so affected by this but I think I was the sort of person who needed more reassurance than others. I had meet children at school who had such a secure family background and were obviously happy and carefree. Perhaps if I had not mixed with a different class of pupils I might not at that time have felt so aware that there was another kind of life outside mine. The families in the area where I grew up probably had the same lifestyle with no show of affection because that really wasn’t what was expected of working class families. After all the parents had been brought up in exactly the same way. People were struggling to survive and I think playing happy families was not on the agenda. I wasn’t aware of

feeling bitter at the time but later when I heard others talking about their happy childhoods I realised what I had missed. Finding work when I left school was difficult even though I had done a commercial course giving me shorthand, typing and book-keeping skills. My father was anxious that I did not follow in May’s footsteps and go to work in a factory. At that time his Colonel in the Territorial Army was looking for someone to help look after his ten month old daughter Janet on a temporary basis and I agreed to do it while I looked for something else. His wife was nice if a bit scatty and they lived in a nice terraced house in Cambusbarron. Most days I walked there through the King’s Park which might not be such a good idea nowadays. I enjoyed looking after Janet in this posh house, feeding her, doing her washing, taking her out in her pram and putting her to bed. They had a nice housekeeper who was also very kind to me. I stayed for about six months and left when I told my father about Mrs Boyle leaving crisp new pound notes in the nursery. He thought she was testing my honesty and was very offended. Later he was to do another favour for Colonel Boyle who by this time had moved to a farm in Comrie. Hugh had just left school and with no prospects of work my father arranged for him to go and work as a farmhand without considering if it was right for Hugh to leave home and live on an isolated farm with other workers. Hugh was a shy withdrawn boy lacking in confidence mainly because of my father’s domineering , bullying manner towards him. I think this was caused by the lack of contact between the two of them during the war and my mother trying to protect Hugh only irritated him more. In the end Hugh returned home and this did not endear him to my father who felt he had let Boyle down and Hugh had failed him. My first real job was on the cash desk in a big restaurant in the centre of Stirling and I was delighted when I went for the interview to see that a neighbour was the manageress. I got the job but I wasn’t long there when I discovered she was embezzling money. She would send me for my lunch in the kitchen then instead of putting customers bills through the till she tore them up. When the till was emptied at the end of the day she

pocketed the excess. When I saw this I told my father who insisted I went in next day and resigned straight away. Everyone was mystified about my leaving but I couldn’t say anything to the management because I had no proof. I heard later that she was dismissed for dishonesty. I then found a job as a clerkess in a butcher’s shop in Bridge of Allan opposite the café. I worked in a little office in the shop where the customer came to pay bills or place orders. I hated seeing the rabbits being skinned and the manager was a strange person. It was a bit of a dead end job and I stayed for about a year and then at seventeen I found a job in the Stirling Journal weekly newspaper office in King Street as a telephonist and this job was to change my life!! The Journal was one of three weekly papers in Stirling, The Observer is still going strong and the Sentinel was the third one.

The offices were above the shop which sold

stationery items and had a travel agency. The print works were behind the shop and were kept very busy besides printing the weekly paper and government leaflets and papers. There was a spiral staircase to the offices and mine was at the top of the stairs. I shared it with two nice gentlemen, one was the travel agent and the other the advertising manager. I operated the small switchboard and typed letters for the others. On my first day I was taken on a tour of the offices and in the Editorial I met Jimmy Keir and George Saunders two of the reporters. I liked Jimmy instantly but my first impression of George was of a small bespectacled guy who was just a bit too full of himself. He later told me that when I walked into the Editorial and he saw my nice legs he decided that’s the girl I’m going to marry!! So I was right about him!!!!! He flirted with me all the time even though he knew I had a boyfriend called Vic. He was a handsome lad who was a postman and we had been going together for about a year. My family really liked Vic whose family were friends and were very annoyed when I decided to stop seeing him. My reason was nothing to do with George although he knew he had rival. Vic confessed to me one night that he was stealing mail because he needed money.

He had been spoiled by his

widowed mother because he was the youngest and he felt he should always be able to spend money. The minute I told my father he was pleased that I had decided to stop

seeing him. My mother always said he never married because I broke his heart which I doubt!! This left the way clear for George and we were absolutely angry when my parents decided that he was too old for me being ten years older. I suppose in these days that was a big difference in our ages. I went with him in secret for a while and we used to visit Jimmy and his wife Janet in their little flat. Janet was a reporter on the Sentinel our rival paper. They were full of fun and we used to play football in their empty spare room with a ball of newspaper. Jimmy was a real tease and Janet was so pleased that George had found someone who was a good influence and would make him reform his wild ways. He had had a few girlfriends and was always involved in wild boozy nights. We became lifelong friends and later when our children arrived we made a pact that if anything happened that left any of our children without parents the other family would assume parental responsibility. Looking back on it now it might not have been a good decision because Jimmy and Janet’s idea of parenting was quite different from ours. They were very strict and I felt that their lifestyle was very restricted. My parents opposition to George ended when he came to our house to report on the terrible damp state of the new house we had moved to from our tenement home. All the houses on the estate had been built with flat roofs which seemed to cause most of the trouble and the rain would come in through the skirting boards. When I told George he thought a bit of pressure publishing the story might have some effect because we had got nowhere with our complaints. He came to see my folks, printed the story and hey presto the houses were fixed!! Were they impressed? You bet they were and from then there was no opposition to us going out together but only twice a week and back in the house by 10.30 on the dot or my father would lean out of the window and bark “it’s time you were in” The move to Craigforth Crescent had been a welcome one because there were more bedrooms, a living room, a nice big kitchen and a garden all to ourselves My father quickly became a keen gardener growing his own vegetables and flowers which was something he enjoyed after a hard day digging coal. He had gone back to his old job in the coalmine when he was demobbed from the army.

My life became full of new experiences because of George’s job because I was able to go with him to amateur dramatic festivals, agricultural shows and the best occasion of all the Press Ball which was held in the Golden Lion Hotel which was in those days famous for its important events and luxurious surroundings. The grand staircase which led to the beautiful ballroom was something special.

I borrowed an evening dress and felt

fantastic!!! George taught me to dance and was infinitely patient with me because I had to overcome my shyness on the dance floor and I was sadly lacking in self confidence. He was a good dancer despite being small and I later learned that his brother Dave had won quite a few medals at dancing competitions. They must have inherited it from their parents who were keen old time dancing fans never missing their Saturday evenings at the dancehall. In these days it was not usual to introduce your girlfriend to your family or friends until you were sure she was the right one. I don’t remember girls feeling like this. Eventually I met George’s gang at the Press Ball and what a great lot they were. They had been friends since schooldays and they all had the most ridiculous nicknames. George had been called Soko for some years after a character in a comic but that ended one day in Bannockburn when his mother was referred to as Soko’s mother!!! He then became Doc because he was the physiotherapist for the local football team and that name stayed with him permanently. George Paterson who used to play saxophone in a local dance band and had been in the navy was Bosun, Alex Cochrane who was a housepainter was Rembrant and Bill Rankin who was always sick after a boosy night out was Spew. A few months later I was invited by George to Maitland Avenue but he forgot to tell his folks!! They were very welcoming despite their surprise because it was the first time he had brought a girl home. His mother was a bustling little woman with a kitchen which was absolutely sparkling clean, his father was such a kindly person with an infectious chuckle, Dave was quite reserved and Bert was full of good humour. His mother was wary of me because she obviously adored her son and always called him Georgie. She totally spoiled her sons making sure their meals were always ready and that their shoes

were cleaned ready for the morning.

She made the most delicious soups and the

atmosphere in her home was so different from my own one. I soon became accepted and was always there at weekends when all the gang seemed to drop in to listen to jazz records and Pop enjoyed the music too. There was always a buzz about the place and great debates about everything but never nasty differences of opinion. I found that difficult because raised voices in my home always ended up in violence and to this day I’m always a bit anxious when I hear people arguing good naturedly or not. By this time May and Robert who had been going out for some time decided to get engaged. Robert was a very moody person and didn’t make friends very easily. We had known each other for some time through our church activities. My father insisted that no daughter of his would marry until they were 21 year old and there was no argument about that I enjoyed my job at the Journal office and made many good friends there but our boss was an eccentric obsessed with the local lawn tennis association who was so dominated by his mother even though he was a middleaged man with a very nice wife. He used to have terrible temper tantrums and throw things around the room if he thought a story had not been reported his way. George and Jimmy Keir were quite unconcerned but I used to feel quite upset. When we decided to get engaged a year later I thought it would be better if I found another job because of the boss’s attitude to my fiancée!! I always wanted to defend the boys but realised I would probably get the sack! I went to work in a small office in Causewayhead for a coal merchant mainly doing accounts but it was a boring job after the bustle of a newspaper office. The boss was quite nice but he was cross when he realised I was engaged and thought I would not stay long in the job. He was quite right as it turned out. May and Robert got married and I was a bridesmaid. May was still working in the factory at Deanston and Robert worked in the McGrouther sausage factory at Cornton as a butcher I think. Finding a home for a young couple was impossible with the only

possibility being a council house since buying was unheard of in those days for young working class people. The waiting list for council housing was horrendous so they had to live with us. It caused overcrowding although we had four bedrooms but it meant that Nan, Flora and I had to share a small room and bed!!! I was still expected to do all the cleaning of the house and hand over my wages only to get a small sum of pocket money and still be expected to go out only two or three nights a week.. This caused a lot of arguments between May and I especially when she became pregnant and stopped work I felt she should have done more of her share of the housework but I didn’t get any support from my parents. The only thing that spoiled my visits to Maitland Avenue was the fact that Dave had a girlfriend who was very snobbish and moody. She was very glamorous because she had a good job and parents who spoiled her so she had plenty of money to spend on clothes and I was very conscious of my cheap ones. I think everyone thought Dave was attracted to having a glamorous girlfriend because she was so different in personality to him. She was a good ice skater and took part in quite a few shows at Falkirk Ice Rink. Her parents were strict teatotal and this made Nan the same so she did not approve when the boys had a wild night out. By this time George was thinking about moving on from The Journal and got a job with the Derby Evening Telegraph. I was absolutely devastated when he left and he was miserable living in very cheap accommodation in Derby. He had asked my father if we could marry because of this and instead of waiting until I was twenty-one we planned to marry four months after my nineteenth birthday. May was really angry that I didn’t have to wait till I was the same age as her but it was nice to have my way for a change! We wrote to each other nearly every day and the postman always joked about the parcel he delivered because George wrote on many sheets of thick copy paper which contained very few words because he had such a scrawly handwriting. We were married on Friday 12th September 1952 in St Mark’s Church Drip Road at 6pm to avoid people having to take time off work. We couldn’t have it on a Saturday

