Stromness Dragon

In the early 1990s I worked in a bar in the West End of Edinburgh, near to Haymarket station. In those pre-Starbucks days, the large buildings on the corners of the Edwardian terraces were still banks. At the other end of the street could be found the splendidly-named West End Fish and just across the way stood the war memorial erected to the players and supporters of a local football club who had died in the Great War.

Our pub was a mixture of locals’ drinking den (it was a cellar bar) and gastro-pub before they were all the rage. The owners of our place had culinary pretensions, which manifested as Sole Bonne Femme, vegetable crepes and chilli nachos; the one concession to ordinary pub grub was allowed on Sundays, when we did the All Day Breakfasts. You know the thing – sausages, fried egg, bacon, grilled tomato, and occasionally potato waffles – perfect hangover food. They were amazingly popular and we did dozens of them.

After 3 years of working in that place I had gone from a fairly chipper and cheeky barmaid to a snarling surly animal, as I slowly realised that whilst bar and waitressing work was great for supplementing the student grant and handy in times of high unemployment, it was not exactly what I had planned as a full-on career. Customers asked for ice at their peril. To prevent me from scaring people too much, I was given kitchen tasks, and proved to be quite apt. I liked working in the warm kitchen, and was fast with the orders, plus I could develop my soup-making skills. Every day, the duty cook had to make a huge pot of soup for the next day, and I got stuck straight in. I befriended the rather shabby greengrocer across the road (the shop was shabby, not the Italian greengrocer or his two handsome sons), who loved me because I bought all the old, wilted, on-the-turn veg from him; he would save me bunches of sad watercress and asparagus and I would transform them into bowls of delight. To this day I maintain that the best soup is made from vegetables that are past their best. As well as these exotics, I experimented with Broccoli and Brie, Stilton and Celery, Cream of Courgette and the good old leek and tattie. I once made a tureen of carrot and orange soup and a regular (nicknamed Chief, because he called everyone…erm…Chief….) proclaimed it to be ‘beezer soup’ which was a high accolade indeed.

On Sundays the routine was slightly different and I was occasionally on All Day Breakfast duties. I shared this honour turn about with a lad called Gavin, a clever but troubled soul who liked an occasional drink. Gav’s speciality was to take a hot potato waffle, top it with baked beans and grated cheddar, and then stick it under the grill until it bubbled. I was particularly proud of my mushrooms and tomatoes. The months/years wore on. I went part-time just doing lunches, but worked a full day on Sundays. Other employment beckoned and I finally made the decision to leave the bar and stop smelling of deep fat fryers. My last shift was a Sunday and my co-workers Andy, John and Gavin had told me in the previous week that I would have an easy time of it. Gavin would do the breakfasts, the other pair would serve at the bar, and I could lounge about smoking fags and reading the Sunday papers.

For the last time I donned my greying shapeless polo shirt, black leggings and Doc Martens and stomped up the road to work. I had had a few drinks the night before, knowing that the next day would be my last shift, so I was tired and a bit groggy and looking forward to eight hours of tea drinking and toast-eating. I arrived first to find the place empty, so I set about hoovering and putting the chairs down. Andy and John arrived and I announced my intention of getting the kettle on. Ah, they said. There’s been a slight change of plan. Gavin can’t make it. What? Why not? I cried. Well, he was pissed last night and got arrested and spent the night in the police cells. You’ll have to cook the breakfasts.

As fate would have it, it was one of our busiest Sundays for months and I spent hours frying eggs and heating up baked beans, cursing to high heaven and spitting every time I heard Gavin’s name mentioned. Finally, once all the greasy pans had been cleaned, I poured myself a pint and sat at the bar. I was looking forward to going home, having a long bath, reading a book and having an early night. Andy and John popped up. They waved a card at me and handed over a bunch of tatty Michaelmas daisies. What’s this? My last shift. I was leaving. The end of an era. No word of farewells from the owners (who had not known what to make of the world’s grumpiest barmaid with degrees coming out of her ears), or indeed the rest of the staff. I was quite touched that someone had thought to mark the occasion, and we had a few celebratory pints before I headed home.

My years of barwork did nothing for my lungs or my liver, but they honed my soup-making skills a treat. I met some grand folk whilst pulling pints (including Mr Dragon) and I remember my grubby daisies with fondness. But I still had to cook the breakfasts on my last shift and if I ever see Gavin again I will kill him.

Tags: breakfast, Edinburgh, prison, soup, waffles

10 years ago, two pals of ours got married in Ireland. The wedding was in a stunning 12^th century cathedral on the banks of the river Shannon, with baby swallows cheeping away in the rood screen.

