Daisy chains and buttercups ....

From tenement back green to crofthouse garden

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‘Howard’s End is on the Landing’ by Susan Hill

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‘Howard’s End is on the Landing’...

It has been a very busy seven months since my last blog with doing repairs and repainting all the exterior window frames and doors. I made the best of the good spells of warm dry weather. The foundation for a cycle lean-to shed is now laid and, although it is not the best time for doing any construction work, I hope to get the main part constructed over the next few weeks. We had long spells of extremely wet cold weather as well this summer which did not bode well for my vegetable plot. It really needs more focussed attention from me next year. There is a palisade fence and gate to be painted and installed early spring, as well as a couple of small grow houses to bring on seedlings when the ground is still cold. The materials for these projects are taking up a lot of space in my main workshop. This is holding me back making a start on other modelmaking and display projects for our local history society. I grew up in the postwar 1950s when nothing was wasted and still today I hold on to things (books, magazines, materials, clothing, etc) in case we might have a use for them in the future. I think I am going to follow in Susan Hill's footsteps and not buy any books for a year ('Howards End is on the Landing') - I shall work my way through my collection of books, both old and new, many unread, many focussing on special interests and hobbies for which I still have to make time! Hopefully I shall be able to reduce my library, by passing on or selling books I am unlikely to read again.

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‘Woodland Craft’ by Ben Law

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‘Norwegian Wood’ by Lars Mytting.

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Firewood...

Now that the log store is constructed I have been checking out some books on the art of chopping and storing wood. Found two amazing books - ‘Norwegian Wood’ by Lars Mytting and 'Woodland Craft' by Ben Law. I already had 'The Forgotten Crafts' by self-sufficiency guru, John Seymour, in my collection. We have a huge pile of logs to work our way through and there is an endless quantitiy of brash to be shredded for garden mulch!

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St Bride’s Church, Orwell Terrace, Dalry, Edinburgh

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‘We Were Only Bairns’ by Howard Gee (Printed by Amazon)

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1950s Fountainbridge & Dalry...

Well March was a pretty wet month, but we are almost there with finishing off the log store - only got to start chopping the logs now! I am enjoying reading 'We Were Only Bairns' by Howard Gee, who grew up in the Fountainbridge/Dalry area of Edinburgh during the 1940s and 1950s. I have fond memories of that area. Although we lived at the bottom end of Merchiston Avenue, Mum and I used to go St Bride's Church every Sunday via Yeaman Place, Dundee Street and the Telfer Subway. My Sunday school teacher lived in Murdoch Terrace where the 'steamie, was located and also round the corner from Fountainbridge Library. The folk of Dalry were very friendly and I enjoyed the Sunday school Christmas party where I was given my first knitting set - a doll's knitting pattern, small plastic knitting needles and three brightly coloured balls of wool contained in a basket made from pressed card. In the 1950s Edinburgh was a very grey city with all the buildings black from the soot of the coal fires which were the main source of heating back then. By the 1960s we longed for cleaner air and more modern lifestyles, but now looking back there was an an underlying richness and greater sense of community in our lives when we lived near the city centre. When we moved to the suburbs the larger terraced house with back and front garden didn't quite live up to my expectations. I missed playing in the street and exploring the parks, the canal and all the old shops. Reading Howard Gee's book I am discovering places in Dalry which I did not know about back then - the 'Normal School' in Orwell Place (was that near old Dalry House?) and the Episcopal Church near the Dalry Baths. Fountainbridge always had a strong aroma which was a mixture of rubber from the North British Rubber Company, maybe hops from the brewery and smoke from the steam trains which ran through the centre. A special Christmas party was always held in Tollcross Primary School for children, like my sister, with cerebral palsy. I remember going out on a cold damp winter's night along Fountainbridge to Tollcross, past the last of the older two-storey buildings including one which housed a shop selling baby carriages, prams and pushchairs. Today there is a cinema complex, modern stores and a new student campus being built on the site of the old industrial works of the early and mid twentieth century. I only wish the modern developments were a better fit with the old. The contrast between the scale of buildings and lack of visual connection between the old and new disappoints me. When I look at an aerial photograph from the 1930s both residential and industrial seem to sit well together.

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Film Poster for ‘The Inn of the Sixth Happiness’

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‘The Inn of the Sixth Happiness’, Gladys Aylward...

After watching the BBC drama 'One Child' about a young adopted Chinese girl returning to China to help her birth mother and brother, I was reminded of my early fascination with the Far East. When I was seven years old, and growing up in Edinburgh, I met a few foreign medical students who lodged with a friend of my mother. One of them was a young Chinese man who insisted on giving me some small gifts of beaded slippers, a pale blue food flask and a Chinese cotton dressing gown with its little stand up collar and traditional twisted cloth buttons. He told me about his little sister who was the same age as myself and I treasured these exotic gifts for many years. At about the same time my aunt was visiting from the Highlands and the film about the missionary Gladys Aylward, 'The Inn of the Sixth Happiness', had just been screened. She took me as a special treat on my own to see the film at the old Scotia Cinema in Dalry Road - one of the numerous small cinemas, which dotted the city back in the 1950s and were often referred to as 'flea pits'. I just loved that film and dreamt of becoming a missionary in China and leading hundreds of children over the mountains to escape the Japanese invaders. The film is a Hollywood adaptation of the true story 'The Small Woman' by Alan Burgess. Back in our tenement flat, I created my own 'Inn of the Sixth Happiness' under the dining room table where I lined up my 'doll' children and drew numerous pictures of the Chinese towns and market places, with lots of little people going about their business.

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Garden designed by Gertrude Jekyll below Lindisfarne Castle

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‘Gertrude Jekyll’ by Sally Festing (Penguin 1991)

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Gertrude Jekyll - gardener and craftswoman...

Reading a small biography of the garden designer Gertrude Jekyll. The only garden of hers which I have visited to date is the small enclosed garden behind Lindisfarne Castle. She was an amazing woman who studied painting and undertook various crafts as well as garden design for which she became famous. I have always enjoyed working with my hands and run the risk of being a ‘jack of all trades’, but glad to read about successful women who managed to overcome that!

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Part of the BBC set for ‘The Dickensians’ with The Old Curiosity Shop on the right.

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‘The Dickensians’ & set design...

I am so enjoying the BBC serial ‘The Dickensians’ and the set design is amazing. In another life I think set design would be a job for me .. from designing in miniature to construction and painting in full size. On every visit to London one of my favourite sections in the V & A is the theatre costumes and set designs. Recently I came across a really good handbook for set design by Colin Winslow. However in the meantime I will have to make do with making a scale model of our railway station which should be finished in time for its 150th anniversary in 2018!

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An Icelandic Farm, 1936 by Allan Sorrell - the turf building in the background would have been similar to the farmhouse where Agnes Magnusdottir was held before she was hanged.