PAST
TIMES….
WINTER….I arrived at Aberlour Orphanage in January early 60’s. I arrived in
the dark and woke up in the dark. I wasn’t scared in the morning… well not
as scared as I had been the night before and the night before that. As dawn
broke I looked outside and the world was white.. somehow I knew everything was
going to be ok. I was six years old and for the first time in my life I had
slept in a warm bed. To me that was heaven on earth. It’s funny how it’s the
small things that make all the difference…a warm bath, flannelette nightdress
and a real bed with springs and all! Then I realised that I wasn’t alone…
lights were switched on and girls about the same age as myself jumped out
of beds that were lined against each wall of a large room, later I found out
that the room was called a ‘dormitory’. They all seemed to know each other.
I remember I wasn’t scared, because they didn’t appear scared…they laughed
and shouted and called each other by name. They all busied themselves getting
dressed and they appeared to know what they were doing, so I got dressed too,
and did what they did. Then at the end of the dormitory, a door opened and the
housemother appeared, she was called Miss Thain . She came up to me and took me
to the bathroom where I got washed in ‘Carbolic’ soap and brushed my
teeth, with a tin of solid pink toothpaste. It tasted horrible!
After getting dressed I sat at a window and looked longingly at the snow…how
much I wanted to get out to play in it…but not yet. Breakfast was ready. Long
rows of tables that had been pre-set by the children as part of their
‘duties’. I had never eaten breakfast before or sat down at a table to eat
it. For the first time I realised how many children there were, they all knew
where to sit, but I held back until I was told which seat was to be mine. A huge
silver trolley arrived and breakfast was served from it. All I can remember is
the porridge with creamy horrible milk! I couldn’t eat it, it was too rich for
me. My stomach had been starved of food for weeks and it couldn’t tolerate the
’cream’. There was a ’napkin’ on the table though for each of us, in
pink gingham with a wooden holder. I used it later to hide stuff I didn’t
like!
After breakfast my first stop was a haircut…off came the long hair and
behold a ‘pudding basin’ style. Very French now, but back then it was
a distinguishing mark of a kid from the ’Orphanage’. The first time I looked
in a mirror I didn’t know it was ‘me’! I don’t think I had ever seen
myself in a mirror before, but I had some sort of recognition of ‘myself’
and the image that came back at me wasn’t it. I should have been
‘prettier’ but the short haircut made me feel as if I wasn’t me.
Next in the ‘procedure’ was clothes. I was taken through a stone floored
hall, through a red carpeted corridor and upstairs to the clothing room
Three of everything… navy knickers, skirts, vests, and the ubiquitous
gaberdine coat and brown Clarke shoes. There was a seamstress -(can’t remember
her name). She fitted me out for pinafores- all in tweed.. itchy horrible tweed.
I had to kneel on the floor to get the ‘right length’ the
pinafore had to touch the floor when I knelt down so that when I stood up they
reached just below the knee! Anything else was ‘indecent’.
Anyway thus fitted and after being medically examined I was allowed out.. what
joy! Sledging, down the slope outside St Drostan‘s my wellies stuffed with
snow… my tiny feet frozen! It was exhilarating. Until I had to come
inside and defrost them on the radiators.. The pain after the fun!
Other winters gave me Christmas. The ‘Big Hall’ Santa Clause bringing us all
one present. Sitting in a circle singing ‘Jingle Bells’ waiting until it was
my turn to go up to Santa and get my present. I got a doll, no surprise there. I
wasn’t too keen on dolls. The next Christmas I got a book. That was the start
of my love of reading. Reading brought me into an imaginary world where I could
be whoever I wanted to be…become ‘someone else’. Not that I really wanted
to be someone else…but I could in the books I read I could fly, and I could do
magic. Magic…was always a possibility I believed in… even now as a mother
and grandmother I still believe in that possibility!
There were trips out to Elgin and the pantomime. On the bus travelling there we
would sing…
‘There is a happy land far far away, where we get bread and jam everyday,
bacon and eggs we never see, dirty water for our tea that’s the way it’s
going to be in…Aberlour Orphanage. The words never made sense to me…still
don’t!
