Bold Street Writers...Prompt..." If you were in the government for one day what rule would you change?"

 Alice sat on the speaker's chair...and glared at the assembled members of parliament. On the wing of the chair beside her perched the Cheshire cat who grinned as he faded and grinned again as he returned. Alice glared as only Alice could glare, and twiddled noisily with a little glass bottle on the stand in front of her. "Poison"..it said... no!..... it said "Drink me". The faces of the assembled on the ruling side of the room were white with worry. What were her thoughts? How could they avoid her sharp tongue? They whispered to one another behind shaking hands. We should never have given the red queen permission to raise an army. Maybe we should have insisted that tea parties were held at least once a year in every town, village and street. A law could have been passed banning cruelty to dormice. The Cheshire cat heard the whisper and his smile widened even as he disappeared once again, leaving a grin.

"Silence", thundered Alice, and she thumped her fist on the table. The ruling party quaked and sealed their lips. Even the opposition sat demurely quiet on the benches. Noone dared to give an "ear! ear!" while Alice occupied the speaker's chair, nor did anyone even feel brave enough to shout "Madame Speaker",  or stand to gain attention.

A white rabbit hopped about around the feet of the parliamentarians looking for carrots and a top hat was thrown high in the air for a moment by a hare who had taken a seat at the back of the opposition benches disagreeing with everyone and everything said. Alice looked at him kindly and pointing in his direction requested that he sit down. Which a hatter who is mad always finds very difficult.

This eased some of the tension in the room and many of the members sank back into the benches with a deep sigh of relief that drifted up into the painted ceiling. 

And there the Cheshire cat's smile reigned supreme... albeit without his furry body.

Alice took another glance around the gathered assembly noting everything and everyone and remembering their speeches given over the previous ten years. Mulling over the promises made and  promises broken, and thinking of all the media reportage watched, she thought of the factories abandoned, the businesses folded, the schools closed and the railways discontinued...and oh, oh so much, much more. 

So when Alice slapped her hand once again on the table and raised her voice to reach the very back of the room, and when all the people were looking to her... waiting for her wisdom....

She said with all the ferocity she could muster....fiercely, "I BAN all silly smiles from politicians making their ludicrous pompous statements of lies and more lies, cloaking them all the time with their shining toothsome wet mouths!"

The assembled parties gasped with unbelief..and the noise reached into every corner of the land. 

While the Cheshire cat wrapped itself around her on the speaker's chair...and grinned.

*

We live in the town where Lewis Carroll was born...well Daresbury which is a parish thereof.

The potter once worked for a company making the ceramic Alice in the pic above...but more than that I love surrealism..and nothing apart from Gulliver maybe....gets any closer to the surreal than Alice and her escapades.

We once held a Wonderland Tea Party here in the hidden garden at The Potters House Penketh.

Yes...even The Mad Hatter! And dormouse in the teapot.

...... grandgirls all grown up now.

*

Early Days...The Potters House Penketh

 Sometimes I start looking through my photo files for something ...

..and then have to stop at an image I'd completely forgotten about...

...such are these early pics from the beginnings of the business we now call 

The Potters House Penketh.

This is a pic of the very first sales day at St Joseph's Summer Fair on Meeting Lane in Penketh...late 70s.

Well the clothes say it all......!

..and hiding behind me advising on prices and top saleswoman...is my lovely late mum over from the troubles in Belfast for a week of peace.

You can see that it wasn't all Alan's ceramics then he was still teaching... 

...as head of art at Penketh High School.

We backed quite a few of the Traidcraft organisations.

And I also did a bit of dealing in vintage and collectables..anything to get the business going.

Every Tuesday I hired "The Institute" on the main Warrington Road.

This is a pic of sisters who came with their mum and shared the building..it was a place of fun and friendship.

Later it became a coffee house for the local church..St. Paul's Penketh and was renamed "The Manna House" ..and when sold on to a young local entrepreneur...Andrew Mulholland...it kept it's name and is used for grand parties and celebrations.

It meant a lot of packing and unpacking and lugging heavy boxes of ceramics and craft goods.

...and our old car at that time often needed a push to get the engine going!

There were many lovely people who became involved by baking and making for stalls.

So much laughter and naughty innocence...it was great to remember it all as I looked through the file of pics.  

The start of something...

 This is the very day that I start a year long project with a dear friend. She has I would say infinite knowledge of the town in which we both live...me for fifty three years...she since birth.

We write together every Thursday morning at a group called..."The Bold Street Writers". A prompt is delivered...and we write. This morning seven of us wrote about the words..."The Journey" ...each person's writing was so different...which I think is a joy in all that we share and have shared for more than twenty years.

