How it all started! - The Accidental Smallholder

Posted: Sunday 24 August, 2008

by Rosemary at 8:32am in Anything goes 2 comments Comments closed

I was looking for a photograph to put on the forums - nothing too scary, you understand, when I came across an album of photographs of me (and my family) when I was VERY young. Some of them made me think - "so THAT'S how it all started."

I'm not from a farming background; both my parents worked in the local textile mills. Both liked the outdoors though - my Dad golfed and fished and we did a lot of walking. Almost every weekend, we'd go off somewhere in the bus (we didn't have a car), with a picnic, and walk for miles. I can't smell Heinz Tomato or Oxtail soup without it all flooding back, because in the winter, Mum would fill a flask of hot soup to take. I don't remember going very far in the bus but we got to the Wild West often and the African jungle occasionally!

My paternal grandfather had been a ploughman, so my Dad was born on a farm and he used to make up stories (at least, I think they were made up!) about the animals that were on the farm when he was a wee boy. My Dad's middle sister, Jen, married a shepherd, my Uncle Alec and lived on a number of farms - I think she was my Dad's favourite sister. She was certainly my favourite aunt. She wasn't all that keen on babies, but she was great with small children, although she had none of her own. I remember her living in two places - Milngavie (vaguely) and Campsie Glen, where she lived until I was in my twenties.

I remember Uncle Alec's vegetable garden and the hens, and him bringing a pail of milk down from the farm - they had a house cow for a while. They always had a cairn terrier called Delias, which is Gaelic for faithful, I think, and the inevitable Border Collies. In fact, my first dog, Kerry, was a pup of his. We always used to stay with Auntie Jenny and Uncle Alec at the May holiday and the October holiday - it took ages to get there (or at least it seemed like it to me) by bus, via Stirling and Kirkintilloch, then on to Campsie Glen.

I must have dragged poor Delias all over the hills while my Dad fished the wee burn close by. My job was to take the newly caught fish, wrapped in dock leaves to keep it fresh (?) up to the house to be cooked for our tea. It was always trout and new potatoes, followed by home-made pancakes and jam.

Anyway, to get to the point, I found these photographs - if Dan had seen them years ago, he might have guessed what was coming!