afternoon because my father said everyone would miss the football match!! We had the reception in the huge Drill Hall in Princes Street where my father was the sergeant in the Territorial Army and we got the hall free. Over 100 guests attended but the place looked half empty which meant there was plenty of room for dancing. George’s gang were up to their usual tricks secretly trying to open our suitcase but all they succeeded in doing was ruining the lock. We were travelling to Edinburgh that night by train and we were lifted on to a station wagon and escorted to the train and all I was worried about was if my light coloured coat would be dirty!! When we arrived at the Caley Station at the West end of Princes Street we could not get a taxi to take us to our hotel at Waterloo Place because the Festival was in full swing so we had to walk the length of Princes Street through the crowds with our heavy suitcase. We soon realised that the lock on our suitcase was damaged and we could not get it opened. We had to wait until we got to Scarborough the next day before we forced it open then had to buy another suitcase for our journey to Derby a week later. Scarborough was cold at that time of year but we had a nice small hotel and there was a nice theatre and ballroom for dancing to the big bands. I felt so free for the first time in my life and nobody to tell me what I could do or no chores to do for everyone else. I felt confident about the future and looked forward to starting my new life in Derby. We travelled to Derby by train a week later and fortunately the old lady who had rented us the rooms was away on holiday so I was looking forward to settling in on our own. I was not prepared for the dreary house on a council estate and I don’t suppose it occurred to George that he should have described the place to me. We had a small sitting room and bedroom which were shabbily furnished. The bathroom only had a bath and toilet. We had to fill a pitcher of water for the basin in our bedroom to wash!! In all fairness George had taken the cheapest accommodation he could find to save money so there was no point in being too upset. Worse was to come when the old lady came home. She was the most unpleasant person who seemed to imagine that she could order this young girl from Scotland around and was going to teach me how to be a housewife. I soon put her right so there was always a strained atmosphere which didn’t worry George because he

was at work all day. I was glad that I had had a week without the old dragon to find my way around but I have to admit the first morning when George went to work and I was on my own I was terrified. He gave me instructions about finding the trolley bus stop and where to get off in the town centre and left me to it. I quickly saw that he had made lots of nice friends especially a couple who owned the pub round the corner from his office called the Noah’s Ark. We used to meet his colleagues there and had some lovely evenings with them. However I decided we would have to find somewhere else to live especially after I heard the most awful moans coming from the old lady’s bedroom one morning. When I opened her bedroom door I saw she was in the middle of a very bad asthma attack and was taking morphine for the pain. She refused my offers of help and frankly I was really scared because I had never seen anyone in such a state. We jumped out of the fat into the fire with this move to a more affluent part of the same area of Alvaston in Derby where the accommodation was more comfortable but the owner of the house was quite eccentric. The dustbin man rang the bell at Xmas looking for his Xmas tip and said to her “ Good morning I’m the man who empties your bin” and she replied “and I’m the one who fills it “ and shut the door!! We had the front half of the house and when we were in Scotland for Xmas she moved our bedroom to the back of the house because she wanted that room. It got pretty unpleasant and we decided to move without telling her so we got up in the middle of the night to get our packing cases from the outside cellar, phoned for a taxi and were gone before she got out of bed!! Our next move was a very happy one with an elderly couple who were friends of my boss at a big department store in Derby where I worked in the accounts office. He was a retired policeman with a wonderful sense of humour and she was the sweetest person who was so delighted to have a daughter because she had two sons. They treated us as their family and Sunday lunches were such a pleasant experience for us because Mrs Whittaker cooked the dinner and I cleared up afterwards with her husband’s help. George was always too busy reading the papers and he was thoroughly spoiled as he had been by his own mother. Their son, his wife and granddaughter came every Sunday for tea and what a wonderful selection of food was always prepared for them which made me

think how wonderful it must be to be welcomed in such a way. To this day I never resent spending hours in the kitchen like Mrs Whittaker making meals for my family because I had never felt welcomed like that by our parents. We had a lovely surprise when we opened our newspaper one morning to see Davie MacKenzie’s photo with the caption” That £75,000 smile” Davie had been at the Stirling Albion football match and his team’s win had clinched the fortune for him. He couldn’t contact us but we soon got in touch with him and celebrated from a distance which was just as well. That was a breathtaking amount of money in 1954!! We had been there for about six months when we got the news that James, my youngest brother had died as a result of a scalding accident at home. While I had left home before he was born I still felt incredibly sad. My mother much to everyone’s surprise before our wedding had been told to go home and prepare to have a baby in her mid forties which meant May’s son Robert who was only a few months old had an uncle younger than him. We rushed home to find everyone absolutely devastated especially my father because James was his pride and joy. Apparently he had been playing in the kitchen with the gadget that lit the cooker, tossed it up in the air and caught a teapot full of tea which badly scalded him on his chest area. He was rushed to Stirling Royal Infirmary and died as a result of inhaling vomit and I often wonder if there had been negligence somewhere but my father was too broken hearted to do anything about it. My mother withdrew into herself and refused to speak to anyone or do anything. In desperation after the funeral my father asked me if I would take Flora and her to Derby for a week or so to see if that would help. The Whittakers were only too happy to help so we all returned to Derby. It was a nightmare for all of us because even kindly Mrs W could get no response from my mother. She just sat and stared into space and was obviously traumatised by the whole tragedy. Poor Flora was just ignored by her but she enjoyed all the attention from everyone else and the neighbours had a lovely little terrier which she loved to spend time with. My father came and took them home and we settled down again. I had changed jobs again and was a wages clerk in a big factory where the staff were very friendly and one of the girls mentioned that her husband who was a joiner would love to make a doll’s house but they had no children. I asked if he would make it for Flora and that’s how we

had this wonderful Swiss chalet. When it was completed and delivered to us the problem was how to get it to Stirling. George’s brother Dave was the manager for a Road haulage firm and he arranged for it to be collected. I never saw Flora’s reaction when it was delivered but my father insisted on displaying it in the garden for all to see!! Looking back now I realise that Flora must have felt pretty abandoned when I left home because of the attention I had given her and then James came along and at five years old she had a baby brother getting all the attention and then the tragedy of his death which meant no one had any time to help her through all this sadness. Dave and Nan had got married a few months after us and had Lynne nine months later much to Nan’s disgust because she had not planned to have a family. They came for a holiday with us when the Whittakers were away. I was so amazed when she finished feeding Lynne who had dribbled on her dress at the way she threw the baby down on the settee and flounced off in a temper. She never became a caring mother and I dread to think what sort of life that child had. More about that later. I went into hospital to have my appendics out soon after and spent a miserable week in a convalescent hospital away in the country which meant that I had no visitors because we had no car and George found it difficult to get away from work because of the time it took to get there. It was the one time I felt homesick but I got a lovely welcome home from the Whittakers so the misery was soon forgotten. George after two and a half years in Derby decided we should come back to Scotland. It was a wrench to say goodbye to our many friends especially the Whittakers who were very upset at our going. He got a reporter’s job with the Evening Dispatch in Edinburgh and we left Derby just before Xmas. We arrived off the overnight train in Edinburgh in a cold rainy day and I had a terrible chest cold. We bought a newspaper to look at accommodation before we continued our journey to Stirling. We found an advert for a basement bed sitting room at the West end. We phoned the owner, arranged to view it and we had a place to stay within hours of arriving in Edinburgh!! The owner, a Jewish gentleman became our first friend and was to be a great help to us later when we bought

our house. My father took one look at the flat and said it was a dreadful place to stay because it was in the basement of the huge house but we stayed there for six months and were very happy there. It was a tiny flat but we had our own cooking facilities, shared a bathroom and it was a great location for getting to work. Flora used to come and stay and we spent practically a whole week visiting the Botanic Gardens which were within walking distance and she was delighted that I was back near her again. We started househunting and one day as we were crossing the Dean Bridge near our flat we saw a bus showing its destination “Silverknowes” and we thought it was a lovely name and wondered where it was and what it was like. Then we found in the property guide an advert for the new estate in Silverknowes with a showhouse so we set out to see it and we loved the house and the area but a new house there was too expensive for us and we were so disappointed. However we saw a house for sale in Silverknowes Grove soon after and went to see it. It had been occupied by a Welsh family with five children who had lived in it for two years. Because of the state of this new house where the children had run amok with pen knives ruining the woodwork and the state of the garden the family had been unable to sell it. They were desperate to move because of the husband’s job and they had to accept our offer of 2,100 pounds although they had paid 2,500 pounds two years before. We were absolutely delighted! We arranged to meet in Princes Street one lunch time to go to the solicitor’s office with our £100 deposit and George was standing there clutching the inside pocket of his jacket to make sure his money was safe. It made me laugh. Our landlord of our tiny flat had become very fond of us and while he was sorry to see us go he was a great help in helping us to equip our house. He arranged for us to have tradesmen to help with various jobs and got us our first carpet and vacuum cleaner at huge discounts. He was always ready to help in any way he could and we appreciated it because we were strangers in Edinburgh. We kept in touch and he was to provide a flat for Flora a few years later.

