Fly cemetery’s modern moniker and oil support hulks at port signs of the times

The Doyenne came home from visiting a friend who sent me a fly cemetery to have with my afternoon, after-walking-hamish, cup of tea. How many readers know that I’m talking about those delicious, gooey, raisin-filled, buttery pastry top and bottom, sugary, cholesterol sins?

I remember going into a baker’s, pointing to a plate of fly cemeteries under the glass counter and saying: “I’ll have one of those.”

“A fruit square?” said the lassie behind the counter, helpfully – looking at the grey hair.

Was this another example of political correctness gone mad?

It was no use remonstrating with the young lady.

She would never have understood what I was blethering on about.

I have to accept that the world moves on and I appear not to be keeping up with it.

Anyway, if I remember right, it was a fly rectangle.

In one family they were known as elephants’ toenails. Confronted with this alarming concept, I remember phoning the late Edzell baker Sandy Robertson (locally known as Sandy Robertson OBE – Only Baker in Edzell) to see if I could get a definitive explanation of the term.

Sandy knew nothing about elephants’ toenails but could tell me that in his bakery the traditional fly cemetery was made with currants, and a fruit slice with sultanas.

Elephants’ toenails sound pretty unappetising, but I’d have been even less ready to tuck into my fly cemetery if I’d remembered about the lady who would ask her baker for a dung midden.

It was watching the young Orkney farmer shearing sheep on the TV programme This Farming Life and saying how much he enjoyed the shearing, that brought back a flood of memories.

I’ve written before about the Whitson family holidays when I was a youngster, caravanning for a month at Leckmelm Farm three miles below Ullapool.

One year the shearing started during the local primary school holidays and the farmer’s son and I went up to join in the fun and get in the way.

We must have got there about the time they broke off for lunch, for I remember the wives arriving with baskets of doorstepsized sandwiches and thermoses of hot, sweet tea. Afterwards, us two boys were put to work fetching and carrying and collecting all the stray bits of wool.

The men worked tirelessly, clipping with the old-fashioned hand shears which they sharpened regularly. The fleeces were put

into tall sacks and we boys had to get in and jump up and down on the wool to stuff as much as possible into each sack.

We were put to work collecting wood for an enormous bonfire. Dusk was falling when the wives arrived again with sandwiches and tea. It had been a long time since lunch and everyone was ready for something to eat. We all sat round the fire and I’ve no doubt a bottle was produced and drams passed round.

My other memory of the day is of the bull in the neighbouring field which was so unpredictable it was fitted with a leather cap covering its head and eyes so that it couldn’t see where or who it could charge. We boys were warned not to go anywhere near it. I didn’t need to be told twice.

Ferryden grew up as a fishing village on the south side of the River South Esk, opposite the north quay of Montrose Harbour.

Peter Anson in his Fishing Boats And Fisher Folk On The East Coast Of Scotland wrote that in the 17th and 18th Centuries up to 500 fishing boats were engaged in Montrose and Ferryden in the herring, cod and ling fishing.

By the 1950s, the numbers were down to three or four moored off Ferryden pier.

When I was a youngster, the largest vessel coming into Montrose was the beerie or beer boat, Lochside II, a coaster which for 30 years carried Montrose beer from the Lochside brewery situated at the top of Brechin Road, to Newcastle.

In the 1970s, the river channel was dredged by Montrose Port Authority and an oil support base created on Rossie Island.

The port is a busy place again with oil support vessels, fishing boats and leisure craft, and general cargo vessels. The Lochside would have been dwarfed by the oil support boats that use the port now. Ferryden’s shore used to be lined with the fishermen’s black, tarred net sheds all of which are gone.

To an outsider its architecture and layout is clearly that of a former fishing village. The last domestic signs of its past now are the half-dozen washing lines on endless pulleys sticking out over the shore to save space on land.

‘A fruit square?’ said the lassie behind the counter, helpfully

To Montrose Port. Picture by Angus Whitson. SUBSTANTIAL SHIPS: The wee beer boat Lochside II would be dwarfed by today’s visitors