Christmas presented the biggest problem. Each ‘Sunday School’ had to be given a party, and they all had to be on a Saturday afternoon because most of the teachers had to go to work on the other days. What happened was that there were usually two parties in each of the three venues on the same day, one early in the afternoon and one later on, six altogether. Finding a Santa to give out presents at each party proved almost impossible, but Bertha’s Bill (Jamieson) had a motor scooter at the time. Hey presto! Santa was mechanised that year!
We had been in Mastrick for only a year or so when the young minister was called to another church. The committee organised several hopefuls to come and preach, choosing the one they thought would best fit into the parish. As the oldest (in years, for it was a young community), my mother was asked to robe Mr T. when he was ordained, a great honour for her. She, Bertha and I were all in the Women’s Guild by this time and I a member of the Drama Group run by the Deaconess. Bill also helped with the Boys’ Brigade Company, and when Alan was old enough he joined the Lifeboys, so we were all well involved in church business. Jimmy, of course, was childminder when I was out in the evenings.
Some years on, Bertha and Bill, who had been living with Mum after their wedding in Mastrick Church, bought a new house at the Bridge of Don, at the other side of town and miles from Mastrick. They became part of the congregation of St Machar’s Cathedral, but the Bridge of Don community kept growing and growing so much that a new church had to be built, still under the guidance of the Cathedral. The numbers at Sunday school in Mastrick had dropped significantly by that time, and so they didn’t feel too badly about giving that up.
It would have been in 1965 some time that I began to consider moving house. I was out all day, studying every evening, cooking was down to a minimum (there were no ready-made meals then, no fridge or freezer) and the cleaning was being neglected for longer and longer periods.
Things became so bad, that I can remember saying to Jimmy at one point, ‘If I should die suddenly, get somebody in to clean the house before you tell Mum.’
Visions of moving to a smaller house did sometimes flit through my mind, but it was my son’s little friend who gave me the prod I needed. Graham called in for Alan on his way to Sunday school every week and always had to wait a few minutes. I was rushing to clear the breakfast dishes so I could spread out my books, so I left the boy standing at the fireside as usual this particular day, and it wasn’t until much later that I noticed how he had been amusing himself.
There, on the lid of the piano, and in huge capital letters, he had painstakingly written his name with his finger . . . in the thick layer of dust. I was mortified and, as I erased it with my sleeve, I prayed that he wouldn’t tell anyone. I may have been a slut – I was a slut – but I didn’t want all and sundry pointing the finger of scorn at me.
I urgently needed that smaller house, or a house that was easier to keep clean, and with this in mind, I scanned the ‘Houses for Let and Exchange’ column in the newspaper every night. After a while, I gave up and placed an ad myself, stating a preference for a flat in one of the multi-storeyed blocks at Hazlehead, which was a really nice area. To my amazement, I received quite a number of letters, making Jimmy wonder if these ‘luxury homes’, built just over a year earlier, were all that they were cracked up to be.
By this time, I had passed my driving test, so I drove over one afternoon to carry out some inspections. There were four blocks, Wallace House, Davidson House, Rose House and Bruce House, and I thought that it would be appropriate to go to Davidson House first. I fancied receiving mail addressed to Mr and Mrs Davidson of Davidson House . . . It would make me feel quite important.
Davidson House, however, already had its share of Davidsons, and I could well imagine the postman’s dilemma without another one to contend with. I eventually settled on a flat in one of the other buildings because it had a lovely view. We moved in at the beginning of October 1966 and I was soon thankful for my decision to move from a terraced house. When there had been snowstorms at Mastrick, it had been a case of pulling on boots and muffling myself in something warm for the back-breaking job of shovelling snow, not only from the front door to the road, but also along the pavement for the whole width of our garden. I’d also had to clear a path from my back door to the coal cellar and the drying green. None of that at Hazlehead, and most of the ice or mud has disappeared from our footwear before we enter our flat.
Contrary to most people’s expectations, living in a multi-storeyed block is not normally noisy. The only sounds that travel are hammering and drilling, very deceptive to the ears. A workman can be doing something on the top (eleventh) floor and it is impossible for other tenants (me, at least) to tell whether the noise is coming from above or below, or even, sometimes, alongside. This is especially irritating when work is being carried out all over the building, and you can’t judge whether or not you’ll be next to have the door-entry system changed, or your electricity wiring renewed, or whatever, but it’s something you learn to live with.
I’ve never regretted moving here, although my mail does sometimes go to Davidson House; hardly surprising, since one set of Davidsons lives in the same numbered flat as ours. What is surprising is that is doesn’t happen more often . . .
One real drawback to living in a tower block is the laundry facility. When we moved in first, I was given my time as 5 to 6.30 p.m. for the huge washing machine, and 6.30 to 8 p.m. for two of the four hot cupboards. Since one load of washing took the full ninety minutes you were allotted, everything had to be done in one go – towels, sheets, underwear, top clothes, even dark working trousers – so you can imagine the horrible shade of grey all the whites finished up. Not only that, the hot cupboards, although they did dry the clothes, left them as hard as boards; almost as stiff as they’d turned out in frosty weather at Mastrick.
