A VERY LONG DRIVE
Protests ignored, we were on the road, and you’ll never guess where to—of all places, over the Border, our feet were to travel to England! In those days a distance like that was seldom contemplated.
Perhaps sitting behind the wheel of a grand bus made Daddy feel like ‘King o’ the Road’. Have castle, will travel. One with wheels, that is. Maybe it was the sense of freedom he felt after six war years; especially the last three spent fighting from a tank. He never told us, but I think it made him claustrophobic. By God, though, he didn’t half eat up those long tarred miles as we trundled down to England.
Mammy adapted no bother to her wee Fordy van (as she christened it). And a mite too fond of it she became. Because, at the brow of every hill, her insistence to stop and give the wee green van a rest, then check if it needed a drink of water, had her and Daddy shouting at each other more than once, I can tell you.
After several days on the road, everybody began to think the land went on forever. Mammy asked Daddy, ‘Where do we stop, Charlie? My bum’s gone past the point of rigor mortis.’
‘I mind chumming an English lad during the War,’ he answered, ‘who sang the praises of his home town—Manchester, he called it.’
‘Manchester, where in heaven’s name is that?’ She looked at him as if he had mentioned a far outpost on the moon.
‘Lancashire,’ he answered, putting a reassuring arm round her waist. ‘The county o’ the Rose.’
‘Dad, that’s where Glasgow is!’ shouted Shirley, who was reading a ‘true romance’ comic on the back seat of the bus.
‘No, that’s Lanarkshire,’ said Janey, ‘and hurry up with the comic, you’ve been reading it for days.’
We spent a few weeks getting acclimatised to the shire, stopping at Lancaster, Preston and several towns round about. Best place was Blackpool. ‘It would have been nice to live there for the winter,’ I heard the older girls say. But Manchester was where my father had set his sights, and he wouldn’t be swayed.
Everybody settled back as we travelled the last few miles to our destination.
Soon it was time for tea, and after eating and tidying up Daddy smiled, saying we’d soon be there, adding when we came into the town that Mammy had best stay close behind the bus. ‘If you get lost, lassie,’ he warned her, ‘I’ll never find you.’
We all laughed, imagining our Mother driving wee Fordy round in circles.
‘Is there a place to pull on, in this Rosie-shire town?’ she asked.
‘Jeannie, there’s miles of houses, surely a wee corner can be found to winter on. When we get there we’ll have a drive round in the Fordy and find some place suitable.
He added, ‘there will be a lot of waste ground, because the brave folks who live here have seen the worst of Hitler’s flying bombs flatten whole streets.’
‘I just hope the polis give us the freedom to settle, then,’ she said.
‘Oh, I hardly think we’ll cause any difference to the landscape,’ he reassured her.
‘Another thing, I hope this town isn’t too big, I don’t like the idea of my lassies living in a place where I can’t keep an eye on them!’
It was easy to sense our mother’s fears. She had seldom been in a place any bigger than Aberdeen.
‘Everything will be fine, wife, never fear, just think on the hawking you can do among so many folk. When we go home in the spring you’ll have plenty to crack to the folks about, it’s not just anybody who can say they travelled so far, now is it?’
Little did our father know just what a tale she would tell! Oh my, if we but knew what Manchester had in store for us, the bus would have been put in reverse there and then. Ochone! Ochone!
I can’t recall much of the actual journey down to England; being only five I played with my toys and my wee sisters. One thing I do remember thinking was how much like Scotland the bonny welcoming hills of Cumbria were. Great rolling giants clothed in green and brown velvet.
I conjured up a friendly monster with wings who followed us from the midst of the hills, all the way to the smog-shrouded county of our destination, then disappeared as quickly as he came. I named him Greenwing. My imaginary friend.
Not like home ground, though, was the thick grey smog of Lancashire!
Smoke from a million reekit factory coal fires lifted itself up to meet the sun then fell back and covered the whole of the otherwise bonny countryside. Like a shroud, it was terrible stuff, filled lungs and brought early death to the weakest of folk. Aye, a shroud indeed!
Thankfully the use of that so-called fossil fuel has all but gone, replaced by healthier alternatives. I feel a fraud saying that, though, because nothing can ever replace the welcome one got from a coal-fire on a winter’s night.
As young as I was, one thing I do remember was Mammy saying to Daddy and the older lassies that she wasn’t feeling very well. Given that this was late October, and wee Babsy, her eighth child, was born in September past, she put her state of health down to natural weakness and the upheaval of the bus life. The War itself left its mark on many a wife, especially those left holding the fort. Her state was no different than that of many another woman in the country in those days. That thought consoled my Mammy, so she put her health to the back of her mind and got on with things in hand.
Things being Manchester, for here we were at last in the smog-shrouded city. The first thing—where to winter settle?
The journey had been a difficult one, especially when Mammy insisted on resting the wee Fordy at ever hill’s brow and refreshing it with a drink of water. Before I leave the road for this chapter, I would like to mention that when we came upon the notorious Shap Fell (an extremely steep hill on the old Cumbria A6 road), Mammy point-blank refused to put her van through such torture. This resulted in Daddy towing it while she walked behind, to make sure it was all right!