The Journey

I don't remember much about the winter of early 1967 and the start of The Journey.

I was seven years old and introverted.

I remember being on the Aberdeen platform,

with my parents, three siblings and Daisy the tortoiseshell cat,

saying goodbye to Mary and Sandy,

the neighbours I'd always known.

Quietly crying. 

I can't recall how I got there, 

but I was there, with my family, about to leave. 

We waved from the dark wooden patinated interior of the steam train window

and I still feel the sadness of that moment,

over half a century later.

It was my first sense of loss in my tiny life.

In retrospect, this wasn't a major journey,

but it was an epic journey for a wee boy.

I'd grown up on Westerns and I likely compared it to the Westward Expansion on the Oregon Trail.

In a carriage, but minus the livestock, dust and rattlesnakes.

My only previous journey of note was at the age of three when I made off from home in a failed bid for freedom, 

crossing a busy main road before I was tracked down and rescued.

Three hours later and the train approached Glasgow Central.

It was early evening drizzling darkness and I vividly recall the new city, 

the monochrome sights and conflicting sounds,

the grinding of metal and the soot-laden buildings,

originally blonde and red sandstone,

but dramatically darkened by pollution,

the echoing of the indistinct announcements under the massive arched glass roof;

a different type of city,

industrial and imposing, with a hint of danger,

the blackened buildings in stark contrast to the glistening granite we'd left behind.

Mum had grown up here and nostalgia had drawn her back to be near her large family,

along with the need to escape the harsh Aberdeen winters and biting winds which were affecting her already poor health.

Although young, I remember Aberdeen's 'Big Freeze' in the 1960s.

One morning I opened our front door expecting light,

which only entered through a narrow gap at the top

due to a snowdrift that had accumulated overnight.

I remember we built a makeshift igloo in the garden;

and I remember removing my frozen trousers from the washing line and standing them up,

unaided on the frostbitten ground,

like a disembodied pair of legs.

That was funny.

The move, or flit as we called it, was made possible through a mutual exchange between the two councils. 

We swapped our lovely two-storey terraced house for the lower left quarter of a four-in-a-block

in a cul-de-sac which no longer matched the memories my mum had held.

Before leaving our emptied house she had carefully cleaned out our coal fire, 

down on her hands and knees,

and then had to repeat the process on arrival,

the previous tenant devoid of the domestic pride held by mum.

Our accents stood out, 

strange and amusing to the locals. 

As children, we adapted quickly,

but our dad was Doric until the day he died.

I learned not to refer to boys as 'loonies',

an innocent term back home, but liable to result in a smack here.

Daisy the cat went missing soon afterwards

and I imagined her making her own journey back to Aberdeen.

Two years later, there was huge excitement as we were allowed to stay up well past midnight

to witness the moon landing and that first, amazing step onto the dusty surface,

on our Radio Rentals coin-operated convex black and white TV,

which made no difference to those grainy transmissions from the depths of space.

This was another Journey, far greater than ours in the winter of '67.

We'd followed it for four days,

sensing the vulnerability of the three pioneers on this dangerous mission

and the potential for disaster.

Frontiersmen of the latest Expansion.

I'll never forget it. 

And don't say it didn't happen. 

I was there.

Epilogue

Decades later, after the birth of my first son, 

I visited Mary and Sandy in the apartment I knew so well.

It seemed just as it had been all those years ago.

And Mary cried. 

She cried because Mark looked so much like the infant me from a generation past.

And she cried for the son she never had.

With thanks to my sister Norma for sharing a few memories.

Aberdeen, winter 1965/1966, a year or so before the journey.

Robert, Norma, Jonathan and me just after I cut my own hair.

Bad timing for a family photo, but not the reason for moving home.

By Alan Dickie