Category Archives: Nostalgia

Irn Bru – Scotland’s other national drink

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A blogpal (you know who you are) has recently been imbibing that stuff which some people call golden nectar, in other words whisky, and I was asked for some advice on the matter. As I said I’m not a great one for the booze but I would plump for a hot toddy any day or night as my favourite way of drinking whisky but really for me it is honestly just medicinal. I’m sure that just breathing in the fumes kills off germs.

Otherwise I’m with the younger generation and I would mix whisky with Coke or Irn Bru, I did think of ginger beer but on second thoughts that would be piling fire on fire! I must admit though that I do enjoy a wee Baileys from time to time, definitely neat.

Anyway, I decided to have a look and see if Irn Bru has reached the other side of the pond yet and the answer seems to be that it is sometimes available at Highland Games in the US. As it isn’t all that long since it managed to make it into English supermarkets I imagine it’ll be a long time before it’s generally available in the US – shame. It’s our other national drink!

I thought you might like to see a couple of old Irn Bru adverts. My favourite is still the parody of ‘The Snowman’ one, but that’s obviously only shown at New Year.

The Crazy Yanks advert is a parody of the Coca Cola ones.

Then there’s the High School Musical parody, I never watched that programme and I don’t think it’s a great ad but it has its moments.

So what does Irn Bru taste like? It’s difficult to describe, it’s a bit fruity, some people say bubble gum-ish, slightly (pleasantly) metallic and my Dutch sister-in-law almost choked when she first tried it. I say first, but she only ever tried it once so I suppose it might be one of those things that you have to grow up with otherwise you think it’s disgusting.

Kodak no more?!

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Like a lot of people my age I’ve had the sad task of clearing out elderly relatives’ homes and in each of them there have been boxes of old photos and albums to look through. Hearing about the demise of Kodak on the news the other day got me thinking about my inadvertent collection of unknown folks from the past. Annoyingly very few of the photos have any information on the back but they’re still fascinating glimpses into history. I even like the Kodak wallets they came in.

I do know the story of the people in the photos below – meet Jack and his wife Weeanna. Jack was my husband’s great uncle and he was a Clydeside engineer, working in one of the many shipyards on the Clyde in the early 1900s. Unfortunately he had a bit of a fiery temper which led to him punching another chap who just happened to be the shipyard owner’s son. This led to Jack being dismissed but worse than that he was blacklisted which meant that none of the other yards would give him work. So, reluctantly he left home for America and ended up working in Ford’s Motor Company, in Detroit I suppose as he lived in Michigan. Presumably he helped build cars, a bit of a come-down from building beautiful ships.

He made the best of it though and met his wife in the US, for years the family thought her name was (wee) Anna but it was Weeanna and I have no idea where she came from. I love these photos they sent home. Jack is obviously saying – Look Mum and Dad, I’m a success now. I have my wife and children.

Here we are again with our car this time with Weeanna, our daughter and the newest addition to the family in the back of it.

This is our house with Weeanna in the doorway, haven’t I done well! It has all worked out for the best.

And we still have these images, thanks to Kodak. It’s all we do have now as Jack and his wife are long dead and even the children are probably gone too, they didn’t keep in contact after their parents’ death.

Now it looks like the end of Kodak, for photos anyway. I’m glad that I have loads of albums of my own boys when they were wee, but photos seem to be a thing of the past. It’s a bit of a shame really.

Braintree, Essex

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This is the one place which we were determined to get to during our recent road trip to the south of England. We moved from the west of Scotland to Braintree over 33 years ago when Jack got a job as a research chemist. This is the first house that we ever bought but it was really too far away from his work in Hertford but house prices there had doubled the year before and were unaffordable. It was brand new when we moved in and Braintree was deep in snow, we had never seen anything like it in Scotland!

Our Old House

The amount of commuting involved to get to work was just ridiculous and what with that and my dad being terminally ill we ended up going back to Scotland after a couple of years so that I could help my mum to look after dad. But we had always wondered what the place was like after all these years, it hasn’t really changed very much but we were really surprised to discover that the rough ground in front of the house hadn’t been built on. In fact it has been turfed and there are nice trees there now and benches looking over to this view.

The River Blackwater

Of course the River Blackwater has always been there but the trees were much smaller then, you would never know that the village of Bocking is at the other side of them. It’s quite scenic really and we were lucky to be living right on the edge of the estate but we didn’t realise that at the time as we had always lived on the edge of the town and had a view of hills where we lived before. I wish we had that now!