The party was in a marquee in the bride’s parents’ garden and we all camped there too, on the spot, allegedly, where the ancient Irish King Brian Boru kept his horses. It was a wonderful event - we’d never been to Ireland and it seemed a perfect opportunity to drink the black stuff and see for ourselves the forty (and the rest) shades of green. For many reasons it was a magical occasion, but it was also the scene of a most embarrassing incident……

Breakfast was in our tent. The bathroom in the house had a rota pinned to the door, and everyone had signed up for a slot to shower, shave, and brush teeth for the big event. The wedding was at 2.00pm and we saw no lunch due to primping and preening and praying that the gossamer-thin stockings wouldn’t ladder. After the lovely ceremony, we high-tailed it back to the marquee, took our seats and eyed up the fabulous-looking buffet laid out on tables along the side. To our slight dismay, instead of getting stuck in to the nosh, we had to sit through several long speeches. My stomach was gurgling loudly and the Guinness I’d had about 1.00pm was mixing uneasily with the champagne being proffered for every toast of the bride and groom.

The last speech was made by the priest, and I am sure my friends will not be offended if I say that he had himself partaken of strong drink, and had a tendency to ramble. He rambled…..and swayed about a bit. And we got hungrier and hungrier as the clock crept past 4 o’clock, and nothing had passed our lips since breakfast except alcohol. My own organs were digesting themselves. Finally, with a magnanimous sweep of his hand, the priest, gesturing towards the groaning buffet table, proclaimed that ‘God helps those who helps themselves! The buffet is now OPEN!’

There was a shuffling of chairs and that moment of awkward looking around, until we decided that somebody had to be first and it might as well be us. Plate and napkin in hand, we started at one end and helped ourselves to poached salmon, salads, baked tatties, and so on. Behind us were the other 100 or so guests, equally hungry and looking forward to tucking in. We spotted a bowl of yummy coleslaw, but no serving spoon. I asked the waitress behind the table for something to scoop up the coleslaw, and was met with a pair of folded arms and withering glance. ‘It is customary in Ireland,’ she said, ‘for the bride and groom to be served first.’

Frozen in our tracks, we turned behind and mortified, spotted the newly married couple about 20 people down the queue, completely doubled-up with laughter.

Never, ever, have I been first to a buffet table again.

Tags: buffet, Ireland, wedding

When I was growing up, we lived in a red brick 1950s council house, built to house the London overspill following the Blitz. It was on the edge of the town and the garden backed onto a playing field, which was itself surrounded by fields and ditches and hedgerows – a haven for children growing up and a place of skinned knees, scratched arms, nettle stings, bumped heads, first kisses and all the rest.

When we moved into the house, my parents’ bedroom had thick wallpaper in various shades of cream and black and brown, featuring a nautical theme of galleons in full sail. Having, as my mother so descriptively puts it, ‘not even a pot to piss in’, the redecorating of their bedroom came fairly low down the list of priorities, well after kids’ shoes, cats and Puffin Book Club purchases. For about 4 years they put up with those ships, until my mother tried to persuade my father to strip off the wallpaper in preparation for redecorating. After months of nagging had failed to do the trick, my mother, armed with a kitchen knife and a washing up bowl full of soapy water, did the job herself. The walls beneath were solid enough, and a sort of greyish plaster. Now all they needed to do was repaper the walls and paint them whatever colour they fancied.

A year or two passed. My father showed no signs of enthusiasm for the great decorating project, and my mother resorted to guerrilla tactics. ‘If you don’t decorate the bedroom,’ she threatened, ‘I’ll get the children to do it!’ And he would laugh and go back to his crossword.

One wet day in early February, my brother and I returned from school to find Mum waiting for us with tea and toast. She then produced two big boxes of thick crayons, led us upstairs and told us to decorate her bedroom walls! It must be every child’s dream to have such a large canvas, and we took full advantage of it. Well, my brother got bored after about 20 minutes and went off to do something else, but I got more and more exuberant as the time went on. I started with a big tabby cat, whiskers extended and tail curled. Then I drew a rainbow above the bed, using every colour in the crayon pack, whether they were in the spectrum or not. I tried to draw us, but didn’t do very well ( I was only 8 years old at the time). Then, I struck upon the brilliant idea of drawing Mr Men. They were simple shapes, lovely colours, and had lots of personality! So I ran to my brother’s room and demanded all the Mr Men books he had. Two hours later I had covered the walls, and the pièce de résistance was a magnificent Mr Tickle, a beautiful orange blob with enormous long wavy arms that went all the way around the room. I used two whole orange crayons for him and wore them down to tiny stubs that my fingers could barely hold.

When my father came home he went upstairs to change, and me and Mum held our breath as he walked into the bedroom. There was a stunned silence, a sort of growl, then a chuckle, then a full shout of laughter as he realised what had happened. And do you know something? Those Mr Men were still there 4 years later!

