Stromness Dragon

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

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

What is your favourite silence? Here are some of mine…..

• The silence after I have switched off the alarm – but only if I don’t actually have to get up.

• You’ve got the long glass, filled it with ice, poured in the gin and added the wedge of lime. The top is off the tonic and you are just about to pour it in. That’s a good silence.

• The silence after the last note played by the West Mainland Strathspey and Reel Society in the annual concert – a split second of suspended animation before the rapturous applause!

• The silence after the howling wind drops.

• The silence at the Menin Gate, Ypres, after the Last Post. This memorial arch commemorates the ‘missing’ of the Ypres Salient – those who have no known grave. There are 36,000 names on it. Members of the local fire brigade come out every night, stop the traffic through the arch, and sound the Last Post, whether there is anybody there to hear it or not. A moment of silence follows before they put down the bugles and walk away.

• When guitar practice has finished.

• I loved sitting in an exam and getting a question I could answer. After a little thrill of recognition, I would plot my essay point by point in the room full of silent students.

• Sleeping children.

• The words on the gravestone of George Mackay Brown – Carve the runes, then be content with silence.

What are your favourite silences?

Tags: George Mackay Brown, gin, Menin Gate, Silence

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

‘Where are you from?’

It’s a very loaded question, and it is not always clear what the questioner wants to know.

How do you define where you are ‘from’? I think for some people it is simple, because they were born, raised and educated in the same place. But for people who have moved around, or were born in one place and raised in another, it can be a tricky thing to answer.

I have always thought of myself as Scottish, although the way I sound defies that. Certainly Scotland was the country of my birth, my parents are Scottish, most of my ancestors were Scottish, some of them were even Orcadian. But I was brought up and educated in England. Those 15 years that I spent in deepest darkest Essex-shire formed about a third of my life so far, and included learning to read, going to school and becoming an adult. Does that make them any more or less important than the other years? Some would argue that was the case.

My family tree research has uncovered not only Orkney connections, but also forebears from Wales. 3 of my 8 great-grandparents were Welsh (grounds for annulment? asks Mr Dragon). Perhaps if I had moved to South West Wales I might have reclaimed my Welsh family name of Gay, instead of moving to Orkney and ‘stealing’ (with her blessing) my grandmother’s maiden name of Flett. If I had found myself in the Highlands, I could just as easily have chosen McKenzie to give me local credibility.

Why does it matter? Should it matter? Where we ‘come from’ can give us a very powerful sense of identity, and where other people ‘come from’ can create a set of preconceptions. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing – when you meet a person, your first few conversational remarks can establish a connection and find common ground almost immediately. An accent can do that very quickly, but accents can also be deceptive.

Mr Dragon was born in Devon and his family home is there, but he was educated at boarding school (thus no Devonian accent) and actually only lived in the county for a few years all told. But if you ask him where he’s from, he’ll say Devon. Pause whilst you all bask in the thought of that lovely warm west country burr and envisage cream teas.

In some quarters, the equivalent question would be ‘where did you go to school’? This query can reveal a background of a particular social class, or indeed religion. Using these shortcuts, perhaps we think we can cut to the chase, and find out who someone really is.

These issues become more and more relevant in a modern world, and is something much discussed throughout Scottish islands. As the world becomes smaller and mobility of population becomes more fluid, there is a two-way process underfoot. Scotland has sent many thousands of people out into the world – in some cases they were forced from their homes and had no other options. Many had successful lives in other countries and became philanthropists, leaders of industry and governors of Australia. The Scottish diaspora is enormous and no-one could deny the effect it has had on the world. Conversely, there is a flow of people into Scotland, who bring their own backgrounds and experiences and accents with them. How much do they affect or even dilute the populations in which they live? Anecdotal evidence is thick on the ground – I have a friend (English) whose children (born here) have Orcadian accents. I have a friend in Lewis whose son (born in Lewis) has a London accent at the moment, because that’s where his childminder is from. Is that ‘good’? Is that ‘bad’?

I have heard the case put that all the Orcadian regional accents are dying out – perhaps because of non-Orcadian residents. This may indeed be the case, although it is equally plausible that the homogenisation of an Orkney accent started when there were regular ferry services between the outer isles and Orkney Mainland. Or when Neighbours was first shown on television.