Anyway, they always say – never go back – but we enjoyed our trip down memory lane and we’re hoping to go back to visit Essex again in the future.

Halloween circa 1995

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This is Gordon our youngest son just about to go out ‘guising’ with his turnip lantern, I think he’s about eight years old and his brother Duncan, who was all of nine and a half had decided that he was too old to get dressed up for Halloween. It’s a shame that they grow up so quickly. Gordon is a pirate in these photos and trying to look fierce in the one on the right but in previous years he was a wizard, long before Harry Potter. He’s supposed to have a beard rather than look dirty. When I was wee I usually dressed up as a witch but I remember one year around about 1969 when I was ten I went as a flower power hippy.

The word guising obviously comes from disguise but it’s only used in Scotland, in fact until quite recently people in England didn’t celebrate Halloween because it’s originally a Celtic thing.

There have been lots of people in the media complaining about it all because they see it as an Americanisation but they’re comnpletely wrong about that. They don’t seem to quite understand how it’s meant to be celebrated either. People have been having trouble with kids who are using it as an excuse to behave badly and cause mayhem around their neighbourhood, throwing eggs at houses and the like. They should just be visiting houses that they know they’ll be welcomed at and after singing a song or reciting a poem or something then they might get some sweets or if they’re very lucky a small amount of money.

I think it’s strange that the parents in my neighbourhood decided to celebrate Halloween on Saturday, surely the whole reason for doing it is that it is done on All Hallows Eve which is definitely October the 31st. Would they change the day of Christmas?!

Anyway, have a good Halloween. Don’t let the ghosties get you!

Virginia Plain – Roxy Music

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I’m still engulfed by that hell which is Gordon’s old bedroom, the decorating is taking a lot longer than it used to, must be my age – or maybe I’m not being so slap-dash now. Anyway, I’ve not had much time for anything else but on Friday night I took a bit of a break from it and watched The Old Grey Whistle Test programme which was on. Most of the clips were at least 40 years old but I can hardly believe that.

I loved Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music when I was a teenager so I enjoyed the clip of them doing The Strand but I fancied hearing Virginia Plain again, have a look if you want to see some glam rock from a 1972 Top of the Pops.

Honestly – what do those dancers in the audience look like?! I just hope that the 13 year old me wasn’t that awful!

The Rumour by Andy Stewart

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I was watching the Scottish news earlier tonight and there was a report about some men who had tried to lure children into their car using a glove puppet. The incident happened in Glasgow and luckily no children were daft enough to get into the car.

Apparently in no time flat there were reports of the incident on the internet but the action had moved to Dundee, Aberdeen,Edinburgh and Fife – where no such thing actually took place according to the police. It’s amazing how things get out of hand so quickly, even without the help of computers. It reminded me of the ancient monologue by Andy Stewart called The Rumour which was really a vehicle for him to show off his skill at different Scottish accents.

The question is: Can anyone understand him because I had some difficulty with parts of it?!

A High Street Near You

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Well, certainly a High Street near me looks set to lose at least three more shops in the very near future, and there are already so many shops lying empty. The local council has tried to tart up the vacant windows with displays of art and in some cases they’ve papered the whole window with posters of the area from the past so that you can see what the shop frontages looked like in Victorian times. It’s better than nothing I suppose but the fact remains that towns all over the country are dying on their feet.

The news that Habitat is closing down brought back memories for me of the days before we got married as I used to shop at the Glasgow branch of the shop in the 1970s. Then it was all new and snazzy and the only place to get something really different and modern. I hadn’t been to a Habitat for years so when I found myself in the Edinburgh shop a couple of years ago I got a real shock.

I had been able to afford to buy things for my ‘bottom drawer’ at Habitat when I wasn’t earning very much and I was supporting a student fiance, in fact I still have some of the things which I bought then. Baskets and enamel ware and even a dhurrie rug are some of the things still being used 30 odd years on. So I was quite amazed at the prices which Habitat were asking for things which I could have got much cheaper elsewhere – gone were the days when their designs were different from anything else available, but whoever was running Habitat at the time obviously hadn’t realised that the goods on offer were run-of-the-mill things with eye watering price tags. Needless to say I haven’t been back to the shop since then.

