The photo that should be here is the one I have framed on my wall. It is a 1930s print of a mother reading to her young children. She is smartly dressed and the picture of dignity and poise. That was my mother and I loved nothing better than for her to read aloud to us.

My mother’s mother was a Lamont, with blue-black hair; a dear, wise Lady. I remember her quoting "Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne!" I think it was from the French Revolution and maybe, with a name like Lamont, that’s where she came from. I do not know.

Her own father was a foreman in the shipyard in Glasgow and he was shot. It was something to do with the Irish troubles but they made the decision not to tell the children at the time, that the hatred would not be passed down to the next generation. History comes down to us on the tongues of our mothers! She was well read, with a love of books that my mother inherited. My earliest memories are centred around the Good Book, with the wonderful art and colour of those Biblical pictures. On my father’s side I was inspired by the Earth and the majestic horse; those great Clydesdale horses he accompanied, up and down the field, behind the plough.

For me as a child the characters who walked into the Mission were every bit as exciting and colourful as the pictures were. They might just as well have walked off the pages of my favourite books! At the same time my mother brought the books alive, not just the Bible but ballads and poetry sagas. And it was not just us children who loved her to read aloud. My father loved it too. At night, around the fire, Saturday night maybe, daddy home, safe and fed and relaxing after a long week trying to get from market to market for early morning pick-ups, fined for ’speeding’ (doing more than 20 mph!). So the pennies would find their way into the police station; pennies we could ill afford. Only once did I see my mother cry; not a penny for the gas, so bread and jam for us once more. No one knew, because my mother was always turned out like a Lady, in her own make of tailored suit!

I can hear my mother  too, singing softly in the house: Of that Country where we never grow old, of perennial Spring, where the birds ever sing, and nothing would ever grow old.. You have to remember my mother had lost her big brother and sister to the Scarlet Fever. And my father lost a sister in childbirth, and both of them had lived through the First World War. So they felt too near to that Country. Young people too close to death. Oh no, there was little cause for laughter, so we were taught the harsh realities of life from the poems she read. One I will always remember; "A solidier of the Legion..."
 
A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers,
There was lack of woman’s nursing, there was dearth of woman’s tears;                                                
But a comrade stood beside him, while his life-blood ebbed away’
And bent, with pitying glances, to hear what he might say....
"Tell my mother not to weep for me when the troops come marching home again with a glad and gallant tread, but to think of one who loved her and was not afraid to die......" There’s another - not a sister; in the happy days gone by, You’d have known her by the merriment that sparkled in her eye; Too innocent for coquetry-too fond for idly scorning,- Ah friend, I fear the lightest heart makes sometimes heaviest mourning...."

And no, I didn’t look it up and I don’t know who it’s by. That’s just exactly how I remember it, though you may find it a little different if you go searching. The memory of the moment is alive in me because we were soothed and enthralled by it, and still I am comforted always to think of it, though my mother has long passed away.

Other words I remember:

"Then up spake a Scottish maiden, with her ear unto the ground: ’Dinna ye hear it?–dinna ye hear it? the pipes o’ Luknow sound...!!"        Bringing us of course, to our Scottish roots!

I can say with a smile, not all of us were so thrilled with these stories. My big sister, a vivacious redhead so full of life, would say in later years "I thought we’d all be di’ed (dead) in the morning!" But me, I could never have enough of this family scene; my father home safe, my mother in her element. That’s how I will always remember them.

DREAM (January 1999)
John Campbell is staying at the Cottage and his smile reminds me of my daddy’s smile. I went to bed and dreamt of a Christmas Day in London. Even the date was there in the dream: 1938. I would be 9 years old. The snow had come to London. It must have reminded daddy of his home in Scotland. He went down to check on the lorries in the garage, to see they weren’t freezing up. So we followed him down there and he decided to knock a sledge up for us! That smile!! So lovely...

That was the dream but, it really did happen once; another cherished memory from the few short years we had together as a family.