Gift from the Gallowgate (32 page)

I had asked the clerk in Bruce Miller’s to have it delivered after four o’clock, but said that I had left a key above the door if they came before I managed to get home. When I went
into the living room, I was quite pleased to see that the piano was already there . . . a tasteful walnut, it is the same style as an upright, but not so high. So everything had gone according to
plan . . . or so I thought.

It was two days before I saw our caretaker, who gave me the sad tale. It was the era of the electricity cuts, early seventies when various zones had the power shut off for three hours at a time.
The van had arrived at a few minutes to three o’clock (an hour early but it wouldn’t have made any difference), but by the time they had unloaded it and rolled it inside to the lift,
the few minutes had been ticking away, and the lift ground to a halt just after passing the sixth floor. The Hazlehead area was scheduled to be powerless from three until six, but they hadn’t
known of this.

The alarm bell brought the caretaker, who hand-cranked the lift up almost five floors to the eleventh with great difficulty, then went to his own flat to recover. He had done all that was
needed, so the other two men pushed the piano across to the number marked on the delivery note – only to find that they had come to the wrong flat. They took a closer look at the slip, and
came to the conclusion that they had misread the number. The alarm bell brought a furious response from the exhausted caretaker.

‘I’m not cranking you anywhere else. You’ll have to carry the damned piano down the stairs yourselves.’

‘But we don’t know which floor we’ve to go to.’

When they told him the name on the docket, they had to wait until he finished swearing before learning that they should have gone to the sixth floor. They could understand his anger – they
had only been a short distance away from their target when the lift stopped – so they had no other option but to carry the heavy piece of furniture down the cement stairs, manoeuvring it
round the tight corner at each half landing. At last they tottered on to the sixth floor landing, heaving a sigh of relief at seeing the nameplate and wiping the sweat from their brows as they
waited for someone to answer the door.

Disillusionment came quickly. This Davidson had not bought a piano, didn’t need a piano, didn’t want a heavy great thing like that scraping the tiled floor, so would they please
watch what they were doing? The door slammed in their faces, they appealed to the caretaker, a sardonic watcher, but no amount of persuasion would make him crank them anywhere else.

After a long exchange of colourful words, however, he said, ‘I’ve been thinking. Have you got the right building? It’s easy to mix them up.’ He finally agreed to ring
their shop to check the address.

It
was
the wrong building. Whoever had written out the delivery ticket had written ‘Davidson House’ because of our surname – a common mistake, made by doctors, taxi
drivers and many other deliverymen.

I don’t know what had gone in the shop; I wish I’d been a fly on the wall. Having learned that the two original men were refusing point blank to carry the b–– thing any
farther, the manager and an assistant ‘volunteered’ to do the needful. Seething with resentment when they turned up, they bore the weighty burden down the six flights to ground
level.

Then came the crunch! Because our building was so near Woodend Hospital, it was connected to the same electricity grid . . . which was NEVER cut off! The piano, once installed in our lift,
sailed up as it should have done originally.

By the way, in case anyone is wondering, the tenants of the three other blocks complained bitterly about us not having our electricity cut off, and we were then taken off the hospital grid. Was
this the start of neighbourhood watch?

I did have a little flirtation with a more unusual type of musical instrument – which I’m sure my family was glad came to nothing. It started when we visited one of
Jimmy’s ex-workmates, Sandy, who had found the job of his dreams – a water baillie on Invercauld estate – next to Balmoral. Their house actually looked across the River Dee to the
Castle and his wife, Lil, usually landed a part-time job when the Royals were in residence every August. Employees were expected to curtsey when they met any of the family, and because Lil cycled
to work, she was forced to come off her bike many times during a summer, even if the rule applied only to the first time of meeting.

I remember her once saying ruefully, ‘I feel a right blooming twit.’

