Teatime Tales From Dundee

by Maureen Reynolds

  She was in the post office one afternoon, the one at the top of the Hilltown where she was a well-known customer. Lying on the floor was a child’s plastic gun that some kiddie had dropped. She picked it up and pointed it at the woman behind the counter. ‘Put your hands up, this is a stick up,’ she said, in her best James Cagney voice.

  The woman assistant roared with laughter. ‘Och that’d the best laugh eh’ve had a’ day. You’ve forgot tae put on yer mask, Molly. Eh’ll be able tae pick you oot in a police line-up.’

  At that moment, much to my embarrassed relief, the small owner of the gun came in with his mum. He was dressed in a cowboy outfit with a little suedette waistcoat, trousers, a hat and an empty holster.

  ‘Oh you’ve found Bobby’s gun, thank goodness,’ said his mum.

  ‘Eh’m jist keeping this baddie from raiding the cattle ranch, cowboy,’ said Mum to the wee boy who didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.

  Personally, I was glad to escape from the shop but the assistant was still laughing and telling all her customers what had happened.

  Of course, Mum had learned all this American jargon from reading her True Crime magazines which she bought in Marshalls, the second-hand book shop on the Hilltown, or from reading her detective novels from the library.

  We went to the library in Albert Square at least three times a week. While I liked to roam all over the building and look at some of the more serious books, I don’t think Mum ever went anywhere but the thriller section. Still it has to be said that this was the busiest section in the entire library.

  I mean, there was I, all alone in the aisle reading a book on world travel while half the population of Dundee was crowded around the shelves of the thrillers. There was always a gasp of anticipation when the librarian came to put new books on the shelves and I personally thought it was a bit of a scramble.

  ‘Oh, eh just love the Crime Club books,’ said one woman to her companion. ‘If you see the Crime Club sign you ken it’s going tae be a good read.’

  Mum just loved anything. Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler or any book with dead bodies.

  Mind you, I’m just pretending to be intellectual as I always read the thrillers as well and enjoyed them. It was a bit of escapism.

  There used to be a newspaper called the Reveille and one of its running stories was about one of their reporters who went around the country. The paper would announce in advance which city he would visit and they offered a money prize to anyone who recognized him.

  He would stand on a street with a Reveille under his arm and the paper said that anyone who knew him had to say a special phrase and they would get the money.

  Every week, the paper was full of happy and delighted winners all gazing with beaming smiles at the camera and holding up their prize.

  Mum loved this story and one week it was announced that the man was coming to Dundee. ‘Oh, we’ll have tae look oot for him,’ she said. Over my dead body I thought.

  As luck would have it, we were coming out of Gray’s the bakers, who had a shop at the top of the Hill, when we saw a man standing at the foot of Hill Street. He was trying to look nonchalant and he had a newspaper under his arm.

  Mum was ecstatic. She poked me in the ribs and said, ‘It’s that man frae the Reveille.’

  I almost died because I knew what was coming next.

  ‘Now Maureen, jist you gae ower and say you want the prize.’ There was just one wee problem to this plan. She couldn’t remember the exact phrase and that was one of the conditions of winning. The words had to be right and as printed in the paper.

  She had a few shots at it. ‘You’re the man frae Reveille and I claim my prize. No that’s no it. I claim my prize because I recognize you. No that’s no right.’ She turned to me.

  ‘Can you no mind the exact words?’

  I shook my head. ‘No Mum.’

  She gave me a look that said I was some sort of backward idiot. ‘Well eh thought you would mind what tae sae. You’ve aye got an answer for everything else.’

  She gave another glance at the man but no one else seemed to notice him.

  ‘We’ll have tae hurry up or he’ll go awa tae some other street.’

  I hoped and prayed that he would but he seemed to be glued to the spot.

  ‘I think you have tae say, “You’re the man frae Reveille and I am claiming my prize.” I’m sure that’s right. Now awa you go ower and say that.’