Having bought the house we could only afford to buy bedroom and dining room suites so for a few months we had to put up with the discomfort of sitting on hard dining room chairs in the evenings and we had no television only a radio and a pack of cards for entertainment!! The bliss when we got our first carpet and our three piece suite was indescribable!! I found a good job in the wages department of a bookbinding firm and we were gradually able to buy more furniture. One Saturday when we were about to go and buy paint to do some decorating there was a knock on the door and I was so angry to find my mother and father on the door step. A few minutes more and we would have been out because they hadn’t told us they were coming. I went to the kitchen to make them a cup of tea and was furious when my father shouted “I don’t think much of your housekeeping Look at the dust on your sideboard” That was the last straw I thought and dashed through to the dining room to give him a piece of my mind. I stopped in my tracks because there spread out on the sideboard were crisp new pound notes, 25 of them which was a small fortune then. My father had had a win on the football pools and decided it would pay for our stair carpet!! What a wonderful surprise and so generous because it was a large part of his win. I felt so guilty that I had been annoyed with them for turning up unexpectedly. About this time Bert who was an electrician decided to emigrate to Canada with two friends. It was hard for the family especially his mother and father because they were always so close but they accepted that he felt that there were better prospects for him there. He was such a miss in the house because he was such a cheery goodnatured person with a lovely sense of humour. We had an endless round of send off parties with so many people and I think we all knew that this was a permanent move to Canada. After a year at Silverknowes we decided that our lives would be complete with a family. We spent a lot of time with George Paton, a fellow journalist and his family and felt we were missing out not having our own children. It was to be over two years later before I became pregnant. We had sought medical advice privately and discovered that my womb was retroverted and when this was corrected there were no further problems. I had

decided to stop work and stop being obsessed about a family and magically before I completed my notice I discovered that I was pregnant. I became aware the George was having increasing problems with his eyesight just before I stopped work. I used to meet him for lunch some days and I would help him to read some notices on the walls in his office. He had never wanted to draw attention to his eyes right from the first time we met. I quickly became aware that he needed to focus very closely on anything he wanted to read but he always managed. I worried that I would not be able to help him so much when I was at home looking after a baby and one day when I was making my routine doctorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s visit I dissolved in to tears and explained why I was so upset. Fortunately my doctor had a good friend who was the chief eye specialist at the Royal Infirmary and he arranged an appointment. It was difficult to persuade George to go and see him because he had been told that nothing could be done until the cataract in his remaining good eye was removed in his old age! He had been born with cataracts in both eyes probably as a result of his mother having german measles when she was pregnant and a series of botched operations on his left eye had left him with no prospects of improving it ever. In the end he went and Professor Scott felt he could operate on his right eye but it would be risky and he could be worse off. He arranged for us to go to his retired senior at his home for a second opinion and his advice was that we should take the risk. It seemed the worse possible time to have such a worry now that I was six months into my pregnancy but arrangements were made for the operation in January 1958 three months before Jill was born. George went into the Royal Infirmary but it quickly became evident that it would not be straight forward. It was not possible to remove the cataract because of Georgeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s age. In these days it was only possible when someone was old and it had stopped growing. In the end he was in hospital for twelve weeks having a process of needling operations every two weeks to gradually remove the film. It was difficult for him because in between the treatment he had to stay upright moving his face as little as possible and eating slops so that there was no disturbance in the eye area. He was worrying about me travelling to the hospital every day especially because the weather was bad and I had fallen in the snow. It was getting nearer the day for Jill to be born and two weeks before George came home but was not

able to see very much. The doctor assured us that the eye was settling down and we should continue to hope that things would be better when he had his new glasses. I had gone privately to the doctor who delivered Jill and he was a tremendous support and arranged that George would be escorted at the Simpson Maternity Unit when I was admitted but by good fortune he got his glasses the day before Jill was born and we were ecstatic because he could see so well. He went into the garden and was so thrilled that he could see every blade of grass on the lawn where before it was all a haze to him. Jill was born on the day she was due in the evening two hours after I arrived at the maternity unit.

Everyone who came into my tiny ward talked about my beautiful

daughter with the huge mop of black hair. Because of our anxiety about eyes the doctor had an eye specialist confirm that there was no problem. George had a great time with his friends forever wetting the baby’s head.

George Paterson and Davy McKenzie

practically lived at our house for about a week!! Jill was a good weight just over eight pounds so I left hospital after ten days confident that all would be well. It soon became apparent that things were going wrong when she was feeding. She would be violently sick with the sickness shooting across the room. My doctor advised me to wait to see if things settled down but I knew there was something wrong because she was losing weight rapidly. I phoned the doctor who had delivered her and he told me to bring her back to the maternity unit straight away. Of course we had no car in those days and George was at work so a neighbour took me and when the doctor heard my description of the vomiting he watched Jill feeding and saw that as the milk was going down a small pocket was gathering and then it shot out of her mouth. He quickly diagnosed that it was pyloric stenosis which is a blockage of the stomach to the bowel and she would need an operation!! I was beside myself with worry having waited so long to have her and with George’s eye problems it was all too much. The doctor was very reassuring and said that if any child of his had an abnormality he would pray it was this one because it was so easy to put right. We were taken straight to the Sick Children’s Hospital and then I went home without her. I hadn’t been able to contact George at work so when he came home and looked in the pram and saw she wasn’t there he got so upset too. The next day Jill had her operation and we were horrified when we went to see this little baby with tubes

all around her and looking so fragile and ill. George couldn’t handle it and left the ward and never went back until the day before Jill was discharged a week later. The ward sister kept asking where my husband was and the night before she came home the sister told me to go downstairs and bring him up to see how well she was now. A week later we had to return to have her stitches out and the doctor was right that the problem had been sorted. It was difficult for a time because she was still quite sickly and had to be fed little and often which meant through the night as well as day but gradually she made up her birth weight and we began to relax. George and Davy were her godfathers and they were so proud and insisted the first time they pushed the pram they put L plates on it. Having Jill put paid to the many prying questions about why after being married for five years we had no children. In these days it was expected that when you married that the children would follow and if they didn’t it was because you didn’t want them. It was an emotional subject for me and I felt a bit of a failure that what I wanted most had not happened. To this day I never question anyone who does not have children in case it upsets them as it did me. The only time I ever left Jill with my parents was when she was one year old and we were going to Prestwick Airport with George’s parents, Dave and Nan, George and Davy to welcome Bert with his Canadian bride on her first visit. We left her early in the morning and picked her up later. I must say the whole family made a great fuss of her and enjoyed looking after her. I worried all the time I was away but she survived without me!! Shirley was the exact opposite to Bert, very quiet and not very sociable and didn’t seem to enjoy the endless parties and I think that is why Bert changed so much over the later years. I can’t say I was very relaxed with Jill when she was so small because of our bad start. I was always afraid something would happen to her because she was so precious to us. George just enjoyed being a Dad with such a lovely little daughter still with masses of black hair. We decided that we wanted her to have a brother or sister as soon as possible which meant dealing with the reverted womb again and we were delighted that eighteen months after Jill was born I became pregnant again. Martin’s birth was not as quick as

Jill’s but we were relieved that after twenty-four hours labour this healthy little boy arrived. Again an eye specialist checked for eye problems and George was so happy that none of his children would face the difficulties he had had. We were happy because our family was complete which was just as well because I was advised to have a hysterectomy because of the constant backache which meant looking after two young children became increasingly difficult and at times I could hardly push the pram. The decision to have the operation was not a difficult one to make but I had to postpone it until the children were a little older because I didn’t have anyone who could look after them and it seemed a drastic step in a woman so young. It would have been nice to have relatives to help but Stirling was two hours away by bus and no one had a car in these days. Visiting grandparents was such a hassle that I’m afraid we didn’t make the journey too often in these days and it meant that Jill and Martin didn’t see much of their cousins either. Eventually I had the operation when I was 33 years old and Pop and Grandma Saunders came and stayed. George decided to buy Jill and Martin a budgie so that they wouldn’t miss me too much and they called it Cheeky!!! By this time Dave, George’s second brother, and Nan had two girls Lynne and Carol and were living in Barnet where Dave was manager of a road haulage firm. During a medical examination for his firm’s superannuation scheme it was discovered that Dave had a faulty aorta heart valve which had been there from birth and had prevented him from being accepted for national service in his late teens even though the reason for this had never been disclosed to him.

He was totally devastated and his health rapidly

deteriorated and he became very depressed.

He went into hospital to regain some

strength in the hope that they could operate. When George got the news he was informed that his brother was very ill so he immediately made plans to go south. In these days flights only ran from Glasgow to London. He left Edinburgh and before he took the flight to London phoned the hospital hoping for better news to be told that his brother had died. I was at home with a two and four year old and had to make phone calls to Canada and to Bannockburn to tell them this terrible news. Bert booked a flight and George’s mother and father were on their way to Edinburgh to catch the first train in the morning.

About 3 o’clock that afternoon George Paterson phoned to say he had phoned my sisterin-law to say how sorry he was and Nan didn’t know what he was talking about because she had just been in to see Dave and he was certainly not dead! She was very upset of course and I was in a panic. George phoned when he arrived in London to see if there was any more news before he made his way to the hospital and when I told him of the terrible mistake he said he was off for a stiff whisky before he went to face my sister-inlaw. It was terrible to tell his parents when they arrived about the mistake but they decided to carry on with their plans to go south. Bert cancelled his flight and we all tried to recover from this terrible mistake. The newspapers got hold of the story probably from George’s colleagues when he explained his absence. The result was a reporter hounding me and it was a strange situation being on the receiving end of press attention. George decided to tell Dave because he didn’t want him reading about it in a newspaper and he found it all very amusing. Apparently the mistake was made when another Mr Saunders in the next ward had died and they had not checked the first name of the patient. The hospital was very apologetic and reimbursed everyone for the expenses involved. Sadly Dave died the following week so we had to go through it all again. It was such a tragedy at forty years and to leave two little girls whose mother was hardly likely to show them much affection because she had never wanted children. Flora was increasingly unhappy at home and on a Friday as soon as school finished she came to Edinburgh every weekend until she was fifteen and could leave. It seemed there were rumours at the school about Flora’s relationship with the music teacher in her last year which were reported to the police.

