Stories
NOSTALGIA
1949
The war was now a memory, rationing was decreasing and sweets were in
the shops.
When you are nine years old summer holidays stretched ahead forever and
the sun shone every day!
If the tide was out we would play away the hours on the shingle, weaving
into the cracks that cut into Dumbarton Rock.
Salty air mingled with carping seagulls, hoping for food. Our game might
be pirates, smugglers, even spies.
Imaginations ran riot to the sound of hammers echoing in our heads from
the shipyard across the River Leven.
Sometimes we’d take a bottle of water and a jam piece then spend the day
walking on The
Camels Hump, a local hill. You could see over the town from there or
collect wild flowers like
pink campion.
When you felt like being near to home then the swing park was the place
to be, playing tig around the bandstand or trying the swings, maypole or
horse in rotation.
Weekends were different though! Auntie from Glasgow came on Sundays,
very occasionally accompanied by granny. Glasgow grannies rarely
travelled abroad, preferring to stay at home and wait for you to visit
them!
On just such a red- letter day they both arrived. To celebrate the
occasion I was despatched to the Italian café for two bottles of ginger.
Jostling them, I ran back, hurrying up the stairs to our top floor, two
roomed tenement flat.
Auntie beckoned me mysteriously into the other room where she revealed
my new outfit for Sundays. Soon I was shrugged into the three piece
suit, hand knitted in serviceable navy blue.
She wagged an admonishing finger.
"Mind and keep it clean…or else!"
After adding bottles of water and tomato sandwiches wrapped in a towel
we trudged to the Clyde shore.
There, we made for the little channel where the water was shallow enough
for us to pretend we could swim, always with one foot oozed into the
mud.
Auntie unbuttoned me from the suit to reveal her piece de resistance –
the hand knitted swimsuit, complete with bib, straps and my name
tastefully embroidered across the front.
After a while we noticed auntie waving a bottle of water at us.
"Come out, it’s time to eat!" She klaxoned.
My swimsuit, loaded with seawater, dipped earthwards. Amidst chortles of
glee from
my sister and brother I ran, red faced, to the grown ups.
My parents tried to hide their mirth; only granny gave me that gentle,
sympathetic smile,
as auntie fumed.
"See you?" She spluttered, scouring me with the only available sand
filled towel.
Once again I was hastily shrugged into the cardigan and skirt as auntie,
her face crimson with embarrassment, shielded me.
"See you!" She whispered,
"I’m fair affronted. I just can’t take you anywhere!"
by G. B. Taylor