Then we set off after a lovely cup of flat white coffee in a favourite cafe and a natter about our lives and a catching up after a busy week....on as Winnie the Poo always said.."A very great adventure". 

I'm going to save the journey for another blog...but this first day touched my heart at quite a deep level as we explored the streets we thought we both knew so well...and found new business in old places and old people in hard places.

Just this pic says it all maybe...a little miniature fern taking hold in a tiny crack in the stone work of an abanboned old 1800s property. 

Here is life.

Not many words today...the pics speak for themselves...

...the beauty of Morecambe Bay

one evening last week.

The old Stone Jetty and the Lighthouse

Every day the tides change the direction of the sands and streams

At low tide the fishing boats rest

 Every evening folk walk to the end of the jetty just waiting for sundown...

The early silver light catching the water and corrugations of sand...

Nets drying on the railings...

Golden beams on the worm casts...

A stream making it's way out to the bay...

Marine life in the sands and on the water...

Morecambe Bay

 

The Story of Ballyferris. Chapter Fifteen. Donaghadee.

 Donaghadee

Pearl of the Ards Peninsula

Long long before Belfast became a city...before Samson and Goliath, the giants of Harland and Wolff's cranes towered over the houses in that city, Donaghadee was the main port on the east coast of Ulster carrying out business with the ports of Scotland and England. It is the closest point to Scotland and was the landing place for the Ulster Scots who settled in the north of Ireland travelling from Port Patrick in Wigtonshire. 

My paternal family left the Scottish borderlands in the mid 17thc to eventually settle in County Armagh, and my storytelling mind has left me imagining that they may have landed at the old harbour in Donaghadee. I like that thought! The sea route between Larne and Stranraer came much later.

Our route from the caravan to the Dee, as we all called the town, took us past the little shop at Ballywhisken, and on through Millisle and the icecream vendor's place where a filled ice cream cone could be dipped into melting chocolate. What a joy! Dad often stopped  and treated us as a start to our holidays.

And so on to the town of Donaghadee.

In the early 50s, before dad bought the old black Austin that later took us to the caravan at Ballyferris...kitchen sink...grandfather clock... et al... we were often thankful for a lift to Donaghadee from Wully Hope. If I remember correctly he too had an Austin, but this was a little two door version. How we all fitted in can only be imagined. Dad in the front with Mr. Hope, mum in the back with Rosie still a baby, on her knee and Ian and myself squashed in as best we could.  Ian was by then at least 13 years old so no skinny kid! I was only eight or nine. Of course there were no safety car belts in those days...so perhaps that made it easier to fit us all in. 

Once parked,  the first thing to do was to take a walk down the harbour to the lighthouse. Stop at the deep end, gaze out to sea to the Copeland Islands and then walk around it and back into the town. We still do that every time we visit. It feels right and you just never know who you might meet.

 The next best place to go was always The Cabin icecream parlour and cafe. 

Up the little wooden stairs we would trundle and find a table big enough to take all five of the McClellands. Then a young local girl dressed in traditional cafe, black dress with white pinny would arrive to write down our order. Dad would josh...joke...with her and she would blush as she wrote down our desires for tea and cake and usually an ice cream in a glass bowl for each of us. And if there were any other tables occupied there might be a bit of chat and banter from dad ....much to my embarassment....me wanting to appear sophisticated even then and pretend that this was normal and not as dad said "a special treat".

I doubt that the tables and chairs have changed in any way over the 60 years and more since we went to eat at The Cabin....this photograph was taken recently and they are still just as I remember them. Wonderful! 

Below is a glass cabinet in the cafe with momentoes and memories of the years that the Cabin has been serving the people of the Dee.

...and on the wall are these three historic photographs of some RNLI men who volunteered for service on the Donaghadee lifeboat.

The seas at this part of the coast are known to be very dangerous. On the 31st January 1953 the MV Princess Victoria sank in a fierce storm. We were already caravanning at Ballyferris and even though I was young the sinking stayed in my memory and worried me when from time to time I took the Liverpool Boat back home to Belfast to visit family. Again in the early days of the caravan, when we were all sitting in the early afternoon, mum remarked that the little fishing boat in our view had disappeared. The men on it had gone down immediately...the story is that they never learnt to swim and always wore heavy rubber boots... theory being best to go down quickly... and even though the rescuers came as fast as they possibly could...no remains were ever found as far as I know. A lifeboat station was set up in 1910 and as with all RNLI boats local people manage it as volunteers.