Lil and Sandy had two sons, one called Alan, the same as ours. Anyway, their Alan was learning to play the bagpipes, and watching him striding up and down outside their cottage, his cheeks
puffed out, I could picture myself moving just as majestically through the heather with my pipes – tucked under my arm in the traditional style – skirling patriotic Scottish tunes.

Sadly, as with the recorder I tried when a music teacher at Smithfield was teaching my class, I found the chanter a thing of mystery. I never got beyond a painfully slow display of the scale on
both these instruments.

When my first book was published, I was asked by
Yours,
a magazine for the elderly, to give a telephone interview, and after some expected questions, there came one,
which I certainly had not expected. We had established that I had written the book straight on to a word processor; I had written three others, unpublished, by hand before typing them out . . .
several times each.

The question was: ‘If someone were to come to you and say you could have two hours off from your word processor, how would you occupy the time?’

I answered, off the cuff, ‘I’d probably go and play the piano’, but when I had time to think about it, I knew that I wouldn’t
want
two hours off. I love writing
and it’s what I would honestly prefer to do. In fact, I have scarcely touched my piano for a long time now. Just sometimes, if I hear a tune on television, an old favourite or a new one that
has taken my fancy, I sit down for a few minutes to see if I can still pick out a tune by myself.

To return to the ‘tramlines’. I was quite pleased at being ‘promoted’ to a higher class. At least I knew that I’d mostly have well-behaved pupils
for the next two years. There were the odd little hiccoughs, of course, but nothing bad enough to relate, and the time passed quite quickly. The kids were accustomed to my style of working, and I
knew exactly what to expect of each of them. Even better, I didn’t have to worry about having to go back to Primary Three again. I was to be with Fours and Fives permanently. I said goodbye
to this class sadly in the summer of 1972 – it may have been 1971, I’m not too clear on this – after having taught them for three whole years, and sure that I’d never have
such a biddable, hardworking crew again.

At this time, the style of education was undergoing many changes, and a new team-teaching in Primary Seven had started; I’ll explain this shortly. The Primary Four class I was given now
was perhaps not quite as good as my last, but not far off it. They, too, were a lively bunch but they soon got to know how I wanted things done and I quite looked forward to having them for another
year.

One of the team teachers, however, had applied for promotion and was to start at her new school as deputy head in the autumn term, but I could scarcely believe it when Mr Robb asked me if I
would like to take her place. This new style of teaching was still in its infancy, although some of the rough edges had been rubbed off during that first year, so I was somewhat apprehensive. Still
. . . it was a challenge, and challenges should not be ignored.

Now comes the explanation I promised. The team teaching took place in the hall, and the Primary Sevens had been divided into three groups for the three teachers, placed round
the large room, but still leaving the stage free. It wasn’t a case of one teacher, one class, however. The pupils were shared in three-week cycles, thus for the first lap:

After three weeks, it was a case of ‘All Change’, so that, over the entire nine weeks’ cycle, each teacher had a spell with each class for each subject. Clear as mud? It
worked!

The good side of it, of course, was that if there was a disruptive pupil who didn’t like Maths, for instance, you only had him (or her, for they came in all shapes and sexes), for three
weeks and not again for another six weeks for that subject. Of course, you had him/her every day for something, but it wasn’t such a grind. Not only that, as far as the pupils were concerned,
they had three different teachers explaining things to them, which gave them a far better chance of understanding. It sounds complicated, but it ran quite smoothly.

Astute readers may have spotted that one of these classes consisted of the same children I had taken through Primaries Three, Four and Five, although in Primary Seven I only had them for a third
of each day. I have never been able to make up my mind if this was a good thing or not. Having the same pupils for four years means that you get too familiar with them and they with you. Not that
any of them ever took advantage, but, apparently, it was noticeable to others.

A student I had once said that she could pick out the pupils I’d had before because they spoke respectfully to me and never argued. We had been on a coach trip to Craigievar Castle, and
she added that ‘my’ kids spoke ‘properly’ to me . . . in other words, in proper English. Trying to stop children using their ‘Smithfield’ dialect was quite a
stiff job sometimes, but that lot had been well schooled.