The biggest problem, of course, was that we all had to take our turn. With forty-six tenants in the building, each having one and a half hours to wash and spin, and one and a half hours to dry, we could only do our laundry once a week. There was very little spare time available for emergencies.
I had left my own spinner when we flitted, but eventually managed to buy a new one and a washing machine as well, and then it was plain sailing. I could wash as often as I liked, but I had to find a way of drying. We were not allowed to put up ropes in our balconies, but I can guarantee that almost every balcony had a rope slung somewhere out of sight of the road. As the years went past, I managed to buy an automatic washing machine, and some years later, a tumble dryer. I am completely independent now. The laundry room, of course, was the place to learn all the gossip, so I am kept in the dark about who did what, whose husband walked out, whose wife went off with another man, although perhaps this doesn’t happen nowadays.
Some of the original tenants have died, some have moved away, and more than half of the houses are now occupied by single mothers. Not that I have anything against them; I was in the same position once myself. More to the point, we are really lucky with our neighbours. One elderly man whose wife died some months ago, one young girl with an under-school-age boy, and one girl with a daughter at the Academy and a son who is due to start there after the summer holidays. Both girls have offered their help to me, but Kim, with whom I share a small passage leading to the waste disposal chute and the stairs, is my standby.
I taught her at Hazlehead Primary School and, even then, she was always anxious to help. Nowadays, she occasionally takes in some shopping for me. I mostly order over the telephone and have groceries and frozen food delivered perhaps every six weeks, and both Sheila and Alan ask every week if I need them to get anything for me.
With no chemist anywhere near us, I always tried to order repeat prescriptions so that Alan could bring the necessary items to us on a Saturday, but inevitably there were times when it was not a repeat prescription but a new and urgently-needed medicine. This was quite a worry until I learned that several chemists now offer to deliver. T
his is a lifesaver, literally.
To go back to what I was saying before, I come to an event that I could scarcely believe could happen to us. When we moved to our present address in 1966, we had much farther to go to church than before, and by that time I was studying a lot, so we only went about once a month or so, at times even less. Along with our Christmas cards one year, I received a letter from a man who had taken over as Treasurer, informing me that if we did not pay in our envelopes regularly, we would be struck off the roll. I had never missed one payment, handing in several envelopes at a time if necessary, so you can imagine how I felt.
My dander well and truly up, I wrote to the minister himself, explaining why I was angry, and reminding him of how much my family had been involved with his church. I even detailed exactly what we had done, and reminded him that my mother had robed him at his ordination, so that he would know exactly who I was. Mum, by this time, was unable to cope with the villa in Mid Stocket and had moved in with Bertha and Bill. She had also transferred her ‘lines’ to St Machar’s Cathedral.
I got no reply to my letter, but a few months after this, I was waiting for a bus at Woolworth’s in Union Street, when I saw the Reverend T. walking towards me. He apologised most profusely for the incident, but put his foot in it by claiming that he had no idea at the time of who had written the letter to him.
This whole business made me so angry that I did not join another church, and, although this is no excuse, I’m afraid that the years just drifted past, and I am still not a member of any Kirk. I do feel ashamed to confess that, but I still believe in God, still watch services on TV and croak the hymns. Over eighty now, I am not very mobile, and couldn’t go to church anyway, but I hope I can class myself as a silent Christian.
19
There is no comparison between walking into a college for the first time and walking into a school for the first time. At a college, all the people you meet, apart from the tutors, are students, greenhorns like yourself, trying to look confident but only succeeding in emphasising how unconfident they feel.
On the first day in school, I drove into the playground and parked the car beside all the others, glad to see that I had something in common with them, at least. Travelling by bus would have taken me over an hour (into town and out again) but only ten minutes by car. I reported to Mr Robb, the headmaster, who showed me into the staffroom, where an array of smiling faces looked up when he introduced me. I knew I’d be all right. And I wasn’t the only newcomer that day; two other replacements turned up, another ‘ordinary’ teacher and a sewing teacher.
I found that I needn’t have worried. All of them, old hands and new, were very friendly, and although I had heard tales of cliques in staffrooms (had even experienced it on my first teaching practice), that wasn’t the case here. Of course, the infant teachers did sit together at one side of the room, and the rest of us sat facing them, but there was no sense of ‘The Great Divide’. There were, perhaps, a few little hushed secrets told, but in the main, the conversation was general, and mostly regarding the pupils, who were a motley bunch, individuals with their own characteristics.
I must admit – as I’m sure will most teachers – that, even after so many years, I can remember the clever pupils best, those who soaked up everything I taught and yearned for more. They would be closely followed by the bright sparks, full of life and anxious to please, even if they sometimes had difficulty in understanding a specific point. Next, I would say, came the badly behaved, of which there were quite a number; they stick in the memory, and their antics still make me laugh . . . though I didn’t find them funny at the time. The middle-of-the-roads, poor souls, who did their work quietly and caused no problems, have slipped into the mists of time. I can recall some names, but not their faces, or faces with no names . . . which is a terrible admission to make.