Eventually, as time went on and my brother and I moved towards adolescence, my mother eventually realised that if there was any decorating to be done, she would have to do it herself. The walls of the bedroom were finally papered in woodchip (yep, parental units were still spending all the housekeeping money on books and red wine), and painted with white emulsion. After three heavy coats of paint, Mr Tickle was finally rendered invisible. About 5 years ago, my parents moved out of that house, where they had lived for over 30 years. By that time they had bought it, and like a lot of houses on the street, it had new windows and doors and you would be hard pressed to tell it was ever a council house. Being within easy commuting distance from London, yet right on the edge of lovely countryside, the town where I was brought up had become fashionable and affluent, meaning my folks could sell up and buy a cottage in Suffolk. They sold the house to a lovely young couple with two small children. And I wonder what they thought when they decorated the bedroom and stripped off the old 1970s woodchip wallpaper and found what was underneath…….

Tags: crayons, decorating, Mr Tickle

In 1893 a young girl, only 16 years old, fell in love with an unsuitable man.

Her name was Frances, and she lived in the industrial heartlands of south-west Wales, in the area around Pembroke Dock.

I don’t know who the man was – I have heard it suggested that he was a travelling photographer, one of many who went from village to village in rural areas taking portraits of country people; they would return several weeks later with the photos – sometimes the only ones the folk would ever own.

However they met, the young girl was besotted with the man, and he seemed to be equally taken with her. The pair became close very quickly, to the dismay of her family, but they continued to meet and correspond.

A plan was hatched. The two of them were to elope! They swore that they would be together no matter what the consequences, and decided to run away as far as they could go, get married, and live together forever. For a young girl with no experience of the world, this must have been a very romantic notion, and Frances agreed to the plan eagerly. The man booked two tickets on a trans-Atlantic ship – they were going to sneak away one morning, make their way to the docks and head across the sea to America and a new life.

Somehow, Frances’s parents found out about the plan. Instead of confronting their daughter, they simply crept up to her bedroom on the morning of the elopement, and locked the door. She cried and screamed and pleaded to be let out, but they were resolute; she would remain there until the danger was passed.

The ship sailed, and as far as I know, the man was on it. I don’t know his name, and I don’t know what happened to him; he simply disappeared out of the story.

Frances was heartbroken. She swore from that day onward that she would never love another man as long as she lived: she would never marry, never have children. The years went by, and whilst she was a bonny lass and many young lads came calling, she was interested in none of them.

When she was in her early twenties, Frances was offered a job in Scotland, working for a Welsh couple who owned a house just outside Nairn called Lochloy. She accepted the job and became the cook. Her handsome face, her baking skills and her unmarried state made Frances a very interesting topic of conversation for the local suitors; they all made their overtures, but she had sworn never to love, never to marry.

Living nearby was a bachelor farmer called Kenneth. By all accounts, he was very quiet, gentle, and had a real affinity for animals – his small farm was filled with dogs, cats and horses. He and Frances met occasionally, and he set about wooing her. The courtship proceeded at glacial pace; any sudden declarations would have sent her running for the hills. They exchanged the odd word here and there, a gift of eggs was left on a doorstep, a cake made its way to a table. Frances was 39 years old when she finally said yes.

Frances and Kenneth were married and lived at a farm called Springbank. They went on to have two sons, Kenneth and Thomas, and Thomas was my grandfather.

It was one of my greatest ambitions to have children, and it is one of my greatest regrets that I cannot. I feel very sad that I will never be able to pass on the story of Frances and Kenneth to my own children and grandchildren, but I have now passed to story on to you. If at anytime you feel like telling this tale, and passing it on to anyone you know, I would be very grateful!

The photo at the top, in case you hadn’t guessed, is my great-grandmother; Frances Gay McKenzie.

Tags: Lochloy, Nairn, Wales

This is by way of a little change from Caritas! But there may be a common thread….who knows?

At university in the late 80s, I visited Berlin with my boyfriend, Steve. His mother was German, and his grandmother still lived there; she had been a widow for many years.

We flew over East Germany and my ears hurt so much with the pressure that I couldn’t hear for at least 24 hours. Our hosts, Steve’s relatives, were very kind to me despite my rudimentary German and temporary deafness. I loved Berlin – it was a fabulous mixture of wide streets, confident people and modern architecture standing side-by-side with medieval ruins.

On our first evening there we went to see Steve’s grandmother, Christa. She was quite crabby and smoked like a chimney, claiming ‘it is my only vice’. We made her dinner and told her what our plans were for the week. We were going to see the museum at Checkpoint Charlie the next day, and the day after that we had booked tickets to go on a coach tour of East Berlin. The old lady’s thin hands shook and she tutted crossly at us. What did we know? She said. We were just silly tourists. She said we had no idea what it was like to live in a divided city; and she told us this story.

