We arrived in Scotland eager for a change of scenery, and that’s what we got. Whereas Toronto’s cold weather was relatively crisp and dry, we found Scotland’s, though not as severe, to be damp and feeling as if it was seeping into our bones. Scotland was further north so the days were shorter and the nights longer at the time of year we arrived. Our apartment (at 9 Grange Loan Gardens) was one of four in an old granite-walled building. It was not centrally heated so we had to constantly turn on electric radiators to keep ourselves warm. To make matters more difficult most of our warm clothing was still yet to arrive from Canada as we could only take a limited amount on our flight from Toronto.
Having settled in as best as we could our first priority was to find jobs. My first interview was in Glasgow. I couldn’t understand a word of their questions because of their accents, so I was certainly not getting a job there! I had more success at the Bank of Scotland. Here, for the only time in my life, I found that I had useful social connections. One of these was with Gerald Sinclair Shaw who had the title of Sheriff of Lothians and Peebles, which covered Edinburgh. (The holder of this office was a sort of chief magistrate or local judge). He at one time long ago had an interest in my mother. The other connection was with Minou Bartholomew, the matriarch of the then famous Bartholomew map-making business. The members of this family were my third cousins through my maternal grandmother.
These connections proved very useful when I was interviewed for an IT position at the Bank of Scotland in Edinburgh. My first interviewer, a notorious social climber, nearly fell off his chair when I nominated these two people as my personal referees. He wanted me to contact them immediately on his phone so that he could speak to them himself! Although I hadn’t at that time had a chance to meet them they knew I was in town and were happy to speak for me. So I was passed onto a technical manager with a glowing endorsement from my interviewer! This man was distinctly unimpressed with this but was happy to hire me on the basis of my professional skills. They were also needing extra staff at the time as decimal currency implementation was coming in Britain, so most of their computer programs would need converting.
Nett’s job hunting also got off to a difficult start. She started as a typist with the Church of Scotland. She had to transcribe sermons which were almost incomprehensibly recorded in thick Scottish accents on poor equipment. She had to do this in a huge barn of an office in freezing cold temperatures in which she could barely move her fingers! After three days of not being able to do this job at all well she quit and looked for another job. She found one as assistant to the production manager at Edinburgh University Press. This was far more comfortable and satisfying and she stayed in this job for all of the time we were in Edinburgh. She was fascinated to discover that EUP was actually required, for business accounting reasons, to run at a loss! Consequently she was part of the production team which produced many obscure titles which were printed at the highest quality. “Flora of Turkey” was a notable non-seller of her time there! We brought home several of their unwanted books as souvenirs, and they are still on my shelves today.
With accommodation and employment now taken care of, and our winter clothes finally arriving from Canada, we settled down to life in Edinburgh. The neighbours were much more friendly than they had been in Toronto and did much to make us feel more at home. We travelled to work in the mornings by bus in total darkness during this first winter, often in dense fog. It was the same returning home after work, so if we didn’t go out at lunchtime we never saw daylight! This was a bit discouraging for going out during those early weeks, so we usually stayed at home to watch television. What was showing on BBC and ITV was much higher quality and more interesting than what we’d been getting in Canada from Toronto and Buffalo! At weekends we were regularly invited to the homes of Gerald and the Bartholomews who really took us under their wings.
Gerald and his French wife Denise took us for drives to show us the sights of Edinburgh, such as this one.
This was great for us as we got to know our way around as well as picking up a lot of the city’s history and culture which was, of course, very deep and extensive in both the arts and the sciences. Some of the great thinkers of historical times had had their homes in Edinburgh. The great ancient castle, looming over the city from on top of a cliff, gave an awesome visual expression to the long and extensive history of Scotland.
Minou Bartholomew and her five children were most hospitable, regularly inviting us into their homes for meals. I remember particularly her daughter Ailie and her sons John and Robbie (both of whom later visited us at different times in Sydney). John was now the head of the Bartholomew mapmaking firm which later sold out to the publishers Harper Collins (part of the Rupert Murdoch empire). See link to Wikipedia page.
