The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Magnifying glass required for his letters
“COURIER COLUMNIST Bill Howatson wrote recently of his illegible writing and his efforts to improve,” a Craigie reader notes. “All I can say is: ‘Join the club!’ My writing was never good. Even at primary school, I was the despair of my teachers and scored low marks for writing because my brain was always ‘way ahead of my pen’.
“Later, my writing deteriorated even further when I had to scribble grocery lists down fast as an errand boy taking orders for my dad’s grocery shop, then as a stu- dent trying to keep up with fast-talking lecturers and, finally, as a journalist alternating between shorthand and longhand.
“My script became so impenetrable to all but myself that our younger daughter said there was no point in my sending her holiday postcards; she could not read a word!
“Bad writing runs in the family. My Uncle John’s writing was worse than mine and we had problems with all his letters, but the crunch came when he served with the Desert Rats in NorthAfrica during the Second World War. Some bright spark came up with the idea of aerograms which saved airspace by reducing foolscap pages to a quarter of their size.
“The arrival of one of John’s aerograms heralded a family deciphering session round the kitchen table and the use of a powerful magnifying glass.
“If John had been used to copy topsecret messages during the war, there’s no way the Germans would have been able to read his writing and the war would have been over long before 1945!” Sea in October. Here’s the proof (see picture above)!”
Still on the subject of openair pools, Reg Mulheron of Tayport recalls a family holi- day to Crail with the caravan in the late 1960s.
“My middle daughter Anne was a keen and very good swimmer,” he says. “She took her swimming costume with her – even though it was October – and pestered us to let her swim in the Step Rock Pool.
“Eventually we relented and the rest of the family watched as she got in. She got out again very quickly as the water was just so cold.
“Her teeth were chattering, she was shivering and her skin had gone red with the shock of the cold water.
“My wife’s vigorous rubbing with the bath towel managed to get her warmed up– and there were no more requests during the holiday to go back in!”