In 1961 Christa and her sister lived in one part of Berlin, and their parents lived in another. There were all sorts of rumours about how the city was going to be split in two, but no-one really believed it would happen, until they woke up one day and discovered that Berlin was divided into East and West. Overnight, a thick fence of barbed wire had been erected: Christa and her sister in the West, their parents in the East.

The East German authorities, not wanting to appear unsympathetic, issued the two daughters with passes, to enable them to cross the border and see their parents whenever they liked. Nonetheless, it was hard for them all, and life was especially difficult for the old people in the East. They did not have any washing facilities in the block of flats where they lived, so every weekend, Christa would drive through the military checkpoint, go to her parents’ flat, and collect their laundry. The next day, or the day after, she would bring it back, cleaned, dried and ironed.

One weekend she crossed the border as usual. She changed the sheets on her mother’s and father’s bed. She took their bath towels and the used sheets and went home. The evening was dry and warm with a brisk breeze, and the laundry dried quickly. The next morning Christa folded everything neatly and placed them on the passenger seat of her car, before setting off for the border. At the checkpoint, instead of being waved through as she usually was, she was pulled over; it was guard she did not recognise. He demanded to know why she had a pile of sheets and towels in the car. Was she going to sell them? No, she protested, they belonged to her parents. Did she not trust the state to take care of her parents? Was she criticising the government? His questions became increasingly aggressive but Christa stood her ground. After a quarter of an hour of protesting, Christa was forced to hand over her pass, and her own papers were stamped with clear instructions that she was never allowed into East Germany from that day onward.

She never saw her parents again. Her sister took the clean laundry the next day and crossed the border without incident – indeed she continued to travel betwee West and East unhindered for many years. When her parents died, Christa was forbidden to go to their funerals. The cruelty was heartbreaking, she told us, but what sickened her most was the arbitrariness of it. Her theory was that the border guard had a hangover, or had an argument with his wife that morning, and needed to take out his bad mood on somebody. So, she concluded, she could understand why we wanted to see the East, but she could not be happy about it. Steve and I did not know what to say, so we topped up her sherry glass.

We did go on the bus trip round East Berlin and it was astonishing in so many ways. My feelings at the Checkpoint Charlie museum were a mixture of horror, pity, and amazement at human ingenuity. We returned to Scotland to resume our studies, and we spilt as a couple a few months later. It was quite amicable, but our paths didn’t cross much after that.

In autumn 1989 extraordinary things were happening in the world – through political will and popular action, the Eastern Bloc started to crumble and one by one Europe’s former Communist countries emerged into capitalism. There was an atmosphere of great hope and expectation, culminating in the moving scenes at the Berlin Wall, when thousands of people used hammers and drills and their bare hands to tear down that most hated symbol of a divided country.

I sat in my flat and watched my tiny black and white TV, remembering the story of Christa. As my heart filled, there was a ring on the doorbell. Standing on the doorstep was Steve, and he was carrying a bottle of wine.

‘I thought you’d like to celebrate,’ he said. ‘It’s too late for her, but it’s not too late for millions of other people’.

We toasted Christa and her parents, and watched the world change.

Tags: Berlin, Berlin wall, East Germany

Johnny Cash is the reason I am in Orkney.

It’s a bold statement, I know, and at first glance there is little or no connection between the two.

Johnny died in September 2003; amongst the many obituaries printed in the newspapers, there was one in The Guardian by a young woman whose name, alas, I have forgotten. Unlike the usual obituary style, looking back over a person’s lifetime, she wrote an account of a meeting she had with Johnny, and how it changed her life.

She was interviewing Johnny for a newspaper; he was old and clearly unwell, and whilst not discourteous, he was quite gruff and a bit impatient with her questions about his new album. After an awkward 20 minutes or so, Johnny asked the interviewer if she liked his music, and she confessed a lifelong love of the 1971 album Man in Black: it was her father’s favourite record. He smiled, picked up his guitar, and sang most of the album for her. Abandoning the formal interview format, and beginning to enjoy each other’s company, Johnny asked the journalist if she enjoyed her work. Ashamed, she confessed that whilst she had a job most people would give their right arm for, actually she was very disillusioned with journalism, and that her real heartfelt ambition was to write fiction, possibly a novel.

Johnny Cash stared at her for several long seconds before asking her, in uncompromising Johnny Cash style, what the hell she thought she was doing. If you want it, he told her, you have to go get it. You get one shot at this life, and every minute spent not pursuing your dream is a minute wasted. The resulting article was not only a fitting tribute to Johnny, it was a journalist bidding farewell to her profession; she had handed in her notice and was going to write her novel.