If any of you in this category are reading this, I apologise. Your type was the mainstay of a class, industrious, pleasant, usually asking shyly for help if something puzzled you but otherwise unwilling to make yourselves noticed. If you should ever meet me, please don’t pass by. Speak to me. Tell me your name, if I can’t recall it, and the school concerned, and that’s all I should need to be able to place you.
On my first day, one of the girls sidled up to me as they were going home at lunchtime. ‘I like you better than my last teacher, Mrs Davidson.’
My heart swelled with joy at winning them over so easily, and when they came back in at half past one and another of the girls came up to me, I prepared myself for a second compliment.
‘Mrs Davidson,’ she said, looking directly at me as if daring me to say a word, ‘my sister says you’re fat.’
Well, I ask you? What could you say to that?
That first class of seven-year-olds almost drove me up the wall. Out of the thirty-six (classes were much bigger then), I’d say that the nucleus of badly behaved affected most of the others, and by Christmas, I’d had enough. I fully intended to hand in my resignation from teaching altogether, but the headmaster talked me out of it.
‘You’ll never get another class like that,’ he assured me. ‘They were the same in the Infants, and we tried to separate the worst of them when they came up to Primary Three, but it seems even that hasn’t worked. You should look on this as an initiation, Doris. Do your best to control them and you will see a change in them, I promise. That will give you confidence in yourself, so much so that no other class will upset you.’
Who was he trying to kid?
What he said next astonished me, however. ‘Buy yourself a tawse – the belt, you know – and let one of them ‘accidentally’ see it in your drawer. Knowing it’s there can often do the trick, without you actually having to use it. Remember, though, you’ll have to carry out a threat if it’s necessary. They won’t respect you if you don’t.’
I learned the hard way as far as that was concerned. I can’t for the life of me recall what they were or weren’t doing that made me use the threat, ‘If you don’t do as you’re told, I’m going to belt the whole class.’ They didn’t obey me, so I was forced to carry it out. I knew that most of them had been influenced by the hard core of show-offs, but I lined them all up, girls as well as boys, and gave each of them a slight tap on the hand with the two-tailed tawse, ending just as the lunch bell started to ring.
Imagine my dismay when Mr Robb came into the staffroom at the end of the break. ‘I’d like to speak to you for a minute, Doris.’
He waited until the others went to their rooms before going on, ‘Rosemary Martin’s mother (not her real name) came in to complain about you giving all your class the strap.’
I was shocked. ‘Just a wee tap, that’s all,’ and I explained why. It was on his advice, after all.
‘Aye, well,’ he said, rubbing his hand over his chin, ‘you should have picked out the ringleaders and made a proper example of them; it would have had more effect. I promised Mrs Martin I would reprimand you, so regard this as a ticking off. Go to your room now, but remember what I’ve said.’
For the record, Rosemary Martin was the same little girl who had taken great delight in telling me that her sister thought I was fat, so this didn’t make me feel any better disposed towards her, but although she was inclined to speak her mind without thinking, she turned out to be an above average scholar and we got on quite well.
I wasn’t the only one who learned a lesson from that incident. The offenders had recognised that there was a limit to how far they could push me. The tawse had done the trick . . . more or less. At least, I didn’t have to resort to threats again.
I had better explain the system that reigned in Smithfield at that time as far as allocating classes was concerned. There were two Primary One classes and two at Primary Two level. Let’s say that Miss A and Miss B taught P. Ones and Miss C and Miss D taught P. Twos. The following year, Miss A and Miss B would take their same pupils into P. Two, while Miss C and Miss D would both have a new intake in P. One.
That takes
care of the Infant School. Primary Three was part of the ‘big’ school, quite a traumatic transition for some of them, so it stood alone. The children were taken by other teachers for Primary Four and Five, and others for Primary Six and Seven.
I was glad to pass my first class on, and my second was far easier, even with its sprinkling of little troublemakers, but my third was a dream come true. It would have been just before the Easter holidays when Mr Robb asked me if I’d like to take them into Primary Four. ‘If you feel easy with that,’ he smiled, ‘you could take over the four and five stage permanently.’
I didn’t have to think about it. Primary Three was a difficult stage, both for children and teacher. It was a transition from Infant School to the ‘big’ school, where they had to learn to concentrate on the work they were given, or whatever they had to do, because it wasn’t all straightforward lessons, and there would be little chance of many classes as good as my present one. I’d had them from August 1969 until late May 1970 when the crunch came.
We were coming up to Sports Day, held in the playing fields at Northfield Secondary School, but the practising was done in our own school grounds, where there were several expanses of grass at various points around the school buildings. Smithfield had been built around the late 1950s, I think, a sprawling one-storeyed mass, and we all had our own little patch where we could take our chairs out and work in the summer, or make use of in any way we liked.
Our first practice went off extremely well, the children had learned in the Infants that racing meant that you had to try to beat the rest of the runners, and the sun beamed genially down on their efforts.
Gift from the Gallowgate Page 22