Never Let the Saucepan Boil Dry Chapter 1: Where the Heffalump Roam

Darkness gave way to light. My oldest memory is of the darkness in the Raigmore car park, lampposts shedding pools of light as I held Dad’s hand. The hospital inside was warm and bright. I remember how happy Mum was to see me, sitting up in bed, as I was to meet my new baby sister, Irene. It was not long before we were all four ensconced in Kinlochbervie again, where Dad was a minister of the Free Presbyterian Church. I was three. Between December 1977 and our leaving in August 1979, I have several memories.

     Kinlochbervie is situated in the far north-west of Sutherland, not far from Cape Wrath in the extreme north-west. It is very beautiful and remote, the weather often harsh. Winter power-cuts were common. I remember a doctor inspecting my ears, and remember being slightly calmed on looking up at a large picture of the Mayflower my parents kept in the sitting-room. A divine light shone on the mainmast, imbuing it with a sense of purpose. If I did not perceive it in quite those terms, I certainly picked up that it was coping with some wild conditions. I enjoyed the detail of the picture as the doctor finished his examination. I was to have six operations involving the insertion of grommets by the time I was nine.

     I absorbed a lot of the Bible stories I was taught at a pre-school age, so that a half-eaten digestive biscuit became Noah’s Ark. I held it up to the painting of the Mayflower, and decided it had a bow, stern and wheelhouse too. A farmhouse set involving a house, farmer, farmer’s wife and many animals became Adam and Eve. Snakes were noticeably absent from this collection.

     The manse was the only building on the hill in that part of the village at that time. The sitting-room tended to be reserved for visitors and Sundays, “the Sabbath” as it was referred to. This room had an open fire, and had the best downstairs views of the country. The rather steep stairs led to the three bedrooms: Dad’s study upstairs later became a fourth bedroom when the new study was built as an extension onto the house downstairs. The bedroom I shared with my sister Irene had curious turquoise designs on the wallpaper, that seemed to go with my plastic turquoise hurricane lantern, which hung above the door. Dad used to knock his head on it when he came in at night to read us our stories. The loft on the top storey could when required disgorge a long metal ladder, the lowest rung just at the head of the main stairs. On a wet day, we had a picnic up there with the teddy bears. I had my first meeting with Pooh, Eeyore and Piglet from the works of AA Milne, together with the “heffalumps” they feared but never materialised, around the same time. The top of the ladder revealed a dark world, a tank gurgling to the side. Left and right of the ladder were two small bedrooms, with skylights letting in truly stunning views of the surrounding country. The light flooding down like an intangible curtain at either end was a vivid contrast with the darkness in the middle.

     I was aware of the house’s function as part of the community. Visitors were frequent. There was a Church of Scotland in Kinlochbervie also, on the other side of Loch Innes. My parents had good relations with the minister, Willie Black. One day I was being taken to Oldshoremore, a very beautiful beach not far from Kinlochbervie, together with his daughter Esther, about my age. Some workmen were treating the road, and had not put up any signs to forewarn approaching traffic. The gulf in the road seemed quite enormous to me. ‘Oh John!’ said Mum to Dad, as he hit the brakes. That was the end of our trip that day.

     Kinlochbervie is mainly a fishing village. I used to love watching the sea on Loch Inchard, and out on the beaches such as Oldshoremore. The sea told me its own stories, building up and destroying, always restless and alive. There was a graveyard near Oldshoremore, with a sandy bank beneath it full of rabbit holes. I would pause to look at the large heavy stones with their grey purpose, before rushing on to the long marram grass and the rocks and the lovely views out to sea. On the Sunday morning, we would often collect a church regular, Mrs MacKay from her house to take her to the service. She often wore a purple hat, which I sometimes saw from the kitchen above the wall like a benevolent shark’s fin, and associated it with purple chocolate wrappers. I remember a small sunken, rotten boat near the church as we stopped in the car. I had a good opportunity to study it while waiting. I thought about the life it had once had, now sinking back into the ground. Perhaps fishermen like James and John had once used it. We had a cattle grid on the entrance to the manse drive, but still sometimes sheep got into the garden. We often chased them out on returning from church on Sundays.

     Dad accepted a call to the FP church in Aberdeen in 1979. This meant a huge change in our circumstances. My parents were concerned as to how I would cope with it, but apparently I said, ‘We can’t stay here forever.’ I had attended the village playgroup, and would have gone to the local primary school. The removal vans towered high as scaffolds in August. As we prepared to move, my imaginative life, already actively developed, helped me cope. I hoped there would be new stories in Aberdeen.