ABERDEEN

Monty and I met when we were both studying in Aberdeen. My landlady introduced us as she thought we would get along well, and as it turned out, we did… We were married 8 months later in Aberdeen University Chapel, after which we moved to Blackburn, West Lothian, to begin our teaching careers.

BLACKBURN

And oh boy, did we have a baptism by fire during that first year teaching and living in Blackburn, West Lothian. We had found it very strange that we had been immediately allocated a council maisonette when our teaching posts were confirmed, as houses in the north of Scotland were at a premium - but we soon realised why when we arrived there. The estate we lived on in Blackburn, previously a small mining village, had been built to provide an overflow for Glasgow residents whose homes were being demolished. Because it was new and people had been plucked from their homes and familiar surroundings, it had no community feel to it and seemed like a strange, uneasy, non-world, lacking character and neighbourliness.

We were swiftly traumatised by experiencing the other side of life, ‘life on the block’ you might say. Both of us had come from fairly small, quiet towns, and even the big city of Aberdeen where we had spent several years, was on the whole relatively free from drama.

Here was a very different life to what we had known, and it’s hard to know where to begin describing this strange new world. Some memories come back to me with vivid recollection: a pack of stray dogs roaming around the estate apparently ownerless, emitting a constant cacophony of high pitched barking; a group of young hooligans marauding around painting the outside of the flats with graffiti; warring couples screaming at each other in the middle of the night, causing lights to be switched on all around the block; washing lines being stolen complete with washing and pegs; a burnt fireside rug going the rounds from house to house, insurance claims being made at each abode; our neighbours, skeletal, middle aged alcoholics without a stick of furniture left in their flat, and many more …

I recall seeing an eviction where all the furniture was taken out and piled up outside the building. When we came back from holiday there were only the charred remains left on the pavement, so we assumed someone had tired of it and decided to set a match to the lot! Monty lay in wait one night with a bucket of water ready to pour on the gang of dogs, but the bush telegraph must have gone around to warn them and they disappointingly never appeared.

Unfortunately, we had made the mistake of living in the same town as the school in which we taught. This proved to be a schoolboy error as the pupils loved to lurk around corners in the shopping centre and shout after us. Fortunately the names were no worse than ‘Monty’ and ‘Sylvia’ but even that became quite stressful in the end. The school was new and opened with half the staff it should have had. Most of us were probationers which meant we were ripe for the killing from street wise kids. My worst nightmare was the most annoying but clever fad whereby one or two pupils would start humming. It was almost impossible to tell who the culprits were, which highly entertained the pupils, while being highly frustrating for the teacher. One of the worst outcomes was when the entire class took up the humming! At this point there was nothing you could do apart from considering running out of the classroom screaming, or seriously contemplating another career.

Somehow or other, we survived our first year, but when we arrived in Shetland on holiday the following year, my mother-in-law Ruby thought she was seeing a ghost when I stepped off the plane - apparently I was so pale and thin that she was surprised I was able to reply to her at all.

We attended a little church in Blackburn where the people were incredibly friendly and welcoming to us. Those were good times which we enjoyed and helped compensate for the difficult aspects of life there. I was telling one of my grandchildren recently that furniture we had ordered failed to arrive till Christmas as the firm was heading towards liquidation. For the first four months we slept on a very high, but not very wide, single bed (I always felt as if I was sleeping on the edge of a precipice!) sat on folding deck chairs and built a bookcase consisting of bricks and plywood. Those were the days. We could not believe the luxury when our king sized bed and three piece suite finally arrived.

BATHGATE

Towards the end of our second year I discovered I was pregnant and so we decided to move to the nearby town of Bathgate, where we were able to buy our own little house in a nice street. To our delight the house had a small front garden and a large back garden. We moved in during the Christmas holidays and spent New Year’s Day enthusiastically painting our new abode. It felt like heaven to us. We were absolutely delighted with our first proper home. In fact the couple selling the house sold it to us for less than another offer as they were so excited about us having our first child and wanted to know a family would enjoy living there!

On the 19th June, 1975 our first son Mark was born, three and a half weeks premature and with a collapsed lung. It was touch and go for the first 48 hours but he survived to tell the tale and quickly become a bundle of unstoppable energy. Our second son Paul was also born there. Just before Paul was born, my father died of a heart attack in the Faroe Islands, and my mum decided to sell her house in Nairn to move nearer us. After staying with us in Bathgate for several months, she bought a lovely little house in Linlithgow, a few miles away. One lovely moment for me was when Paul was born as he was the exact double of my dad in appearance. I felt this was an amazing consolation for me after the sudden death of my beloved father.

While living in Bathgate we attended the Bathgate Baptist Church where we made some very good friends. David and Stephanie Evans, the pastor and his wife became particular friends, as did Harry and Una Franssen. Across the road from our cul-de-sac was a park which always displayed an amazing array of colours with its variety of trees and bushes: moving with the changing seasons from the bright, cheerful colours of spring through to the vibrant, iridescent colours of summer, progressing then to the rich, rusty colours of autumn and ending finally with the dazzling white layers of snowy crystals resting gently on the leaves in winter.

