Stromness Dragon

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

It was snowing hard. The line of people stamped their feet and blew on their fingers as they waited for the office to open. The internment office was manned by a retired policeman who had been hoping to spend his retirement doing nothing more than growing cabbages. In the few conversations she had had with him, Olivia had gleaned that working for the Reich was not a matter of choice; he had confided in her that his daughter was hoping to get a secretarial position, and that by co-operating he would smooth the path for her. It would not do, she said, for her father to show unwilling.

Herr Brocken unlocked the iron gate and they filed in. Looking around, Olivia saw the French teacher, Pierre. He nodded at her – he was here most mornings. At the front of the queue to have her papers checked she saw Frau Weiss, an American who had married a German musician shortly before the war. Whilst he travelled Europe playing to the troops, his wife was under strict controls. America might be a neutral country, but the talk was that they would swing the Allies’ way if push came to shove.

Herr ex-Polizei looked at her papers and slid the forms under the glass for her to sign.

‘Cold today.’ It was a statement of fact, rather than a question.

‘Yes,’ she said. Then, thinking this might be her only vocal interaction of the day, she made herself speak.

‘Is the butcher’s open today, do you know?’ she said, pushing the papers back. Her voice sounded cracked and croaky.

‘Oh yes,’ he looked up, his forehead catching the orange glow of the streetlight. ‘Herr Jonathan came in last night with some good meat. You should go quick!’ His eyes flickered at the queue behind Olivia and he leaned forward, baring his yellow teeth.

‘Your friend Herr Jonathan will save the best bits for the English Fraulein, eh?’ he laughed and looked delighted at his own wit. Olivia made herself smile and left the office quickly.

Out in the street the snow was still swirling, coating the drab streets with a layer of white. There was already a queue at the butcher’s. Herr Brocken was right –there had clearly been a delivery. A tired-looking woman with yellow hair came out, clutching a seeping brown parcel. She scowled at Olivia, who lowered her gaze; she should be used to it by now – the underlying resentment towards an enemy foreign national. It would be no consolation to the woman to know that Olivia’s movements were severely restricted, and that she was obliged to report to the authorities every day. As far as the local volk were concerned, she was a snake in their midst – a snake fed and clothed at their expense, eating food that they could be giving to their children.

At the butcher’s counter she peered through the smeared glass. A plate of glistening offal seemed the freshest thing on offer. There was no indication of what animal it had once been, but Olivia swallowed hard and bought a kilo. Lowering her head against the battering wind and snow, she walked the two miles back to the convent. She pulled the iron ring and heard the bell ring deep inside the medieval walls. Sister Konstanza peered through the bars, saw who it was, and hefted the circle of keys hanging at her belt.

Olivia walked to her cell, removed her sodden coat, and took the parcel of meat to the convent kitchen. She pulled a bucket of small grey potatoes towards her and began to peel.

Olivia looked up from her papers. The wooden sash window rattled in its frame and outside a rook flew from one pinnacle to another. A blast of air rushed down the chimney and sent a plume of ash and smoke into Olivia’s room. She chewed the end of her pen and surveyed the mass of books and papers and ink on her desk – what time was it? Indeed, what day was it? Had she eaten? Casting around for clues she saw a paper bag from a nearby bakery, but judging from the layer of dust on it, she concluded that it had been there for some time.

She stood up, arched her back and stretched, hearing her joints crack. The window rattled again and looking out, she saw a swirl of leaves eddying around the courtyard. There was no-one about, but then she wasn’t looking for anyone – her days here were in the main untroubled by human contact. Every now and again she sought out the silent old woman who looked after her rooms, gave her a crumpled note and asked her to get toiletries and food – nothing fancy – Olivia’s taste buds had long been dulled by invalid food. A bag of bread, sausage, ground coffee and occasionally apples, would appear silently at her door, along with the coins, which were stacked up neatly in order of size. On her two-ring gas stove she brewed coffee and drank it thick and dark – her one vice, as she saw it.