We grew up and made it to the town ourselves often hitching rides or managing to get a lift from the older members of the caravanners. Derek Cathcart or maybe June McKee. With a newspaper steaming with the treat of delicious chips...seldom could I afford fish as well...or an icecream poke...yes that's what a cone gets called in Ireland!...we sat on the wall together or lounged in the amusement arcade where we offered our pennies into the one-arm bandits. Noone asked our ages...and anyway there were maybe only a few machines in the small room opposite the wall. June was an adult by then and had made friends with the lads who owned the fishing boat called "The Brothers". So if business was a bit quiet with them, then for a small nominal amount, as we knew June, we got to go out mackerel fishing by the Copeland Islands. I tried to be brave if I managed to catch a fish but I was always thankful for the fishermen who helped me to take the squirming fish off the hook. Mum refused to accept my catch when I proudly brought it back to her as she scoffed at mackerel telling me they were the bins of the ocean and who knows what they had eaten. I'm very fond of a mackerel now though I have recently read that they too are becoming scarce.

This is the boat called "The Brothers" still to be seen in the harbour.You know how things can seem enormous when you are young...like the size of your bedroom..or the back garden at home...well that is how I thought of the boat called "The Brothers". I thought it was really big! Once when Rosie and me were in the Dee alone we decided to go out on a trip in it and land on one of the Copeland islands. Being adventurous we set off to walk the whole shore around it. It was a special site for terns that we chose and it happened to be the prime breeding time. As we walked we started to be attacked by the worried birds. We ran for the safe shore and made it to the boat unharmed ...apart from our pride. Terns are also now on the decrease..whether or not on the Copelands I'm not sure. There is a story that Dean Swift who wrote Gulliver's Travels took the idea for the islands from the Copelands. It may be so as he lived locally and took the hill outside Belfast we called Napoleon's Head as the thought behind his giant. And mum used the Lilliput Laundry in Belfast which was on Lilliput Street....not named after Swift's book! 

 

Finally...The Warren..a rabbity land south of the main town which was another wonderful place to walk where there were swings and pitch and putt and benches to sit and do nothing more but dream ...

..and on the way there maybe stop and buy a bag of dulse from the garden behind the whitewashed wall with the red gates and the notice..."Dulse for sale." Hard to believe now that a bag of dulse....seaweed found all the way along the coast and dried in the sun...could be thought of as a treat when you were only eight years of age in the 1950s. But I still keep a bag of it in my food cupboard..very tasty fried for a minute or two in some butter.

 I was reminded recently that the little end cottage to the left of the lane leading down to the beach was lived in by a local man who collected dulse each morning at low tide and dried it in the yard at the back of the cottage, and then bagged it up to be sold in the town. ...memories.

...oh!...that could be the potter on that swing...early days at Donaghadee.

The Story of Ballyferris.Chapter Fourteen.Carrowdore 100

                                                       Official photo..Commando 961

I love  the growly roar of a powerful motorbike ....what could make me enjoy a noise like that?

Perhaps it was because when I was young the infamous aunt, Helen, took me north on the train to the seaside town of Portrush up on the Atlantic coast of north Antrim. And there we watched the North West 200, and if I remember correctly, it was held every year on the narrow roads of the county. 

Possibly still is!

 Aunt Helen worked for an engineering firm  servicing and selling  Daimler cars, Norton bikes and David Brown tractors. She was a woman in a man's world ....and she was fiesty with it! The company also owned a greyhound racing track and a speedway track in the city..... but that's another story and nothing to do with Ballyferris..... so I mustn't get sidelined !

Anyway, I  really loved the eardrum-splitting noise of the engines as they screamed around the track on the roads of Co Antrim. And I lay on my stomach on the top of a roadside verge with my nose literally inches away from those gloriously smelly monsters absolutely unable to hear anything that aunt Helen might say to warn me to be careful...what did I know of danger!

A gang of friends waiting for the start of the race.

So therefore in Ballyferris, at the top of the lane that lead down to the caravan field having motor bikes speeding past in a major race...that was a delicious joy!.

The Carrowdore 100.

It was so called as the bikers started from  the little town of Carrowdore...you remember Carrowdore... and filled the roads along the shores of the Ards Peninsula with noise, dirt and a smell of oily excitement.

 Not raced over as many miles as The NorthWest 200, and perhaps not thought of as important internationally, but it was ours and and a day to remember.

   A farmer's field was always set aside for the riders and their growling steeds.We made it our job to be there in the field. Tough men in their leather biking gear, scuffed boots with straps and buckles and unnumbered unknown acoutrements, had our eyes popping out of our  heads...and our hearts beating wildly with excitement....wondering...what could all that gear be for?