This is assuming that accent is the important thing. It may not be, of course, there are lots of other factors that make up where someone is ‘from’. It is very hard to quantify a sense of belonging, but I have heard it said that it’s something in a shared memory, a knowledge of a particular street or field, just a ‘feeling’ that your origins are in a particular place. I have recently been chatting digitally to old school friends who are only a few miles away from where they started – whereas it is unlikely that I will ever visit the place again. The town where I was raised has no pull for me, other than a vague sense of nostalgia brought on by the fact I am not 17 any more. I spent 14 years in Edinburgh and I still visit it regularly. Am I ‘from’ Edinburgh?

We could fall back on the ‘home is where the heart is’ cliché. Clichés, of course, are clichés for a reason – they often contain at least a grain of truth. Maybe that’s all we need – just to be happy in one place and say that wherever that might be, we are ‘home’. That’s where we’re ‘from’. What do you think?

Tags: ancestry, Home, migration, Orkney

During the course of researching my book about Otherworldy Orkney, I spent a bit of time loitering in the archives looking at records of trials, and documents pertaining to crimes committed and punishments meted out. Here is a small selection for your delight and delectation………

From 1691-1732 the records of the Kirkwall Town Council are almost free of accounts of executions. The exception was Arthur Mason, a notorious thief and housebreaker, sentenced to die on 29 October 1706. He was to be taken from the Tolbooth to the Loan, ‘between the hours of 2 and 3 in the afternoon, by the hand of the common hangman; having his hands tied behind his back, and there to be hanged upon ane gibbet of gallows till he dyed.’

When a hanging took place in Kirkwall, the gibbet was made anew every time – it did not stand, as in some places, as a permanent warning and reminder to the ne’er-do-wells of the town. Special arrangements were made for timber and iron to make the gibbet, and after its use, it was cut down and burnt. Only the notorious hangman’s ladder was used time and time again.

In 1720 the Sheriff of Caithness appealed to the Kirkwall authorities for a loan of the hangman, Alexander Downie, to execute one William Farquhar. They gave many bonds and guarantees of his return, and the promise of excellent pay – clearly these men were much in demand.

In 1680 the Kirkwall Tolbooth was a rather open prison – complaints were made that the prisoners were keeping women, and servants attended them night and day, even using and keeping cooking pots within the gaol. The regulations were duly tightened – everybody was to leave the prison at 8.00pm, except, of course, the prisoners.

At the beginning of the 19^th century, concern was raised once more about the state of the Kirkwall gaol. The Sheriff Depute of Orkney, James A McConnochie, sent a report to Provost Laing bemoaning ‘ the communication which the prisoners may have with the people on the streets…I myself saw gingerbread handed in…..’ . Spirits and other drink were also transferred. He advised building a wall to screen the windows from the street; the council agreed and this was done.

The punishment of Jean Seatter on 9 March 1697 caused a lot of excitement in Kirkwall. Business stopped, and crowds gathered around the Tolbooth, surging forward to catch a glimpse of the prisoner being led from the damp cells. Jean, a tall young woman with fair hair, was escorted by the magistrates. Her punishment began when she was taken to the rampart of the Brig at about 11 o’clock and stripped to her shift. She received three lashes over her shoulders, with the cord or tow. Three more lashes were inflicted at the Mercat Cross, then a further three at the ‘head of the town’, followed by banishment from Orkney. If anyone harboured her, the fine was 40 shillings for every night she spent under their roof. Jean’s crime was that of theft. She was a servant with the Bailie Moncrieff, at a time of great hunger and famine, when many in Orkney were starving. She stole from her employer a small quantity of bere meal, and more seriously, ‘did cut down and steal away’ 27 pieces of beef which had been hanging in the larder. She attempted to hide the meat whilst the household was in church, but was discovered. Jean pled for mercy, saying that desperation had made her steal to feed her family, but no leniency was shown and the full punishment was carried out.

1843 saw a rare case of bigamy in Orkney. William Sharp married Ann Marwick when he was already married to Mary McFie. He was found guilty and served 12 months in prison.