If everybody else had the same experience that I had it isn’t a surprise that they’ve stopped trading. It’s sad though, I suppose they needed another Terence Conran to shake it all up.

Speaking of ‘bottom drawers’! I mentioned the phrase to my prospective daughter-in-law recently and she didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. In fact I think she thought I was being a bit rude – I suppose the word ‘drawers’ does have sort of lewd comedy connotations!

Anyway, the upshot of the conversation was that young women nowadays do not have ‘bottom drawers’. My mother started my bottom drawer when I was only 5 years old. She bought guest towels for me! I was the third daughter (and she didn’t like girls) and not so much an afterthought as an aftershock! So I suppose it’s reasonable to say that she was very much looking forward to the day when she would get me off her hands and safely married off to – anyone. Sadly, she didn’t make me any patchwork quilts, I think traditionally you were supposed to have about ten of them before you could safely say that you were well kitted out for your new life of drudgery. It’s probably my upbringing but I think there’s something quite comforting about a bottom drawer – just as well I didn’t have a daughter!

Scottish words: pokey hat

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We don’t have an ice-cream van coming around here anymore. It used to come just once a week, on a Sunday afternoon. But when I was growing up an ice-cream van came every night about 7 o’clock and I was often sent out to get whatever people wanted.

Sometimes I was sent out with a jug, and the ice-cream man who was Italian and just recently arrived from Naples would fill the jug with vanilla ice-cream. That was easy, but it wasn’t so good when family members all wanted different things.

In Scotland an ice-cream cone is called a pokey hat. It’s obvious why – turn it upside down and it looks like a pointed hat. It was fine if everybody wanted pokey hats but things got precarious when it was a combination of pokey hats and sliders, which is what ice-cream wafers are called. It wasn’t so easy to cross the road with a whole load of different shaped ice-creams.

In those days Cadbury’s sold cream eggs the whole year round, none of this modern nonsense of them only being available between Christmas and Easter. They used to come wrapped in all different coloured foil too – pink, green, blue, yellow, and for some reason it was important to get the colour which you really fancied at the time, as if the cream egg was going to taste any different in a pink wrapping. The van man was not happy about that!

Those were the days when the most dangerous thing in the ice-cream van was the calories but nowadays, in the less salubrious areas, they sell drugs – allegedly!

Happy New Year

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We’ll probably be having a quiet Hogmanay this year. We’re not going out ‘first footing’. But if anyone comes to our door after ‘the bells’ – this is the sort of welcome that they’ll be given. Whisky, Irn Bru, cherry cake and shortbread. Maybe not the kilt, that’s just for ceilidhs and weddings. Note the seasonal snowman on the Irn Bru bottle.

Women of my mother’s generation used to cook a huge meal and serve it up about an hour before midnight. Steak pie was the traditional fare, the idea was that if people (men) ate a good meal then they wouldn’t get so drunk and hungover. Women of course didn’t drink anything, well perhaps a very wee sherry at midnight!

I’m hoping that 2011 is going to be a good and peaceful year and things aren’t going to be as horrendous as all the politicians are promising us they will be.

Happy New Year to anyone visiting ‘Pining’ and big hugs and kisses to the lovely people who take the time to leave comments.

If you missed the Irn Bru advert which I posted a few weeks ago you might like to have a look at it now. I shouldn’t need any Irn Bru for hangover purposes as I’ll just be having one wee drinkie, I’m not mad keen on alcohol but I am quite partial to our other national drink.
The advert contains well known Scottish landmarks.

Sláinthe – as they say in the Highlands. It’s pronounced like “flange” only with an “s” instead of “f” at the beginning.

Christmas card writing

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I couldn’t put it off any longer so I just had to get on with writing the Christmas cards or else I would have been drummed out of society! It’s not so much the cards that take the time but all the wee letters that I have to include to the people that I owe letters to. I know some people do those Round Robin things but I really don’t like receiving those myself so I wouldn’t send them. Anyway, now I just have to get to the post office early tomorrow and send them off.

I thought you might like to see these original Christmas cards from the 1950s. They turned up in the store room of a local print works which was closing down, so they are unused.

I toyed with the idea of sending them to people but then decided that as they aren’t glossy and glitzy like modern cards they probably wouldn’t be appreciated. So they’ve been added to my collection of old postcards, and things that other people probably wouldn’t give house room, but I find interesting. Anyway, I think they have olde worlde charm.