Every month or so Olivia climbed the broad stone steps to the college department where Professor Schmidt held court. The Professor always looked surprised to see her, but once she had drawn forth the handful of notes and papers from her leather satchel (once her father’s), he was happy to discuss her work and ideas. Sometimes he would reach into the dark varnished cupboard and take out a bottle of sherry and two sticky glasses, and they would sit, one either side of the fireplace, talking until the college housekeeper came to turn down the lamps. She felt happiest there – if the satisfaction of philosophical grappling and a sense of not wanting to be anywhere else could be described as happiness. The feeling lasted until she got back to her own room, heated up the dregs of the morning’s coffee and climbed under her quilt for warmth. Using a pile of books as a bedside table, she would lie there for hours, thinking about life in the abstract and sometimes hearing her sisters’ voices of pity. They had both sent letters over the last year, but Olivia had stopped opening them after a while – they seemed to have nothing to say except things of a domestic nature – children, garden, troublesome housemaids. Three or four unopened envelopes lay strewn under her desk.

Watching the trees being stripped of their foliage, Olivia decided that perhaps it was time to go home for a visit. There were documents and things to do with her parents’ house that she had to attend to, and she supposed she should visit her growing and uninteresting collection of nephews and nieces. Wrapping herself in a thick woollen coat (her mother’s best and too good to throw out) and pulling on a sturdy pair of boots, she headed down the street to the railway station. How much was a passage back to Britain? She couldn’t remember how much it had cost to get here – she just knew that you could buy a ticket that got you from one place to another: a ticket including train travel at both ends, and a boat trip in the middle.

The streets were quiet, but then it was still early morning. She berated herself: what if the station didn’t open till later? She didn’t know if she had the mental strength to make the journey again. The wooden gate creaked and she saw the smoke from the station guard’s pipe through the hatchway. Relieved, Olivia pulled off her mittens and in her crisp, clear voice asked for a passage to London. The station guard took his pipe from his lips and gave her a strange look. She repeated her request.

‘London. London, in England.’

He smiled and leaned forward.

‘Fraulein, it is not possible to go to England’ he said.

‘Whyever not? Is there a problem with the train?’ she frowned. This was most inconvenient.

‘No, Fraulein. You cannot go to England because we are at war with England’.

To be continued…….

This is based on a true story. I am going to write it as a short story in several parts, but if I get a good feeling about it, I might expand it and see where it goes!

When her mother died, Olivia felt nothing but relief. She had played the part of the youngest daughter diligently, and followed her parents’ Victorian notions of duty by staying at home to look after them in their old age. Her sisters had both had jobs, if not careers, and both had married and now lived too far away to be of any use.

Her mother’s death left Olivia financially independent (her reward for giving up her youth, she supposed) and she was at liberty to pursue whatever dream had not been stifled by the claustrophobia of the sickroom. Lying on her wooden bed and hearing the springs creak beneath her, Olivia’s first thought was ‘away’. Away to where, though? She had never travelled and had little notion to see the world. If she had a companion perhaps, or a husband, then a journey of exploration might have been undertaken, but Olivia could not envisage herself mounting camels, or taking a train across continents. She could not see the point of holidays.

What leisure time Olivia had enjoyed during her parents’ years of sickness and dotage had been spent in educating herself. She had forced herself through her father’s leather-bound Classics (mostly untouched and some with pages still uncut), and to stretch her mind through the long nights of nursing, had taught herself German in order to study the works of the great German philosophers. Her sisters, in their rare visits, had accused her of being humourless. They’d be bloody humourless, she’d thought, scraping the burnt toast, if they’d had to wipe the ancient backsides.

