Animals

I lived above Andrew Woodcock in mentioned  78, Lochee Road. I live near Aberdeen now, but last time I drove down Lochee road, the old tenement had been demolished. Andrew's brother Stuart was my pal during that time and my brother Andrew B was Andrew W's pal. All the "noisy" families lived over one another. Read more......

I was brought up in Cherryfield Lane, one memory I have is of Harry Deaks horses coming home from a hard days work on the building sites, sometimes a horse would slip on the cobbles and crash to the ground, this terrified my pals and me to see the horse struggling to get up, we thought the only safe place to get away was to run up three storey's in the building opposite. The year would have been in the 1940s and I would be about six or seven.

My grandparents ran the Dairy at 6 Shepherds Loan. When they moved there as a married couple in 1906, they were cowfeeders i.e. they had cows in milk and sold milk round the doors. Then they had a byre and then "larries" and his brother had a dairy in Strathmartine Rd., with the first milk lorry in Dundee a model T Ford, I could write a lot more and have done so in my series of "Poems and Stories". My other grandfather was stage manager at the Palace and at the King's Theatre in the 1914-18 war.

A seagull - fancy free
Requested directions to the sea
To see what he'd never seen before
Perhaps travel to a sandy shore

 Read more......

I have read that Blackness Library is celebrating its centenary this year and that members and former members are being invited to offer special memories associated with the library. I have one incident with which I was directly linked and which caused something of a surprise at the library in the 1940s. Whether anyone else still linked to the area remembers it I am not sure, but I believe it was the talk of the Sinderins at the time. Read more......

As I sat on my dad’s knee
Many stories he told me
They were always of the same wee thing
Everyone different, made my heart sing. Read more......

Deserted natural habitats
Abandoned sea shores
Where have all the gulls gone?
Flying to fast-food stores! Read more......

In yonder years of long ago
We found a tram went to and fro
The horse-drawn tram a feature
Was a tram pulled with creatures Read more......

I was born in D.R.I. on 27th June, 1931. I lived at 2 Park Lane with my six brothers and sisters in a one room attic. My father was in the army at outbreak of war. My mother and all of the family were sent to Banchory for the remainder of the war. It was a cultural shock for us. We had never seen cows in a field. We lived on a farm for six years. We were so happy then. We did not want to come home. We cried all the way back to Dundee.

I have a memory of being marched from Hawkhill school down to East Station, to be evacuated to Montrose 1939. At 8 years of age I also remember along the roadside of Dudhope Castle, there were monkeys and parrots in enclosures. I still carry the scar at the age of 76, having been nipped by one of the monkeys.