In September 2003 I had come to an impasse myself. We had lived in Edinburgh for 13 years, and the last two years had been difficult for a number of reasons. I wanted to leave my job, but I was terrified of the consequences of abandoning full-time salaried work, with the attendant benefits of holiday pay, pension contributions and all the rest. We had this mad scheme about moving to Orkney, but it seemed a real leap in the dark and we didn’t know if we were brave enough.

I cut out the article about Johnny Cash and stuck it on my wall, in a place where I could see it every day. I looked at the photo of a man who lived life in the raw, and rarely compromised on anything that mattered. In November 2003 I handed in my notice, and in February 2004 we moved to Orkney, a decision that I have not regretted for one single second.

There were many other people who gave us advice, encouragement and inspiration, and I am grateful to all of them. But when folk ask me why I came to the islands, a little voice in my head answers ‘because Johnny Cash told me to.’

Tags: Johnny Cash, Orkney

In the town where I grew up there was a flea market. It was held every Saturday in a concrete courtyard behind the High Street shops, and it was where I spent most of my money between the ages of 10 and 18.

I collected things. My collections at one time included stamps, candles, tea tins and polished stones, but the collection I have maintained for most of my life has been that of old bottles and jars. Cod bottles with marbles, ink bottles, brown glazed cream jugs, 2-toned cider flagons and the occasional stone hot water ‘pig’. In my one-hour lunch break from my teenage Saturday job (in an achingly classy furniture and gift shop) I would buy a bag of chips and head for the market, browsing at a leisurely pace, the hot vinegary chips keeping my hands warm. The stallholders all knew me, and the man with the bottle stall would sometimes keep things by for me. I had very little money, so each purchase was made after an age of deliberation: sometimes it took me weeks to decide which lemonade bottle to buy.

There was a stall next to the bottle table which was crammed with vintage collectibles – stuff like old OXO tins, deck chairs and glass beads. I browsed there too, and occasionally bought something cheap like a small box that had once held Parma Violets.

One Saturday I followed my usual routine – chips shop, flea market, bottle stall. But my purposeful steps were halted suddenly by the junk stall. There, dangling from a wooden hanger, was the most amazing piece of clothing I had ever seen. It was a boxy jacket made of very dark blue, almost black, thin corded material. At its cuffs and geometric angular collar was a thin rim of dark red ribbon, and round every edge was a rope of gold braid. Down the double-breasted front marched a line of tarnished brass buttons. The lining was black satin and the smell of decades hit my nostrils as I tried it on. It was a perfect fit, albeit a bit long in the arms.

The man on the stall told me that it was the jacket of a cinema commissionaire, the uniformed presence who opened doors, presided over the foyer, helped ladies on with their coats and occasionally introduced the films, no doubt featuring Hollywood legends like Clarke Gable and Hedy Lamarr. The jacket evoked movie glamour; it had a quasi-military air and more than a hint of Sergeant Pepper about it. I wanted it so much my stomach hurt. The stallholder wanted £40.00 for it.

It was a huge amount of money for me at the time. My Saturday job paid £8.00 a week and that had to cover my clothes, my books, my going out, my Saturday chips, everything. The stallholder and I came to a deal. He dropped the price to £38.00 and he allowed me to pay in instalments. It was nearly 5 months before I paid the last of the money and got to slip the musty satin over my shoulders once more. I paraded around the market and let the stallholders see me – they all knew how long I had waited for that moment. They applauded and admired, and I felt like I was on top of the world.

I wore the jacket regularly for years. My favourite outfit at 18 was a pair of tight cream jeans, knee length leather boots, black t-shirt and the commissionaire’s jacket. People knew me by it. Several women and a couple of men tried to buy it from me. When one of my university boyfriends first saw me, I was wearing it: he turned to a mutual friend and said ‘Who the hell is that?’

Years later I made a disastrous attempt to turn over the thick ropes of braid. The gold was tarnished on the outside and shiny underneath and I wanted to reverse it to get the bright gold uppermost. I unpicked the sleeves at the shoulders to reveal wads of woollen padding that looked like furniture stuffing. My braid-reversal did not really work.

I still have the jacket in a box somewhere. I doubt whether I will ever mend it or wear it again; indeed, I was lightly toying with the idea of selling it on eBay. But now……now I’m not so sure.