Olivia’s glance drifted around her book-stuffed room and she allowed her mind to slip. Heidegger and Kierkegaard sat alongside Milton and Keats. A collection of dog-eared Bibles paid testament to Olivia’s religious habit. And it was a habit, she supposed, borne out of years of her father’s stern voice and the silent, dusty Sundays. From her prone position, she stretched out her hand and slid her bedside Bible onto her chest and opened it at random, just in case it could offer her any words of wisdom. It didn’t. It offered her a page of begats, doing no more than reminding her of her loveless state of spinsterhood.

Her first task was to clear out her parents’ belongings and clean the house from top to bottom. The scrubbing of the sickroom floor provided a monotonous rhythm to Olivia’s thoughts: ‘What shall I do? What shall I do? What shall I do?’ she muttered under her breath. It never occurred to Olivia to do nothing: it was simply not in her nature. She heaped woollen coats and flattened leather brogues onto the cart of the rag-and-bone man and locked her father’s Great War medals in her wooden box. As she swept out her mother’s wardrobe, she found a pile of old school exercise books, inscribed with her fastidious hand. Untying the string she was faced with faded ink lines of Latin and Greek and the reminder that she had once shown an aptitude for scholarship. Her hand paused in the turning of the pages.

A week later a brown envelope arrived bearing pamphlets and booklets. A fortnight after that, a letter, bearing a florid embossed crest, informed Olivia that if the financial arrangements were found to be in order, her place at the Faculty of Theology in Paderborn, Westphalia, would be secured.

The most visited place in Orkney is not the Ring of Brodgar or Skara Brae or the magnificent St Magnus Cathedral. It is a tiny chapel dating from the Second World War, built out of tin and cardboard. It is estimated that around 85,000 people a year cross the concrete threshold of the little church and peer into the unlit interior. It is a very special place indeed.

Barely a few weeks into the war, German U-Boat 47, captained by Gunther Prien, entered Scapa Flow, the home base of the British fleet. Prien fired on the Royal Oak, flagship of the fleet, and she sank in fewer than 15 minutes – from a complement of 1200 men and boys, 833 lost their lives.

As well as being a terrible tragedy, the sinking of the Royal Oak on 14 October 1939 demonstrated that Scapa Flow was far from impregnable. The blockships, booms and nets were insufficient defence against enemy attack. First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, devised a plan whereby the eastern approaches to Scapa Flow would be blocked permanently by concrete barriers. This phenomenal engineering project took 4 years to complete, and the result was four great causeways; now known as the Churchill Barriers, they link Orkney Mainland and the South Isles of Lamb Holm, Glimps Holm, Burray and South Ronaldsay.

Building the barriers was a massive undertaking and the work was done by construction company Balfour Beatty. To begin with the work force was British, but it became clear very quickly that many more men were needed, so Churchill proposed using Prisoner of War labour. Whilst the Geneva Convention prevents prisoners from being put to war work, there is no law against them undertaking civilian labour – and the construction of four ‘causeways’ was deemed to be a civilian project and nothing to do with military strategy.

Thus it was that over 1000 Italian POWs, captured in North Africa, were brought to the tiny islands of Orkney, installed in purpose-built prison camps, and put to work casting huge concrete blocks. The Italians, far from home, living in concrete huts on an uninhabited island and working long arduous days, set about making the best of their situation. They organised plays and concert parties, and planted the ground around the huts with flowers and vegetables; but their spiritual needs were not being met, and a request for a place to worship was addressed by the provision of two corrugated iron Nissen huts. They were cold and bare and joyless.

One of the prisoners, Domenico Chiocchetti, painted the Madonna and Child above the altar, based on a Renaissance altarpiece. Palumbi forged a beautiful rood screen out of scrap iron, and Buttapasta fashioned an altar from concrete. The other prisoners were soon caught up in the creative endeavour, and their imagination knew no bounds! They painted astonishing trompe l’oeil designs on the walls, to make them look like tiles and carved stone, when in fact they are nothing more than plasterboard and scrounged paint. The lamps are made from bully beef tins and the shaft of the font is a truck spring encased in concrete. The whole place is created from scrap – even the bell in the belfry was made of cardboard for the first official photograph.

