Around the Rowan Tree, Day 49

Have one glass and all is contentment, care has gone,” said Ronnie

The wine, of course, had to obey the Customs and Excise guidelines, not over 15% alcohol or extra tax is charged. Then it had to have the right image.

“We want to get away from the chateau image, this swilling-in-the-mouth-and-spitting-out snobbery of it all, which grape, which year, which particular wine-growing area,” said Ronnie and Judith.

“This is to be something different, young, fun, to be enjoyed, good for you, simply the health-giving properties of berries and what could be more natural than collecting the berries and fruit ourselves from the countryside,” they added.

“And the image we want for it also is Scottish,” said Judith. Everything was discussed and thought about down to the last detail on the labels. Bottles were carefully chosen, a different label for each fruit, flower and leaf.

In the beginning I helped them quite a bit. I was so enthusiastic about the wine myself that it wasn’t difficult to make potential customers enthusiastic too.

Contentment

Not long before they began selling it commercially I asked Ronnie what he was going to call the wine. “We’ve thought long and hard about that, Mum. Castle’s certainly not going to be on the label. How about Bothy?”

“Don’t think so Ronnie,” I replied, “it makes it sound too lowly.”

Then he came out with titles, like “Stinky stuff”. It was all in vogue amongst the young at the time to disparage instead of praise.

“No,” I said. “You may sell to the young but you certainly won’t sell to my age group with names like that and you say you want it to appeal to all.”

One day the kitchen door burst open. I was busy pouring warmed sugar into huge pots of bubbling raspberries. My annual jam making. “What about care no more?”

“What are you talking about?” I asked Ronnie. “The name of the wine,” he carried on. “Well,” he spelled it out, “Cairn O’ Mohr. Remember I told you there’s a place in the middle of the red Australian desert called that. I named it.” ‘Cairn O’ Mohr’.”

I mouthed the words over to myself, thought about them. “Have one glass and all is contentment, care has gone,” said Ronnie.

“That’s rather good. I kind of like that,” I said. Ronnie, I think, was rather surprised at my approval.

“Yes, I like that, it’s clever, different, has a ring to it, a Scottish ring.” And so Cairn O’ Mohr was born.

To begin with, life was fraught with difficulties. There had to be a way found of selling it to the wider public. Fortunately, Michael had a friend looking for a job at the time who turned out to be an excellent salesman. Cairn O’ Mohr began to get known.

Things went vastly wrong sometimes. One time I remember a big batch of wine that had been bottled had started to referment. I’ll never forget Judith’s reaction. “It will just all have to go back into the casks.”

It was 10 o’clock at night when they realised the predicament, but with good humour and resolve they began the huge task, working well into the night.

All the time, they were learning. Once a party of international experts came to give them advice and every bit of information was noted. But again experience was the best teacher. A lesson once learned through experience was never forgotten.

Determination

People still say to me from time to time, when they learn of the size of my family: “Seven children, how on earth did you manage?”

I reply: “It’s not difficult, really. They’re not all babies or infants at the same time and the first half of the family help to bring up the second half.”

Time whizzes by, too. It seemed no time at all from when I was pushing my most welcome and wanted sixth baby in the new pedigree pram up the hill to Errol to when he was a tall slim youth of 17 with reddish brown hair and the blue eyes of his father.

He had also his rather nervous disposition along with the same determination to take no notice of an inherent condition but just barge on regardless.

Like his older brother Ronnie, a lot of Lindsay’s teenage leisure time was spent up in the village with his friends.

From time to time he got into a bit of bother along with the other boys. Daring ideas were hatched out on the school bus but they were all country boys and there was no serious trouble.

Lindsay had actually stayed on a little longer at school than the rest of them and got qualifications that would have taken him to university. But like the others, he wanted to get on with life, have the adventures his brothers were having.

It wasn’t long until he was up in Richard’s flat in Aberdeen and had got an oil-related job. He got good pay for a young lad. I felt it was too good – it would give him wrong ideas of how hard it could be to make a living. It did, however, give him the wherewithal to travel and that’s what he wanted to do.

He took full advantage of the years of cheap travel, as so many other young people were doing at the time, and, of course, being young, spurned the idea of package holidays; they were for tourists, the elderly.

The young didn’t see themselves as tourists. They were explorers of a world opening out for them. How different it was for my generation.

It was difficult for us to travel abroad, especially if we were teenagers in the aftermath of the Second World War.

For me, on the meagre wages of a nurse, it was impossible to save enough to go anywhere apart from bicycling holidays around Scotland.

Ronald and I liked the idea of young folk exploring and encouraged it when we could. They always knew that they could come back here if things went wrong and get in touch at any time.

That none of them ever did get in touch when they were in trouble astounds me. Quite often, they did run into real difficulties but always managed to arrive home with rucksacks of dirty washing and rolls of toilet paper.

Adventure

We didn’t always like their mode of transport but usually didn’t know about it until afterwards. It was always the cheapest. The Magic Bus from London to Greece for £25 was an example.

I wasn’t told much about it before Lindsay left but afterwards, when I was told, I thought the only thing magic about it was that it ever reached its destination at all. But arrive it did.

“The whole journey is quite an adventure,” Lindsay told me after coming home from one of these trips. “See when we crossed the border into Yugoslavia, the Brits among us didn’t know what was happening. Half the Yugoslavs got off the bus and handed us bags stuffed with jeans.

“Then the guards got on. Every one was searched but we were okay. We were allowed to carry more or less, what we wanted to. The Yugoslavs were not allowed to bring jeans into the country. After the search, the guards got off.

“A bit further down the road the young Yugoslavs got on again and reclaimed their plastic bags.”

More tomorrow.