His Belgian wife Ginette was most kind to us and entertained us several times. The oldest of her five sons, John Eric (Riki), was just thirteen at the time. In more recent years Riki has been keeping in touch with me seeking updates to the extensive family genealogy website that he has built up.
When Christmas came round we were invited to join the family of my uncle, Peter Pritchard (my mother’s brother) at Dorchester-on-Thames, near Oxford. This occasion made Nett particularly homesick for her own family whom she had now not seen for over two years. Peter’s daughter, Wendy, has since kept in contact with me over the years.
In the new year we made an early trip to London for a sightseeing tour. We saw all the usual attractions, Houses of Parliament, 10 Downing Street, Regents Park, Serpentine Lake, and so on. We also got to see a West End performance of the long-running Agatha Christie play “The Mousetrap“. It was a nice escape from the damp cold of Edinburgh’s winter!
Then came a shocking development which threatened to completely change our plans.. Nett discovered that she was pregnant, despite our precautions. We made plans to cut short our stay in Edinburgh and return home to have the baby in Australia. Tragically she then suffered a miscarriage. Dreadful though this was for Nett, it at least meant that we were free to stay on in Scotland.
Both our workplaces only gave us two weeks annual leave. We decided that our best option to fulfil our wish to see Europe would be to use these two weeks to go on a ten-day, seven-country bus tour of the Continent, organized by Trafalgar Tours. The tour started in London with a train ride to Dover and a Channel ferry before reaching our bus in Calais. We discovered that all but two of our fellow tourists were in a Canadian touring party from Halifax, Nova Scotia, the other two being American girls. We didn’t mind as they were all great company. The tour guide, a man named Percy, entertained us throughout with his weird, over-the-top narration of the sights. We certainly crammed much of Europe in those ten days and we had a lovely time. Early highlights of the tour included Brussels and the charming city of Lucerne in Switzerland, where we posed in front of the Lion Monument (see Wikipedia reference).
In Milan we took the chance that a man selling opera tickets outside La Scala was honest. He was, and so we had the dazzling experience of seeing an opera in one of the world’s great venues. (I forget what the opera was). We ran out of money by the time we got to Rome, however Percy was able to smuggle us in through the entrance to the Tivoli Fountains, a great experience. In Paris we were limited to what we could see from walks around our hotel. We had nothing with which to tip the driver when we left the bus at the channel ferry terminal. Fortunately my sister Gill was there to meet us at the London train station where our tour ended, so we were able to borrow from her to give a tip to Percy! Unfortunately, instead of local cuisine at each stop we were served chicken and chips every evening! There was also the annoyance of frequently encountering many buses from the Australian Womens Weekly World Discovery Tours. Our fellow Australians often embarrassed us with their loud denunciations of European food, culture, accommodation, plumbing, etc.
Years later, a satirical movie was made called “If it’s Tuesday this must be Belgium”. This reflected so much of our experiences on this whirlwind tour! At the end of our ten days we got back to London, flat broke. But we did think we got good value from our trip. My sister Gill, having met us in London, travelled with us back to Edinburgh where she stayed with us for a few days.
There was lots to see and do now that the weather was warmer. A bike ride around the local streets made a nice diversion.
The Commonwealth Games was on in Edinburgh and we went to several events. Ron Clarke, Kip Keino and Karen Moras were some of the great athletes we saw in action. There was also a trip to the west of Scotland to go on a cruise of the Firth of Clyde. The Highland Games also came to Edinburgh and we went to see the caber tossing, tug-of-war and other events there.
Then Gerald’s wife, Denise, very kindly lent us her car, a tiny Fiat 500. Fil joined us from Canada and we used this car to go on several local trips together, including the Edinburgh Military Tattoo and several events of the Edinburgh Festival. Memorably, Fil smuggled a small quantity of hashish into the country. When we smoked this it left him and Nett on a euphoric high but left me in the depths of depression for several days! We never smoked this stuff again!
