Tag Archives: Photography

The Rookery

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One of our favourite spots for an interesting luncheon is The Rookery restaurant in the seaside town of Carnoustie. The restaurant is housed upstairs in Links House, the clubhouse of Carnoustie Golf Links.

Downstairs in Links House, Carnoustie.

Neither Lorna nor I have ever been golfers, but we both enjoy watching the game, and frequenting golf clubhouses. The Rookery has very good views of the golf course, as well as other points of interest.

Carnoustie Golf Links.

In addition to golf, there are trains to watch from the Rookery’s windows. The main east coast railway line runs through Carnoustie, just behind the houses seen in the picture below, beyond the 18th green. Unfortunately we don’t have any pictorial evidence, but we did see 8 trains during our recent luncheon, and once saw 13 on another visit.

The 18th green at Carnoustie Golf Links. The railway line runs just behind the houses shown.

We had a table next to a window, giving a good view of the 1st tee and the 18th green.

Happily settled in The Rookery, ready to enjoy food, golf and trains.

It was a dreich, grey, damp day and we both opted for hearty fish and chips.

Fish and chips at The Rookery.
Tucking in to my lunch in The Rookery.

We very much enjoyed eating our meals with the interesting views from the window. As we sat there, what had begun as drizzle turned into heavy rain, and we were amazed by the number of golfers continuing to stream out onto the course. In fact, this was the wettest visit we’d ever had to Carnoustie and we saw far more golfers than usual.

There were a lot of Americans in the clubhouse, and I suspect many of those getting drenched outside were also from distant shores This may have been their one chance to play at Carnoustie, one of the courses that hosts the Open Championship, and I suppose they weren’t going to let a bit of rain put them off.

Our main courses had filled us up nicely but we felt we had room for something small and sweet, and both ordered one scoop of strawberry ice cream, which came all alone in a brown bowl.

Strawberry ice cream at The Rookery.

Lorna had been hoping for a wafer biscuit in her ice cream, but was pleased that the cappuccino she ordered afterwards arrived with a delicious shortbread biscuit.

I ordered an Americano, and organised it as I often like to, with the saucer turned upside down to raise the cup higher off the table.

My reason for doing this is that I find it very difficult to get my fingers in and around the cup handle if the cup is sitting inside a saucer. Turning the saucer upside down gives freedom of movement for the fingers, and is, for me, a much more comfortable experience.

When we’d finished our meal and left the building, I got into the car for a nap while Lorna took a walk to look at the sea. She had a large umbrella with her, made from clear plastic decorated with leaves, which gives the impression of standing under a tree. She didn’t stay out for long as the rain was very heavy and soaked her trousers in a few brief minutes.

View of the sea at Carnoustie from under a leafy umbrella.

My first five years

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The following photograph, taken in September 2015, shows 15 Cathcart Place, a residential tenement in Edinburgh.  It has eleven small flats (apartments) and I was born in flat 8 (on the floor below the top floor).  That was my home from 1929 to 1934.  The three windows on the left side of this shot belong to flat 8, including the one with a white blind.  (I’m standing in the street level entrance door that leads to the internal stair.)

Outside Dalry Road with JBM in doorway

The flat has two rooms looking out over the street.  The two narrow windows on the left of the photograph are in what we called the parlour, a room used mainly when we had visitors.  The wider window with a white blind is in what was Granny’s bedroom.  The other windows of the flat are on the far side of the building.

The next photograph shows the internal stair.  The property now has mains electricity but when I lived in it there was none.  At night, especially in winter, the stair was dark and a battery-operated torch was often in use.  A grassy communal area at the back of the building was formerly used for hanging out the washing but there was none there when I visited.

DSC02150

There are twenty or more steps between floors.  The next photograph shows me two flights up, outside the door of flat 8.

JBM outside front door

The busiest room in the house was the kitchen.  It has a wide window that faces northeast, looking out over the city of Edinburgh towards the Firth of Forth.  When I lived in this flat the kitchen had a cast iron range with at least one built-in oven heated by a central coal fire.  An iron kettle could be hung over the fire to boil water.  Heavy iron pans could be balanced above the fire.