Arrangements were made for Flora to be

medically examined to determine if there was any evidence of an improper relationship. My parents were handling it all very badly and instead of supporting Flora they were ready to condemn her. When I heard about the medical examination I went berserk and told them that if they allowed it to go ahead I would never speak to them again. My father immediately cancelled it! Flora told me of the terrible ordeal it had all been for her with the teacher’s wife accosting her in the street and shouting abuse at a fourteen year old girl. I don’t know if an offence had been committed because Flora never told me and I never asked her. My only concern was to support her. Immediately after she finished

school she did a year’s secretarial course which was only bearable because she escaped at the weekends and holidays. When she was sixteen she knew my parents couldn’t stop her leaving home and she came to Edinburgh to live. It was important that George was supportive and didn’t mind that he had to provide for her financially. Shortly after she came to live with us the music teacher arrived at our door and asked to speak to Flora. I didn’t invite him in but I thought it was probably better to let her speak to him. It would have been no surprise to me if she thought she loved the man because he probably gave her the affection she never had at home and he encouraged her in her interest in music which has continued throughout her adult life. I do not know if they had any further contact at that time. Flora got a secretarial job in an office and then we all felt she should become more independent of us so our old friend who had rented us our flat in Edinburgh found one for Flora in town. She was there about a month when Mr Stoller phoned to ask if Flora had left the flat because it was empty. I was angry because she had never told me she was going and I didn’t know where she was. I decided not to tell my parents to alarm them in the hope that she would get in touch which she did about two weeks later to say she was working in London and I knew she had followed the man Bramwell Cook there. I simply told them she was working in London. The breach between us never healed because I felt all the help we had given her counted for nothing. She stayed in London working as the secretary to the Banqueting manager at the Russell Hotel and there she met Martin Dalby who married her when his wife divorced him. Years later the only reference she made to Bramwell Cook was to say that this man ruined her life and I could not bring myself to ask her what she meant. About 1964 a friend asked us to join an organization called THE EXPERIMENT IN INTERNATIONAL LIVING which involved welcoming a visitor from overseas into your home to experience the British family life. We thought it a good idea and soon welcomed our first visitor who was a school teacher from Tanzania and wife of a civil servant in the government . Hadija was a very tall black lady and I was extremely nervous that Jill and Martin being only six and four would be frightened of her. We met her off the train from London at the old Caley station and within minutes of getting into the car Jill was sitting on her knee in the back chatting away full of questions. She stayed

one month with us and was a delightful person full of stories about life in her country. She had to wear shoes for the first time because in her country everyone went around in bare feet and when she asked if she could take them off I was horrified to see her toes were covered in corns!!

I got corn remover from the chemist and it did the trick and

Hadija raised her arms and said “Margaret you are magic” She told us how the children couldn’t be educated because they were so poor so we arranged to send £30 after she left to sponsor one child but sadly it never reached the authorities so somewhere between our bank and the Tanzanian one it disappeared. We never heard from her until many years later but with her letter there was one from her husband who was now in fruit growing industry and demanding that we set up contacts here to help his business. We decided to ignore the letters so we don’t know if she was under pressure from her husband to use our friendship. Our next foreign visitor was Ulla a Finish student studying to be a doctor and she was quite charming and so interested in our way of life and was a real fan of Robert Burns. There were outings arranged by the Scottish organiser and leader of the group of about eight students living with families around Edinburgh. We had a welcome party for everyone to get to know the group and they organised a farewell party to thank their hosts. They had to provide food typical of their country and we were sorry to see them go. Most of our families had teenagers who went on a week’s hostelling holiday with the group at their expense as a thank you gesture but Jill and Martin were too young to join them. The next year we had a Japanese boy called Nabuya who was also a medical student and was again so eager to learn about Scotland. If we had visitors he always managed to produce a little gift from his country for them. The leader of their group was a successful kimono maker

and was very strict about their behaviour but organised a fabulous

farewell party giving all the families lovely little gifts to remember them by. One of the young reporters at the Scotman fell in love with one of the girls and followed her to Japan but I think the romance was shortlived.

I was asked to organise the groups but did so only for another two years because it was a lot of work especially since the American and Moroccan groups proved very difficult and host families were complaining about them.

No payment was involved in the

arrangement so if there were problems with the behaviour of the groups people lost enthusiasm for it. Martin was born with eczema so his skin always needed attention and when he was about four years old he developed asthma which often goes with the eczema. It was very distressing to see him having difficulty breathing and George always found it difficult to cope with this. It usually ended up with Martin reassuring George that he would be alright as soon as the medication kicked in. About that time he had to go to hospital to be circumcised for medical reasons. When I left him in the ward he said “if you go out that door don’t bother coming back” He was only in for three days and forgave me!! Another occasion he decided he was leaving home because of some disagreement with me and I found him sitting at the bottom of the stairs ready to leave with only a shoe box full of his favourite cars!!!! We were fortunate to have a little nursery school run by a kindly neighbour in the next street where Jill first then Martin went before attending Davidson’s Mains School. It was a good way of introducing Jill to school because she was a very nervous child probably because she had a nervous mother!! She had to follow the instructions of the teacher to the letter and one day she had been told to bring a shilling and because I only had two sixpences she got all upset and could not be convinced it was the same thing. She had a good teacher though who handled her very well. I had to take another teacher to task one day for terrorising her into remembering that the beefeaters in the Tower of London were the same as the yeomen of the guard. This teacher was a holy terror at the school but to be fair she saw my point of view much to my surprise. The only other times Jill and Martin were in hospital at such an early age were to have their tonsils out because they kept having throat infections. Jill was first to go and she found it very traumatic because at that time parents were not encouraged to spend much

time in the ward. Fortunately it was for a short time and Shirley Howitt who lived in the street was in at the same time. George discovered on a routine checkup that his eyesight was good enough for him to drive so we could think about owning a car. He decided to have an intensive course of driving lessons in the spring when Martin was two years old and he was so certain that he would pass his test that we decided to book a holiday in a lovely hotel on the outskirts of Nairn. We would hire a car which would make life easier with two young children. George was devastated when he failed the test and we had to book seats on a train instead. Unfortunately the taxi we ordered to take us to the station never turned up and a neighbour rushed us there, We just had time to get on the train with pushchair, children and luggage when it moved off and it was a nightmare traveling through the train to find our seats. When we arrived at Nairn we were faced with climbing up stairs to get to the other side of the track to exit the station. The hotel was really nice but with no car it was quite difficult to do very much. We had chosen it so that George and I could put the children to bed and when they were asleep we could go for dinner and enjoy a drink in the lounge which was at the bottom of the stairs to the bedrooms.

We were just

beginning to relax when we saw a lady coming downstairs with two pyjama clad children looking for their mummy! It was not the best of holidays. For the next two years we went to a lovely old hotel in Banff and we enjoyed exploring the various small villages and fishing towns around the area and there were good shops for Jill and Martin to spend their pocket money and there was a huge garden to play in. One evening Jill and I travelled about 25 miles to Keith to see a film in the local cinema!! I decided it would be a good idea if I learned to drive too. George had found a very good driving instructor Bob Mathews, for his next test which he passed. It took me so long and many lessons to pass my test that Bob became a great family friend and always enjoyed making things for Martin like the garage, still in the attic, with a road layout. What a thrill it was when we bought our first car, a little Hillman Imp made in Scotland.

The Kendrews next door had a little mongrel dog very like a Yorkshire terrier and when she had pups they promised one to Martin without asking us first. We had never thought about having a dog at this stage but we had to take this puppy and we called it Pepe. One evening a year or so later when George went to the garage to get something Pepe got out without us knowing. We got a phone call shortly after from someone asking if we were the owners of the little dog which had been run over on the dual carriageway near the house. We called a vet who had to put Pepe to sleep because he was so badly injured. Everyone was very upset and Martin declared he did not believe in God if he could let this happen. We felt we had to have another dog and along came Rosie a pedigree Yorkshire terrier whose father was a Cruft champion. The breeder thought we should let her have at least one litter so when Rosie was two years old we took her back and she was mated with one of her dogs. We werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t very sure when the pups would arrive but one night Rosie jumped up on the bed and was obviously distressed. We put the light on and this little puppy emerged but it looked dead. I had been told that the mother would look after her puppies but Rosie just ignored it so I got a towel and removed the skin surrounding it and it started to breathe. The next pup arrived soon after and we thought that was the end of it but some time later this little scrap of a dog arrived so we had three puppies all different sizes. Jill and Martin were amazed when they got up in the morning and found them and we decided to call them Maxi, Midi and Mini. We had such a lovely time looking after them all until Maxi and Midi went to their new owners when they were eight weeks old. Sadly Mini died when she was just two years old because of a defect from birth and she had always been a delicate little dog. This had been one of the reasons that we decided to keep her with us. Jill was chosen to be a lady in waiting to the Queen at the local Gala and it was a very exciting affair with a horse drawn carriage arriving at our house which was decorated with bunting, to escort her to the park for the crowning ceremony. She wore a lovely dress and we were very proud of her. I decided at this stage to find an interest outside the home and was asked to run a girl guide company at the school which I did for about nine years. It was great fun and I had

an enthusiastic group of girls who were willing to have a go at anything. We marched in the parade at the gala, helped to give out the bun bags, arranged food parcels and visits to old people in the village and in hospital, we went on weekends to converted stables but never camping because I hated the thought of creepy crawlies when I was asleep. The converted stables were no picnic though because they were overrun with mice and when I was lying in my camp bed listening to them and the noise of the girls I often asked myself what I was doing. When Jill and her friends were old enough to move up from brownies it was tough for her because I showed her no favours. The girls were a great bunch always ready to do something new and very entertaining. Jill and her friends had to be told to leave by the commissioner when they were fifteen and were expected to go to Rangers but they never did go!! I left myself after an irate parent turned up at my door complaining that I had not been at the school when she arrived to enroll her daughter from brownies. I pointed out that my deputy was there and I was looking after my sick son. Another parent one evening asked me to make up my mind if guides finished at 9 oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;clock or not because he had a programme he liked to watch on TV and he kept missing it if we were late. I told him he was lucky because I hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seen TV on Friday evening for nearly 9 years!! It was the right time to look for another challenge!! George by this time had lost his job with the Evening Dispatch when it merged with the Evening News which was bought by the owners of the Scotsman. He had been news editor on the paper after doing general reporting work for a few years concentrating mainly on court work. This turned out to be to his advantage because the Scotsman was looking for some one to replace their court reporter who was involved in some scandal with one of the High Court judges. George was to be Chief Law Reporter for the Scotsman for the rest of his working life and quickly established a reputation for the accuracy of his reporting and the respect of everyone in the Court of Session together with his good friend George Watt of the Glasgow Herald, Their reputation was such that whatever information they asked for was given to them I was told by one lawyer. George Watt whose wife had died and had no children became a close friend of our family and we all admired him for the way he coped with disabilities that made it difficult for him to get around.