To give you an example of what we had to cope with, I had drummed home to one class that people outside Aberdeen wouldn’t understand what they were saying unless they spoke in decent
English, and I was delighted (not the most appropriate word, but you’ll understand what I mean) to see an article in a newspaper about an Aberdeen seaman who’d been having an argument
on board a trawler in Hull with a local man. When he started shouting, strange words that seemed as if he were swearing in a foreign language, his adversary gave him a punch that sent him over the
side of the boat. Tragically, they did not recover the body for some time. Even that story, however, did not get through to the children, who came up with all sorts of reasons for the attack.

‘The other mannie was deef.’ ‘Maybe he
was
sweiring.’ . . . and so on.

What did get through to them came about accidentally. I happened, at one point, to have a student who came from Stornoway. She had great difficulty making herself understood as well as
understanding what they were saying to her. One of the stock excuses for not doing homework was, ‘I didna hiv a pinnel.’ Or, ‘I left my pinnel in my desk.’ This word
flummoxed me at first, too, but it turned out to be just a slovenly version of pencil.

With the poor student having to ask them constantly what they meant, and vice versa, it eventually dawned on them that I had been right. Other people
couldn’t
understand them.

I might also mention here something that I should have spoken of before. A trip to London was arranged in 1971, to see the Tutankhamun Exhibition. I was still teaching younger children at the
time, but when the headmaster asked for volunteers to accompany the group of Primary Sevens, I was one of the six who said we’d like to go. With only twenty-six children booked, this would
have meant each of us having only four or five pupils to look after.

We were expecting the headmaster to pick three or four, but, as he pointed out, it was the first time away from home for most of the children and six teachers wouldn’t be too many. As when
I went to London as a pupil myself, the rule was that one person was allowed free for every ten paying pupils, so only two teachers would qualify for this and four would have to pay the full amount
of travel and hotel charges. To make things fair, however, Mr Robb divided the cost of four between the six of us so that we all paid the same.

We had a most enjoyable week in London, but having to queue from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. to see the Exhibition did take the gilt off the gingerbread. The amazing thing was that not one child
complained at the wait, but they were really too tired to take in what they had come to see. When we came to the souvenir shop, they all wanted to buy something for ‘my ma’.

Everything, naturally, was very expensive, but one of the boys was studying the paper carrier bags emblazoned with the young king’s head and various ancient Egyptian symbols, costing one
shilling each. Very politely, he said to the elegant assistant behind the counter, ‘Twa o’ them bugs, please.’

She looked at me in bewilderment. ‘What does he want?’

‘Two of the carrier bags, please.’

Those pupils also learned by experience.

I thoroughly enjoyed the team teaching, and it was into the New Year before I had the fright that made me apply for a transfer. I did mention earlier that it took ten minutes
by car to get from Hazlehead to Smithfield, and over an hour to go by buses, so I tried to avoid taking public transport for as long as I could in the winter. There always came a time, of course,
when the roads weren’t safe, when the council advised people to leave their cars at home. On one such day, I thought I would try walking to school. It was across town, but not too far, I
thought. The trouble was that the shortest route I could go – through the grounds of Woodend Hospital then wading through drifts on side streets the snowploughs hadn’t cleared –
took me exactly one hour and ten minutes. Not only had it taken longer than going by bus, but I was covered in icy snow and absolutely worn out by the time I reached the school.

On the following morning, therefore, I decided to go by public transport and save myself the hassle. Unfortunately, the storm hadn’t stopped, and as the outlying districts of Aberdeen are
all very much higher than the centre of the town, dozens of buses had got stuck on the hills in various routes, including the bus I took. I had still a good bit to go, so I’d no choice but to
get off and walk – in a blinding blizzard – and arrived for the second day running cold, bedraggled and exhausted.