The smell of  hot engine oil,  the sound of a never-ending accelerator noise as the competitors prepared riding up and down the field waiting for their race, waiting for the signal that summoned them to the starting line, had us too jumping with anticipation.

As townies we always hung around with the farmers' lads, they knew many of the riders by name. And if you were lucky there was a possibility of  getting up close to one of the bikes or even being allowed to sit pillion behind one of these "gods of the road".... though I must sadly tell you, it was not my fortune ever to be chosen!

Such innocent days. Yet in that little tucked away spot of nowhere, death and tragedy struck most years.

 As in the Isle of Man T.T. races nowadays young men died, striving to be the first to cross the line and win the accolades from those who stood around adoring! I don't think the fear of dying was ever as strong, is even now as strong, as the longing and love for excitement and danger.

At the end of the races we trudged down the lane towards the sea and gathered in one of the caravans ...excited, noisy and smelling of  fast engines and fresh air. A wonderful combination! The noise was still going on in our heads......

zoom...zoom...zoom... 

...while outside the windows of the van, the grey Irish sea whooshed us into a dreamy quiet state.

*

The last death stopped it all. Now there is no more Carrowdore 100.

 I 'm sure this is right... and yet... those  "magnificent men on their racing machines", and the

memory of the noise and the smells, went into the rest of the mix which made my teenage years  ever more memorable.

*

The Story of Ballyferris. Chapter Thirteen. Some Dad-type Incidents.

Me ...Dad ...and Rosie

 This chapter is a story about dad and it could only be told after he had passed on. It's hard to believe that he died nearly forty years ago, because my memories of him are so clear...though that may be because I am  now close to the age he was when he went! 

In our hidden garden, here at The Potters House in Penketh, every autumn we are amazed at the variety of fungi that crops up under the birch grove and the grassy paths of the labyrinth. Mushroom and fungi are everywhere. I'm astounded at the size of some of them for those in around the labyrinth are the most beautiful, tiny little orangey-red ones.

 I've looked in my fungi book in the summer house, but it's hard to know exactly what we have. So I just warn the grand children to look but not touch. Nowadays fungi is one of the most talked about subjects within the scientific world. Centres such as Kew are publishing reports of how it is a basic provider of environmental health on the earth's surface and I read about the link between fungi and trees in Merlin Sheldrake's book.."Entangled Lives"..well worth a visit!  But in the 50s I thought that the mushrooms which came with my Ulster fry were from a farm somewhere in the country. So it was with great anticipation that I was allowed to go with dad very early one summer morning, leave the caravan field and go up the lane and on to Greystone Road the one that led to Carrowdore...you remember Carrowdore? Once there to enter the best field where fresh mushrooms were to be found and take them back to mum for the breakfast she was cooking. 

Some of the fungi to be found here at The Potters House.

What child living in a city in the 50s knew that the best field mushrooms were to be found where the biggest cow claps were! Not me.  Big white umbrella like fungi that grew on the edges of  brown claps where dad and I picked enough to feed the family for breakfast that morning. I have really never since had such a wonderful taste as those freshly picked that day still with the early morning dew shining on their tops. And when they were fried in the pan with foaming butter and us all seated around the little table and the sound of the sea and the smell of the wild flowers in the long grass... well that was heaven. 

But this story of dad and Cassie and her field is a good one and all the better for a comment I received recently from someone who discovered me on my blog and was also in Ballyferris with her family at the same time as us. We always seemed to eat well at the caravan. Maybe it was the fresh air, maybe it was the smell of the calor gas stove or maybe it was because after a day roaming the beaches, we were just plain ravenous.  So as I have written, I learnt from dad that the best place to look for mushrooms was around the periphery of old cow pats! I suppose you could say that they were very well manured. As I have already said the difference in the taste of a freshly picked field mushroom and a lily white button one salvaged from the ravages of some supermarket shelf cannot be described with mere words. I would need you to smell and taste these plump, snowy morsels after they had been gently marinaded in hot butter by mum and arranged on toast... also dripping with butter... and placed on the caravan table sometime around eight in the morning, just after a successful search. The best field to find these jewels of the morning were always at Cassie’s farm. Cassie was an old woman living alone in her farm up on the right of the Greystone Road looking away from Hope's property. As kids we used to climb on the back of Wully Hope's tractor and cling on for dear life as one of the Hope boys drove at breakneck speed up the narrow road to Cassie’s to work in the potato fields gathering the harvest. In my memories this was normally Neil, the younger of the two sons, who allowed us on to the back of the tractor. Can you imagine this happening today? Of course it was a bit dangerous, but in all the years that I did it, I knew of no accidents. That’s not to say that there were none but I never heard of them. Cassie’s farmyard was a lot smaller the Hope’s. but just as exciting for us townies. I can't imagine now that I did very much gathering for the potato harvest, but to be with the others and the joshing and joking that went on was just such a wonderful memory.