In 1972 we had a phone call from Pop one day to say that Lynne, Dave’s oldest daughter had turned up on their doorstep looking desperate because she had no home and no money. We immediately went through to Bannockburn because we knew they couldn’t handle the situation and they had no spare room because by this time they were in a little sheltered housing flat with only one bedroom. We were horrified when we say Lynne. She looked ill and frightened. We took her back to Edinburgh and she told us she had been living rough somewhere. I took her to town and bought her new clothes and even a handbag to put in the pocket money I gave her. I began to suspect she might have been on drugs. She moved into Martin’s bedroom and he shared with Jill. She spent the time smoking in her room and I decided she had to get a job or something. I made an appointment with a careers officer who saw her on her own and I don’t know what was said but afterwards the lady spoke to me on my own and her words to me were “get that girl out of your house as soon as possible” She got a job in a shoe shop in Princes Street and I got her a place in a hostel at the Westend because she had stolen Martin’s pocket money despite the fact that I had given her an allowance. She was only a few days in the hostel when they asked her to leave because she had stolen money from her roommate. She went to work and asked if she could have her week’s wages in advance despite having only worked three days because she would have to go to London where her mother had been badly injured in a car crash. All lies of course and I’ve never heard anything of her since. Our holidays had been spent at Banff for two years and then we decided to try the Aviemore Centre which had just opened and we all loved it. We stayed at the Cairngorm Hotel just outside the centre and returned there every year for five or six years. It was the idyll place because Jill and Martin could go to the centre without us whenever they wanted to and they quickly became friends with Rona and Caroline, the children of the manager at the hotel, Anne and Calum who also became close friends. Managing the hotel left Anne and Calum little time to do things with their children so they were delighted that we included Rona and Caroline in all our activities. We spent days at Loch Morlich much to the delight of our dog Rosie who loved to run in the sand. We

walked in the Glenmore Forest and picnicked around Loch An Eilan. We loved our visits to Tomintoul and shopping trips to Grantown on Spey and the other small towns provided the opportunity to spend the pocket money. During the year they had to save for their spending money about half of their weekly pocket money and the rest they could spend on small penny chews and other small sweets that were kept in a box and they were allowed to take one item each day after tea!! I think they quite enjoyed their shopping expedition and choosing what they would buy. We were able to relax at the bar in the evening after dinner while the children all played together in the family flat. Eventually Rosie’s middle pup (midi who became Chotah because her owner had lived in India) came back to us because his owner was emigrating. He had been kicked around by people in the bed and breakfast where he lived probably because he was a yappy wee dog and he was very aggressive and used to attack people’s heels as they walked by. Two dogs in the hotel presented some problems for us especially when they wanted out about six o’clock in the morning and no prizes for guessing who got that job. I had to go to the reception and take the keys to open the door and I would be standing in the garden in my coat over my nightie with the traffic roaring past on the busy main road!! We found so much to do in that area and our visits to Tomintoul were always quite special. Jill was always inclined to be car sick on the journeys to Aviemore so we had to have some stops on the way but on one of our journeys home when Martin was 11 years old it was Martin who was sick. Jill went off on a school trip with her Geography teacher to Shetland I think and George went on a cruise to Norway to report for the Scotsman. Martin had a great thirst and was always desperate for the loo and by the time I had made the appointment with the doctor I suspected he would diagnose diabetes because I had seen a programme on TV a few weeks earlier called “Your life in their hands” The doctor who was a diabetic himself was describing the symptoms. We went to hospital where it was confirmed by the pediatrician who made the biggest mistake by trying to treat Martin when he obviously was no expert on diabetes instead of referring to the specialist.

As a result instead of Martin improving he was getting worse. I had to

educate myself on the condition and was sent home to practice injecting on an orange!! I began to challenge the doctor on his treatment and blew my top so many times in the

ward because poor Martin would be in for a few days, home for a few days and back in again all the time getting weaker. Eventually the doctor realised he was out of his depth and consulted the specialist who immediately removed Martin from his care and within four days Martin’s diabetes was under control. The specialist was appalled and dismayed especially when Martin greeted her with “I wish I was dead” She said it might not be any consolation but as a result of Martin’s experience every child would immediately be referred to her. Because he felt so miserable she decided not to admit him and we went morning, afternoon and evening for four days to the Diabetic clinic and there were no further problems. The diet in those days was a very strict one but I was determined that we would all eat the same meals and Martin quickly learned which foods he had to cut down on. The only thing he really missed was Coca Cola but at that time diet coke was introduced so it was a good substitute. He coped very well with the regime and never grumbled about the daily injections which he quickly wanted to do himself. About that time we noticed patches of alopecia which we were assured had no connection to his diabetes. When he was eight years old the barber had pointed to a small patch just behind his ear one day when he was having his hair cut but it was hardly noticeable. It became more noticeable now and we visited a specialist who arranged weekly sessions of ultra-violet treatment at the infirmary.

When this proved ineffective a course of

injections in his scalp was tried and this too proved unsuccessful. George and I felt so miserable that Martin was having to cope with so many problems in his young life and there was nothing we could do to help. Thankfully Martin seemed to be such a strong character and was just getting on with his life. I quickly learned a great deal about diabetes and the specialist used to ask me to speak to other mothers learning to cope and this is where I met Pat Armstrong who was a pharmacist and whose little girl had just been diagnosed and who has been a friend ever since. It was quite obvious that parents needed support at this difficult time so I decided with the encouragement of Dr Baird that I should start a parents’group because it was felt that the adult groups were not appropriate for us. George wrote an article for the Scotsman to publicise the group and there was immediately a hostile reaction from a pediatrician at the Sick Children’s Hospital warning of the dangers of meddling in

medical matters. Fortunately Dr Baird immediately sprang to our defence pointing out the benefits of parents supporting each other and making it clear that his reaction was quite ridiculous.

We arranged regular support meetings with experts on any particular

problem parents raised and held Xmas parties where the parents brought the children’s insulin and we took care of the injections. Because the parents knew we were parents ourselves they could go away confident that everything would be fine. The group still exists, I believe, to a lesser degree because of the opposition of the adult group who somehow saw us as a threat and did their best to force us to give up. I was very grateful to my local chemist who asked me if I would like to speak to another parent in the village when I handed in the first prescription for Martin’s insulin. He contacted Bubbles Douglas whose daughter was now in her late teens and a radiographer at one of the hospitals and she readily agreed to meet me. We became lifelong friends and she helped with the parent’s group. Ruth came and spoke to us about living with diabetes and when she married George took a cine film of the wedding. In 1973 we had a lovely golden wedding celebration for Pop and Granma Saunders at the Station Hotel in Stirling. Bert, Shirley, Nancy and Elaine came over and so many old friends were there. We all stayed in the hotel overnight and next day we and the Canadians went to Aviemore for a few days. I started a cycling proficiency class at Davidson’s Mains school when we finally relented and let Jill and Martin have a bike. I had to chalk out the road junctions before the pupils arrived and had little encouragement from the school. The children were very keen to do well and when they were ready to sit the test the traffic police sent one of the officers to put them through their paces. He praised them for their clear hand signals and boasted at further tests to other officers how good they were at this school! I didn’t like to point out that because I lived locally the children never knew when I would be driving behind them so they were always determined to act correctly on the road. I gave up after two years because of lack of support from parents or school and the practice stopped.

I started to do some market research work then some government social research which fitted in quite well with school times and the occasional evening work when George was at home because in these days when he worked for the Evening Dispatch latterly he started work at six in the morning and was home sometimes late afternoon. One day I think Jill must have been about fourteen years old and when I think about it it was irresponsible of me to go out for half an hour to contact a client. George was at a meeting at the Press Club where he was the secretary. I was turning right making my way home when a mini came speeding round a corner at Meadowbank and when I was halfway across the road I knew I couldn’t get out of the way. Fortunately my seat belt saved me from serious injury but I had struck my head on the handle of the passenger door which knocked me out. An ambulance took me to the infirmary and a policeman called at the house. Poor Jill must have got a terrible fright. George was informed and asked a neighbour to stay with Jill and Martin. I had injured my ankle and the wound on my head was stitched by the time George arrived and he was so relieved that it was not too serious. I remember when he bent down to kiss me while I was still on the trolley in accident and emergency that he was wearing old spice after shave and I can never stand the smell of it till this day. I was kept in until the next day to make sure there was no concussion. The door of the car had to be replaced and we changed the car soon after. I was charged with careless driving which hurt my pride while the other driver had no action taken against him when he had obviously been speeding round a corner. Because George was the secretary at the Press Club he was responsible for organising various functions like Royal visits and parties for members children. I got the job of arranging the Xmas parties with the help of Dennis Straun’s wife. We had a lovely time choosing gifts for about fifty children with no restrictions on the cost, we wrapped them and labelled them making sure we had appropriate gifts for each age group from two to ten years, arranged a magician’s show and of course a visit from Santa to give out the gifts. They were very special parties mainly because of the lovely gifts and it was good fun arranging them.

