My boyhood homes

I've had many 'homes' - houses I've lived in and considered 'home' (or in the case of the first first 'homes' they were places that I lived although I have no recollection of them whatsoever). I was born in a top flat overlooking the river Teviot in Hawick in the Scottish Borders before moving for some months to a cottage at Cavers, just outside Hawick. 

Then, aged about 18 months, my family moved to central Africa where my father had been posted as a pharmacist in the British Colonial Service. There my home became first a colonial service bungalow at Livingstone not far from the Victoria Falls and then another in N'dola in what was then Northern Rhodesia. My father then joined the mining company Rio Tinto, working in hospitals set up by  his new employer on the Copper Belt . We relocated to a mining company bungalow in 'A' Avenue, Luanshya, home on the Roan Antelope Mine.

After three years my parents separated and I moved with mother, brother, and sister back to Scotland to my mother's 'home' city of Dundee where lived first with her mother, my formidable grandmother in city-centre Panmure Street

Overgate, Dundee 1950s

before moving close-by into a small flat in Dundee's Overgate. I started school in Dundee at Harris Academy, but by year's end my parents were reconciled and we moved back to Africa and into a house that I remember well, again a large mine company bungalow, 134, 'E' Avenue.

It was a large sprawling brick and tile house with red polished concrete floors - anything wood was subject to attack from termites. The front of the house had a long verandah, enclosed with a fine-mesh wire intended to keep mosquitoes out; it was out indoor play area - especially during the Wet Season. Each house door was 'guarded' by rough coir matting laid out across the doorway to prevent, or so it was claimed, snakes from slithering into the house. It was not entirely successful as I recall on at least one occasion a snake coiled in a corner of my bedroom, until dispatched by my father.

My best memories of 134E are associated with our 'house-boy,' Daason, a tall, strong, handsome 'native' servant, who was something of a second father to me. He played football with my brother and me on the large front lawn; he amused us with silly antics, clowning , 'dancing' with cloths tied to his feet while he polished the floors. He taught me and spoke to me in Swahili. he gave me rides on the back of his bicycle. Daason and my mother seemed to get along very well; she spent time trying to teach Daason to read and write and to tell the time by looking at the clock and there would be much laughter. Looking back now, I am sure that there was some flirting going on; but at the time, it was to me just fun.

My other memories of that home were having braaivleis (Africaans for 'grilled meat') - usually cooked on our small brick-built 'braai' (barbecue) or when larger groups gathered for a party - over long shallow trenches dug in the back yard filled with burning logs and covered by sections of wire. These were always enjoyable evenings - staying up well beyond the usual bedtime, playing in the shadows with friends, enjoying the chatter and laughter of the party atmosphere.

When my family moved back to the UK, my father was not keen to 'settle' and he stalled for time which meant we travelled widely while he took on what seemed a never ending number of two-week 'locums' - and we lived in a succession of guest-houses. Finally, he took a more permanent position as pharmacist manager of a Co-operative chemist shop in the East Lothian village of Ormiston - and our new 'home' was the house attached to the chemist shop. We were there for about six months before he bought a property on the main street of a nearby village, Pathhead in Midlothian about 12 miles south of Edinburgh on the A68, one of the main routes to England, and opened his own chemist shop with us living in the flat above the shop.

At last - after almost two years, we had a place to call 'home' - and it remained my home for the next twelve years.