Childhood Memories Of Long Ago
Long hot summers, with enviable freedom. We were Nature’s children, always inquisitive, yet often teetering on the edge…
Can you even imagine long, hot summers in Scotland?
Seems like a joke, doesn’t it! Yet that’s how it felt to us as children. I have no idea what the temperatures ever climbed to, but everything is relative, and compared to freezing cold winters, those summers were to us, very warm.
Then factoring in the gloaming, where it’s still light at 10pm, the days seemed to stretch out, long and comforting, and perfect.
We used to complain that it couldn’t be time for bed because the sun was still shining. Still and all, we went to bed betimes, like it or not!
The first nine years of my life were spent in a small, nondescript house with a postage-stamp-sized front and back yard.
The back yard, though small, was home to a few chickens and a vegetable plot…oh and rhubarb! I adore rhubarb.
My dad always found ways to grow potatoes and greens in that little patch, all becoming prized crops due to the pristine cow dung he got from a friend.
Imagine the embarrassment for us kids, the smell of manure all around for at least a week. No other kids had to endure such ignominy, but I suspect we were better fed than most…except, that is, for the chickens!
See, my dad killed one for dinner one day, and none of us would eat it. We sat around the table sobbing, just crying our little hearts out.
This was our pet, the one we fed and played with, being offered up like a sacrificial lamb…and we were expected to eat it!
So we cried even more.
Nothing would appease us, which meant that Dad felt bad. He had no idea his plan to make a free dinner out of a pet, could go so awry, so he never did it again, and the other chicken was subsequently allowed a longevity a chicken could only dream of.
Our family was good at sourcing free food.
In July the wild brambles, raspberries and rose hips were in the height of their season. With my dad we’d hike into the forest to find them all, an absolute abundance of colour, there for the taking, yet only our family was seemingly interested, or aware.
We’d gather huge amounts, but ate just as many, evidenced by our clothes covered in juice, our hands and lips stained red.
What we didn’t manage to eat, Mum would make into jam, almost enough to see us right through the seasons, until the next picking.
And wild spinach. We knew how and where to find it, yet nobody else seemed at all interested. Wild spinach and watercress heralded the short, but sweet start to summer salads.
Summer holidays trekking in the country
The above heading lends itself to summers spent at a holiday retreat, being pampered with country cooking.
We did none of that, (give or take Sunday walks to Bellfield house where we got things to eat that normally we were not allowed, one scant fizzy drink, and French tea cakes…which was really posh to us), but what we were allowed to do, was to take walks to the nearby burns, a word we Scottish people use for streams or brooks.
There we would guddle (yes it is a word!) for minnows, catching the odd one with our hands, but most of them were much too agile for us.
Still it was fun trying to beat each other to fill our jam jars with cute little fish, which we’d later virtuously return to the water.
Always!
We’d spend hours doing that, knee-deep in water, marvelling at the amazing colors we saw.
And then, lunch!
What lunch? It never occurred to us to bring food because the orchardists always left us plenty of low-hanging fruit…just the right height for us to reach.
Fruit and water cascading over some rocks was our food for the day, food being unimportant because we were totally enthralled in the moments.
Still, there were dangers
We weren’t swimmers, and couldn’t have saved ourselves had we got in trouble. Today, I look back and wonder at our idiocy.
One day we decided to cross a waterfall, small, but a waterfall nonetheless. It was slippery and at one stage I almost fell in, but fortuitously saved myself. How? I have no idea!
Had I not, I wouldn’t be writing here right now. There was an eddy close by that had sucked several young villagers into its arms. We were banned from being anywhere near it. But we were children, and children feel invincible at times.
Still I knew not to go home until my clothes had dried.
And not to tell anyone…yet here am I, sharing it with the world!
The thing is, we were outdoors kids, and along the way of growing up, we worked out over time, what we were capable of, and what we simply were not.
Sure we took risks but they were educated risks, to a certain extent. And when we fell foul of things, we learned from them, and took steps not to repeat mistakes.
We’d climb trees, testing branches for strength, adjusting heights that we deemed safe, we’d ride our bikes down hills knowing the brakes were less-than-perfect, but at the same time we assured ourselves we knew the hills, and how to stop if necessary.
My knees are monuments to some of this knowing!
The fact is we were heavily engaged in self-regulating, knowing all the while the implicit trust our parents had placed on us.
Consequently, we always came back in one piece, bloodied at times, but as intact as adventurous kids can be.
