Teatime Tales From Dundee Read online

  Dedication

  To Nora & Charlie;

  Evelyn & Jack;

  dear Aunts and Uncles

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  1 Street Games with Wallace Beery

  2 Verdant Works

  3 James ‘Napper’ Thomson

  4 Spookie Nights

  5 The City Arcade

  6 The City Centre Bar

  7 Radio Days

  8 David Phillips

  9 Street Entertainment

  10 Travelling the Roads to Dundee

  11 Piggyback Flying

  12 A Ghost Story

  13 Making a Living

  14 The Tay Whale

  15 The All-Singing and Dancing Show

  16 The People’s Infirmary

  17 Remembering The Mona

  18 A Safe Seat for Life

  19 The Octocentenary Jamboree

  20 Market Days

  21 Crossing the River

  22 Happy Birthday Beano

  23 The Tattie Gatherers

  24 It Begins with a ‘B’ but it’s Not Butlins

  25 The Wild West Comes to Dundee

  26 Credit Crunch

  27 Travels on a Tramcar

  28 A Family Story

  29 Calling a Spade a Spade

  30 A Close Shave

  31 The Bermuda Triangle

  32 On Yer Bike

  33 Easter Parade

  34 And Finally

  Also by Maureen Reynolds

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  My grateful thanks go to Eleanor and Alistair McRobbie, Pamela Hodge and Carolyn Dwyer, Innes Duffus, the late Miss Japp and Mrs Kiddie, Ann Mitchell, Jessie Robertson, Betty Ellis, Jim Paton, Jack Easton, Maureen Marr, the staff at Dundee’s Local History Library and D. C. Thomson for all their help. I’m also grateful to my family: Ally for his memories of his parents and his cycling days; Alick, Steven and Wendy Reynolds; also George for his info on marathon running; and my brother George Macdonald. I’m also indebted to George Martin and his book Dundee Worthies. Finally, any mistakes in the book are solely mine.

  1

  Street Games with Wallace Beery

  If I have an abiding memory of the seven-week school holiday it is playing on the streets of Dundee. Pouring out of school on the last week of June was similar to escaping from prison. The feeling of joy and childish exuberance at the thought of an eternity of freedom was indescribable.

  The streets, which were noisy at the best of times, were suddenly abuzz with the shouts and laughter from hordes of children.

  The boys played ‘Pinner’, a game that seemed to consist of small pieces of metal being thrown down on the ground. As to the intricacies of this game, I’m afraid the rules escaped me at the time and the years haven’t improved my grasp of the game.

  Football with a tiny, cheap ball was another favourite, as was a great deal of jostling, wrestling and jersey pulling. Chalking up wickets on a wall and playing cricket almost started World War III when the chalk mark on the ball was hotly disputed.

  ‘Eh telling you. The ba’ hit the wicket.’

  Unlike real cricket stumps, which were knocked over when hit, our chalked version remained solidly on the wall.

  Then there were the ‘Pilers’; homemade carts made from empty boxes and four wheels, usually old pram wheels. Dundee, being built on a hill was a great place for scooting down braes with nothing more scientific than a piece of Mum’s washing rope to guide the wheels, and a good pair of strong sandals to act as a brake.

  Playing ‘Chuckies’ was another popular pastime. A pile of small stones was placed on the back of the hand and with a quick flick of the wrist the player had to catch the stones in his palm. This went on until there were no stones left.

  In my opinion, however, the girls had the best games. Stotting a ball was universally popular and the streets resounded to high-pitched chants of:

  One, two, three, O’Leary.

  Eh saw Wallace Beery.

  Sitting on his bum-ba-leerie.

  Eating chocolate soldiers.

  Then there was the ball in the stocking or long sock. My cousins recall playing this game. With each strike on the wall, the stocking got longer and longer. Each convoluted movement was accompanied by:

  Stot, stot, ba’, ba’.

  Twenty lassies at the wa’.

  No a lad among them a’.

  Stot, stot, ba’, ba’.

  Skipping with a rope was another pastime. The number of different manoeuvres needed was something that only girls could get the hang of. I have to admit that I enjoyed the more gentler rope games and not ‘Firies’, where the vicious swish swish of the rope was so hard that it sounded like a whip striking the road. Some girls were able to jump in and out as the rope whirled around them. How they didn’t lose an eye or have a whiplash to their faces was always a mystery to me.

  Playing ‘Boxies’, or hopscotch as it was known in polite circles, was also a great way to spend a whole day. Chalking on the pavements and skimming empty shoe-polish tins towards the squares took a lot of concentration, as did the hopping, jumping and turning, because this game called for a balancing act – again, best suited to girls.

  Both boys and girls played ‘Kick the Can’. In fact if you had a big, burly lad on your team who also owned a pair of tough tacketty boots, then you were made. As he lined up to take an almighty wallop, and if his aim was good, then the can would maybe reach the junction of the street and the Hilltown, where it would roll down the brae. With twenty whooping kids running off to find hiding places before the can was retrieved, it was maybe just as well that there was little traffic on the roads.