LINLITHGOW

When I found I was pregnant again we decided our little house in Bathgate was too small, and we bought a house in Linlithgow quite near my mum’s house. Our daughter Fiona was born there. We were both delighted to have a daughter after our two boys, so much so that Monty was driving through the High Street in Linlithgow shouting out the window to everyone who cared to listen, ‘It’s a girl!’ We spent several very happy years there, with our little family. We didn’t have much money to spare, so I did what I could to supplement our income, including being an Avon rep, and knitting Aran jumpers! I was paid £6 for each Aran jumper, and always declared that that one would be the last. However, once I had received the £6 (a fair amount of money at that time) I would invariably decide to knit another one! I kept going with my Avon until the last minute, still delivering orders a week before Fiona was born.

Mark, Paul and Fiona all attended Springfield Primary School which was just round the corner from our house. Fiona’s two older brothers always looked out for her. The same P1 teacher taught them all, an amazing, soft spoken gentle teacher with complete control of her class. She was absolutely traumatised after teaching Mark, not because he was badly behaved, but just full to the brim with boundless energy and endless chatter. We could see she was very apprehensive to hear another Georgeson brother was coming the next year, and although we assured her he was completely different, indeed very calm and quiet, we could read the scepticism in her eyes. She was very relived to find our predictions were indeed true, and Paul turned out to be ‘teacher’s pet’, as he ran little errands for her with great aplomb. Fiona was a model pupil but she never particularly took to school, where she seemed to spend most of her time in a ‘dwaam’ to use a fantastic Shetland word (meaning a dream like state) where she was obviously thinking of better and far more interesting things she could be doing than boring sums and suchlike chores!

We spent five happy years in Linlithow before we went to Ivory Coast, followed by three years after we returned. We then moved to Shetland in 1991 where we were both successful in obtaining permanent teaching jobs. During our time in Linlithgow we attended St John’s Evangelical Church. The folk there became like our family and supported us faithfully during our years at VIS. We still keep in touch even to this day with many of the friends we made during our time there.

Our years in Linlithgow were very happy times. I had my mum nearby to keep me sane when I had three young kids very close together in age. I would visit her every day for a cuppa as she lived only ten minutes walking distance away. We would have a natter and I might catch a much needed forty winks while she kept an eye on the kids. Chistmas times were very special and sometimes my auntie Marion, my dad’s sister would join us too on those occasions.

Then there were the times when ‘the cousins’ came up from England to visit us, my neices Ailsa and Moragh Randall. The five kids had such enormous fun together, chasing each other around the garden and through the house. Moragh had a pink quilt nicknamed the ‘pink pig’, while Paul had a yellow quilt nicknamed the ‘yellow chicken’: the game of attempting to capture and hide these from each other caused endless fun and entertainment. My mum, in whose house all these high jinks took place, always maintained a poised calm and equilibrium (on the surface anyhow) in the midst of a cacophony of shrieks, screeches and apparent chaos.

In the section on Ivory Coast I explained how we felt God was calling us to go to VIS as houseparents, so you can read about that there.

return to linlithgow

After we came back to Linlithgow we were unsure how our future would look. We had intended to return to VIS after a year, but that did not work out so we had to find jobs as soon as possible. Neither of us initially wanted to return to teaching so Monty tried a brief foray into Encyclopaedia Britannica. His trial introduction with them was very short lived indeed as he felt he could not condone their hard sell techniques. It was something he could not live with, so back to teaching it was, and we both put our names on the supply list…

I was immediately offered a year’s work in Linlithgow Academy teaching English and RE as cover for a man who was training to become an RE teacher. The year went well, and the following year I was given a permanent contract to set up an RE department in The James Young High School in Livingston. To say this was an eye opener would be a complete understatement. The classes were single sex, and I recall one class of third year boys in particular. I began by taking their names, not quite understanding why they were all tittering quietly. I made the list of names, then checked with Monty and the boys at home. What had they done of course but give me footballers names instead of their own, and I in my ignorance about sport had taken them seriously. Needless to say I never gained control of that class, despite my best attempts!

Monty was not so fortunate. Initially he was given a maternity cover of eight months in St Mary’s Academy, Bathgate, which went well, but following that he was only able to obtain a contract for one and a half days a week in Craigshill, Livingston. That did have an up side though. It meant that he did all the housework and cooking, and spent Fridays baking all kinds of goodies - cakes, cookies, bread and sometimes even butteries! Returning home to the tantalising spell of baking was very pleasant after a hard day teaching.

After a few months of this we decided that Monty needed to find something more permanent. We didn’t fancy teaching further south so started looking for jobs in the north. A job in Aith Junior High School for a social subjects teacher appeared in The Shetland Times. The first time it appeared we laughed about it, dismissing it fairly quickly. It appeared again and this time we contemplated it briefly. Again it disappeared, but by this time I felt Monty should have applied for it. I told him so, and he agreed. Amazingly though, it appeared for a third time; he applied and was successful. He moved to Shetland in January while the rest of us remained in Linlithgow to complete the school year.

By the time we moved I also had obtained a post as an English teacher between Aith Junior High and Brae Junior High, so we were set. We sold our house in Linlithgow, packed up our worldly goods and moved to Shetland lock, stock and barrel. My mother had decided to move as well, so she said farewell to her little house and came north with us. Another stage in our lives was about to begin. I continue this saga in the Shetland section.