There is much more to say about this remarkable place, and stories abound about the people, the ingenuity, the return of Chiochetti in the 1960s, the subsequent friendship between Orkney and a small town in northern Italy called Moena. But there is one particular story that I want to share.

Two years ago, in my capacity as occasional tour guide, I took a coachful of English visitors to the Italian Chapel. We had spent the day together and visited many places, including the Ring of Brodgar, Skara Brae and the Cathedral. The chapel was the last stop on the itinerary before we headed for the ferry. I had told them the story of the Royal Oak, the building of the barriers and the Italian POWs. We then pulled up at the chapel. They looked, we spoke, and folk took photos and left donations. As the group began to trickle back to the coach, one lady stayed behind to tell me a story.

The lady came from Lincolnshire, and had married young. Her husband had died in his 60s and her children were grown up and had moved away, so she had thrown herself into village activities, joining clubs and societies and making many friends. Amongst them was an old Italian gentleman who had a farm only a few miles from where she lived. They became very close and he told her that he had come to Britain as a prisoner during the war, and had worked on the mighty Churchill Barriers in Orkney. He also told her about a little chapel that he had helped to decorate. The gentleman spoke often about Orkney, and as their relationship deepened and they fell in love, the old couple decided to take a holiday there to visit the chapel.

The pair looked at brochures and made plans, and even managed to get hold of a TV film about the chapel, so the lady could get an idea of what it looked like. Six months before the trip, the old Italian gentleman died, so he never got to see the chapel again. But the lady, heartbroken as she was, decided that she would go to Orkney herself. She booked a place on a group coach holiday visiting the islands, and now here she was, standing in the chapel in front of me, telling this story. She looked around her and said ‘He’s here. He’s all around me, I can feel him,’ and the tears started to pour down her cheeks. Everybody else had left the chapel and we stood with our arms around each other and cried. After a few minutes we pulled ourselves together, and headed back to the coach with very red eyes! She told me too that she had not intended to tell me the story, but that she was moved by what I had said about the Italians and wanted to share her little part in the tale. I am very glad she did.

Last year a book was published called The Italian Chapel – it is a fictionalised version of the Italians’ story written by Philip Paris, who became interested in the chapel after visiting Orkney on his honeymoon. Philip did a huge amount of research for the book, contacting many of the surviving POWs, and he has plans to publish a non-fiction book later this year. We have corresponded regularly, and I told him the tale of the lady on the coach. At the time, it did not seem appropriate to ask her name, or demand more details – I just felt so privileged to be there with her. Philip has asked my permission to use the story, and he has started the process of trying to find her, placing adverts and articles in Lincolnshire newspapers. He has said, and I am sure he is right, that there must be hundreds of stories such as mine out there, and we will never know them all.

But this story will live on, because I tell it to every group that I take to the Italian Chapel; and I’ve now told it to you.

Tags: Churchill Barriers, Italian Chapel, Orkney

Edinburgh’s Royal Mile is amazing – a medieval street built on a crag-and-tail ridge of volcanic rock, with the castle and the head and the Palace of Holyroodhouse at the tail. Running off the spine are dozens of closes – narrow, steep, cobbled alleyways where many a secret lurks.

In the Old Town today (comprising the Royal Mile, Cowgate and Grassmarket), there are approximately 6,000 residents. In 1850 there were 60,000. The medieval buildings were tall and narrow, sometimes reaching twenty storeys high. At the top of the close, the bit that faced onto the Royal Mile, there might be six or seven storeys; but the roofs of the buildings were level, which meant by the time you got down to the bottom of the close, the tenements were towering above you. Raw sewage was thrown from the windows (with the cry of ‘Gardyloo!’) and would run down the close to the pool of stinking filth below, the Nor’ Loch, now Princes Street Gardens.