Tags: flea market, Vintage clothes

I’ve been at work all day and we’ve got guests for dinner, so I have about 20 minutes to batter something out before cleaning the bathroom and dusting the piano. This writing something a day lark is quite enjoyable, and I generally start thinking about what I’m going write as soon as I wake up (although not today I confess - this is a really last-minute thing). So far I have stuck to my New Year’s Resolution, and not only that, but the readers of Island Blogging have been feeling the ‘benefit’. However, to paraphrase Mr Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, I have probably delighted you long enough. I thought that after January I would spare you the daily post, although I still intend to write every day. That way, I stick to my resolution, and you get a chance to take a breath. Here’s today’s offering.

As part of my job in my old Edinburgh life, I spent a bit of time helping TV and film folk to poke around in haunted underground places. They would be making programmes or scouting for locations that were suitably creepy and I was the media liaison person, at the ready with extension cables, candles, historical comment and breathless recounting of ghostly encounters. During the years I did this, I met several people who might be termed ‘famous’; for the most part they were fun, lovely and genuinely interested. Take a bow Adam Hart-Davis, Yvette Fielding and Graeme Garden (I met a Goody! I met a Goody!). The ones who were obnoxious and up themselves…..well, I shall remain diplomatically tight-lipped. Except maybe after a couple of gins.

Anyway. One of the nicest afternoon’s work I ever did was spent in the company of Pam Ayres. Readers of a certain age will remember the cheeky lass appearing on the 1970s show Opportunity Knocks in a flowery frock, reciting her funny, touching, and occasionally downright risqué poetry whilst looking sideways and smirking at the camera. Imagine comic verse crossed with cream teas. Pam is to be found these days on the tour circuit, and also gracing the radio airwaves regularly. For a while she did a programme on R2 called Pam Ayres’ Open Road in which she travelled around Britain ‘visitin’ interestin’ places and talkin’ to interestin’ people’, and that’s how I met her. She was just lovely – very funny and warm and seemed to have this trick of making everybody feel like they had been her best friend for years. I feel a sudden urge to follow her on Twitter.

My other memorable celeb encounter was with Clarissa Dickson Wright. She was presenting a special Halloween edition of the BBC TV programme Holiday and was filming in our underground places. Clarissa is a larger-than-life character who first came to widespread prominence with the cookery show Two Fat Ladies. She has been bankrupt, an alcoholic, a barrister, a campaigner for the countryside, a bookshop owner, a newspaper columnist and I don’t know what else. This is a lady who would never be without a story to tell. This was confirmed by the film crew (with whom she flirted outrageously), who said that in the week they had been with her, she had kept them hugely entertained and had never told the same story twice. In that great imaginary dinner party we all have in our heads, Clarissa is first on my list, despite the fact that I dislike many of her politics.

In the time we were filming she found out very quickly that I had an interest in the First World War, and related how her father had fought in the trenches for two years before joining the Royal Flying Corps ‘to get out of the mud’. By 1916 the average life expectancy for a fighter pilot had risen from 3 days to 9 days. He was also shocked to discover that the RFC did not issue their pilots with parachutes, as it was thought this might cause them to ‘funk’ in a crisis. Despite this, he survived. After the war was over, he took his wife to the Western Front to show her where he had seen action; for several days they visited trench systems and bombed villages and graveyards, and he appeared calm and distant. Then, walking along a canal, he suddenly doubled over, vomiting and shaking, and pleaded to be taken home. The thing that had tipped him over the edge was the smell of a horse corpse drifting in the water.

The underground room in Edinburgh that we used as filming HQ had a lot of old furniture which served as props and backdrops for events and functions. In one corner of the room sat a huge wooden box with doors and a hole in the top. A series of ancient valves and pipes gave a clue as to its purpose – a sauna sweat box from the late 19^th century, wherein stout Victorian ladies would take the steam cure for its restorative powers. Clarissa could not resist it, squeezed her ample self in and closed the doors so just her head was poking out. To my dying day I will regret the fact that I did not have my camera to hand. That would have been some photograph!

Tags: Clarissa Dickson Wright, Pam Ayres, underground Edinburgh

This is a story regarding (to use Greg’s memorable phrase) a Dragon-in-training!

The Dragon's primary school

In the early 1970s my primary school still had a proper kitchen where the dinner ladies prepared the school meals. There were no choices or options available (except of the gravy/no gravy/custard/no custard type), and everyone, staff and pupils, ate the same thing, in the school hall with its wooden floor, raised stage and climbing bars on the walls*.

Being a good mini-Dragon, I wasn’t actually that fussy about my food and ate most of what was put in front of me. Unlike many of my peers I liked the ‘greens’, which I guess was some sort of brassica – cabbage or spinach probably, very dark green, leaves thin and finely chopped. I didn’t mind the prunes, or the stewed plums, or the tapioca/sago/semolina things with jam in the middle. There were some things I wasn’t that keen on, but I was an obedient little thing and forced them down.