  ‘Mum he might no be the man frae Reveille.’

  ‘Eh’m sure he is. He’s standing there looking awfy suspicious like, and eh bet he’s jist waiting on somebody going ower and claiming the prize.’ This statement was delivered with another dig in the ribs. ‘Jist go ower, he’ll no eat you.’

  Well I never thought he would, as he looked so innocuous as he stared into space.

  ‘He might be waiting for his wife tae come oot o Johnstone’s Stores,’ I said, more in hope than anything.

  ‘Well why is he standing at the foot of Hill Street if he’s waiting on his wife? If he was waiting for somebody he would be standing outside the shop.’

  I couldn’t argue with that so to keep her quiet, I rehearsed my words and wandered over, hoping no one I knew was in the vicinity.

  As I approached him, the man looked at me. ‘You’re the man from Reveille and I claim my prize,’ I said, trying hard not to stutter, my face as red as a beetroot.

  He burst out laughing. ‘I wish I was, hen.’

  I went back to Mum and was I furious. ‘He’s no the man frae Reveille and you hivnae got any prize,’ I said through clenched teeth.

  ‘You must have said the words wrong,’ she said, disbelief written all over her face. ‘Eh wish eh could remember them.’

  Much to my relief she walked away but still looking backwards, no doubt looking to see if someone else approached him but he stood there like a statue, looking as nonchalant as an Eskimo in the Sahara.

  She couldn’t wait to get the paper the following week. Seemingly the prize was won by someone outside McGills shop on the Wellgate steps.

  ‘Och that’s where he was,’ she said, disappointment sounding in every word. Then she brightened up. ‘Eh still say that was him but you got the words wrong.’

  So it was my fault.

  She was also full of little dire warnings about dirty ears and other personal idiosyncrasies. It was just as well I didn’t believe her when she said potatoes grew out of dirty ears otherwise I would have had nightmares.

  Although mortified at the time by her humour, I can now look back with affection. Mum didn’t have a lot in life to be cheery about but we did get lots of laughs.

  No doubt in this politically-correct world she wouldn’t get off with larking about with a child’s plastic gun or encouraging her daughter to approach a total stranger but we lived in a more innocent time when you could call a spade a spade without calling it a garden, flat-bladed implement.

  Motherspeak

  Do you remember, Mother?

  Those far-off days of childhood,

  When you told me potatoes grew out of dirty ears?

  How I scanned the mirror for months afterwards.

  Watching and waiting.

  Scared stiff I would emerge as the star of some Hollywood horror film.

  When I squinted in the bright sunshine

  You warned me that should the wind change course,

  I would turn into a perpetually, demented, grimacing gargoyle.

  The wet, unboiled face flannel

  Was another watchword in life’s dictionary.

  Its slimy surface harbouring a multitude of unspeakable horrors.

  Do you remember, Mum?

  The far-off days of Motherspeak?

  Those wonderful golden nuggets of nonsense

  So precious to me now you are on the verge of leaving me.

  30

  A Close Shave

  We passed a barber’s shop the other day and there was a price list in the window. A basic hairc
ut was £8, which is the going rate these days, according to my husband.

  We then went on to the supermarket which was the size of Dens Park and pushing a trolley around this vast cavern took ages, especially when looking for something small. I searched high and low for a deodorant but still couldn’t find one. I looked in the right aisle and although there were twenty different toothpastes and scores of shampoos, conditioners and various forms of hair gels, the elusive deodorant was hiding from view.

  I felt exhausted when leaving, a feeling that was made worse by the fact we only went in for two items and came out with three bags full and a till receipt for £81.45. How do they do it? Is there a form of hypnotism at the front door that makes customers suddenly desire three bags full like Baa Baa Black Sheep?