In 1861 the closes of the High Street were disease-ridden, overcrowded and neglected – all the wealthy inhabitants had made the move across to the swanky Georgian New Town, where they had their own front door and streets wide enough to turn a coach and four without unhitching the horses. The poor remained in the medieval Old Town and conditions were insanitary and congested.

Half way down the High Street, a local baker had his premises: a shop and bakery on the ground floor, and his house the level above. Attempting to increase the size of his ovens, he set about knocking down several walls. Unfortunately the walls were load-bearing, and were essential for the stability of the building – a stone-built tenement some 12 storeys high. It is testament to the medieval builders’ skills that the structure stayed up as long as it did, but within 48 hours the building began to submit to gravity. The residents of the surrounding streets were awoken in the small hours by a deep rumbling and an ear-splitting crack as the tenement buckled under its own weight and came crashing to the ground. Folk from all the houses round about rushed out with lamps and shovels and tried to pull away the rubble to see if there were any survivors.

Before the night was over, 35 bodies had been pulled from the wreckage. It became increasingly clear that no-one could possibly have survived such a devastating event. The rescuers wiped their faces, blew out their lamps as dawn broke, and prepared to head for home and get ready for their normal day. Just as they were turning away, someone caught a faint sound……a voice, very faint, buried deep beneath the rubble. They shouted back, and heard it again, a distant but definite human voice. With renewed vigour and hope, the High Street residents rolled up their sleeves and started to dig for all they were worth. Ton after ton of rubble was dragged away, and the voice of young Joseph McIvor could be heard loud and clear. The 14 year old boy did not actually live in the building – he had been visiting an uncle, who sadly perished in the collapse. Joseph began to encourage his rescuers, and they in turn shouted to him to raise his spirits – in response to the diggers’ shouts, he yelled back ‘Heave awa’ lads! I’m no deid yet!’

Joseph McIvor was the only survivor of the tragedy. His father was so thankful to God for sparing his son, and so grateful to his rescuers, that when the new Paisley Close was built on the site of the old houses, he had a special door lintel carved, showing his son and the words he had shouted from under the rubble. So that the words would be understood by all, they were slightly modified, so the close bears the legend ‘Heave awa chaps, I’m no dead yet!’

In the light of this terrible event, the City Council took it upon themselves for the first time to draw up some form of building controls, and it also prompted them to address the issue of overcrowding in Edinburgh’s Old Town. Now visitors from all over the world stand and admire Joseph McIvor; I hope none of them have the cheek to criticise modern Health and Safety laws!

Tags: Edinburgh, Heave awa, Old Town, tenement

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

Walking into the room, the first thing I saw was a torso lying on a table. Next to it was a head, sporting a tweed cap at a jaunty angle. On, next to and underneath the table were boxes, and suitcases bursting with knickers, feathers and demob suits. E, to whom these garments belong, told me that this represented a tiny part of her vast clothes collection, and that she had just grabbed things randomly off their hangers for tonight’s talk.

On a wild and windy Thursday night in November, an intrepid group of folk met in a local community centre to see and hear about E’s amazing collection of vintage clothing. She has been accumulating clothes for about 35 years and she started in a small way with her father’s petticoats, which were on their way to being torn up for cleaning rags. These lacy white garments were standard, if special, wear for both boys and girls, of course. I have a photo in the family archive of my grandfather as a baby, swathed in frills like a little doll!

E displayed for us a bewildering array of undergarments of yesteryear, from cotton bloomers (roomy affairs held together with ties and buttons) to fierce-looking corsets reinforced with whalebone. The men were amply served by woollen semmits and long drawers, but it was clear as the parade of pants continued that our scanties had become progressively more scanty with the passing years. By the time we were shown the lycra thong, E had made a convincing case for global warming! Of course, until relatively modern times, houses had no central heating so multiple layers of underclothing were essential.

