Mike Clouston's Web Pages

It is supposed to be a sign of approaching old age when one starts looking back, but I very often look back and think that although we never had very much of this world’s wealth we had a happy childhood.

I was born in September 1912. My mother had been a school teacher, and my father at that time was a postman. He had Highland blood, his grandfather having come to Orkney to make roads. My mother, however, was a true Orcadian. She was the middle child of eleven, and she was the one who got a chance to go on to school and do something. Her father had a big farm and it is around the farm that my earliest memories are centred, because just before I was due to start school we were living at the farm. My own Dad was at that time in “The Terriers” and I suppose mother was really needed at the farm as her brothers were fighting in France. The farm was Skaill Farm, and it was in the bay there where many bodies from the Hampshire came ashore. I can remember one old man wading into the sea and pulling in the body of a sailor who was dressed only in his underwear, which was almost new. This the old man removed and also a gold ring from the sailor’s finger. Of course, I did not realise that the sailor was dead but I thought it was a very callous thing to do.

Shortly after this the men started to come back from the war, and my father went away to London to be demobbed. I can still see the doll he brought back for me. She had a beautiful face, but the body was cloth and stuffed. She wore a purple suit with a sailor collar on the jacket, and a pleated skirt, with a beret to match, and around her neck she had a card which read “I'm Florrie the Flapper, Dainty and dapper, Does as she's bid, Good little kid.” The very first day I took her out and there was a sudden shower and I pushed Florrie into a hole in the dyke to keep her dry. And that was the last I saw of poor Florrie. You see, I never did remember which hole I had pushed her into!

Dad was one of the lucky ones who came back to that “world fit for heroes” we heard so much about. He had got a job during the war driving a road roller for a firm called Topham Jones, and he was really one of the first men in Orkney who could make roads, so he got a job with the County Council driving one of their rollers, a job which he held until the day of his untimely death in 1935. He boasted proudly that he made the first bit of tar-macadammed road in Orkney. It was just a little bit about a mile and a half, but he showed everyone this road, and very often would take a walk on a Sunday to see how it was “holding up” as he used to say. He was paid fortnightly and the money was not even paid into his hand, but was dispatched by bus from Kirkwall, and it was my job to go and meet the bus on the Saturday, to collect it. The amount for two weeks’ hard work was never more than four pounds, and never any overtime. No transport to and from work either. Each man had to find his own way. In my father’s case this meant a pushbike, very often to Deerness or Rendall from Stromness. This meant that we saw very little of him except at weekends. In spite of this he and I were always very close, and my mother always had a soft spot for my brother who was four years younger than me. This meant when we were young that I always felt that I bore the brunt of any tellings-off, because Dad was not there to take my side.

When we first moved into Stromness, on the Market Day I was sent to look for my brother who had disappeared early in the morning. I went north, then south, and down all the piers in each direction but no sign of him. Then I was told to go once again as far as the Pierhead. Very unwillingly I went, without seeing any signs of him, and then when I got back into the house he was there eating his dinner. I yelled at him “Whaur have you been?”, and the maddening answer was “Doon wir own pier!”, the one place I had never looked.

About this same time they cleared away the house on the sea side of Graham Place, and my brother went to “help” the workmen, taking with him a good hammer belonging to Dad which was never seen again. Whether it went with the rubble or the workmen we never discovered.

Sunday School picnics and socials are things which stand out in my mind, the picnics mainly because of the transport and the distance we went. I can well remember going from Stromness to Finstown, a distance of only seven miles but hours in a farm cart. Those big Clydesdale horses all dressed up with ribbons and straw or raffia decorations and the carts all newly painted up - and the last traces of dung or “neeps” removed for the occasion!

Farm carts were quite a big bit of my life then, because all the work was done by them, taking home peats and hay and sheaves, and the ubiquitous tractor of today had still not been thought of. A ploughing match was a big day, and my grandfather’s farm very often seemed to be the venue for a match. All the various competitors arriving early in the morning, with horses all beautifully groomed and dressed. The tea, scones, cakes, etc. that we carried out to the field at the “half-yoke”, then the proper tea after the ploughing was over, when the judges came in and there was plenty of everything, and all set in the “ben end” with every bit as much for us poor mortals in the kitchen. Then the prize-giving, which read like a roll of honour. A prize for the man with the biggest feet, the youngest and the oldest, and even for the man who travelled farthest to see his lass at the weekend. This usually turned out to be a pair of iron heels for his boots or if he was lucky enough to have a bike, a pair of cycle clips to keep his “breeks” tidy.

A big day at the farm was the day they killed one of the pigs. Everyone seemed to be involved in some way, and we children got the bladder to play with. And what delicious feeds we had for ages after that. Potted heid, puddings, liver, fresh pork, and then there was the huge tub filled with pickle to cure the rest of the pork. Nothing nowadays ever tastes like these things did. Probably the feeding then was different to what it is now, and frozen food never tastes like fresh. I admit that the modern way of life is easier in many ways, but the people who have all the modern appliances don't seem to have any more time than they did then. Not so much, in fact, because I can remember attending butter-making classes with my two aunties, who had both been making superlative butter for as long as I could remember, but they thought they might learn something, and made time to go. Each summer they packed a huge jar with butter when the milk was plentiful, and this was to last until the winter was over, and I remember one customer saying that the last of her jar was as good as the first. This is a lost art now, with restrictions on the making of butter and cheese. These things are not supposed to be real products nowadays, but a “piece” with good Orkney farm butter eaten with a chunk of good Orkney cheese takes a lot of beating. Chickens too have lost their flavour, and I refuse to cook a frozen one. The fresh variety is becoming more and more difficult to track down.

When my grandfather died the farm was sold and all the stock had to go too. Neither of my uncles was prepared to take it on alone, and I think they were all rather waiting for a chance to get away on their own. Mother was again co-opted into helping with the sale and for about a week we, my brother and I, went to school from the farm, usually getting a lift there and walking back. On the night of the sale we were walking over the Howe Road when we saw a man in the distance leading a cow. We realised that it was someone who had been to the sale, and when we got nearer my brother said, “Oh, hang, hid's ould Kilmarnock.” This was our name for the one Ayrshire cow at the farm, and only then did the full enormity of the whole thing hit us. Without “ould Kilmarnock” the place wouldn’t be the same, and we realised that she was only one of all the animals that would no longer be friends of ours. That marked the end of an era as far as we were concerned. For as long as I could remember we had gone there the night the school closed and never saw the town again until the night before classes resumed at the end of August. One auntie had already married and gone to New Zealand, and the other went off to Canada a few years later, and the “boys” too scattered to homes of their own, and we were condemned to town life! Mind you, we soon adjusted, and I was by this time, about fourteen, and the house we lived in then was right beside the Town Hall where all the dances were held, and the music was like a clarion call summoning me to be up and among the dancers. This was not allowed though for a few more years except for school dances, and it was there that I first met the boy who was later to be my husband and dear companion for 32 years, but that is another story.

I think I must always have been a bit of a “loner” because although I was invited to and went to parties, I can never really remember enjoying them, and in the winter time, when everyone else went sledging I went too but there again I did not enjoy it. School I always liked and it was a sad day for me when I had got all my Highers and had to leave. I was in tears and I think I would quite cheerfully have stayed on always. However, I had a living to earn and on the 19th of October 1932 I arrived in London to start nursing, I who had never been out of Orkney till then, and as green as grass in the ways of the city. However, I soon learned, and that too is another story.