 "The Quaint Couple" by Charles Vincent Lamb. 1893-1964

There is a great family story concerning dad and Cassie. One early morning he went out alone to pick some mushrooms. He was wandering about in one of her fields scanning the ground for fresh white goodies by the cow pats, when a voice cried out to him in a lovely Co. Down accent,

 “ I think you’ve strayed!”

He looked up and noticed an elderly farming woman approaching him pointing a loaded shotgun in his direction. But being the charmer that he was, he gave a chuckle and agreed. " I think I have!" However Cassie was having none of it, and dad had to carefully retreat back out of the gate and off down the Greystone Road. Dougie's charm was not enough that morning to calm the situation. Alas, that was the last time we ever gathered mushrooms there for our seaside breakfasts. 

Cassie had every right to defend her land. A woman living alone out in the country needed to know how to protect herself. Then again, maybe that’s why she was alone! I’ll never know. Moments like this are there to be savoured and remembered in the difficult times that all of us encounter in life. All I know is that she was highly esteemed by the Hope family and that's enough for me.

Fly Agaric under the birch grove in the hidden garden.

I believe them to be magic mushrooms....but I've not tried them so I have nothing to report!!

The Story of Ballyferris. Chapter Twelve. The Beach Take Two.

The grey beauty of the Irish Sea.

When I became bored of waiting my turn on the beach, on the sand in front of the van where my brother Ian made those serious structures... I've written about already... with the other lads whose families also had vans on the field by the beach....I went walking .

I've mentioned that many liked to promenade in a summer evening along the silver sands as the sun lowered  over the peninsula. When aunt Helen...mum's sister ...came to the van it was de rigeur to have a walk after tea. Teatime then  being what I now call dinner. 

But soon it became a place of gathering for the young people from our field and the smaller field to the right of the lane. In our early teens the gang was mainly the younger Cathcarts, Vicky Pollock, the McKee girls and myself. the leader of the pack being Vicky, she who must be obeyed!

This was seldom a leisurely stroll. This walk was invariably brisk and our given instructions were to collect shells.

Not just any old shells

They had to be either "pearlies" or tiny cowries. And to this day I keep a glass bottle full of cowries on a window ledge in my home in Morecambe...and if by chance and good luck I happen upon a "pearly" on some distant shore, why a little whoop of success leaves my lips.

Of course I never could compete with the number of precious shells that Vicky gathered, because we all had to walk behind her, thus making sure that she spied them first....and wow betide you if you thought that you could somehow sneakily get in front of her because you were then in danger of receiving a little friendly nip or punch on the arm. We remained good friends through grammer school and college until we both went our separate ways as adults never to meet again.

I was actually more of a lone wanderer.Leaving the van I liked to take the beach to the left. It was more rugged and I found it interesting with seaweed and shells and those little hopping sand fleas!. It also gave me the chance to see what the folk along the edge were up to. Always inquisitive I was, maybe a bit nosey.

I especially loved the double decker bus I've mentioned before and was always hopeful that I might catch a glimpse of one of the occupants and be invited into their van.  It didn't happen. I never saw them there. Perhaps they had come to Hope's field wanting quiet and peace. 

There was a headland about thirty yards away from our van with quite a rocky promontory and there the area stopped being Ballyferris townland and became Ballywhisken... as far as I can remember. One of my delights was to clamber alone over these rocks and climb right out on to the very edge of them where the water was deepest. Then as the tide came in a surge smashed up into the crevases in the rocks soaking my clothes and hair. Imagination ran riot in this place. I saw the footprints of giants and dinosaurs and thought of the generations of children who may have climbed these rocks before me and who might have dreamt of someone like me in the future. I too dreamt of my future, who I would become, what I would do in life and I even thought of the children and grandchildren that I might have one day. Such dreams as these sustained me and kept me positive in my later life when disappointments came my way, as of course they do for us all.

If I was feeling really daring I would climb over the grassy hill at the back of the promontory and walk on to the next beach. 

And that was a very different environment, with a completely different feel to it, as if, as in the old testament, other gods or princes of the air were holding court in that empty seascape! Actually...it was just the way to a favourite shop in Ballywhisken, but if you were going by the beach you had to negotiate the sucking clay that melted below your feet and if it succeeded in trapping you to free yourself took a mighty muscle wrenching effort. 