In 1707, a 15 year old named Adam Farquhar was convicted of striking his mother with a knife. The magistrate described him as a ‘wicked, godless wretch’. His sentenced required that he walked from the Tolbooth to the shore, then to the head of the town. He was to carry a board with the following writing; ‘With this right hand I did most unchristianly beat my mother’. He had to walk accompanied by officers who beat a large drum to draw attention to the ‘unnatural son’. This, alas, did not deflect the lad from the path of wickedness – 14 years later he again hit his mother, this time with a pair of tongs. For this second offence he was ordered to pay a fine of 500 merks and was thereafter banished from the island.

It is believed the last public execution took place in Kirkwall in 1728. A young woman from Shapinsay was convicted of the murder of a child. The bill for the execution included beer for the hangman, diggers for the burial and candles for those visiting the condemned woman the night before she died.

In 1551 an Act of Parliament made it a state offence to profane or swear. The convicted had to sit outside the Cathedral on a Sunday with a board on their legs which read ‘Here sits ane curser’.

Let that be a lesson to you all!

Tags: hanging, Orkney, punishments, St Magnus Cathedral

To Albert, everyone who came to visit his church was a ‘dear friend’. Over two decades he greeted thousands of travellers, historians, families and pilgrims, all seeking knowledge about this tiny corner of Belgium and its crucial roll in the Great War.

Albert Ghekiere was the curator of the little church in Messines, the ‘smallest town of Belgium’, he would tell us. Messines is a few miles from the town of Ieper, once called Ypres, and known to the British soldiers of WWI as Wipers – a place that haunted a generation. Ypres stood at the northernmost end of the huge line of trenches called the Western Front – 400 miles of mud and barbed wire that stretched from Belgium in the north, down through France, and ending in the south at the Swiss border.

When the German army’s audacious Schlieffen plan failed to capture France in August 1914, the opposing armies dug in, and four years of near-stalemate was the result, punctuated by disastrous attempts to break through the line. Ypres held the key – it was all that stood between the German army and the Channel ports, and the British were sworn to defend Ypres at any cost. That cost was almost impossibly high.

Albert himself was absolutely uninterested in the tactics and strategies of the war, but he would explain in his broken English that at the end of the 18^th century, the French Revolutionaries ‘made guns with ours bells’. The church tower had been stripped of its carillon, and the huge medieval iron bells were melted down, leaving Messines church tower silent for 200 years. In the 1980s, Albert decided that he would like to make a new set of bells, one that would symbolise peace, and he set about contacting anyone he thought could help him, including the Pope. Many in the church authorities thought he was crackers, but in Albert’s own words, ‘I am mad, but I am not dangerous’.

Almost single-handedly, Albert raised money for a new set of bells, and the contributions still pour in from all over the world.

The tower at Messines church has a stone spiral staircase that leads to the wooden rafters where the bells hang. Each one has an inscription or a dedication, and they ring out folk tunes every 15 minutes, as well as being activated by a keyboard down in the church. You touch the keys, the bells ring. A narrow wooden stair takes you above the bells, through a hatch, and up into the highest part of the church tower, where a stunning panorama stretches out before you. A few miles away stand the spires of Ypres. Just a field’s distance in the other direction is Ploegsteert Wood, called Plugstreet by the soldiers, scene of the famous Christmas truce in 1914 when troops of both sides met in No-Man’s-Land, exchanged gifts, shared food and drink, and even kicked a football around. Here and there across the flat landscape you can make out a gleam of white stone – indication of one of the many Commonwealth War Graves cemeteries that dot the countryside. Away to the north, the tiny village of Passchendaele, whose battle came to symbolise every horror of trench warfare and muddy, bloody, desperate death.

The town of Messines itself sits on a low ridge that had strategic importance during the war. The Germans held it, and to capture the ridge, the British resorted to digging tunnels and laying huge explosive mines. On 7 June 1917, 19 of the 21 mines exploded, ripping the top off the Messines Ridge and killing thousands. (Of the remaining 2 mines, one exploded in 1955 and killed a cow; the other has never been located). General Plumer said before the attack: ‘Gentlemen, we may not make history tomorrow, but we shall certainly change the geography.’

