VE Day and a Fishy Tale !
VE Day and a Fishy Tale !
Being
incredibly old and decrepit, I can probably outdo most of my fellow Facebookers
in that I can actually remember VE Day! I was admittedly a mere 1 month and 1 day
off my fourth birthday and the following encounter in all probability has
relied on parental recall more than a little bit. This of
course was the era before the mobile
phone replaced the ear
transplant and we were all rather naïve . My father worked during the War with
Scottish steel makers Colvilles in their Glasgow Office. As steel manufacturing
was an essential ingredient to the War effort his job made him exempt from
military service. Well not quite as
he was a fully paid up member of Dad’s Army aka The Home Guard , As I was an only child and
of pre-school age my father used to
opt for a May holiday in a the years when that
month was regularly blessed with warm sunny weather ( or
so it seemed ! ) . We headed off “ doon the water “ to Millport on the
Isle of Cumbrae in the County of Bute .
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On reflection this was somewhat strange as
my mother’s family , the
Lamonts had lived as farmers and fishers
on the Isle of Bute a short
distance across the firth
from Cumbrae .The tattie famine
and herring decline in the mid 19th
century had seen
them depart the bucolic bliss and
head up stream to the expanding industrial metropolis that was Glasgow . Cumbrae at that time was part of Ayrshire
and the population was almost all located
within the small town of Millport
and apart from a few fishing boats. The
feudal superiorities were split
between the Marquis of Bute and the Earl of Glasgow . It was the latter who
built the small church nestling
amongst some woodland
adjacent to the Garrison . It is
the Cathedral of the Isles – the smallest Cathedral in the British Isles and a
fascinating little structure . The Garrison House just mentioned lies in the
centre of town and was constructed in 1745 It
was formerly the barracks/Captain's mansion, then the home of the Earl
of Glasgow, and is now in community ownership .During the development of the
River Clyde as a main thoroughfare for goods, shipbuilding and smuggling,
Millport was a strategic base for Customs and Excise. Several of the streets in
Millport are named after crew members of the Revenue cutter Royal George.
The Mayall
family rented as mall single
bedroomed flat on Cardiff Street
– a steep road leading down to the Old Pier and harbour. Why Cardiff Street
? It fell within the curtilage of the area
of the town feued
from the Marquis of Bute . The Butes owned a vast
number of coal mines in South Wales
including those close by Cardiff – hence the name !
Enough of my
historical asides , let us get to the reasoning for this epistle ! In the early part of 1945
the war was still raging in Europe . I
late April , Hitler
realising his game was up committed suicide and that
was the beginning of the end for
the Nazi regime . We happened to have
just started our annual holiday .
The hamper had been packed and sent off
“ advanced luggage “ to be awaiting
our arrival in “ Shangri-La “ . Although the distance
between our home in Clarkston , south of Glasgow and Millport was less than 40 miles , the complications of
travel was quite unbelievable when looked at with
hindsight from the present era .Armed with a
large suitcase , we got a taxi
from our home in Clarkston to the
railway station - a distance of about a
mile . We then got the steam train
to Glasgow Central and
connected with the Wemyss Bay holiday
special . Wemyss Bay was near
Slelmorlie on the Firth of Clyde and had a long
pier . It always seemed like a
mile long as we walked down from the station to the pier itself . Here both the Rothesay steamer
and the Millport boat , the “ Duchess of Fife “ , departed . Once aboard
we settled in the below decks
tea room and after a glass of lemonade and a buttered scone ,
Dad would take
into the bowels of the vessel to
look at the “engines “ . Being a paddle
steamer it was an incredibly
complex arrangement of machinery and oh
so noisy ! From Wemyss Bay we sailed
to Largs and thence across
to Cumbrae First stop at Keppel
Pier and thence to the climax
the arrival at Millport Old Pier – disembark – up the hill and into our
holiday home !
Why then do
I recall 1945 ? Not for what you might
expect as you read of the curtailed celebrations
of the 75th anniversary of the end of WW2 but something that
for a pre school wee laddie was far more
exciting - my first fishing trip ! Armed
with a reel of orange coloured
fishing twine in its wooden holder , Dad and I were off to the end of the pier in search of saithe ,
rock cod and who knows what else . Down
the steep decline of Cardiff
Street , ;little more than a 100
yards or so – nearly there ! Suddenly a
wee guy
with a fiery red face came rushing up towards We stopped “ The War’s over , the Wars over “
he kept
bellowing . My attention was far
away- away in the blue waters of the
adjacent harbour . To my astonishment Dad grabbed my hand and turning sharply
round began our ascent back in the
direction from whence we came !
“ The fishing , the fishing Dad “ I stammered . The reply was
brief and to the point “ The
War’s over son , we gotta tell mum righty away “
We did eventually get to
seek piscatorial satisfaction but
it was not in May 1945 !
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