A cliff of sand separated the coast road from the beach. There were no fields behind it to house friendly caravanners and therefore the beach was normally deserted. Here the tide went out very far and left great acres of shining silver with what looked like little rivulets of water. But wow to the one who tried to take the path through this expanse for if the clay didn't get you then the the depth of those little streams might offer up a surprising shock. It was worth the risk as the sand was littered with beautiful stones. Stones that sparked as you struck them against each other...flints! My pockets were often so heavy with them that my shorts were in danger of falling down. And this too has left me with the joy, whether Suffolk, Spain ,Morecambe or Donaghadee where I woud seek out pebbles seawashed and beautiful. I have read that stones may roll down rivers in one part of the world and reappear somewhere else much later, with the sharp edges rounded off and ready to slip nicely into the palm of a hand. A comforting thought. 

A path led eventually through the cliff and on to the road by the little emporium in Ballywhisken.

A wooden hut with rows of glass bottles full of sugary treats. Hilda's shop.Now although there were other little shops around further on in Millisle and Ballywalter, none compared to this. Hilda's was a place of magic. Now gone the way of all good things, gone the way of progress! Possibly woodworm ate away at the structure or perhaps one stormy night it just took off and flew free of the cliff it was balanced on so precariously. Dougie, my dad, had a way of flirting in an Armagh sort of a way and Hilda was one of his favourite flirt partners, if there is such a thing. I loved to be there when he was flirting. He charmed, she responded and mum just raised her eyebrows and waited for the loaf of bread or the bag of sweets or whatever it was that she had gone in for. As far as I'm concerned...nobody took it seriously, least of all mum, and in a way it added a frisson of fun and excitement to our days.

*

I may have asked for a bag of dulse.....but that's for another story.

 

The Story of Ballyferris. Chapter Eleven. The Road to Ballywalter

 I'm excited...we are going to see the film "Ballywalter" this afternoon in Warrington.

We were there in July...walking along the beautiful silver beach and loving the wild marine daisies that grew by the old caravan in the field at Ballyferris. Just along the road from the little town.

It was a perfect Co Down coast day. The breeze was soft...the sea was gentle..birds swooped over the water..and Leo..Rosie's dog lept in the waves with joy.

Later that day we met up with an old friend that we hadn't seen for 60 years...that was special...but that post is for another day.

I'll let you know if the film lives up to all my expectations!!

I'm leaving this story as a recap...in case you might like to know what Ballywalter meant to me..x

The caravan was moved to the edge of the field by the beach after a couple of years and so after breakfast it was merely a matter of stepping out of the door and running down the sand to the sea and the magic of rock pools and little darting creatures in the water.

But as we got older, well at least older than eight or nine… we became more adventurous and we started to wander ever further away from the relative safety of the beach. One of our favourite places to go was  the little town of Ballywalter, a small fishing village on the east coast of the Ards Peninsula some two miles south of the caravan site at Ballyferris. This was the first of the local metropolises ... or should that be metropolii? It would become a flame to us little moths. At the top of the lane to the beach we turned left on to the coast road. Being the 1950s, there was very little traffic on country roads and any that there was tended to be tractors with trailers or fastasmagorical medieval-looking contraptions for doing various jobs in the fields. How was I to know what they were for, I may have been the child of a farmer’s son, but I was also the daughter of a city loving mother.

I mentioned previously that I rarely wore shoes during my time at the caravan, and so it was that very often I walked the road barefoot. I’m not pretending that it was painless, the roads were tarmacked and stoney and it was my own silly fault when I regularly ended up with aching soles! There was of course the grass verge I could have kept to but nettles and unknown creepy crawlies deterred me from taking that choice. Most of the time we were laughing and joking so much that we didn’t notice any physical discomfort.

There were land marks on the way to keep us interested. Greystone Road was off to the right opposite the farm. So called I believe because of the enormous grey stone perched on the right hand side. This road took you to Carrowdore…you remember Carrowdore?... the little village that time seemed to have passed by. I never questioned the reason for the stone then I simply accepted it’s presence, but I suppose that it was dumped there after the ice age for the whole of County Down is known as basket of eggs country, officially drumlins.

Different farms and other sites were passed as we walked though these we dismissed as lesser establishments than our field. Half way along the road to the town on the right hand side, was an old abandoned farm house no doubt left empty when the residents either died or left for a chance of a better life elsewhere. The Irish diaspora in England,  Australia and the Americas left the island with a small population in those days and many of my friends took the Liverpool boat in search of a future myself included.  With our vivid imaginations and no doubt encouraged by one of the older members of the gang, we came to believe this old house was haunted. So to prove our lack of fear we would creep up the tangled path and peer in the grimey windows, until one of the gang jumped out and shouted “boo!” Sometimes if I passed by on my own, I would take a sidelong glance and hurry on as fast as my little legs could carry me. Well you know the old saying...there’s more to heaven and earth than any of us realise.