Albert explained how Messines church was shelled and the tower destroyed, but that the crypt survived and was used by the German army as a field hospital. One of the many thousands of casualties treated there was a young corporal Hitler, who later painted a watercolour of the area which he sent home. Albert went on to say that he himself spoke a little of many languages: French, German, Dutch, English and more, because he was firmly of the opinion that if we could communicate better with one another, we could ensure an end to war. Albert believed that nothing was impossible, and remained resolutely optimistic until the day of his death in 2003.

To visit the battlefields of the Ypres Salient is to experience a hundred different emotions. There are a thousand stories of personal heroism and a million meaningless deaths – every field seems to have a cemetery; row upon row of white headstones. It is said that of all the British soldiers who died in the whole of the war, 1 in 4 of them died defending the city of Ypres. Not for nothing is it known as the Graveyard of the British Army. Amidst the echoes of ‘Tipperary’, surrounded by the gentle green of the Belgian countryside, and just a stone’s throw from some of the bloodiest battlefields the world has ever seen, there stands a small town that has become a place of peace and reconciliation. The Peace Carillon of Messines, Albert Ghekiere’s legacy, rings out every quarter of an hour, and every person who met Albert and heard about his vision will remember his voice: ‘Be optimist, dear friends. Nothing is impossible’.

Tags: Albert Ghekiere, Messines, peace, Western Front, WWI

There are many things that evoke a strong sense of nostalgia in your average grown-up – toys, music, clothes, first loves, and so on. But nothing seems to make a grown adult go more misty-eyed than when reminiscing about the sweeties of their youth. To describe the shop where you bought them, the amount of pocket money you received (and how much of it spent on said sweeties) your ritual of choosing, the receptacle you put them in, or even the amount you paid – all of these will set you firmly in a particular time and a place. And when you interact with someone else from the same time and place, and start talking about sweeties……well, the squeals of excitement are joyful to behold.

I am well aware that my next statement will elicit howls of outrage from some quarters, but this is my blog and I am entitled to my opinion, so no brickbats please! I’m not a big chocolate fan (*ducks to avoid missiles*). I don’t dislike it, but I really have to be in the mood for it; it doesn’t matter that some is better than others, that posh 70% is better than blah blah, and ‘oh you should try such-and-such, you’d love it’. If I do have a bit, it’s most likely to be a really plebeian chocolate bar like a Snickers or something, and they’re quite nice, but I wouldn’t think it a tragedy if I never had chocolate again. We shall disregard it for the purposes of this trip down memory lane.

No. My favourite sweeties fell largely into two categories: the boiled kind (‘bilin’s’ in Scotland) and the jelly kind. And in a third, no doubt controversial category, the liquorice kind. At the time I was a young Dragon, there were several options available to the discerning child, coins clutched in sweaty palm. One of these was the ‘Ha’penny/Penny chew’ collection, usually placed at convenient 6-year old height, ready to be fingered and poked and breathed on before being carefully selected. In my day, a small pile of paper bags was provided, sometimes hanging by a piece of string on a wee nail. In a fabulous little brainstorm with a work colleague, we got excited about foam shrimps and their larger yellow cousins foam bananas, jelly worms/snakes, Blackjack chews, Fruit Salad chews, sweet cigarettes and (please assure me I’m not dreaming this – my colleague denied their existence) the chocolate toolbox – a cardboard box in which nestled chocolate-flavoured saws, spanners and pliers. There were also gobstoppers and round fat bubblegum spheres, shaped like golfballs. With my pocket money, I used to go to a little newsagents at the top of my road and buy a comic (which is a completely different nostalgia-fest and definitely one for another blog!), and a wee poke of sweeties. I spent ages choosing, and weighing in my mind the relative merits of taste, texture and longevity.

Another option for the discerning sweet buyer was the ‘quarter of’. Behind the counter, and sometimes lining the walls up to the ceiling, would be a magical world of glass jars with their jewelled, coloured contents. The big set of scales had a brass bowl, pointed at one end, and the chosen sweetmeat would be expertly shaken into the bowl, itself then scooped up and the contents slid deftly into the paper poke. This bag of delights would then get shoved on your pocket, the better to achieve that picking-and-sucking-off-the-paper effect later in the day. The contents of those jars kept me and my colleague in breathless conversation for a good hour. In the ‘bilin’s’ corner, I give you: sherbert lemons, and the strawberry version (the acid sherbert sucked out of the hard shell through a small hole, usually). Rhubarb and custard/strawberries and cream. Soor plooms (for our non-Scottish readers, this can be translated as ‘sour plums’), cola cubes (kola? kubes?) and pineapple cubes. Pear drops. Chocolate limes. Aniseed balls and twists. Sherbert pips. The sweetie which sent my colleague into paroxysms of delight was clove rock. Clove rock! I ask you.