  Later, when tired of running up and down after an old can, we would all gather in a line, arms held above our heads in an arch and sing:

  The big ship sails through the alley, alley O,

  The alley, alley O, the alley, alley O.

  Oh the big ship sails through the alley, alley O

  On a cold and frosty morning.

  As the song progressed, a line of kids would go under one of the arches and, at the end of the game, we all stood with our arms crossed over our chests.

  How well I remember the year of the paper parasols. I don’t know who started the trend but in a couple of days nearly every girl in the surrounding streets had one. The idea was simple. A large sheet of paper, preferably wallpaper, was pleated and then pinned up to make a circle. A piece of wood then had a split made at the top to hold the paper and, hey presto, a desirable, designer paper umbrella.

  We paraded around for hours but soon the wind and rain made short work of them and the paper parasols disappeared as fast as they had arrived.

  Meanwhile, the boys had devised a far better toy. After the start of the National Health Service, babies were fed on National Dried Milk that came in tall tins. Before long, some genius thought of punching two holes in a tin and inserting long pieces of string. This meant he or she could walk around as if on stilts, albeit short stilts. Soon we were all asking mothers with new babies to give us their old tins and it was fortunate that there was a baby boom at the time, which meant nearly every child had this wonderful toy.

  Another super game was ‘Skiffies’. We would all gather round a shop window and call out the initials of some product on show. To the request of, ‘Gie’s a skiffie,’ the person who called out, put their hands together and pointed in the general direction of the product.

  If guessed, the chase round some convenient lamppost was both noisy and annoying to the shop owner and our mums because often the chaser caught you by your clothes. It wasn’t the first time someone went home w
ith a hand-knitted jumper in holes and, in some cases, almost disintegrated with wool yarn hanging down in festoons.

  Looking back, I can picture this scene as if it were yesterday. Long summer days in dusty streets with the shadows growing longer as night fell. Afterwards, with all the running and jumping and general mayhem, we would fall into bed and be fast asleep in moments, leaving behind the echo of our voices and pavements covered in chalk, hoping against hope that it wouldn’t rain overnight and wash away all our carefully drawn games.

  Last but not least, none of our playthings cost any money but believe me, they gave us hours and hours of fun and pleasure on the sunny streets of our childhood.

  2

  Verdant Works

  In September 1996, Verdant Works in West Henderson’s Wynd was opened to the public. Acquired in 1991 by Dundee Heritage Trust, they saved a vital part of Dundee’s jute history and brought to life an important part of the city’s involvement with the jute industry.

  As I walked around the cavernous building I couldn’t help but feel how quiet and empty it was and although it depicts an age gone by, nothing in my opinion can ever recreate the atmosphere of a jute mill in its heyday.

  I imagined how bemused my mother and her pals would have been. A job, which to them was a daily grind of hard work in a stoury mill is now a tourist attraction.

  What I remember most of all was the noise. Hundreds of looms clattering away as the weavers stood, hour after hour, with the shuttle, the weft and the warp of the hessian, coping with a pair of looms which needed total concentration. It was impossible to have a conversation with your neighbour because of this noise, and as a result this clamour led to a sign language being used that the workers were experts at.

  Still, the weaver felt fortunate when the looms were working properly. Should the loom break down for some reason then it was the ‘tenter’ who had to sort out the problem. The tenter was a mechanic who fixed the looms, and weavers – who were on piecework – were often at loggerheads with these men, especially if they didn’t sort out the problem quickly, as it could lead to a few hours or worse, an entire morning or afternoon, when the weaver wasn’t earning her wages.

  Apart from the calender machines with their large steamrollers, which finished the cloth off to a smooth finish, the weaving sheds were at the final end of the process as rolls of hessian were disgorged from the looms.

  However, long before the yarn was in the weaver’s shuttle, the jute fibres the hessian had once been, had themselves been through lots of different processes.

  When they arrived straight from the docks, the jute bales were taken to the batching and carding shed where they were sprayed with a mixture of oil and water to straighten and clean the fibres. During Dundee’s whaling history it was whale oil that was used for the batching.

  Another machine then discharged a continuous fibre called ‘sliver’. This was then passed through another machine which made the strand even finer before the roving frames twisted the thread.

  Then it was on to the spinning sheds that were also noisy, dusty places. The roving machines holding hundreds of winding bobbins were manned by women who spent long hot days running up and down the aisles as each bobbin quickly filled with yarn.

  The bobbins would then be wound onto ‘cops’ that would then be fitted into shuttles, which provided the weft thread for the weavers.

  Working in the mills was a low paid job, although the weavers earned a bit more than the spinners, and there were no holidays with pay until well into the 1940s. This meant that families often went hungry until the next pay day after the annual summer break. I remember all too well this time of the year when money was tighter than ever.

  We never had a holiday and it was such a worrying time for Mum, as we had to live for three weeks on one week’s wages.

  When paid holidays finally became law, I remember Mum going down to the mill near the end of the holiday period to collect her pay. What a relief it must have been to her.

  Mill owners lived in large luxurious houses while their employees lived in damp, overcrowded, slum housing. Did they never give a thought to the workforce’s terrible poverty and atrocious living conditions?

