Around the Rowan Tree, Day 15

It’s odd how things often come in threes, both disasters and triumphs. As far as I was concerned, the next few years became the time of disasters

Alittle further on at the big wrought iron gates of Errol Park Estate, the road divided into two, one fork running north to the brickworks, the other south following the course of the river.

We were lucky in Errol. There was still quite a variety of shops – two butchers, two grocers, a baker, a draper that sold an enormous range of goods, a post office, a hairdresser, a chip shop and two pubs.

We also had a dispensing doctor – everything we needed, in fact. Even today Errol hasn’t changed much but there is no baker or draper any more, the mansion at the foot of the village with its grounds has gone to make way for a housing development and the banker, doctor and headmasker no longer inhabit the same large houses in the village that they once did.

The pram proved to be most useful as well as a pleasure. Because of its large wheels it was possible to push it round the rough farm road and because of its large size I used it when one of the small children was ill as a bed in the kitchen which saved me going up and down stairs. It’s still in use now with the 11th grandchild. Exhausted I had always liked walking and seeing the wild birds, animals and flowers.

Whenever there was the slightest opportunity I would go for a walk round the farm, sometimes very early in the morning and before anyone was up, sometimes even in the middle of the night under the moon and stars when the owl would smooth out of the barn on woollen wings giving me a fright as I passed.

I used time to the best possible advantage. Sometimes I was so exhausted by the time I’d got all the children to bed that I went to bed myself with a lot of the housework undone and then I would get up about two in the morning to do two hours hard work.

What a lot I could get done with no one about, no phone or door bell ringing. I’d go back to bed and when I got up a few hours later tell myself the fairies had been in and done all the work while I was asleep.

One day a friend of mine in Perth was telling me about the keep fit class she had just joined.

“You must come,” she said. “It’s fun. You could do with at least one night out a week.” Ronald thought it a good idea.

“I’ll easily look after the kids,” he said, so I joined. In a short while I had a few going with me from the Errol district. We took turn about driving and it was fun.

Led by a rather beautiful amazon of a girl with a good sense of humour, everyone enjoyed it. There would be about 100 of us, mostly from Perth.

The pianist was good and the tunes lively. Afterwards I and my friends from Errol went for brown bread, cucumber sandwiches and coffee before going home.

Ronald, teasing me, called it the keep fat club, saying that it consolidated what I already had, but agreed it had made a difference to my life.

Perhaps I enjoyed the company of the others as much as anything – an opportunity for chat and an exchange of news. Traumatic Perhaps with having the biggest family I always seemed to have the most traumatic happenings in the week.

“Well, what happened this week?” they would ask as soon as we got out on to the main road. There would always be something to report.

“Do you remember me telling you a fortnight ago that Richard had the chickenpox. Well, the other six have it now.

“I wasn’t going to come tonight but Ronald insisted. They are not all that ill, just fractious and what a problem I have trying to keep the little ones from scratching their spots.”

One of my friends came along next day and spent time helping me with the children.

By the time Kathleen was two, Lindsay had started school. I had now only one at home for the first time for 16 years. And then devastation struck.

It’s odd how things often come in threes, both disasters and triumphs. As far as I was concerned, the next few years became the time of disasters.

First, my beloved mother took a severe stroke. She was approaching 80 years old and had had one or two minor ones in previous years but she had always seemed so young and full of life.

She was always unconcerned about herself and optimistic for my sister’s and my future.

My father called me over one evening in alarm when she took ill. When I arrived I found her in a state of high excitement.

“I think this is it,” she said, “but you’re not to worry. I’ve had a good life and I don’t mind at all.”

After she had said these words the doctor arrived and she was bundled off to hospital.

These were the last coherent words I heard my mother say although she was to live another four years.

My sister, now living in Edinburgh with her husband and two pre-school age children, was as stunned as I was.

For several days mother’s life hung in the balance and then after a brain operation which relieved the pressure, they believed she would live but with much incapacity. Informed My sister travelled through to be with her whenever she could in the first week. Then things settled down a little and I kept Jean informed of mother’s progress over the phone.

Worse devastation was to come. One evening about a couple of weeks after my mother took her stroke, I phoned my sister to give her the latest report.

She sounded more cheerful over the phone. She’d bought a carpet that day for the spare room in the new house they had just bought and she was painting the doors.

She had a bit of a sore throat but she expected it would pass off – she said that it was nothing much.

At six o’clock next morning the phone woke me at my bedside.

In the darkness I picked it up in alarm. Who would phone at this time in the morning – could it be the hospital?

It was Jean’s husband Alan at the other end of the phone. “Jean’s dead,” he sobbed.

I found it extremely hard to take this message in. I just couldn’t believe it.