Martin followed Jill to Broughton School but by this time it was a comprehensive school and we never felt it was as good as when Jill went on the selective system. Jill was a hard worker who shone at French and her teacher asked us to persuade her to follow a language course but it didn’t appeal to Jill. Martin as far as we were concerned never worked as hard and just did what he could get away with but did shine at maths. Jill worked in the local chemist shop on Saturdays to earn some pocket money. She left school at the end of her fifth year and took a year out to work in an office before going to university. Around 1975 George had begun to have some health problems. Two toes in each foot became numb which affected his balance at times and he was admitted to hospital for some tests. I knew from the tests that the doctor was thinking it might be the early symtoms of multiple sclerosis but it turned out to be spondilitis, a form of arthritis of the spine which wasn’t helped by his constant bending over his notebook for hours in court every day. There was no treatment available then and he never regained feeling in his toes. He was often away from home for weeks on end covering big murder trials only coming home at weekends and eventually his shoulder was affected and was very painful. I by this time had found a really worthwhile challenge in the new legal Children’s Hearings where lay people would meet parents and children in an informal setting to look at problems instead of going through the court system. I joined the year after it was introduced and while I found it very demanding with hours of training sometimes at weekends I felt it was the least I could do to try and help some of the troubled young people who came before the children’s panel. A group of three people sat with the family to discuss the difficulties which ranged from petty thieving, truanting from school, in need of protection or more serious crimes. On the crime side George and I had many an argument since he saw young people in court on serious charges who had gone through the hearing system and he felt we were too soft with some of them. I was a panel member for nine years, three of them as chairman of Edinburgh West Panel, and then had to leave because it was felt that after that amount of time we were becoming too professional so I joined the advisory panel but I missed the contact with the families and

only stayed two years. One hearing I remember so well concerned a young girl of nine years who arrived with her elderly grandparents because her parents had abandoned her years earlier. She had robbed an old gentleman on the stairs of the tenement block where they lived and stolen his pension which he had just collected at the post office. She seemed totally out of the control of these elderly people and was wearing a guide uniform. Since I had been a guide captain I felt particularly sad and asked her what she thought her guide captain would say if she knew what she had done. Granny let me rave on then eventually said wearily “she’s no in the guides – Ah bought her that at a jumble sale!! Undeterred I tried another approach and asked what she had done to show the old gentleman that she was sorry for what she had done. Granny again wearily replied “he’s deid the man’s deid. So much for trying the retribution tactic. I often wonder what became of this girl who seemed so vulnerable with little prospect of an opportunity to make a worthwhile future for herself. In 1975 we decided to go on a Mediterranian Cruise. Jill and Martin had been abroad to Norway and Denmark with the School and George had gone on a National Trust cruise reporting for the Scotsman so the only who had never been abroad was me! I thought a cruise a good idea in case Martin was affected by the heat and it turned out that he was the only one who didn’t have to pay a visit to the ship’s hospital. We were seasick!! George had been in Leeds for about twelve weeks covering a big corruption trial and we were having the extension built at the back of the house so the cruise provided the much needed break. It was a lovely holiday with one day at sea and the next in port. We visited Gibralter, Majorca, Ajaccio, Naples and Lisbon.

George was excited about

visiting Naples because he had been there about thirty years previously during the war and he took us to a café to see if the building opposite with it’s blue shutter, where he had been billeted was still there and sure enough it was just as he remembered it! Martin liked the fact that he could go to the cinema after dinner and if he didn’t like the film he could leave because he didn’t pay anything!! There was always a good cabaret and dancing each evening and the food was superb served by Greek waiters on a Greek liner with entertainment provided by Australians!

The following year we had our last family holiday in the Abruzzo region in Italy in a little resort Silvi Marina. The hotel was right on the beach with wonderful golden sand with umbrellas if we wanted shade. An Italian couple sat near us most days and George was able to try out his Italian. The husband was a stern person who was a commander in the European forces but his wife was a very warm, friendly person who had a soft spot for Jill. We kept in touch for a while after the holiday. I remember it was very, very warm and it was impossible to be too energetic by mid day. George got friendly with quite a few of the locals and when he heard that the shops were having a holiday he asked the tobacconist if he would close too and the reply was “for a soldier in the 8th army we never close” It was always embarrassing in the shop because the shopkeeper was more interested in talking to George than serving his customers who complained loudly as Italians do! In that same year Pop Saunders ‘s health began to worry us and our worse fears were confirmed at Stirling Royal Infirmary when we learned that a swelling on his neck was cancerous and further investigation revealed that it was a secondary and his lungs were affected. He was to be referred to the Western General in Edinburgh and we brought him and Granma to Edinburgh because he was so unwell to await the appointment. After a month I phoned to ask when someone would see him only to discover that no referral had been made. He was admitted very quickly but Pop seemed to give up and he missed his pipe which had been a part of him for so many years He hated being in hospital and his condition deteriorated rapidly. Granma didn’t seem to realise how ill Pop was and was urging him to hurry up and get better so that they could return to Bannockburn. We decided to take her home and bring her at weekends to visit Pop and it was easier all round because we had been sleeping on a futon on the floor in the dining room for a month. At this time Jill and Karen decided to have their first foreign holiday on their own in Spain. I took them to the airport and they were so excited even though their flight was delayed and I had to leave them there. A few days into the holiday Karen’s Mum became seriously ill and she had to return home leaving Jill who fortunately had made friends

with some girls there. We were so worried about her being on her own and when Karen’s Mum died a few days later she asked us not to tell Jill till she came home. Pop became steadily worse and on the evening that we were due to pick Jill up at the airport he died about midnight. Fortunately Jill’s flight had been diverted to Glasgow and the passengers completed the journey to Edinburgh Airport by bus which gave us time to leave the hospital and arrive at the airport for Jill. We prayed that she would not ask about Pop or Karen’s Mum until we were home but no sooner had we got in the car than she asked about Pop. Then she asked about Karen’s Mum and it was just too much to take in. A few days later when she was in the St James Centre with Stewart her boyfriend at that time she hyperventilated which was quite alarming for them but the doctor said it was the shock of her homecoming to such bad news. Jill went off to university and within a year she had decided to move into a flat in Dalkeith Road with four friends. George was unhappy about her leaving home and even more unhappy when we delivered some of her things at the flat which he decided was really grotty. He couldn’t see that it was Jill striking out for independence but eventually got used to the idea. She had decided even before she left school that she wanted to go into social work and I must say I tried to persuade her against it because of my working on the fringe of social work and knowing how difficult a job it would be. Nothing would change her mind and she settled down to student life and the fun of student charity parades. She decided to take a summer job in Ostend with two friends working in a hotel for a month. It was always difficult for George to let go when she wanted to do something independently and he was worried sick when we saw her off at the railway station with the parents of her two friends. We all adjourned to the Press Club to talk over our worries and to get used to the idea. When we got the letter saying she was out on a ledge cleaning first floor windows George went crazy and demanded that I should tell her to return home but Jill stuck it although I’m not sure that she made much money out of it!! In 1977 we decided to go with Martin to Canada to celebrate our silver wedding anniversary. We flew from Prestwick to Toronto and I will never forget the feeling I had

as I left the plane that we had made a big mistake I knew that Shirley was not a very friendly person from visits to us and wasn’t sure what her welcome would be. The first thing we realised was how much Bert had changed from the good humoured guy always laughing and such good company. He was morose and didn’t make much effort to make us feel at home. I stayed out of Shirley’s way until he had gone to work and the children to school but Shirley seemed to resent me interrupting her quiet smoking time. There was only one towel for all of us in the bathroom and a small one at that so it looked as if we should have brought our own!! However we went on a long trip to Boston in the USA to visit George’s cousin and found her to be a drunk and it was ages before she produced a meal. The next day we went to visit another cousin and she was the same. I told Bert we had better get off to a hotel or Martin would become ill because we had gone for so long without food. We declined their offer of accommodation saying we had already booked a hotel. We didn’t go far and booked in to a hotel that advertised entertainment in the evening and we thought that would just be relaxing. However after dinner Martin went behind our chairs to look at the swimming pool, brushed his hand against a ledge and suddenly the white table cloth looked as if someone had thrown tomato ketchup at it. Then we realised that it was blood coming from Martin’s finger!! He had cut it on a jagged glass beer bottle which someone had put on the ledge probably to remove later. George quickly got the manager who offered the hotel minibus to take us to the local hospital but George insisted he came too because he knew the first thing they would ask was who is paying for the treatment. A plastic surgeon was sent for and Martin emerged about three hours later with his hand well bandaged with instructions to keep it dry which put paid to many activities for the rest of the holiday. A local doctor removed the stitches before we left for home.

George promptly put in a claim for

curtailment of the holiday and it was settled almost by return probably because the amount of £500 was so reasonable. Martin bought his first car a peugot with the money. Martin left school and we were all delighted when he got the first job he applied for in the Royal Bank in George Street. One day a man came into the bank and demanded that the teller hand over money and put a box on the counter saying there was a bomb in it. The alarm was raised, George Street was sealed off and a bomb disposal squad arrived but

they had difficulty getting their equipment into the building because of the steps. I was on my way to a Children’s hearing and happened to be listening to the news which was reporting on the incident. I was quite alarmed but soon found out that there were no casualties because it was a fake bomb. There was a lot of unrest in the bank Martin felt it would be a bit of a dead end job so he decided to go to college at Sighthill and do a computer course. He found the course boring and decided computing was not for him. He didn’t have a job but that quickly changed because Roger Ptolomey who was the manager at a hospital laundry asked him to help out there. He stayed for about two years starting at 6 o’ clock in the morning but the work was hard.

Around this time we realised that Jill had a boyfriend called Allan whom we liked instantly. When he was looking for a job George spoke to our friend who was a pilot on the Forth and Allan worked for a time with the pilots out in these small boats in the most dreadful weather sometimes and we wondered if we did Allan any favours. It seemed such a dangerous job but I think he stayed for a few months. He had worked on the oilrigs before that working two weeks on and two weeks off. It seemed such an isolated job but the pay I think was good. At Jill’s graduation there were only two places for us and George managed to get Allan a press seat next to Sally Magnusson who was a reporter on the Scotsman. All was well until Sally asked Allan what paper he worked for. Jill and Allan were working that summer at the Cairngorm Hotel and had a flying visit for the graduation but we had time to have a celebration lunch in an Italian restaurant before they dashed away. Jill went off to Newcastle to do her social work course and Allan eventually joined her to study too. When Jill qualified as a social worker she decided to stay on there because she liked the area. We used to spend some time with them when we left on holiday from the airport and were amused to see so much of her grandparents old furniture in the flat. By this time Jill and Allan had acquired a beautiful black cat called Angus and they used to bring him when they came North. When they decided to move to London about two

years later they could not have him in their flat so we adopted him. I had never liked cats before but our dogs had died, Rosie when she was seventeen years old and Chotah a year later at sixteen years. We had been so broken hearted and vowed we would never have another pet and here we were with Angus who I think was about five years old and we had him until he was seventeen and we absolutely loved him!! Jill had befriended an old lady when she was at Edinburgh University and used to visit her once week and we continued the contact after Jill left for Newcastle. By this time Lizzie was a patient at Astley Ainslie Hospital. I used to visit her on a Sunday and she looked forward to the visits because she was very deaf and felt isolated . She used to come at Xmas time for a visit to our house an d my Mum and Dad used to keep her entertained.. George was thrilled when Jill and Allan bought their first flat in London and we went down to help them organise the garden. We went off to a garden centre and bought loads of plants and Allan made a garden shed. George loved discussing plants with her and seeing her become a keen gardener.