  It made me think back to the old days when there were just the little shops to buy from. Usually owned by one man or woman who seemed to make a decent living out of their little business, you went in with a list, which they ran around getting for you. You didn’t get seduced into purchasing twenty-four toilet rolls in order to get two free, or a mega packet of soap powder that needs a crane to carry it out of the door and a 4x4 car to get it home.

  One shop I remember with affection was Lottie Henderson’s paper shop on the Hilltown. A tiny shop by any standard, it was made even more miniscule by the piles of newspapers on the counter. In fact, it was often impossible to see Lottie. Her technique however was spot on.

  No matter what paper you asked for, she immediately found it and slapped it down on the top of the pile. Getting the money to her was a bit of a problem, especially when I was a child as it would have needed a small stepladder to reach her hands.

  The fruiterer in Ann Street was another one-woman business. Potatoes were kept in a wooden-type bunker with a small trapdoor at the front and she would use a shovel to scoop them up and throw them on the scale. Cutting a turnip was hair-raising as she kept a large knife – or maybe it was a machete – nearby and she would hit the turnip with it, giving it an almighty thump and neatly slicing it in half.

  There was also a selection of barbershops on the Hilltown and, unlike the modern shop of today with all its big mirrors and upholstered chairs, the shops of yesteryear were plain affairs.

  The windows nearly all held a few sun-bleached cardboard adverts for Brylcreem and small colonies of dead flies.

  Inside was just as spartan with perhaps a couple of kitchen chairs and a pile of Hotspur and Commando comics, all well-thumbed with some of the pages missing.

  One occasion I’ll never forget took place in the 1960s. For some reason none of the male members of the family had had a haircut for months and they all had that shaggy look. So one Saturday afternoon we all trooped into Louis Lumsden’s barbershop that lay directly across from Shepherd’s Pend and plonked ourselves down on the row of empty chairs.

  The reason we chose this barber above everyone else was the fact his shop was empty, which meant there would be no waiting and we could be in and out quickly. I wish.

  The three boys pounced on the comics while their dad got his hair cut first. The barber, a cheery man, started off with bright chatter, about football and the sorry state of the world.

  At that point, I’m sure he thought he just had the one customer and we were all waiting for him. He soon realised how wrong that assumption was.

  It was now time for son number one whose hair had sprouted like a gigantic haystack. The brave barber tackled it manfully but kept glancing over at the other two boys who looked like wild men from Borneo.

  Half an hour later it was time for son number two whose hair was slightly less thick than the other two but it still took another half hour to get into shape.

  Son number three then made his way to the chair and I’m sure I heard a muffled groan coming from the poor man.

  At that point, he turned to where I was sitting with my daughter. Wendy was clutching a tattered Commando book in her little fists and gazing intently at all the mayhem portrayed on the pages.

  ‘Are you twa needing your hair cut as weel?’

  I said no, we were just waiting.

  The relief on his face was comical and I felt really sorry for him. The fact that it was a hot summer day didn’t help, as the shop was stifling.

  ‘When did you lot last get yer hair cut?’ he asked. ‘Was it afore the last war?’

  Very funny.

  Two and a half hours later we all emerged into the sunlight with the three boys and their Dad looking like shorn sheep.

  Leaving behind the shop floor covered in enough hair to fill a mattress and with the huge sum of six shillings and threepence for all his hard work. That worked out at half a crown for my husband and one and threepence for each child. Now, for all the people born after 1971, that is equivalent to about thirty-two pence.

  In my opinion, decimalisation put the cost of living up by nearly one hundred per cent. There were 240 pennies to the old pound and the new pound has 100 pennies. So something that cost eleven pennies in old money, which was a penny short of a shilling, went up overnight to eleven new pence, which was over two shillings. It was all down to the magic word, ‘new’ pence. We all thought we were still dealing in pennies. But we weren’t.

  But I digress. Back on the barber theme, we never went back to his shop as I’m sure he would have locked up and emigrated at the first sight of us.