The kitchen had a large central table where meals were prepared and eaten.  In the window recess there was a large kitchen sink with one cold water tap.  When hot water was needed it was transferred in a kettle from the range.  In a corner of the room away from the window there was a bed recess, an area large enough to take a double bed, and it may have had a curtain that could be drawn across to make the area into a little bedroom.  That was where my parents slept.

Coal fires were the only form of heating in the house when I lived there.  The fire in the range was kept burning most of the time, and there were fireplaces in Granny’s bedroom and in the parlour.  The house had no mains electricity.  It did have mains gas but that was used only for gas lamps, suspended from the ceiling in each of the three main rooms.  A fanlight over the flat door did allow some daylight into the hall.

There was no bathroom in the flat – only a small toilet opening off the hall.  This small room had no window, but it did have an electric battery torch fixed to the wall.  When I was small I was probably bathed in the kitchen sink or in a large zinc tub placed near the range in the kitchen.  When I was older I remember my father taking me on a short walk to the nearby public baths where he paid for a bathroom that had a very large bath with lots of hot water available.  I think we had the choice of taking our own towels or of hiring towels there.

JBM standing in doorway

I left 15 Cathcart Place after this brief visit to my childhood home still struggling to remember how life had been for me all those years ago.

After the war

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In the previous post I quoted from an account given by my father, Robert McInnes, of his departure from civilian life in Edinburgh in 1914 when he was called up for military service in France.  In 1918 (or it may have been in 1919) he returned to Edinburgh to live with his parents and to resume his work in the wholesale fruit and vegetable market.

On a recent visit to Edinburgh I was able to go to Cathcart Place, the street where both my father and I were born (in different houses).  The road is paved with ‘causies’ (causeway stones) and it looks much the same as it did when I was a child, except that now there are painted lines – white lines showing where cars may be parked, and yellow ones where parking is forbidden or at least discouraged. There were very few cars in this part of Edinburgh in the 1930s.  I and the other local children were able to play in the street, unaffected by traffic.

150926 cr Cathcart Place

On either side there are ‘tenements’, the local name for apartment blocks.  These ones were built well over a hundred years ago.  About half way down on the left is number 20 and one of the flats in that tenement is where my father lived with his parents and his three siblings till after the war had ended.

My father’s workplace in Market Street was about a mile and a half from his home and he made that journey routinely four times a day.  There was a frequent tram service down Dalry Road to Haymarket and then along Princes Street past Edinburgh Castle to Waverley Station, where the Fruit Market was, but he usually made the journey on foot, often walking through Princes Street Gardens rather than along the street itself.

Deliveries of fruit and vegetables arrived overnight in closed wagons at a railway siding that ran along Market Street below street level.  The wholesale fruit and vegetable companies owned properties that lined that siding and their staff arrived early in the morning, before 07:00, I think, to unload the wagons into the warehouses.  Retailers came during the day to purchase what they needed for their shops in the city and in neighbouring towns and villages.

Wood Ormerod, the company for which my father worked, supplied a cooked breakfast for their staff at around 09:00 and then allowed them a long meal break in the middle of the day.  My father used to walk home for that meal (called dinner rather than lunch) and then back to work again for three or more hours before returning home for the evening meal (called tea, although it usually included a substantial cooked dish).  I realize that he led a disciplined life, with good meals and healthy exercise, often walking around six miles a day.

His mother died in 1924, aged 66, and at about that time the family moved from their flat in Cathcart Place to a top floor flat at 52 Dalry Road, a short walk away.

DSC02140

Here is a photograph of that flat.  It has two windows looking out to Dalry Road below, three windows looking west, and another four windows (not visible in this shot) looking north.

Also in Dalry Road, not far from number 52, there was a shop that sold umbrellas, leather handbags, and a variety of items that were described as fancy goods, which is where my mother comes into the story.

Marjory Duff Watt was the youngest of the four children of Andrew Watt and Anne Morrison.  She was born on 14 February 1896 and lived at 2 St David’s Terrace, near Morrison Street in Edinburgh.  Madge (as she was usually called) went to Torphichen Street School and left in 1910 when she reached the age of 14.  Her mother had been looking out for a career opportunity for her, although that sounds rather too grand: basically she wanted to help her to earn a living.  One day in 1910 my grandmother walked down Morrison Street to Haymarket and then up Dalry Road.  There she noticed an advertisement in the umbrella shop window inviting job applications for work as a sales assistant.  I don’t know if Madge had expressed any interest in such work but her mother took her to the shop and she got the job, which she continued to do for the next sixteen years.  The shop was about half a mile from her home.

