Teatime Tales From Dundee

by Maureen Reynolds

  About this time, a certain Norman Tebbit was urging everyone to ‘Get on yer Bike’ and go and look for work but I had beaten him to it by a few months.

  I loved my bike and felt I had the freedom of the roads and the wind in my face and all that romantic rubbish. If I imagined the open road to be free from obstacles then I was soon put right on that matter.

  Sunday mornings were always the wildlife journeys. There were the hedgehogs with a death wish, kamikaze rabbits, crows that dined alfresco in the middle of the road and pheasants that forgot they owned wings and would always do a runner in front of me, often getting their wings clipped in the process.

  Loitering sheep were another menace. They would lurk on corners, just waiting to stroll nonchalantly in front of any motorist or biker stupid enough to be in their territory. Or else, sleep in the middle of the road and refuse to budge until nudged by the motorist. They would then trot off only to turn sharply and trot back from whence they came.

  Then there were the deer. One memorable morning, I was joined by a small roe deer that resembled Bambi. For some unknown reason it decided to race along beside me and I could hear its hooves clattering on the tarmac. I looked in my mirror for Thumper but he must still have been playing somewhere else. Frightened in case I injured Bambi, I gave up and stopped. As it bounded away into the bracken, it gave me a ‘What a Wimp and Spoilsport’ look. I felt rotten for the rest of the journey. It isn’t every day you see a playful deer that looks like Bambi.

  Two days later I met its dad. A huge stag with gigantic antlers jumped over a wall and landed on the road a few feet from me. I don’t know who got the bigger fright but he gave me a hostile glare, no doubt wondering what kind of yellow animal had dared to challenge him. After a heart-stopping moment he dismissed my threat and leapt over another wall and disappeared into the distance. I kept thinking all the way home that had I set off on my journey a few seconds earlier, the stag would have landed squarely on me and my bike. I imagined the headline in the local paper. ‘Woman and moped squashed by stag.’

  Man-made obstacles were also a nuisance; road chippings in particular. Signs were always placed stating twenty miles an hour but that didn’t stop boy racers and often grandad racers from flying along and scattering stone chips in every direction including my helmet, which soon had a sandblasted effect.

  The bike didn’t like this new road surface either and often went into a series of skids, twists and pirouettes that would have made Rudolf Nureyev proud and sorted out the bike riders from the rest of humanity.

  Springtime could be the cruellest time. One moment warm sunshine and the next cold icy showers that dripped down your neck while icy winds left my hands numb until three o’clock in the afternoon.

  Winged insects also played their part in the rich tapestry of life on the road. I was driving along one summer’s evening, minding my own business when a bumble bee flew underneath my visor. Trying to concentrate on the road while Mr Bee played Rimsky-Korsakov on drums was impossible, so I jumped off the bike and stood on the roadside doing the Hokey Cokey. Shaking my helmet, ‘In out, in out, shake it all about.’

  However, the worst culprits of all were the midgies; those miniscule black specks of devilment. In my opinion, Scotland doesn’t need a nuclear deterrent. Any invader foolhardy enough to try and subdue us during a wet summer would surely be driven insane by these insects, and their armies would head off for the sea and probably swim towards wherever they came from.

  When meeting a black cloud of midgies, I always put on my grim ‘Don’t mess with me’ face but one night I accidentally swallowed one.

  What a dilemma. Should I stand at the roadside and try to be sick or manfully soldier on and try to forget the whole horrendous episode? I did the latter, telling myself that in some countries a midgie might be looked upon as a source of protein, costing four pounds fifty a punnet to boot.

  Long after Mr Tebbit disappeared from the political scene, I was still biking up and down the roads. At 120 miles to the gallon of petrol it was a cheap version of travel.

  Terms like global warming, climate change and carbon footprints lay in the far distant future but with hindsight I like to think I was doing my bit for the planet.

  It also kept the wildlife population guessing about the Yellow Peril in their midst.

  33

  Easter Parade

  Easter Sunday was a special treat during the Spring holiday and there was always great anticipation a few weeks in advance of the day.

  The reason for this feeling was the ‘egg-rolling day’ at the Den O’Mains; a trip that saw scores of people make there way to this leafy, grassy and extremely scenic spot, situated not far from the busy Kingsway.

  In our house, preparations for this event normally started early in the day with the boiling of two eggs. For some reason, Mum never seemed to buy brown eggs. Ours were always snowy white and to give them some colour we would boil them in a solution of weak tea.

  After ten minutes in this solution they emerged with a nice healthy tan, almost as if they had been sunning themselves on the beach. Then, after they cooled down, it was time to paint them. I had a small painting set which was a tinplate box filled with eight small squares of paint and a threadbare brush that sported six or seven bristles.

