Paisley 7

As a small child in Scotland I enjoyed the kudos of having two residences. One on the Isle of Mull the other in Glennifer Braes just outside of Paisley. We were dead poor however, the first was a stone croft and the second a house occasionally used by the artist Sir William Lavery and owned by the McMillan shipbuilders to whom Grandfather was tithed. McMillan was his clan, and he was loyal to his clan chief to the point of only allowing friendships in his family between septs. Brown, Baxter, Walker, and Bell were all acceptable families, either from Scotland or Ireland but never England. His children all buggered off and did what they wanted in the end. He eventually accepted outsiders but only very gradually.

There were of course other downsides. No electricity, no sanitation, and a Grandfather who, if described as a miserable old bastard would be doing a disservice to miserable old bastards the world over, for he took miserly, miserableness, and hardness to another level. Add to this bigotry, hypocritical religious fanaticism, and an insatiable appetite for whiskey chasers and you have a delightful hearth and home where everyone lived in fear, We lived with Grandfather because my father was on the HMS Ark Royal and stationed in England when on land. He hated Scotland with a venom, had he not got my mother pregnant he would never have returned.

The only redeeming memory I have of my Grandfather was his love of Lupins. He grew them everywhere, pollinated them, selected them, and developed a really strong strain that made the famous English 'Russell' hybrids look like pathetic little pussies. Apart from drinking, keeping the Sabbath, and beating his children (of which there were many) lupins were his hobby, along with his pet swan called 'yoke'.....which, oddly enough, was a vicious surly fucker as well.

Today, on looking at a receipt from a local garage, I noticed the telephone number of Teesdale 278. Now this must be a very old number because they have six digits these days. However it reminded me of being ill in Glennifer Braes....aged four I had been unwell all week and took a turn for the worst on the Sunday, no doctor was allowed because it meant going down the road to the house at the bottom of the Braes and using their 'telephone'...."A tool of the devil that should not be working on the Sabbath" according to the old man. The next morning I was dragged down to a rather posh house, indoor toilet and paper instead of moss to wipe your bottom with...some sort of tracing paper I believe was used, and it came out in single sheets. I know this because I pulled them all out while the grown ups were talking and my Grandmother kept having a "wee one" (piddle) just to pull the flush chain.

The point of this long winded post is the telephone number I heard them talking on was Paisley 7. Now Paisley is a large town and it has just today occurred to me that this must have been only the seventh phone installed in 1960. They had rung the doctor and he called back, which was when I heard the Lady answer with the words "Paisley 7"......funny how things stay with you. As has the repercussions of the Rheumatic fever that laid me low for the following 18 months, after which my father turned up and took me away to England.

Six years later Grandfather dropped dead....don't know why, just keeled over and snuffed it.

Thirty six years after, on a whim of laying some ghosts to rest, I returned on a pilgrimage to those houses, both by then in ruins, however there were Lupins growing wild in both places and I took a selection of the seed heads.

Today at Eggleston Hall Gardens we grow the resulting progeny and they are certainly as strong as I remember. The colours are mixed and I call them 'Glamrock Hybrids'....Perhaps I should maybe for the purposes of closure restart work on the strain, selecting and isolating individual colours for propagation. Perhaps I should even name one after my Grandfather........though "Miserable old Bastard" rather lacks sales appeal!