 Fresh air and the salty smell of sea was ever present and even now when that wonderful ozone once again hits my nostrils, I’m catapulted back in memories to the sensuousness of it all. 

One of the reasons I liked to walk along the road to Ballywalter was that some of my relatives had  caravans on a site close to the town. They had their vans pitched on Robinson’s field with the farm on the landward side of the road and the vans tight up against the edge of the coast. Aunt Cis, was my father’s sister and she and her husband John occupied one of these sites with their three sons. And Aunt Sally and her husband Cecil, dad’s nephew, had another site close by with their two daughters. Both men had built their caravans before dad made ours, and the legend was that they were so good at it that even the line on the screw heads were level throughout. Quite a boast. Sometimes Aunt Cis's boys went out rabbiting, not to catch or kill but to bring back some little wild ones to have as pets by the caravan. Then I assume that at the end of the summer they set them free…well that’s what I want to assume! I’m not saying that dad didn’t catch rabbit for food, oh yes he did, and mum was expert at turning it in to best chicken! She was a magician. And talking about chickens, none of these sites were the clean cemented establishments that so much of today's caravaners know. Chickens, ducks and various fowl wandered at will in among the caravans.

Aunt Sally had a little saying about her girls. The farmer’s son was John and like many of the farmer's sons locally, he was a flirt,  so Sally with a wry smile would ask him quietly to remember that she was always watching out for her beautiful daughters and he should be a good boy. Hmm! That seemed to me even then like a lost cause. They were such fun the country lads, but good, no they were not!

Aunt Cis

Food  played a big role in my wanting to stop here. Aunt Cis was renowned for exotic sandwiches. Always the crusts discarded...a feast for the gulls. The white bread would be “sliced pan” no doubt from the Ormeau Bakery, buttered with best Ulster butter. There might be some amazing combinations such as freshly cooked ham sliced to within an inch of it’s life and maybe on top of that some thin slices of pickled peaches. Where did she get such luxuries in those days of belt tightening? Best not to ask! Onions also played a role with thin sliced beef and even thinner slices of onion rings on delicious wheaten bread. I missed Irish bread so much when I first made my way to these English shores and really I still do..

The Ballyferris gang were always eager to be on the move... eager to get to the multifarious delights of the town of Ballywalter. So reluctantly I would have to leave the gourmet pleasures of Aunt Cis’s food and the verbal joys of Aunt Sally’s caustic remarks and join them. I didn’t ever want to be the one who missed out on the big happenings at the town.

I'll write another missive on the activities we got up to there...but I just want to mention this painter of Irish landscapes and seascapes, Kenneth Webb. As a bit of an artist myself now...I studied Fine Art degree at the college in Birkenhead... how I wish I had known that he lived in the town of Ballywalter even while I was there during the caravan days. Mum was an amateur oil painter of Irish landscape but I don't recall her ever mentioning him...that's not to say she didn't...just that I may not have payed attention to her!

Ballywalter Harbour

Artist

Kenneth Webb

The Story of Ballyferris. Chapter Ten. Music and Derek's Caravan.

 Music at the Caravan

When we were all rather young, before our teenage years, a barn was set aside at Turkington’s caravan site (the one on the Millisle side of Hope's farm), in which  caravanners could gather to have a bit of a concert . Well that was always such a good old sing song, and in the inimitable Irish way if you felt like it, you could get up and strut your stuff musically! Noone minded if you got all  the notes ...even when they were not exactly in the right places!

I remember one of the regular favourites was... “Look over your shoulder, I’m walking behind”……now who on earth sang that? Does anyone remember?

Google tells me it was Eddie Fisher !

I don't remember singing many Irish folk songs in the 50s. You would be more likely to hear a country and western rendered...or mangled, depending on how it came out. But the enthusiasm was boundless. In fact my drama teacher Graeme Roberts was surprised when upon winning a science prize at school I opted for a book of Irish "come-all-yees"...dad's name for Irish songs.

This was at the end of the fifties when Elvis broke into our music world and thrilled us with songs such as "Teddy Bear” and “ Jail House Rock”, and you know…. we kids wanted to rock it up in the Barn.

 I remember one day in particular at the swings in Turkington's yard with Vicky, another caravanner and close school friend, when we must have sung "Teddy bear" constantly all afternoon...and I mean...

all afternoon!!

