Posted in Nostalgia at 10:00 am on 31 December 2008
Got your steak pie, black bun and shortbread at the ready have you?
Me neither – except for the shortbread. (I was given a tin of shortbread as a Christmas present. It was for the tin really; I have a small collection of nice tins and this, a good example, was one of five tins I was given this year. Three even had things in them.)
Despite the tradition – which the good lady’s family used to uphold – there will be no steak pie at Son Of The Rock towers this New Year. I haven’t knowingly eaten meat from a cow or bull ever since I heard about BSE. Nor will there be black bun: I’ve never tasted black bun in my life. Were it not for The Broons I doubt I’d have heard of the stuff.
We now have to prepare for “The Bells.” The house is supposed to be clean and tidy; lots of hoovering and dusting to be done. Then we’ll lay out the booze, shortbread and cherry cake in case there’s a first foot.
For the last few years we’ve had some of our sons’ friends around to bring in the New Year but they may be going to someone else’s this time around.
Is it my imagination or is Hogmanay TV now utter rubbish? It was fine when we had Scotch And Wry but Rikki Fulton has long since gone to the great Last Call in the sky and taken I M Jolly with him. Instead we’re stuck with the BBC Scotland-given-right to watch Only An Excuse? for the single laugh it will provide and the awesome naffness of the show that ushers in the New Year – usually with an inappropriately dressed Jackie Bird, some pretty crap Scottish entertainers desperate for the exposure plus an extremely po-faced fiddler and an accompanying accordionist. But STV’s efforts are usually even worse.
I suppose everybody is too busy to notice. There are more organised events than there were in my youth. Edinburgh and Glasgow’s Hogmanay dos are no longer the only ones. They even had one in Kirkcaldy one year but I think they’ve given that up.
This New Year, what with Credit Crunch and recession, is likely to be a sickly child. Not much to celebrate really.
But celebrate we will. It’s what we Scots do to light up the dark winter and forget the troubles of the world for one night.
In The Guide part of the Guardian on Saturday Charlie Brooker gave a most eloquent and refined tribute to the man and his collaborator Peter Firmin’s genius for story telling.
I was sad to hear this morning of the death of Oliver Postgate, who, due to the animated films he produced for television in the 1960s, was one of the subliminal influences on my youth.
He is perhaps most famous for Bagpuss and The Clangers but my personal recollection of his best work is of Noggin The Nog, one of whose characters, Nogbad The Bad, provided the nickname for a teacher of French at my school. Its source material, Norse sagas, made it somehow exotic. The sonorous voice-over at the beginning only added to its charm.
His films, made in collaboration with Peter Firmin, were understated, gentle, but also quietly subversive and the animation technique in the early works – Ivor The Engine as well as Noggin – while apparently basic, was expressive.
With The Clangers he entered all our subconsciouses – what a delightful, surreal world that was.
In these days of shoot-em-ups and CGI his work maybe seems anachronistic; but children of all ages everywhere would surely still respond to it.
Today, sadly, Woolworths went into administration. This looks like the demise of one of the fixtures of British High Streets (though the company started in the US) since ever I can remember. 99 years in fact. Some of their original shops were Art Deco too.
Another source of sadness is that doctorvee works part-time in the Kirkcaldy branch, so it’s like a personal blow.
It is the latest, but will not be the last, victim of the credit crunch. The company is probably viable on a day to day basis but its creditors wanted their money back. Since this has forced Woolies into administration they will now most likely not get it (or at least not all of it.)
There had been attempts to sell it to someone else for £1 and they would take the debt over, but these have fallen through.
Most likely the immediate reason for today’s administration is that the staff were due to be paid tomorrow and the money wasn’t readily available for that; or their bank (Barclay’s) wouldn’t make it available.
Ironically, Woolies’s cash flow was probably quite good this week as they have had a 20% off offer on everything (only 10% on DVDs and electrical goods.) The Kirkcaldy store has certainly been busy. Yet I suppose these moneys would not have got through the system in time to prevent the administration.
While supermarkets have been expanding into most product areas and therefore undermining them and the rise of £ shops undercut them, Woolies was still the only place in the High Street where you could be sure of buying certain items – ironmongery and sewing thread spring to mind here and in Kirkcaldy their selection of sweets was greater than their competitors – so it will certainly be missed.
Some stores may be saved but most will soon have disappeared.
Yesterday, walking in Kirkcaldy town centre, the unmistakable smell of linseed hit my nostrils.
This reminded me of how, when I was young and whisky was being produced there, the air in Dumbarton at certain times was full of the smell of malt. It still takes me back whenever I get the merest hint of malting out on passing a distillery.
Kirkcaldy was once famous for its particular “queer like smell”, but now, since the demise of the linoleum industry, I detect it only rarely – perhaps when the ground has just become damp after a drier spell, but I’m not really sure why. The land where the factories were sited is probably saturated with the stuff.
Nairn’s (as Forbo?) still, I believe, make Cushionflor (sic) in Kirkcaldy but that doesn’t require the quantities of linseed that linoleum did – and many fewer workers. Apparently it’s great stuff against MRSA and other hospital bugs, though. Fantastic.
Forbo also sell something called Marmoleum now, though, which seems to be a linoleum derivative. Nairn’s erstwhile main factories in the town have, however, been demolished. There was a hint that a new swimming pool might be built where they were sited but the council has opted for a location near the promenade.
The malt smell in Dumbarton has also vanished – forever it would seem, as the distillery which spewed it out is defunct and it too is for the most part demolished. Its landmark tower survives, if decrepitly, but what use will be found for that in these uncertain times is problematic.
Sadly, those now growing up in both towns won’t have that olfactory memory to bring everything back whenever they catch a stray whiff in adult life.
In Dumbarton when I was growing up I can remember branches in the town of the British Linen Bank, the Glasgow Savings Bank, the National and Commercial Bank (itself previously merged from the separate National and Commercial banks,) the Bank of Scotland, the Clydesdale Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland. Possibly the Co-op ran a banking service in its main store and there would have been the Post Office Savings Bank. In addition there were various Building Societies – though some of them were run out of solicitor’s offices. This was in the days when a lot of working people didn’t have bank accounts! (If that was because they didn’t trust banks with their money it now turns out they were probably right to be wary.)
With the Lloyd’sTSB – HBOS merger that will bring the number down to three banks plus whatever Building Societies are there now.
Will depositors’ or investors’ money be safer as a result? Given recent events who can tell?
In Kirkcaldy, where I live now, the merger might mean two bank outlets – which are quite often queued out as it is – may be replaced by one. I hardly think the service will improve.
I have also noticed recently some Royal Bank poster adverts trumpeting the fact that they will be open on Saturdays. I believe one of the English banks is doing something similar. They’re making a virtue out of going back to something they ought never to have abandoned in the first place????
For, yes, in those days when I was growing up, banks opened on a Saturday – at least in the mornings.
