Scotland Raised Me

Scotland Raised Me Born 1956

Though ‘a son of the rock’- born in Overtoun House, Dunbartonshire, which was then an NHS maternity hospital - I was brought up in Glasgow. In the late 50s and 60s, Glasgow was still an economic powerhouse; a city where hard work and skilled trades made its products an export leader in Scotland.
Both my parents worked and I had relatives that were skilled in engineering and shipbuilding. All around where I lived in Dennistoun were factories, foundries, chemical works and the great locomotive factory in Springburn. My extended family worked in: Connel’s yard in Scotstoun; the Scott Lithgow’s yards in Greenock, the munitions works at Bishopton and Beardmores steel works at Parkhead. When visiting relatives as a child, a big thing would be made of the return of the wage earners, greasy and tired from a day of physical labour. I would thrill to handle artefacts that a relative had brought back from the yard or factory.
I inhaled that discipline of work, physical labour and envied the respect and companionship that I saw my relatives enjoyed from their workmates and I wanted my place at the wheel. The grimy coal-blackened tenements and the plumes of noxious smoke and occasional vile smells if the wind changed did not faze me as I saw it as normal, we took pride in our school in repeating that mantra from an Edina-phobic teacher ‘that Edinburgh was the capital, but Glasgow had the capital.’ That sustained our sooty pride. I remember riding on the Whiteinch passenger ferry with Dad and watching the bubbles bursting on the water from the construction of the Clyde tunnel below. Around us were the sparking violet lights of the welders’ torches up on scaffolds. The whole city was alive with industry. I grew up with kids of artisans and like them, I wanted to follow that path. Dad was a DIY - er and by necessity, as the only child, I was drafted as his helper which gave me an early exposure to and confidence in using tools. Self sufficiency was the word then if there was a chance that you could do it yourself, because most could not afford to hire tradesmen.
But Dad invoked and convinced me of that second former strength of the Scots - education. Where there really should be a parity of esteem between trades and academia, in those days the latter was seen to be superior. Anyway, I embraced that second path, a polar divergence from woodwork, which I had to leave after 2nd year to continue to take French which I hated, to get into Uni. Meanwhile I embraced that Scottish bootstrap philosophy - I worked selling newspapers at the Royal Infirmary at twelve and then as a milkboy from fourteen to seventeen and paid towards my way in the house. That stuck with me through my life-there was always something you could do to contribute to that other great institution - the common weal.
Another memory from those days was being cold (put another jumper on) and hungry from exercise, we kids would improvise and overcome hunger, by raiding apples, rhubarb and wild berries. When we needed money, we would gather and sell firewood or offer to wash someone’s car - which were few on the ground in 60s Glasgow. We learned a degree of self sufficiency and business sense. Social workers hands will no doubt be raised in horror, but we were not stupid and we learned to identify creepy characters by a calibrated exposure to risk- similarly, we climbed trees and air raid shelters and got a sense of what you could get away with and what would probably kill you, if you were stupid.
The other aspect of my Scottish education was that I was fortunate to have grandparents in the last scheme (Pennyfern) before the moors in Greenock, and in Millport, on the Isle of Cumbrae. I loved the open country and the sea and Millport was the epitome of Scotland on a smaller scale. My grandpa had an old manse and ran it as a boarding house and from age of eight till twelve, I would spend most of my summer holidays there.
Grandpa grew all his own veg for the guests kitchen and I was recruited early to gardening, a love that I still practise. Dad, who was from the island, took me up to the Farland hills when I was very young and those memories were of the triumph of the climb and savouring the view. It was then that I got that sense of wonder of the natural world and the urge to go beyond the horizon to the next vista. That ambition that gave me the desire and satisfaction of travel. I was an only child but my cousins there that I palled about with made me feel like family, especially when we all sat round that big table in the kitchen at Mansewood for meals. My uncles were kind and spent time with me imparting their skills. I learned DIY, shooting, trapping, fishing and rowing. They also had tales, both local and ancient mythologies, that probably got me the desire to be a teller of tales. It also gave me an interest in finding about the history and folk tales of wherever I stayed.
Scotland is a place to challenge yourself; after I learned to ski on the icy snow of Glen Shee, any other slope was gravy. Rock climbing in Scotland made me believe if I could do it here , I could do it anywhere. The education the state gave me equipped me well and that ‘here we go, here we go’ can-do-magic gave me confidence to carve out a career in the UK and for my ten years in Canada. So when I set off abroad, I took all that Scots smeddum with me. And the world was my oxter.