After Fil left we used Denises’s car to go on a driving tour of the Highlands, taking in Inverness, Loch Ness and Aberdeen. Then we later crossed the border into England to see York and Chester.
We also visited my old school at Birkdale, the Liverpool School for the Partially Deaf. Although nineteen years had elapsed since I left that school I was delighted that there was still a teacher there, Jack Henderson, who remembered me.
Back in Edinburgh we visited a couple of former acquaintances who lived there. The first was Teddy Morse, a second cousin on my paternal grandmother’s side. The second was Robbie Holm, a former work colleague of mine in Canberra who had returned home to Scotland. Nett also knew him as he had been a referee for another colleague for whom Nett had processed an adoption order.
The year was now getting late. We could have remained in Edinburgh longer however, with another winter approaching I didn’t want to stay on. For her part, Nett didn’t mind the cold so much but was longing to be reunited with her family again. All the people we had met in Scotland had been from my side of the family, so she had often felt left out. Having decided to leave, we booked our passage home, quit our jobs, and said our farewells to many more people than we had when we left Canada. We travelled down to Tonbridge to stay with Len and Ivy Wright, whose company we had enjoyed so much the previous year. They very kindly drove us to Southampton Dock to see us off. We boarded the Sitmar “Fairstar”, waved goodbye to Len and Ivy, and finally set sail for Australia. The date, quite auspiciously, was again 17th November!
We had no regrets about leaving Britain. We’d seen and done a lot, and would always have fond memories of our three years in Canada and Scotland. But we’d both turned 30 during our year in Scotland so we felt it was time for us to return home and settle down. We’d seen the world, or at least a big part of it, which had always been our intention. Now, with all that behind us, we wanted to return to a more permanent lifestyle in our home country.
The voyage started in quite rough seas. Nett was seasick the next morning. So were all the other passengers, as I found when I went up to breakfast and had the dining room to myself. Naturally I ordered a full English breakfast! The waiter who brought it to me looked quite ill. Fortunately we soon reached calmer seas. Tenerife was our first port of call but I don’t remember much of this place, save for taking this charming picture.
.We now had two long stretches of sea travel ahead of us. Nett contented herself with reading quietly by herself while I entered the shipboard tournaments for deck tennis, deck quoits and chess. In those days passenger ships provided much less on-board entertainment than cruise liners do these days. I reached the final in each of these events. Nett willingly put her book aside to join the crowds watching me compete in these finals. Alas, I lost all three of them!
When we reached Cape Town I remember being spellbound watching the magnificent spectacle of Table Mountain rising above the horizon as the ship approached. On landing we took a bus tour of the city. We saw that, under apartheid, the town’s banks, toilets, etc had segregated entrances for blacks and whites. The tour guide/driver said, quite dismissively, that the blacks “seemed quite happy”. We didn’t think so. Their clothing then was quite drab in contrast to the colourful attire that we see from them these days. We also passed Groote Schuur hospital where Dr Christiaan Barnard had recently performed the world’s first heart transplant operation (see Wikipedia link).
Back on board for another long stretch at sea, then finally we got to Perth. Australia at last! I remembered the last time I came ashore here as a 17 year old immigrant and bought a bottle of Cottee’s Passiona. I loved it then, and loved it just as much when I bought it again this time! We took a bus tour and drank in the sight, sounds and smells of the country we had been away from for so long. We loved Perth and resolved to return for a longer visit. We were to do this many times over the years!
After calling in to Melbourne, the ship finally arrived in Sydney. Just as when I first arrived as a boy the ship passed between the Heads and under the Harbour Bridge before finally docking. Nett just couldn’t wait to disembark! When we finally did, we found that nearly all of our families were there to meet us. Nett was simply overwhelmed with joy to be reunited with her parents and brothers and to meet the new additions to their families! Lots of hugs, tears and excited chatter!
We were home at last!
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Nett 