The owner of the shop, Tom Chambers, happened to be a member of the Glanton Brethren Assembly in George Street which was attended by the McInnes family.  Young Madge was invited to join a Bible Class that was led by a member of the Chambers family.  She did so and eventually decided to leave the Church of Scotland to which her family belonged and join the Brethren.  The Church of Scotland minister tried to persuade her that she was just the type of sincere Christian that he needed in his congregation but she remained convinced that she ought to leave.  She remained a member of the Glanton Brethren for the rest of her life.

Madge’s father died in 1919 and when her three older siblings married and left home she became her mother’s main support and I expect that eventually her earnings provided most of the family income.  My grandmother may well have wondered what would happen to her if her daughter got married.

I do not know when Madge Watt became friendly with Robert McInnes but I do know that they would often meet each other at the Sunday services and other meetings of the Brethren.  He would sometimes go into the umbrella shop as he passed by on his way to or from his dinner.  When I was a child my mother told me that on one occasion he demonstrated the filling effect of his meal.  Like most men at that time he wore a three piece suit.  The sleeveless waistcoat had a small belt at the back which could be adjusted.  One day Robert loosened his waistcoat when he left work for the dinner break and called in at the umbrella shop to say hello.  He pointed out that his waistcoat was very loose and remarked that he was feeling hun gry. After dinner he called in again and demonstrated that his dinner had made a noticeable difference:  the waistcoat was now very tight!  I wasn’t sure that I believed my mother when she said that she was fooled by this demonstration.

The friendship flourished and on 2 June 1926, when he was 33, Robert McInnes married Madge Watt.  I think that his parents’ flats in Cathcart Place and Dalry Road had been rented properties.  Robert was not highly paid, but he had been saving up to buy a home for himself, and before the wedding he had bought a flat in 15 Cathcart Place, across the street from his boyhood home.  That tenement is on the right of the Cathcart Place photograph above (beyond the red car) and the photograph below shows me walking towards the street level entrance door.

150925 cr BM going to 15 CP

In the next post I hope to write more about the house where I was born.

Thousands of mornings

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It was a frosty morning at the end of January 2012.  An old man sat comfortably in his house, with a mug of tea in his hand.  As he looked out over the white roofs of the houses nearby, he thought about how many mornings he had experienced in his life so far.  A rough calculation showed that the number had already passed thirty thousand.  He was relieved that he did not have detailed memories of all these mornings, but he knew that they had all happened, and that the events of the thirty thousand days that followed them had been woven into the tapestry of his life.

What was his earliest memory?  He had seen photographs of himself as a toddler, including one taken in a photographer’s studio where he was standing with his hands on a small stool, possibly because he would have fallen over without its support.  He was warmly dressed in a fluffy woollen coat and hat, corduroy leggings, and thick mitts.  He had no memory of the photograph being taken, but he had no doubt that he had been in that studio and that this picture was evidence of a day in his life that had probably been as frosty as today was.

Bennet McInnes aged 1 in 1930 - cropped

In 1930 I was the toddler in that photograph, wondering what the photographer was doing.  In 2012 I was the old man with the mug of tea, thinking about my past life, more than eighty years long so far.

As I rack my brain to recall early memories I remember something that happened when I was about three years old.  My uncle James, my father’s brother, had been showing me how to produce the domino effect, setting up a row of wooden bricks on their narrow edges so that when the first one was tapped to make it fall over it knocked over the rest of the row.  I have a definite memory of that event, and can almost hear again the clatter of the bricks as they tumbled down in a long line.  But it’s only a partial memory and I cannot visualise the room where it happened.  My uncle died on 9 May 1932, aged 35, ten days after my third birthday.

In writing this blog I want to explore some of the ways in which my life has developed.  In particular, I should like to review those times when I made choices that had significant consequences for me and for other people.  I believe that I’m accountable for my actions, in this life to my family and to society at large, and beyond this life to my creator.

My grandmother, my mother’s mother, lived with my parents from their marriage in 1926 for the remaining seventeen years of her life.  She died in 1943, when I was fourteen.  Among other memories that I have are those of her sitting quietly in her room reading from a large-print Bible.  Was she swotting for her finals?