  It seems not. Instead of providing better wages, the owners ploughed money into the railroads of America and the beef ranches of Argentina; buying shares in the wealth of other countries whilst ignoring the grinding poverty around them.

  Oh, I know a lot of them were philanthropists, spending huge sums of money on various institutions in the city, like the Caird maternity wing and numerous other donations to the Dundee Royal Hospital, plus other many bequests like Baxter Park, the Caird Hall and Marryat Halls. And I dare say a hardworking city was grateful for their gifts.

  However, these donations and gifts bypassed my mother and her pals, Nan, Bella and Nellie who all worked in the South Anchor jute mill in Anchor Lane, which was situated at the rear of the Verdant Works. Athough the demise of the jute industry lay many years into the future, the end did come eventually. The last cargo of jute arrived from India on board the ship Banglar Urmi in October 1998 and it heralded the end of an era.

  Mum did enjoy her work because it brought great friends and a spirit of camaraderie to her life.

  As I strolled around the Verdant Works sixty years later, was that cacophony of noise a far distant echo from the golden age of jute? Or was it the bemused mill workers laughing at the thought of their daily grind now being turned into a tourist attraction?

  Now, of course, with the passage of time, it’s fitting that part of our historic past is being preserved for future generations and it’s right that young people can see for themselves the changes in work and conditions over the century, and can see how people, perhaps their ancestors, coped with hardship, poverty and the hard grinding work in the many jute mills of Dundee.

  It is maybe wrong in the modern world to be aggrieved at the jute owners for their lack of concern for ordinary men and women who helped make their wealth. Still, I’ve often thought that these owners who lived in their palatial homes, their ivory towers, never knew that mill women such as Mum, Nan, Nellie or Bella ever existed.

  But I’m afraid that was their loss.

  The Weaver’s Lament

  The weaving looms clatter in a tumult of noise.

  Strident, mechanical noises

  That numb her brain and silence her tongue.

  Questions are posed in sign language

  As her neighbour asks the time.

  Dear Lord it’s only half past nine.

  Here comes the gaffer, a thin joyless guy,

  Stalking down the aisle

  Like a grey thundercloud.

  He’s looking for skivers and broken-down looms,

  His face etched with pain

  From his varicose veins.

  Only eight more hours till the end of the shift.

  The looms will then shudder into a silence so complete

  That the canopy of cobwebs

  Stop quivering in the dusty corners.

  This heavenly peace

  Like a prisoner’s release.

  3

  James ‘Napper’ Thomson

  James ‘Napper’ Thomson was a native of Lochee and owner of a coach hire company and emporium. In 1945 he started his car and garage business in Kirk Street, a business that was to grow over the next few years. A shrewd businessman, he had many interests.

  In our house, and like most of the population of Dundee, holidays in the 1960s were mostly always taken in this country. There was no fancy foreign travel or visits to exotic overseas locations.

  Before the Dundee holiday fortnight, we would visit Napper Thomson’s emporium in South Road, Lochee, and hire one of his caravanettes.

  Packing four children, two adults, clothes and food into the caravanette took a lot of careful planning, which always went awry a couple of days into the holiday.

  The caravanette wasn’t a huge vehicle, but it was possible to stand upright becau
se the roof had a wonderful striped contraption that lifted like an awning.

  And so we would set off for glamorous locations like Oban, Fort William or some other spot on the west coast.

  As we bowled merrily along, it was with a feeling of freedom that we could stop anywhere on the road and cook a meal on the miniscule cooker.

  If the weather was nice we could sit outside with our meal, but if it was raining, which it was more often than not, we all would crowd round the tiny table and try to dodge each other’s elbows.

  The sleeping arrangements were haphazard to say the least. As there didn’t seem to be enough beds for everyone, I managed to squeeze in beside the children but my husband slept on the floor or stretched out on the front seats of the driving cab. That was until he discovered the pull-out hammock a couple of feet from the roof. Getting into it took all the patience of a contortionist but as we settled down for the night, he seemed as snug as the proverbial bug.

  Now on this particular holiday, the weather was more like winter than summer and in the morning he was so cold that he nearly froze to the roof. That was the end of the hammock and it was back to the lottery of squeezing into a corner and trying to get a good night’s sleep.

  One holiday I’ll never forget was in Oban.There had been a hurricane in the Caribbean and the west coast of Scotland got the tail end of it. I remember hanging a sheet out to air on a makeshift rope and it disappeared, sailing over Oban Bay like a sail without a ship. I almost cried because it was brand new and a bonny blue colour. The kids however, were ecstatic at the sight as it flapped like a gigantic bluebird towards the horizon.

  The wind howled all night and the next morning we awoke to a scene of devastation, with overturned caravans littered all around us. Fortunately, it was a small privately-owned site and as all the caravans were empty, no one was hurt. For some unknown reason, we had stayed upright, probably due to the weight inside that had anchored the caravanette to the ground. Then we had the pleasure of the campsite toilet before leaving and had to wash in freezing cold water as the hot water system hadn’t been switched on. The old man in charge of this small site was apologetic, but it didn’t pay to switch on the hot water until the site was full, he said.