  Still that didn’t dampen our enthusiasm and George and I would take turns to paint faces on our eggs. This was a bit of a hit-or-miss venture as the paint kept sliding off the smooth eggshells, but we weren’t too fussed about that. As long as we had a semblance of some features we were happy.

  Then it was time to make our way to roll our eggs. I can’t recall ever getting any sort of transport to the Den O’ Mains and I’m sure we always walked all the way, along with half the population of Dundee.

  When we reached our destination, it was always a scramble to get a nice spot to sit. There were prams with babies and toddlers in pushchairs, plus all the children running about shouting while mums and dads tried to settle everyone down. Sometimes entire extended families would all be grouped around the blankets: grannies, grandads, uncles, aunties and numerous children. It was a hard job trying to get a small piece of grass but this just added to the festive air.

  Some families took along picnics, the mother emptying her large message bag which seemed to be filled to capacity with sandwiches, biscuits, tea and the hard-boiled eggs.

  I don’t think we ever saw one chocolate Easter egg in all the years we went egg-rolling.

  George and I would try and sit near the grassy slope that was the venue for the egg-rolling and we would settle down with our picnic. We always travelled light; a paper bag with two jam pieces and the two eggs.

  After scoffing our sandwiches, we would run up the slope along with a horde of children and roll our eggs down to the bottom. As there were scores of similar eggs, it was sometimes difficult to find your own but that is where the dodgy painted faces came into their own.

  Not many children had one eye at the front of the egg and the other at the back. George and I were truly in the Salvador Dali school of art with our unrealistic faces and it paid off when we spotted our strange creations lying forlornly in the thick grass.

  After a few runs up and down the slope, it was now time to crack the shells and eat our eggs. Sometimes the egg was covered with grass and bits of twigs but a quick wipe over with your hand soon sorted that out.

  After our picnic was eaten we would content ourselves by watching everyone else eat theirs. I lived in hope that someone would toss us a biscuit or another jammy piece but it never happened. I expect people just had enough food for their own families and there was never anything left over.

  We would then run up the slope and launch ourselves downwards, rolling like the eggs until coming to a sharp bump at the foot. Sometimes you had to wait in a queue to get a chance to do this as most, but not all, of the children enjoyed this caper.

  Looking back, I would like to imagine that these Easter Sundays were always sun-filled and warm
, when we could stretch out on the grass and soak up the sunshine but I have to be honest and say that days like that were few.

  I can remember it being so cold that everyone was muffled up with thick coats, scarves and gloves. Or else it was wet and the grass was damp. Some people with foresight came armed with an old army blanket that they spread over the wet grass but we relied only on our coats, which soon became wet and cold and uncomfortable to wear.

  Still the weather might have dampened our coats but never our spirit.

  We did learn about the biblical story of Jesus and the Crucifixion and sang with great gusto, a particular favourite hymn of mine ‘There is a Green Hill Far Away’.

  However, the symbolic rolling of eggs was lost on George and I and we never associated it with the stone rolling away from the tomb of Jesus. We just thought it was a fun thing to do.

  It was a great day out in the fresh air, albeit a cold or wet one and I’m sure I recall some snowy times, but it cost very little and as we made our way back home in the late afternoon, we were tired out and starving.

  Do children of today ever roll hard-boiled eggs down a grassy slope? If they do, I bet they don’t eat them afterwards and who can blame them, what with all the litter and pollution around.

  One Easter, a few years ago, a young acquaintance of mine stated proudly that she had received fourteen chocolate eggs, all of them filled with a selection of different sweeties. ‘I’m not going to eat them all at once,’ she said, sounding virtuous like Mother Teresa. ‘I’m going to have one a day.’

  I should jolly well think so, I thought. The younger generation have made this gigantic leap from the wartime years and beyond: from a world of food scarcity to a world where everything under the sun is stacked up high in the shops; we’ve moved away from little thin bars of ‘Five Boys’ chocolate to gigantic slabs that weigh a ton and measure twelve inches by ten inches.

  I read about some school that did a lesson once on living during wartime. The children were all asked how they thought they would cope with going into a shelter when the siren went off.

  The answers were funny. One boy thought there was nothing to it. ‘I’ll take some packets of crisps, apples, bananas and bars of chocolate to eat,’ he said.

  Another, when asked how he would entertain himself said, ‘I’ll take my iPod and X-Box player with my computer games, my mobile phone, and maybe Mum will put in the television and computer.’

  The teacher told them there weren’t all those things back then. That there was no electricity in the shelters nor packets of crisps, bananas and chocolate. Nor televisions, iPods and computers.

  The kids were gobsmacked. They couldn’t visualise a world without all its modern gadgets.

