Childhood days

“Craigie keeps on doing this to me,” says a regular reader, “bringing back memories of my childhood days, the latest being horses, the Unicorn anchor and the Blue Mountains.

“Regarding the former, we had a neighbour in Balfour Street who drove a horse and ‘kert’ for Bell and Sime, Timber Merchants, in the city. If he had a delivery near home he would come home for lunch, horse, cart and all.

“His steed was a massive Suffolk Punch with hooves, as they say, the sez o’ bin lids. Once fed and watered it would stand patiently in the street despite the full attention children of the area.

“Inevitably, while standing there, it would do its full business. Once the carter returned, and the unit moved off, what remained was put in a bucket, heading for a garden or plot.

“No visit to the ‘Shorers’ was complete without the mandatory slide down the shank of the anchor alongside the Unicorn. The shank had a permanent polish via the hundreds of schoolboy trousers. Another challenge was to try to move the massive anchor ring.

“We were not inundated with play areas on the Hawkhill, other than the streets themselves. The Blue Mountains was a piece of waste ground, for the want of a better description, between Hunter Street and Johnson’s Lane. There was access into the Blue Mountains from both the Hawkhill and Brook Street (the Burn).”