Moving to the outerwear, we were shown silk skirts and dresses from the Victorian and Edwardian eras featuring fully-lined skirts, plus delicate lace blouses and velvet waistcoats. I was privileged to model a beautiful black velvet coat, sparkling with beads and sequins, probably a mourning garment with a bit of bling. Black became very fashionable as the colour of mourning after Queen Victoria wore it following the death of her beloved consort Prince Albert. E also has a fine collection of headgear for gentlemen and ladies – lace, crepe and men’s caps from long-defunct Kirkwall outfitters. The starched white shirts and stiff collars were, she said, ‘not from yesterday, but maybe the day before’.

A mixed response greeted the accessories, particularly those of the fur and feather variety - black crow’s feathers may seem a little morbid in today’s world of spangly fascinators. The height of fashion once demanded dangling furs – stoles and collars and muffs featuring feet, tails and occasionally heads. One audience member shuddered at the ‘dry, dead things’ whilst I brought forth a long-buried memory of my grandmother giving me a patchy old stoat fur, complete with face and glass eyes. I called it Pickles.

My favourite garment of the evening was a stunning full-length, figure-hugging red velvet evening gown. It fastened at the back with tiny velvet-covered buttons and brought to mind Bette Davis. If I lost a few pounds I think I could just about squeeze into it……

The question that E gets asked the most is ‘where do you get them?’ And her answer is ‘they just come to me’. Often, she says, they turn up on the doorstep, crumpled and in black plastic bags, sometimes from the other side of the world (such as the clutch bag and gloves from America). She has become known as the lady who collects old clothes, and will love them and care for them and very generously give her time by showing them to groups such as ours. Many of her large extended family send her things; examples include a tiny beaded purse owned by her great-aunt, and a pair of 1950s black high-heeled peep-toed shoes which were owned by her second cousin’s wife!

To vary the evening’s entertainment, E produced a brain-teaser: a list of popular toys from each decade of the twentieth century. Could we work out which toy belonged to which decade? Amongst them were kewpie dolls, Pokemon, Barbie, Rubik’s cube, and the coolest of them all, the Corgi James Bond Aston Martin car, in gold. We had a small confession from an audience member – he had actually owned one of these models, lucky boy!

Alongside the gorgeous gowns that would not have disgraced Ginger Rogers, Wallis Simpson or Jackie Onassis, there were more down-to-earth and homely items like handbags and pinnies. E even had poetry to demonstrate their evocative power – here is Ruth Fainlight’s poem ‘Handbag’.

My mother’s old leather handbag,

crowded with letters she carried

all through the war. The smell

of my mother’s handbag: mints

and lipstick and Coty powder.

The look of those letters, softened

and worn at the edges, opened,

read, and refolded so often.

Letters from my father. Odour

of leather and powder, which ever

since then has meant womanliness,

and love, and anguish, and war.

Wartime images surfaced again as we exclaimed over the flying goggles and a real box of Coty powder, then E brought us a bit more up-to-date with some fabulous 1970s Laura Ashley creations which would have suited Karen Carpenter perfectly! There was even a puffball dress from the 1980s – a look which flattered nobody and which I am dismayed to see is making a comeback. No fashion parade would be complete without the piece de resistance, a bridal gown – a vision of nylon, netting and pink roses – which provoked a rush of wedding-day reminiscences.

The wind howled outside and the rain battered, but we had been taken back in time as a century or more was presented to us in sights, smells, textures, memories and emotions. I was swept away by the clothes and by E’s stories of how she got them, and her assertion once again that the clothes ‘just came’ to her. I suddenly remembered that buried deep in a box of junk, I had a pair of sheer stockings from the 1960s made by Elbeo, still in their cellophane wrapping. I can’t think of a better person to give them to.

Many thanks to E for an unforgettable evening.

Tags: bloomers, clothing, Coty, Laura Ashley, velvet, Vintage

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