Now we move onto the jelly/chewy category of sweeties, foremost amongst them, the wine gum. These came in a variety of exciting shapes, embossed onto which were really grown-up words like Port, Madeira and Sherry. Did they ever contain these things, or was it a skilful marketing ploy? The fruit pastilles in glass jars were much nicer, I thought, than the small round packet versions. Midget gems. Cherry lips. Soap sweets (what a strange idea!). Jelly babies? A small tale for you…..to celebrate the end of the First World War, Bassett’s invented a sweet that they called Peace Babies. They were very popular and sold well. When the second great conflict began, Bassett’s suspended production, and when they resumed after the war, they renamed them Jelly Babies. True fact! I give you, also, the jelly bean. Not that modern American ‘tastes-amazingly-like-buttered-popcorn-but-can’t-possibly-be-therefore-must-be-full-of-artificial-chemical-flavouring’ Jelly Bellys. Cola bottles, and the white, milk bottles too (a distant relative of the current ‘sours’ fad). Closely aligned were the liquorice things – my mother was a fiend for liquorice, and had major cravings whilst pregnant with both me and my brother (incidentally, we both love it). Her favourite was the liquorice comfit (a bullet-shaped liquorice piece coated in a hard shell, coloured red/orange/pink), and its bigger sibling, the liquorice torpedo. They made a fantastic sound as they clicked and clacked against each other in the bag. I used to suck away the colour, then let the hard shell dissolve on my tongue, finally chewing the black centre.

There were some other sweeties which defy category. Lemon bon-bons (and other flavours but the lemon ones were best) which had powdered sugar on the outside, a crispy shell, and a toffee middle – heaven! Dolly mixtures (of which the tiny jelly sugared cones were the highlight), peanut brittle (not a great favourite simply because a quarter of brittle was often only two or three bits), and a weird thing shaped like a mushroom that was coated in coconut, and which my colleague insisted (after the second bottle of wine) were ‘sick and wrong’. Flying saucers that stuck to the roof of your mouth. Pan drops. Jazzles, which were discs of ‘choc’ (white or milk) sprinkled with little coloured balls – and I am positive they were called something else when I was a nipper. Red laces. We could go on all night and I haven’t even broached the subject of marshmallows.

I asked the two people immediately available during the writing of this blog what their favourite childhood sweeties were: Mr Dragon was a fan of the Mojo chew (which I confess had slipped my mind), and my friend Ryan’s response was ‘Oh, I was more of a Space Dust kid myself’. And on that bombshell, I hand it to you, dear IB readers. What was your favourite childhood sweetie?

Tags: Childhood, dolly mixtures, foam shrimps, nostalgia, sweeties

I was at my writing group last night, and we had to use a picture from a newspaper as inspiration for a story. I naturally homed in on a photo of some biscuits. This was the result, but I warn you - literature it ain’t!

There are six biscuits in the pile. I am separated from the biscuits by a plate glass cabinet, but it is very clean so I get a good view of the biscuits, especially when I squat down and bring them to eye-level.

If I were an American, I might call them cookies. They are golden brown, about the size of my palm and studded with nut pieces. The surface is cracked like dried mud on a riverbed and I can just make out the lines where the tines of a fork have pressed down.

The biscuits look very home-made. But there are only six of them. Maybe they have some more out the back – six really isn’t enough. They certainly look freshly-baked, but how can you tell unless you eat one? And if I ate one, then there would only be five left! And nobody would believe I baked only five biscuits.

I peer closer. I can just make out something poking from the side of the biscuit. Is it coconut? Jeff’s funny about coconut. Come to think of it, I’m funny about coconut. Should I ask the girl? Why isn’t there a sign that tells you what’s in them?