  A few years later, while staying with their grandparents, Alick, George and Steven were taken to the barber by their grandad. Their hair was cut to within an inch of their life and the barber used the hand clippers to cut any stray tufts that escaped his scissors. In fact, it looked as if they didn’t have any hair, just dirty scalps.

  I almost cried when I saw them. They looked like escapees from Alcatraz and it crossed my mind that this was the same barber we had visited a couple of years before. If it was, he was making sure it would be a couple of years before they would be back.

  I gave a mental count when faced with the modern barber’s list and worked out it would now cost a family of four well over twenty pounds for the job. And then I remembered why, all those years ago, the men in the family had such long hair. It was because I had to save up the six shillings and threepence.

  So everything is relevant to its own time.

  31

  The Bermuda Triangle

  I once owned a handbag. It was advertised as an organiser bag, which was a bit of a misnomer to begin with because it was the most disorganised item I had. Apart from that, I was convinced this bag harboured a Bermuda Triangle in its depths.

  Things kept disappearing and I once lost the electricity and telephone bills in its dark interior, never to return again. I don’t remember how I paid these bills but as nothing was ever cut off, I must have managed somehow.

  I was also the woman about whom ‘Irate Man’ wrote to the letters page of the newspaper;

  Dear Sir

  I was behind this idiotic woman in the shop the other day and it took five minutes for the checkout girl to ring through her groceries and another half hour while she rummaged in her bag for her purse/chequebook/card.

  Yours truly

  Irate Man.

  I almost replied that I was organised and had the bag to prove it and wanted to explain it wasn’t me but the fault of the Bermuda Triangle but I don’t think he would have believed me. Quite honestly I couldn’t believe it myself.

  What was worse was the fact the Bermuda Triangle syndrome had also moved to the house and items disappeared on a regular basis only to reappear later.

  The biro pens were the first. I bought a large pack of twenty pens and within two days they had all disappeared. I searched high and low but no sign of them. Then ten days later I found the entire twenty huddled together in the kitchen. They looked as if they had all arrived en masse from some biro pen convention and were now comparing notes.

  Then there were the disappearing drawing pins. As soon as the Christmas decorations and cards came down at Epiphany, the pi
ns were all carefully placed in a wee box with a picture of themselves on the front. So far so good, until one was needed and I discovered they had vanished – box and all. As with the pens, they all appeared out of the blue one summer day and I can only surmise they had rented themselves out to another house; a house with teenage bedrooms and numerous posters to be hung on the wall no doubt.

  I keep the tape measure tightly rolled up on a shelf where it seems happy enough until I need it. Then off it goes walkabout for weeks before coming back home. When it returns it is all coiled up and wearing a smug expression. Perhaps it’s been on its holiday where it spent a sun-soaked month inching its way across some golden beach in Majorca.

  The worst disappearance, however, is of the scissors. They are a large, black-handled pair that hang from a hook in the kitchen and are quite content to dangle there until urgently required, especially when cooking the tea, courtesy of Birds Eye Boil-in-the-Bag. Everything is bubbling and boiling away and the scissors are not there.

  Now, I draw the line at attacking the boil bag with my teeth and after umpteen tries with a sharp knife, I’m left with gravy and bits of meat all over the breadboard, the potatoes are cold and the peas have given up and died. Later, I find the scissors in the bread bin where they lurk as if in the huff.

  In the future, should anyone excavate our house, they will find a multitude of pens, drawing pins, tape measures and scissors, plus many other things that go missing in the dead of night.

  Will these learned people all nod wisely to themselves, saying they have found the real Bermuda Triangle?

  It’s not near the Bahamas after all but right here Chez Reynolds.

  32

  On Yer Bike

  After we left Dundee and went rural, I became the proud owner of a smashing yellow Yamaha moped with a matching yellow helmet.

  My workmates called me Penelope Pitstop from Whacky Races, except for one lone voice who would mutter something about the Yellow Peril.