Then came the day……when I refused to eat my school dinner. I was about 7 years old and it was probably my first proper act of conscious rebellion. I took my little tray and moved along the counter, proffering the thick white china plate to the ladies. They scooped and dolloped along the line until I had everything that I was supposed to have. From the beginning of the line, my dinner comprised the following: a cube of scrambled egg (it was made in those big metal tins so it assumed solid form and had to be cut out in wobbling pale yellow chunks), a large spoon of spaghetti which slithered about in a pinkish watery liquid, and two scoops of grey lumpy mashed potato, doled out with an ice cream scoop. I walked slowly to my table, my stomach alternately rising and sinking.

Our dinner ladies were truly fearsome women with power of life and death over us poor children (well, that’s what it felt like, anyway). Once the food had been dished out, they moved over to the table where they presided over an enormous metal bowl. Wielding a plastic spatula, they scraped into the bowl any food that the children didn’t eat – it went to feed pigs, apparently, a practice no longer permitted nowadays. If you went up with your plate and you hadn’t eaten enough, they would send you back to your table and tell you to eat more of it. I have a clear memory in my head of a large woman with enormous arms and a red scaly face and a hair net scowling at me.

The scrambled egg dinner sat untouched on my plate, grew cold and congealed. I was sent back four times by the dinner ladies. One by one all my schoolmates finished their food and left the hall, until I was the only person left. The caretaker came in and started clearing away the tables and chairs. I sat and stared at my dinner, blushing furiously and feeling very lonely, but determined that I would not eat it. When the school bell rang for the afternoon classes, the headmaster was brought in to deal with my stubborn attitude. He stood looking terribly stern. Then, under the glowering eye of the head dinner lady (who was sure I was going to cop it), I was escorted to the headmaster’s office, where only very naughty children were taken to be punished.

Looking back, our headmaster Mr Sullivan was rather Dickensian. He was rotund and wore half-moon glasses on a chain, I’m sure there was a waistcoat, but I am probably imagining the fob watch on a chain. He was a gruff character with no real empathy for children and I was quite worried as he propelled me towards his office, where he made me stand next to his old-fashioned pedestal desk. He sat heavily and peered at me.

‘Wouldn’t eat your dinner, eh?’ he said.

‘No, Mr Sullivan’ I replied.

‘And why not?’ he asked.

‘Because it was horrible.’ I was pulling no punches.

There was a long pause and I thought I was in serious trouble.

‘I wouldn’t have eaten it either,’ he said, and bending down to the bottom drawer of his desk, he pulled out a chocolate mini-roll.

‘Eat that,’ he said, ‘then get to your classroom’.

The Dragon-in-training had prevailed. I had stuck to my guns and I was thoroughly vindicated, plus I had got a chocolate mini-roll into the bargain! There is a moral in this story somewhere – can you guess what it is, dear IBers?

*The primary school is being knocked down this year, except for the old Victorian block (pictured - thanks to Todd) which has been given listed status to protect it.

Tags: rebellion, School dinners

Last spring I put out the call – I’m in the market for kittens.

We’d lost one of our big cats, Jess, a few weeks before – she had a long and happy life which involved the minimum of activity and the maximum of fuss and cat food – and she was buried in the garden with a small cairn raised in her honour. The other two cats were at a bit of a loss and there was a certain amount of aimless wandering, but the feline population of the house clearly needed a new focus.

Orkney has a lot of feral cats. Some are outdoor barn cats who patrol farmsteads very effectively, and as long as they are well managed, everyone benefits from their presence. But sometimes the feral population gets out of control, resulting in hundreds of kittens who have little chance at growing to healthy adults.

The Friends of Orkney Ferals (FOF) is a local charity that helps feral cats and kittens by trapping, neutering, and re-homing. If they can trap the adult cats they are spayed or neutered, and if they find nests of newborn kittens they remove them, feed and socialise them and find loving homes.

Following my initial enquiry, we were told that they had just got in a litter of 5 tiny kittens, found shivering in a huddle near Boardhouse Loch. FOF had taken them in and were bottle-feeding the little scraps of fur. Over the phone, they explained that there were two boys (tabby and white), and three girls (one grey and two tabby), and that they were all quite poorly with cat flu. Feral colonies are not healthy, and as well as endemic cat flu, the mothers often pass on FIV (Feline AIDS) to their kittens. We decided that if they all survived, we would take the two girl tabbies. All five kittens struggled through the next few days, with the FOF volunteers bottle-feeding them regularly through the night. Then we heard the sad news that the wee boys had simply been too weak and had not made it.

The grey kitten, we were told, had already been allotted a new home (although she was too young to go there yet). The two tabbies were ours and when they were about three weeks old we got to see them for the first time. They were brought through in their well-padded cage and we got our first cuddles – the kittens’ eyes were still blue, and you can see how teeny they were! Because they knew we were going to take the kittens eventually, we gave them their names.