We loved visiting them because they always

arranged such interesting things for us to do like the Cabinet Rooms at Whitehall and we always ate in a variety of

interesting restaurants and later with their good friends

Androulla and Clive. About this time we realised that Martin had a girlfriend who was a friend of Colin Kendrewâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s girlfriend Morag but as boys do we didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t meet her for some time. Suzanneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s father worked with United Distillers which was to be of some benefit to Martin later. I became Family Welfare Organiser for WRVS in Scotland in 1979 setting up playgroups and organising holidays for children with learning difficulties to give parents a break. One of our favourite camps was at an old school in Killearn an area with which I was to become familiar in later years. 1981 was declared the year to focus on physically disabled children and I decided to arrange a week long holiday at the Trefoil Holiday

Centre with two disabled and two other children from each region in Scotland making 40 of them whose ages ranged from 13 to 16 years of age. I had two exnurses and two other adults to help and we had a wonderful time giving the young people so many choices of activities which they had never had before. We had a visit from the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh on our first day but the children were not impressed by the Queenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lack of interest in them, a sports day at Meadowbank with athletes, footballers and rugby players helping, we canoed on the canal at Ratho, we sailed under the Forth Bridge by curtesy of the Royal Navy at Rosyth, we went up the ski slope at Hillend, we went to the Dominion cinema, we had discos every evening and we had a great party on our last evening. The magic for the young people was that every evening they had to make a choice about their programme for the next day and this had never happened before. They all enjoyed the challenge of being independent of their parents for the first time in their lives and were heard to say that they liked the holiday because they could decide what they wanted to do for themselves. I arranged this holiday each year for 5 years and then the funding stopped and after that we had to be content for a few years with a reunion weekend for those who could travel to the centre. It was a wonderful challenge and it proved that with the right support the physically disabled can enjoy the same activities as the able-bodied. My one regret is that no lessons were learned by those responsible for those young people and no one continued the challenge. My fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s health was beginning to fail mainly because of a lung condition caused by coal dust which was finally diagnosed as lung cancer. I was kept informed of his deteriorating condition by the consultant at Stirling Royal Infirmary in1979 and he did not expect him to survive more than a few months but decided not to tell Dad or Mum because he felt they could not handle it. However he lived for almost three more years I think because he did not know and eventually the cancer spread to his liver. He became very dependent on me and was always wanting me to be there. He always used to say if we phone Margaret to say one of us is not well Margaret will arrive with the big pot of Scotch broth!! He loved to see Martin and Jill to hear how they were getting on at school and was so amused by Jill when she arrived one day to browbeat him into parting with some of his possessions for some fund raising thing she was involved in. She bullied him

into it and he loved it!! Despite his ill health he was always supportive of Granma Saunders and he and my mother kept an eye on her but she began to develop Altzeimer and started to wonder in the village at night. The warden at the sheltered flats where she lived began to complain about having to keep an eye on her so we decided to bring her to Edinburgh every Friday and take her home on Monday afternoons because we felt she was less at risk in Bannockburn where she wanted to be and where everyone knew her. One Monday I had taken her home and I had gone to pick George up at the office in the evening when Martin got a phone call from her minister accusing us of not looking after her because she had been found wandering in the village. Martin got angry and told him just how much we were looking after her and was worried that I would be annoyed with him for that. She had to be admitted to Larbert Hospital and with days had fallen and broke her hip which resulted in an operation from which she never recovered. She died in June 1981 and my father in February 1982 but not before we had a wonderful golden wedding celebration for my Mum and Dad in 1980 with about 100 people at McCueâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in Bannockburn which they both enjoyed with Granma Saunders and all the friends young and old. Jill and Allan decided to marry in March 1984 and wanted a low key affair which disappointed George who had visions of escorting his daughter up the aisle in church. In the end it became a compromise with the service in the Dragonara Hotel with my minister friend Bill Brockie performing the wedding ceremony. It turned out to be a very happy informal occasion with everyone having a great time and as few relatives as we could get away with being there!!

Bert, Shirley, Nancy and Elaine came from Canada

and our house was so crowded with us all looking for space to get ready I ended up in the bathroom.!! We had a great lunch party the next day while Jill and Allan jetted off to Crete. George was so happy that he could have reunion with some of his oldest friends. The next year Martin got a job with United Distillers and one day when he decided to come home from his office in the West End for lunch he was involved in head on collision with another car which left him with serious injuries mainly to his eyes. Thanks to the skill of the eye surgeon and Martinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s determination the outcome was better

than we ever thought possible. George was absolutely devastated at first because he had such bad memories of all his eye problems and had always been happy that his children had no such difficulties.

A year later Martin and Suzanne got married

and the

Grosvenor Hotel and again with so many friends on both sides it was a very happy occasion with good food good music and lots of dancing to suit everyone. Jill and Allan decided to sell their flat in 1988 and the healthy profit enabled then to finance a world trip lasting a year. George was horrified although but now he had got used to them taking off somewhere in Europe for shorter trips. They set off in December I think and I have to admit their organisation of their year was quite amazing. We knew at any time roughly where they were because of the post restante addresses and the timetable they had given us. We wrote every week and we had regular phone calls so we were always in touch. Their accounts of their adventures were always fascinating and we plotted their progress on a big map. We did worry about them however and missed them. They did miss two big events in Georgeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life. The first being his retirement party at Lauriston Farm where we had a barbecue on a wonderful summer evening in June. Many of our friends were there and George thoroughly enjoyed celebrating with them all. He had had a good send off from colleagues at the office and professional organisations and was happy to get down to writing his book which would ease him into life away from the hectic life of court reporting. Jill and Allanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wonderful postcards and reports of their holiday made us decide to make a trip to the Far East ourselves and it was strange standing outside the post office in Hong Kong where we used to send all our letters for them when they were in China. We flew to Bangkok, Hong Kong, Bali which was wonderful and flew home from Singapore. It was an unforgettable holiday. Then George was awarded the MBE for services to the training of journalists. I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t say I was enthusiastic about it because I did not approve of the honours system but he had been nominated by his colleagues and felt he could not turn it down. He had worked hard

over a number of years training young journalists who regarded him as a great journalist but they were always nervous when asked by their editor to phone him because he sounded so fearsome on the phone, He expected calls to be brief and not waste his time. So when they met him they realised that he really was quite nice!! So we went to London for a few days with Martin and Suzanne and stayed at a hotel in Drury Lane. George hired a suit for the event and it was quite amusing to get into a taxi and ask to be taken to Buckingham Palace. It was a very grand affair and the Queen seemed less formal and it was interesting to see inside the palace. We went to two West end shows and returned home to write to Jill and Allan

who were goodness knows where on their world

adventure about it. We were delighted when Jill and Allan came home in December just before Xmas flying on the last leg of their journey from New York just a few days before the flight to New York crashed at Lockerbie killing almost three hundred people. We hoped they were ready to settle down and to some extent they did when the bought their next flat at Nightingale Lane and found jobs again in London. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no need for me to recount their continuing travel since they can do it best themselves. We spent some very nice Xmases with them and Martin in London. George settled well into retirement and was kept busy as a volunteer with the Citizens Advice Bureau at Portobello representing people at industrial tribunals where his knowledge of legal matters quickly earned him the respect of the chairmen and clients . He also got down to writing his book on some of the famous trials he had covered in his years for the Scotsman He bought a computer and worked hard each day on this and when it was completed he found a publisher and called the book CASEBOOK OF THE BIZARRE. He was very excited about this and the contract was signed giving him royalties twice a year on the number of books sold. 3000 copies were printed and they were selling well. The Evening Times in Glasgow arranged to publish a chapter but payment was made to the publisher with George getting a percentage. He had to chase the publisher all the time for the royalties and this took the shine off the success. The firm went bankrupt and payment stopped. He had planned to write another one, had the

title Crimes of Passion and most of the copy but he was so disillusioned that he never had the heart to write it. Years later after George died I contacted the firm who had bought the business, demanded a statement on the book sales which had not been paid. At first the firm denied all liability but I had kept all the information and threatened to sue them. The result was that years after George died I was paid what was due to him. He put it behind him and found time to enjoy his garden and greenhouse growing plants for charity. I was running a domino evening for disabled people and he had time to help and in the end became more aware of the lack of opportunities for disabled to enjoy an evening with friends. He became a great campaigner and when our club was in danger of being closed down he arranged protest groups and involved the press in our protests to no avail sadly. We had been enjoying holidays every year since 1978 to Sorrento which was so full of memories for George because he had spent three years in the country during his national service. He could speak the language quite fluently and loved to surprise the locals when he launched into a conversation with them. Our first holiday had been such a success and Jill and Allan had joined us for a few days on their way to Brindisi. They arrived at the hotel on our first day and had to share our room because the hotel was full and so were all the other hotels. They had got a lift from the station and were so surprised by the posh look of the hotel they hid their rucksacks under a tree until they checked that they were at the right hotel. They had been travelling for some time and had plenty of dirty clothes so I arranged for them to use the laundry service and they went on their travels with clothes that Jill said looked too good to push into a rucksack. I picked up the big bill!! I decided to learn Italian because I got fed up asking George to translate what he was saying and joined a class for beginners with George keeping me company. A young Italian student at Edinburgh University was taking the class to supplement his grant. His name was Erio and we soon became great friends. He shared a flat in town with some Iranian students and we had some lovely evenings there. Lots of his friends came over from the North of Italy and usually they came to us for a typical Scottish dinner and we had a friend who played the accordion. We became great friends with all of them and

spent a lovely holiday in Italy with them and met Erio’s mother and grandmother who was more than ninety years old and sang us all the lovely Italian songs. Erio’s mother still tells me how happy she was that he had a family in Edinburgh when he was studying and he regards himself as my adopted son and always introduces me to his friends as his Scottish mother!! I used to pick him up every Sunday after I had visited Lizzie at Astley Ainslie and he would come home for Sunday dinner. He was there too if there was a big football match on the television or snooker and he always enjoyed the company of George and Martin on these occasions. He enjoyed being included in Jill And Allan’s wedding and still talks about his attempts to dance!! We continued our holidays in Sorrento always celebrating our wedding anniversary with a big party in the hotel and as the years went on and we made more and more friends with local people and other hotel guests the parties became famous and everyone looked forward to them. There was a group of people who went every year at the sane time and we were known as the September club. George would arrange minibus tours for us all. George became great friends with Giovanni who runs the bar and if he disappeared I could be sure he was sitting behind the bar drinking grappa with him and smoking his cigarettes so that the duty free would last longer and I would think he wasn’t smoking so much.