In  Ballywalter the Lemon family had a café and fish and chip emporium where we often gathered in the store room at the back of the shop to feed our money into their exotic juke box. Bill Haley, Little Richard and The Big Bopper fed our fertile minds and brought us dreams of faraway places and possibilities of distant lands. Could be one of the reasons why so many of us left Ireland for distant shores as soon as our teenage years were behind us?

For me, even more important than all of this, was the scruffy caravan in Hope’s second field. A musical cooking pot full of enormous significance for my young enquiring soul.

The van was owned by Derek Cathcart.

He was much older that me, and in my young eyes very worldly-wise. He played guitar and more importantly than that played and sang regularly in local pubs. A font of musical knowledge of a genre  I had never heard before.

I often waited until the other van kids were in his scruffy abode some early evening... before he sallied forth to the bright lights of Donaghadee, Millisle or Ballywalter...and would creep in to sit  at the back of the caravan... near the door. A thick smokey fug filled the space and  meant that you could hardly see to the opposite end... and I’m sure more than contributed to his throaty singing voice.

He sang the usual country and western songs of those days. Do you remember..."It wasn't God who made honky tonk angels" ? or Jim Reeves and "He'll have to go"? Oh my ...you  and I are old!!

More important to me however was the jazz that he sang... and in particular the blues  I heard  for the first time in my life.

From Derek I learnt to sing "Beale Street Blues, St Louis Blues" and many many more.

One song in particular that I loved to hear him sing, was his rendition of "Miss Otis Regrets".

I still sing it today.

I was probably only ten or twelve at the most when I first sat in that caravan, and I had already had quite a few years studying drama and music, but this new music was something that entered my soul and has stayed with me ever since.

Though a  rough diamond, he was kindly. He seemed to recognise something in me and encouraged me to sing. And I found that I had a natural inclination to harmonise and so when he launched into some blues piece, I would quietly sing along  absorbed in this wonderful world of music. More often than not I received an encouraging word  from him at the end. That did more for my confidence than all of the scales and classical pieces given to me by my singing teacher .

 I have a memory that once, in a lesson, my singing teacher informed me that if I continued to sing in the lower register I would absolutely ruin my voice. Ooops! I don't think she ever knew about my jazz , my gospel albums or any other stage work I did.

I was a young teenager sitting at the back of his tiny caravan in the coastal district of Ballyferris, Co Down but I was always encouraged by Derek to sing. 

He sang the blues and black American Gospel to a tinny old guitar.

He was the sophisticated older member of that early seaside gang who sang in the local pubs and bars... a thing unimaginable to me and my strict church upbringing at that point in my life...and therefore, all the more exotic and unattainable .

I mostly remember blues like ...Beale street, St. Louis Blues or St James's Infirmary. Or country and western songs which were always popular in Ireland.

So I pestered mum and dad for a guitar of my own. Left adverts sitting around on the mantlepiece and the breakfast table.

"Almost new guitar for sale...very resonably priced".

 So with great rejoicings and merrymakings I got my first guitar on my thirteenth birthday.

It's not hard to learn three chords from each of the major keys! So that's what I did... and not much more. But I got the reputation for entertaining my friends when we got together in our family caravan as the teenage years went by.

I didn't know what had happened to Derek...I lost touch with most of them from the smokey caravan. But the phone call recently from Neil let me know that he had emigrated to Australia. I loved the music  he had introduced me to and when other friends were revelling in Elvis, The Beatles and The Stones...I was listening to late night jazz and buying up Billy Holliday and Peggy Lee records.

I dabbled a bit in the university clubs in Belfast and sang at some of the student balls and rag concerts and on one occasion was at the same glee club at Queen's in the 60s, when an older singer called Ottilie Patterson took the stage. Being young and arrogant, I remember being quite scathing about her singing.

....Ah me the foolishness of youth!

When she died, and I read through her obituary, it hit me like a ton of bricks....she was possibly the inspiration for Derek and therefore myself all those years before in the late 50s.

She was born in Comber...and that's just a spit away from Ballyferris and the caravan. So I realised that Derek must have been following her music and listening to her in the early 50s in the pubs and clubs where he himself then used to perform.

She married Chris Barber and sang with his band...but like so many singers she struggled with a throat problem and eventually disappeared from the scene.

What a great memory. Who could better that instruction with so much fun thown in? 

It was many years before I met any one else who had such confidence in my vocal abilities.

Thankyou Ottilie....thankyou Derek...and many thanks for the memories....

...oh that could be a good song title....

....stop being silly Geraldine!

Singing at "Jazz in the Garden"...here in Penketh.