TS Elliot has a lot to say about the naming of cats, and if you have them yourself, you may know the hours of thought and brainstorming that go into this most important task. Kitten 1 was to be called Myrtle. Why? We have good pals who live in a house called Myrtledene, and they had a gorgeous tabby called Myrtle who was sadly run over at a young age. She was a very cool cat and we liked the name so we named a kitten after her.

Kitten 2 was to be Beryl. As a long time Beano/Dandy/DC Thomson fan, I liked the idea of naming a cat after a cartoon character. Minnie the Minx was my role model as a child (all that catapult-climbing-trees-tomboy stuff), with Beryl the Peril a close second. We did actually have a kitten called Minnie (lost to a busy road), and we liked the name so much we named our cool black Sphinx-like feline Minxie (missing, alas). So, we had to have a Beryl. In a wee tangent, I have a great friend whose father is the cartoonist Andrew Christine – in his long and varied career he did at one time draw Beryl the Peril, thus earning my lifelong respect.

The grey kitten was given a FOF name. They called her Mouse, because, well, she looked like a mouse.

Myrtle had cat flu very badly, and very nearly didn’t make it. Late one evening, the FOF folk sat around their table trying to work out how to break it to us, but against all expectation she made it through the night and was started to grow.

We visited the kittens every few days and they got more friendly and more frisky. The FOF folk have a lot of work with tiny kittens. As well as feeding them every couple of hours, they wash the kittens and clean up after their teeny tiny businesses, ahem. When the kittens were about 6 weeks old, we visited them at FOF HQ and Beryl distinguished herself by doing a big pooh on Mr Dragon. We were also enormously impressed with Mouse, who was leaping around and rubbing and purring and doing her very bestest to look adorable. FOF told us that the person who was going to take Mouse had pulled out, and Mouse was looking for a home too. Cue me looking beseechingly at Mr Dragon and Mr Dragon looking stern and shaking his head. The kittens were still on medication for cat flu, and were quite snuffly.

We went away for a week on holiday. When we came back, we went round and picked up all three kittens (Mr Dragon did not take much persuading!). Into the spare room they went, to leap about and tear the place up, and keep them away from big adult cats (looking very sulky). After a week or so it was clear that the cat flu symptoms were back with a vengeance, and we got more medication for them. Poor Beryl was very ill, and we quarantined her in the bathroom. She would lie in her little cat house not eating or drinking, eyes all sticky and unable to breathe. I spent a lot of time cleaning her up with cotton buds and syringing cat milk into her mouth, and it just broke my heart leaving her there without her sisters. I love all my cats dearly, but I confess that it was Beryl who first stole my heart, and she hasn’t given it back yet.

After a few weeks the symptoms were still there and we began to worry that the kittens had FIV. If one had it, they all would, and none would survive. When I really couldn’t put it off any longer, we made a vet’s appointment to have the blood test done, and even the FOF folk were feeling pessimistic. I was at work that day, and Mr Dragon had the unenviable task of taking them to the appointment. After an agonising morning, I was surprised to see the car pull up at work, and Mr Dragon get out. I could see the cat box in the car. He came rushing in to give me the good news – the kittens didn’t have FIV, and he thought that I would want to know immediately!

Mouse was not badly affected by the cat flu and has never shown symptoms since. The tabbies both have ‘residual snuffles’ which means they are sometimes a bit snuffly and snotty. When they sneeze, the resulting projectiles can travel quite a distance……but it’s a small price to pay for three fantastic cats.

Mouse

They are about 18 months old now. Mouse is definitely the serious cat. She keeps slightly apart from the others, and is a bit more grown up. Mouse has the kink in the end of her tail that so many Orkney cats have, so when she jumps on the bed in the night it’s easy to tell it’s her. She is, of course, very beautiful, especially in her red velvet collar, and her favourite spot is the top of the piano.

Beryl

Beryl is the most affectionate and is a real people cat. She like sitting on Mr Dragon’s shoulders, or failing that, the warmest bit in the house which sometimes means we find her leaning against the teapot. She is generally known as Peril, or Perilous.

Myrtle

Myrtle is the world’s peskiest cat, by a long shot. She is also extremely cute but I don’t trust her an inch, frankly. She has more nicknames than any of the others, chiefly Squirtles, Squirtly-Woo, Mogboon, and Resident Evil. They are all very good company and an integral part of the household, even if I do spend half my time wiping cat bogies off the walls.

If you want to contribute to Friends of Orkney Ferals or become a member, or just find out about the work they do, you can find them here. http://www.orkneyferals.co.uk/

Tags: cats, ferals, FOF, Orkney