Giovanni was mainly responsible for arranging the anniversary parties and he

would line up all the asti spumante bottles so that George could see how much he had to pay and there was usually about twenty-six of them because George insisted that other hotel guests should be offered a drink!! The hotel arranged the music and an enormous cake and this arrangement continued with an even bigger party for our 40th anniversary. Giovanni had arranged forty red roses and little red flowers around the table since it was our ruby anniversary. What wonderful memories with good friends. George said we can’t afford to make any more new friends in Sorrento because we don’t have time to see them!!! We had many such happy memories in and went sometimes two or three times a year for weddings, baptisms and New Year celebrations. We went in the summer for a month and really felt like natives. We felt so comfortable there that when George had problems with

his prostrate during the summer of I think about l990 we just saw a specialist who arranged some treatment and we continued our holiday because our dear friend Michele took us to the clinic at 7.30 in the morning, he went to work and his wife drove us back to the hotel and Giovanni collected his medicines!! I felt I had had a crash course in nursing dealing with catheters and bladder bags!! Everyone was amazed that we continued our holiday and enjoyed it despite the difficulties.

George had a small operation on our

return. Jill encourage us to be involved in “Share the Care” run by the social work department around 1990 because she saw how successful it was in her work in London. After checks we were presented with Nicola a little girl about six years old who had great learning disabilities. She was a pretty little girl, very strong, stubborn and had no concentration skills. It was difficult to cope with her except at meal times. As soon as she saw the table being set she would sit quietly and wait for the food especially pavlova which she just sat and gazed at with such pleasure. She loved when Martin was there because he would give her piggybacks and she thought he should play with her all the time. If she woke at 2a.m. the chances were you would not get back to sleep. We took her for long drives in the car and that seemed to please her. We had her once a month from Friday evening until Sunday afternoon and I needed a stiff gin after I returned her home!!. Her parents were always so happy to have a break but within minutes of her arriving home she was causing mayhem. We gave up after two years because she was getting too difficult for us to handle and shortly after she went into residential care. In 1994 it was arranged that George would have some tests on his return from holiday. His doctor didn’t seem very concerned about it and neither did we because he really seemed to be in good form, dancing as usual in the evenings and thoroughly enjoying himself.

Little did we know it would be his last holiday in his beloved Sorrento.

Tests showed that he had cancer in one of his kidneys and there should be no delay in operating. Jill and Allan were in Symi and Martin was studying for his degree. George had to cancel a training weekend for journalists, an involvement he always enjoyed and

he had to find a replacement tutor.

Jill came home immediately although George

protested it was not necessary but when she said it was to support me he agreed. It was discovered that the remaining kidney was small and may cause problems. When he became very ill Allan came home

and Martin was wishing he had never had the

operation because he seemed so well before he went into hospital but the consultant said there was really no choice It’s not necessary for me to go into all the details of this because those who will read my memories are as familiar as I am with the nightmare that followed which even after fourteen years is too painful for me to talk about. Sufficient to say how sad it was that George who was always so full of life ended the last few months robbed of all the things he enjoyed in life mainly communicating and being actively involved with his family. It’s of some comfort that after his last birthday celebrations on his 71st birthday with former colleagues and friends in his favourite Chinese restaurant he told me when he was getting in the car that “whatever happens in the future I’ve had a good life, done everything I wanted to do and feel so lucky.” He died on 17th May 1995 and as I write this I feel still the great sadness at losing the best friend I could ever have. He was such a big influence on my life that sometimes I feel he lives on through me. He was right we had a very happy life together with our ups and downs but I wish it could have gone on longer. Jill and Allan decided to return to Scotland to live and in Kippen of all places near Stirling which was just tremendous news for me and such support at the most difficult time in my life as I tried to adjust to life without George. Jill encouraged me to continue with my job at Family Mediation even when George was ill and used to travel through to look after her Dad so that I could continue a job I enjoyed and one I would never have applied for without her encouragement. It was a godsend and I continued my work until I retired just before my 70th birthday. The nurse who attended George suggested I continue nursing by working for Crossroads who provide care in the home and I enjoyed caring for people who had had strokes or were housebound for other reasons. I looked after a nice old gentleman who was a vegetarian and loved to prepare the vegetables for me to cook. He stayed with his son who was quite eccentric but fortunately he went out when I arrived and I spent four hours two afternoons a week for about three years there. He

loved to chat or play dominoes and my visits ended when he died suddenly. I spent an afternoon with Mary who used to sing with a musical group until her stroke robbed her of her speech. She loved to watch musical videos that I used to buy for her but she always chose “The Sound of Music” so for three years every Tuesday afternoon I had to listen to the video!! Her husband was able to have some time out. My third client was a little old lady who lived at Drylaw and there never seemed to be any food for her lunch in the fridge. I started to make her soup and bake some scones and she certainly enjoyed her lunch!!

She went into care which I thought was a good thing because she was being

neglected by her family but Crossroads weren’t too happy with me feeding the old lady and I suppose it was setting a precedent. I had to retire at 65 years but it had put the experience of nursing George to good use and maybe helped me to concentrate on others who needed care. My friends in Sorrento insisted that I continue my holidays “because we are your family here” They even after all those years look after me so well and I feel secure there on my own. Everyone talks about Mr George and if they had never met him Giovanna tells them all about him. When we are sitting later at night as we used to do he produces 3 drinks, one for George, because he says we are still in three. I certainly feel his presence and think he is saying well done Margaret. I enjoy my holidays and will continue to go as long as I can. My friends closer to home have been just great and I’ve always got a lunch date in my diary each week There is one friend though Caroline who is more like a daughter and who is always there in an emergency usually concerning Micky. We get on so well together and she knows I’m always there for her too. We sometimes don’t see each other for a couple of weeks but a long phone call or a long lunch gets us up to date with the news. We think alike about a lot of things. George was very fond of Caroline too and to think we only met her when I went into her dress shop!! He liked to come too because she always liked to hear how his book was coming on.

She is one of the few

who has an autographed copy!! She loves being included in family occasions because she is so fond of Emma and Rory and never tires of hearing of their latest escapades.

I’m getting to the end of my story with just one last sad event to record. The death of my mother in December l997 left me with many regrets that I had not been closer to her and realised sooner that she was not getting the support from Hugh the son she cared for so much. How glad I am that Jill and Allan stepped in and did the caring she should have got from the one she cared for to the exclusion of the rest of her family. Strangely I think she realised that in the end when he wasn’t around and Jill and Allan were. She was always wanting to phone them or see them. Now that I’m older myself I feel I should have done more for her because I’m sure that despite her involvement in the church she must have been quite lonely.

The revelation when I was winding up her

estate showed clearly that my brother had only visited my mother briefly on pension day to leave her a few bits of food and pocket the rest of her pension and empty her bank account. When we later learned that he had sold my father’s medals after she died I was beside myself with rage. With the help of Jill and Allan, May, Nan Flora and I we bought them back and they are in Stirling Castle which is where they should be

I’ll

never forgive him for using my mother to feed his drink habit instead of looking after her as she had done for him all her life I can end on the happiest of notes because I have two lovely grandchildren whom I absolutely adore. Emma came into my life just before I stopped work and our first meeting was one that gives me so much pleasure to remember. When I arrived in Kippen to meet her for the first time I opened the back door and heard Allan say “ who is this coming” and the wee voice saying “it’s Granny” and she jumped into my arms. What a magical moment!!!

Then along came Rory much different calling me Granny Magnet

who thinks it is his duty to look after me because he has the same name as Papa George. How George would have loved Emma and Rory and I just love the fact that they talk about him as if they had known him. Then of course there’s Micky Emma’s cat who is such a good companion even though he wakes me up early in the morning and now there is Rosy who is such a friendly wee dog. No time to be bored. I love being kept busy helping out and giving Jill and Allan a break and being involved with them so much

The other happy event was the wedding of Martin and Ruth in June. It’s lovely to have another Mrs Saunders and to feel that Ruth truly belongs in our family officially because I’ve felt she belonged a long time ago. I love their house in the Spey Valley which holds many happy holiday memories. I miss their visits though on Sundays but look forward to the times when they come with dear old Sparky. What more could I wish for? Like George I feel lucky to have my family and friends round me. There’s no more to add to my memories because those nearest and dearest will be there and the whole point of writing my lifetime of memories was to fill in any gaps in the family history and I’ve more than done that. It’s taken longer than I thought having started it when I was 72 years old. Now at 76 years I’ll leave it at that. Thanks Jill for asking me to do it. I’ve enjoyed looking back . I’ve come a long way from the wee shy lassie from the Raploch who was determined to have a different life one day and I certainly achieved that.

What a lucky day it was for me when I went to work in the

Jourrnal Office in Stirling and met George. I owe so much to him because he made it all possible. Almost the last word for you George and I know you would have liked that.!!!! Whatever the future holds who knows? I won’t be writing any more but I can honestly say so far like George I’ve had a very happy life, I’ve done lots of interesting things and had a great deal of satisfaction from the many activities I’ve been involved in and of course I have a few regrets but that’s life.

A lifetime of Memories is dedicated to my family who provided most of the happy memories but especially to Jill who encouraged me to write it and of course to George who was the greatest influence in my life. Margaret Saunders November 2009