There were duties all year round, shoe polishing 30 or 40 pairs, table setting,
floor polishing with dusters on our feet covered in ‘Beeswax’ yellow
horrible stuff. Trying to make fun of it, slipping and sliding… laughing.
Pocket money.. given on a Saturday Going down the ‘village’ spending
it in the corner shop. Getting a little bag of sweeties, and handing the bag
over until the evening when we went to the pictures. Walking there in
‘crocodile fashion’ then going in ‘house by house’. The first cine film
I saw was ‘Battle of the River Plate’. I sat on the hard wooden chair and
didn’t understand what it was all about. Later I saw ‘Oliver Twist’ and
the cine film ground to a halt. We had to go back to bed. I watched the whole of
that film years later…
SPRING
Spring was fun…tadpoles and newts. I brought back some newts. Took them back
to the room in a jar.. they escaped found- them dead a week later in someone’s
shoes!. Long walks to various places. Fairy Hill, Primrose Woods, Skeletons
Graveyard, The Triangle, The Moors…
Rounders in the ‘Big Field’. Sports days. Walks to Ben Rinnes and Ben Agen.
Wild Roses… the ‘smells still lingers’! Soukie Souries.. Small
leaves we ate for their ‘sour taste’.
Grass cutting, rolling in in it. Covering ourselves with the stuff! ‘Ribies
with their small dark pink flowers, profligate where we lived. Bringing
them back in posies. Swimming… costumes made of ribbed smocking, that filled
up with water.
School…Miss Carey. My first teacher. Singing ‘Pretty Pretty daffodil
standing on the windowsill, won’t you show your yellow frill…yes I will said
daffodil‘! Miss Carey bringing the class to her house in the village and
giving us orange juice and biscuits. Making daisy chains on her lawn.
Then as I grew older and moved on a bit my teachers were Miss Gordon, and then
Miss Beattie. Coming first in the class, not that I was brainy or anything, but
I liked reading! My first school prize… a book by Enid Blyton.
Learning to knit…a long scarf in plain and purl! Too big for a giant
with lots of dropped stitches! Being good and going to the headmaster across the
playground with the register.. a gold star in my workbook!
SUMMER
‘Wild raspberries, blaeberries from the Moors. Blue and red covered mouths.
‘Hopeman… holidays on the beach…Brownie cameras… SR toothpaste in a
tube! ( I bought it with my pocket money!) ‘Highland Games…locally!
Summer dresses, change of clothes. Drindl skirts, a change of shoes…sandals
still ‘Clarke’s and still brown! Visits from my ‘mother’ petite and
pretty … with a dark skirt with roses all around. Fancy dress,who
was covered in cocoa? Me that’s who! I was a ‘Hawaiian girl with grass
skirt, but my skin was too pale…hence the ‘cocoa’. I didn’t win!
Not long after I got measles… and went into the ‘infirmary. This was almost
like a hospital. Kids were isolated so that ‘bugs’ didn’t spread. I
remember as I got better being bored and playing ‘Tarzan’. Swinging from the
curtains until the whole pelmet fell down on my head!
AUTUMN
Halloween… what I remember…sticky pancakes in rows. Having to eat them with
hands behind your back! Bobbing for apples in zinc baths! ‘Monkey Nuts’
thrown across the room. (Not PC … but do I care!) Walking through
‘Autumn Leaves’. The change in colour from ‘Green to Gold to Brown’ The
beauty of the world around me. The ‘Loss of Summer’ and the onset of
‘Winter‘. I recognised even as a ‘child’ That ‘everything dies’ but
comes back in it’s right time and place.
To everything there is a ‘season’ … a purpose under heaven…a time to
laugh, a time to die, a time to weep a time to cry…but when ‘Pandora opened
the box and let loose all the ‘ills’ that would inflict ‘mankind’ the
last thing left in the ‘box’ was ‘HOPE!
I believe in ‘HOPE‘…some may scorn about that, but I don’t!
May you all have HOPE in your hearts. And may I say …the past doesn’t
equal the future!
If you wish
to share a few of your memories about your time at Aberlour then please send
then to me.
Page
updated Tuesday August 21, 2007