By this time my nose is perilously close to being pressed up against the glass. I try and work out how the biscuits might have been made. Into my head pops my home economics teacher, Mrs Pacey. ‘Work it in, girls! Work it in! Rub it gently through your fingers’. She wore a striped blue apron that stretched tightly across an enormous single bosom which jutted out at child height and made it very difficult to see her head if you were standing too close. She went to Africa to become a missionary. Oh no, hang on, that was the other one – the one who played the guitar.

My eye is caught by another plate of goodies – delicate fancies. There is a difference between a cake and a fancy, but it is not a difference that is easily defined. Pink icing features occasionally, or an artfully haphazard drizzle of melted chocolate. The paper doily is usually a giveaway, as is the red-never-seen-in-nature glace cherry. And the coconut. Wait a minute - coconut. Better think again.

A slight shift to my left and a delightful sight greets me. A pile of scones rises like a knobbly volcano out of a sea of brown Denby. They look rustic. Rustic is good. They are pale golden, sugar-encrusted and I can make out plump sultanas dotted throughout. There are twelve of them. Perfect.

Twenty minutes later, the box of scones is nestling at the bottom of my bag, down at my feet. The bus turns left. I eat the last biscuit.

Tags: biscuits, cakes

How often do you look at your hands? Do you look after them? Are they hardworking hands? Dishpan? Do you wear rings?

As a young Dragon, I was a bit of a tomboy (as demonstrated by previous blog A Childhood Accident) and my hands were constantly filthy from all the climbing trees, building dams, falling off bikes and so on. They would be caked in dirt from dawn until dusk, and received the most cursory of washes at mealtimes.

In addition to all the scratches and scrapes, I was also a dedicated nailbiter. My fingers were a mess of torn nails, rags, bits of skin, blisters. I picked and chewed and tore with my teeth until they were shredded, and they hurt quite a lot. I didn’t give my poor hands a moment’s thought and they suffered accordingly.

My saving was probably that I was a musician. At the age of about 12 or 13, when I was thinking about whether to try for one of the music academies, I fell over and broke the ring finger on my left hand. As I sat in the music teacher’s office grimacing with pain, watching my finger get fatter and fatter, the teacher commented how long and slim my hands were. In retrospect, she wasn’t correct – my hands are cone-shaped but my fingers are not especially long; however they are what is considered to be the classic ‘musician’ shape. It was the first time though, that I had really paid them any attention at all.

In one’s early teens, one’s thoughts occasionally turn to things of a romantic nature, and I suppose I was no different. In attempts to make myself cool/irresistible/attractive, I did weird things to my hair, experimented with vintage clothing, discovered I had a shape (which I then did my damnedest to cover up with baggy t-shirts) and bemoaned my bitten fingers. I tried all the folk remedies usually suggested – mustard powder and the like, but my nails stayed stubbornly brittle and splintered. I did look after my hands more though, with creams and lotions.

Aged 17, I had a bout of German measles, which in itself is not very debilitating, but it did leave me with a nasty predilection towards arthritis. To aid with creaky joints, I started taking Cod Liver Oil, which helped enormously, and I have taken a high dose every day for the last 20-odd years. An unlooked for but pleasant side effect is that it made my nails much stronger! I have photos of my student days, when my hands were graced by elegant, long nails, coated in ‘Frosted Grape’ varnish, and adorned in extrovert silver rings – several on each finger sometimes.

In Edinburgh, I spent many a long night wandering the streets telling people ghost stories, and long talons were all part of my rather Morticia persona – even when I spent more time at the computer, my hands were still quite soft and the nails nicely shaped. But it was all to change when I moved to Orkney.

6 years of gardening, knitting, scrabbling around monuments, straw work, spinning, peeling vegetables, chopping kindling…..have taken their toll. Added to that the fact that I am not a very young Dragon any more, it makes for a pair of well-worn hands. I don’t wear rings very much now, except my wedding ring and maybe the lovely Ring of Brodgar ring made by local jewellery company Aurora.

I have a lot of lines on my hands, and they do feel quite dry and rough, compared to my labour-free youth. The nails are short and practical, and the tips are quite solid now from fiddle playing. I don’t like getting old, that’s a straight fact. But I suppose that the lines on your hands are just as much a mark of how you have lived your life as the lines on your face, and mine show a fair amount of hard work, and an awful lot of fun.

Tags: hands, nails, Orkney, work