My mother spent her afternoons in the parks; every day, rain, hail or shine – only fog kept her in. Fog wasn’t good for the chest. She and her sisters met in various parks around the city and we cousins splashed, jumped and snow-ball fought to our hearts’ content; those of us too young for school, until we moved out to the great suburbs on the very edge of civilization and country.

 

Alexandra Park up Denistoun way; The Botanic Gardens in the West-end, with Kelvingrove Park; Glasgow Green and The People’s Palace on the South-side.

 

When we moved to Carnwadric there was the wonderful Rouken Glen Park with its waterfall and wooded paths; the lake had three islands, a motor launch and rowing boats – every trip there was like a full-blown holiday. We’d play crazy golf, swing, twirl on roundabouts, eat in the cafes, feed ducks and swans, fly on the see-saw, hide and seek in the woods, Pooh Stick in the river from the little wooden bridges – all this within walking distance of home, through the remains of the old internment camp.

 

My Aunty Jean had a veranda; now in my mind that was the most exotic thing in my life. And, they lived on the other side of the train tracks; the tracks had long been ripped up but the sleepers were still there. Arden was a much more modern and exciting place to live; oh, the adventures we had sliding down The Red Hill on a piece of cardboard or linoleum. I yearned for Arden, even the name was magnificent, and the fact that it had a ghost-train track and hills put it top of my list along with London and my father’s ferry boat.

 

Everything was outside in my early childhood; being inside was only necessary to prepare for going out, and sleep came and went so quickly that it seemed invisible. Fog, the most magic of all, called to me but my mother pulled me back, always.

Oh, to live in The Faraway Tree; it just wasn’t fair that I ended up in a pokey council flat in Glasgow. My mother was as bossy and complaining as Dame Whashalot but Carnwadric, however much fun we had there, was not a patch on The Land of Do as You Please, or The Land of Goodies or The Land of Presents, now was it? My envy knew no bounds; I could see faeries in the pattern of my Aunty Jean’s living-room carpet, so was always asking if I could sleep there. Our place was boring; everything had flowers on it; I wanted to live in a house with smooth colours and beautiful people – a house with a real potato-masher and a record-player. I wished for modern before I knew what modern was, exactly – I only knew that I didn’t have it.

 

First, we lived in a shop in the Gorbals- just one room; all I remember of it is standing on a settee under the huge window, looking up at lightning flashing across the black sky, Dad behind me – Mum had probably locked herself in a wardrobe. Looking back on this, I should be impressed by the wall-to-wall window; those were the days of tiny square panes of glass. My paternal grandmother, The Dragon, had moved out to the suburbs, to a carbuncle called Carnwadric, growing on the little village of Thornliebank. I was four years old and my brother two, when we went to live with her. I have since learned that there was a serious housing shortage in the 50s, that’s why married couples had to live with parents for so long. My mother told me that she and my father lived with the dragon along with his sister, Jean, and her husband William, when they first got married – it was only a two-bedroom flat!

 

Wullie spent his spare time knitting stripy jumpers and Jean spent all his hard-earned money as fast as she could. The two men would be sitting down to supper when they returned from work; my father, with stew, mince or fish and poor old Wullie had toast n beans! Apparently Aunty Jean said something to Dragon, about my mother showing her up and her mother told her that she was showing herself up. In the end up poor old Uncle Wullie had to eat his supper in the kitchen at the pull-down counter of the dresser. My mother was always great at feeding people and her fridge bulged (though there were no fridges in those days, not in poor people’s Britain).