  What I could have told them was that they could have had a jammy piece and a hard-boiled egg decorated with a strange face and covered in grass.

  But I didn’t.

  34

  And Finally

  I’ve always wanted to be a writer, except for a very short time away back in 1952. We were all in Miss Calvert’s English class and explaining what we would like to do after leaving school. I can’t remember how many classmates spoke before me but when it was my turn, I stood up and said I wanted to be a mannequin.

  As with all the others before me, the teacher threw the occupations open to the class for discussion while giving her own opinion on our choices. When I had finished giving my spiel, Miss Calvert said she didn’t think a mannequin’s career was suitable for me and she asked the class, ‘Now why don’t you think Maureen would make a good mannequin?’

  One hand shot up. ‘Because mannequins have to be pretty.’ Thank you dear classmate of 1AMC. All I can say to her, is, ‘May the moose aye leave yer girnal wi a tear in its e’e.’

  Now the teacher said this wasn’t the reason and I was pretty. Well teachers have to say these things don’t they? After all, they are supposed to fill their pupils with confidence, otherwise we’ll never believe another word they say.

  No, what she meant was I wasn’t quiet enough, being quite a lippy person at the time.

  At that point it was time for plan B and to tell the class I wanted to be an authoress. In those dark days of sex discrimination, every male job that was coveted by a female always ended in -ess, as in poetess etc. Thankfully, all that nonsense has disappeared.

  I recall being quite serious as I explained what tools I would need for this mythical job. ‘A lot of paper and pencils,’ I said, without a blush on my face. If only it had been as easy as that. With hindsight I would have stood a better chance of success if I had put my name down for the first moon trip. But of course that was all in the future.

  I was nudging fifty when I seriously gave writing another thought and this eureka moment in my life coincided with the purchase of a second-hand typewriter.

  This machine was perfect except for one little fault, as the woman who gave it to me explained, handing over a minute piece of plastic that was seemingly a broken bit that could be replaced.

  Needless to say I never did get the replacement, which meant I had to insert the paper in the machine sideways and do a lot of jiggling around to square it up. This was fine when writing small articles but would have been time-consuming while writing my grand ‘Meaning of Life’ novel.

  Undaunted, I entered a short story contest. Later, along with the letter saying I hadn’t won, was a card inviting me to join a writing school.

  Although I never thought I would win I was still a bit disappointed when told I hadn’t won, so I didn’t keep the card.

  A few weeks later I received another card saying if I didn’t reply immediately, my name would be taken off their books. Well no one wants to be wiped from the great world of literary brilliance, but as the course cost quite a bit of money that I didn’t have, I wasn’t tempted.

  I was now entering the harsh world of the publishing houses and it seemed to be a case of too many writers chasing too few publishers and it was a case of ‘Don’t call us. We’ll call you.’

  Also, I was now realising that my childish stories that had captured the attention of my friends now cut little ice with the big boys of the story world.

  My typewriter ribbon was also threadbare and I had to replace it. This took a lot of pushing and pulling until I got it into position. And if some of my friends muttered, when seeing my blue fingers, about being fingerprinted, then that was their problem. They weren’t the ones having to read the typewriter manual, which could have been written in Cantonese for all the good it did me.

  Also, I was too busy with the correction fluid and I think there should be an evening class showing the best way to use this wonderful liquid. I could never get the hang of it and instead of omitting one wrong word, I would end up omitting half a page.

  I often thought back to the happy, innocent time when I imagined writing to be easy. How could I have been so wrong?

  Writing is a bit like show business. It’s an overcrowded profession and for every one who makes the big time, there are hundreds of hopefuls pouring out their stories with plots of murder, love, humour and mayhem; all of us dreaming of becoming another writing genius.

  After years of rejection slips, I often thought of taking a leaf out of Barbra Streisand’s film, Funny Girl, climbing to the top of the highest building and singing:

  ‘Hey, Mr Publisher, here I am.’

  Also by Maureen Reynolds

  Voices in the Street

  The Sunday Girls

  Towards a Dark Horizon

  The Sun Will Shine Tomorrow

  McQueen’s Agency

  A Private Sorrow

  Indian Summer

  Copyright

  First published 2009

  by Black & White Publishing Ltd

  29 Ocean Drive, Edinburgh EH6 6JL

  www.blackandwhitepublishing.com

  This electronic edition published in 2013

  ISBN: 978 1 84502 673 8 in EPub format

  ISBN: 978 1 84502 674 5 in Mobi
pocket format

  ISBN: 978 1 84502 249 5 in paperback format

  Copyright © Maureen Reynolds 2009

  The right of Maureen Reynolds to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Ebook compilation by RefineCatch Ltd, Bungay