‘The dining room – it was spotless. The dining room had to be spotless. You cleaned it after every meal. You shifted all the tables to one half first of all, chairs, cleaned that whole area, shifted them all back to the other side and then I think twice a week you mopped the whole thing and cleaning in the kitchen was, oh, a nightmare. (sighs) Gosh – pots and pans and… the old cook was terrible for burning stuff in pans and you’d be scrubbing for hours with pot scrubbers, pot scrubbers, you see.

 

Oh gosh, yes. But she was awful good to us, she was very, very good to us. She was a very big woman, she was from Brora and when I went to work in Brora after that, of course she was dead but her two sons were living there and I remember them, they were just my own age – children, two boys, and we used to reminisce a lot about old times in the school. But she was a big, big hefty woman but could she cook? Oh, she was good at cooking, she was excellent at cooking. But every now and again – likely the poor woman was going flat out trying to make meals for fifty people in a , not what you would call a modern kitchen. It was coal-fired, like big Rayburns, like or Agas, big things like that – they were very, very big but they were coal-fired. That was another job you had to do; carry coal in every day, that was somebody else’s job. Then there was a big boiler room which heated the whole school, central heating. And it was coal-fired so somebody had to go down and shovel coal on there, help the janny to shovel coal on there.

 

Aye, she used to make, well what we would call casseroles now. She made brilliant stews, everybody loved that, everybody loved that. Everybody loved mince and tatties. The meals were very ordinary meals but probably very wholesome meals like casseroles, which was stews, like, you know? Plenty vegetables in them, all fresh vegetables grown in the gardens. Soup, yes, you got soup, soup. The day you had soup you didn’t get a sweet, you see, and it rotated as the week went on. Now, the meals changed every day for a whole week but then next week you went on to the same meals again. You had seven different meals in a week but you would have the same seven the next week but they might be staggered about a bit in a different rotation. But she used to make chicken, different things with chicken. It was like a chicken casserole but she did different things with it. And she used to make fantastic puddings, oh, her cluttie dumplings were just absolutely beautiful. And homemade custard. I don’t think I was every really hungry, there was always plenty as long as you would eat what you got. Because there was some people that came there to begin with that –‘oh, I never tasted stuff like that before.’ I said, ‘well if you were living in our house you had to eat what you got or you’d get it for breakfast next morning again!’ And then you got breakfast in the morning. Now, breakfast was probably porridge, I think there might have been some type of cereal in that time. But most people took the porridge because the porridge was excellent and she had it simmering away for ages, and it was beautiful porridge (didn’t like cleaning the porridge pot the day I was on kitchen duties) but the porridge was absolutely beautiful. Fresh milk from the farm, just fresh in from the farm. You would probably get maybe a bacon sandwich or something like that.

Now, lunch – if it was a day that there wasn’t soup on the menu, you’d have soup at lunch and something else with it, it could be cold meat or something like that but there was always food. Quite a lot of fruit, there was always fruit for anybody that wanted fruit. Normally apples and maybe the odd pear but lots of fruit. And there was always stuff to eat but you just got on with it and that was it. You were there for a whole term and you just got on.

 

I liked mathematics, I was, I don’t know how but I was absolutely brilliant at algebra. I think I got near a hundred out of a hundred out of every exam at algebra. I don’t know much about it today and I don’t know what good it did me but I was good at that. Geometry, that was another thing. I was never an expert at the technical side of the school thing but I did well in all the other subjects, in history – I liked history. I think I did well in all the other subjects but I was never a real –Hugh was the professional in the technical side of it but I wasn’t. I liked the mechanical side, we had an old car and it was a fellow from a garage in Golspie, Campbell, that had the garage in Golspie and they came up and taught – I think he only came once a week or something like that. And he taught the ones about a car, we had an old, old car there and it was in a shed and he taught us all about that. I liked that, I liked that bit of it.

 

I realised how it set me up in life. When I went to Hong Kong, it didn’t bother me being away in Hong Kong for eighteen month. It was just a slightly longer period than I was in…. but there was some people there that were terrible, they had never left home. I know when we went for basic training to (Rill), we went for a fortnight to Owestry to a camp there where they decided where they were going to put you and oh, they were terrible. They were just – eighteen year olds certainly but they had never been outside Manchester, London, hadn’t seen anywhere and they couldn’t understand how it didn’t bother me. ‘Were you in the army before?’ I says, ‘No, never but I almost was…’ And when I explained that them, then – ‘Oh’.

if you were very academic you would probably go to Dornoch, if you were just not very sort of… you would probably go to Golspie or the Tech. But the Tech was originally by the Duchess Millicent for the sons of crofters and fishermen. That was its original…Well it was – taught all different subjects, you see. It was actually a boarding school in the true meaning of boarding schools that the very rich go to, actually. But that’s what it actually was, it was a boarding school, because you were there for the full term. And just one matron and a janitor, that was all.

 

You did everything in the school – everything. You weren’t only taught everything you actually did everything in the school. Four houses: Rosslyn, Sutherland, Portland and Carnegie and you all took turns – one week you would be on kitchen duty, you did all the work in the kitchen with the matron. You set the tables, served the meal, peeled the potatoes, vegetables, helped to cook certain meals. There would be another one on the farm, they went out early in the morning to do the milking and there would be another one cleaning the school, it was all swept every morning and everything polished. Now that was all done before breakfast which was breakfast at eight o’ clock and then there would be another lot in the garden, they had their own garden – very self sufficient they were, as far as that went. They grew a big lot of their own vegetables and you just did everything in the school and then went to your class.

 

There was a lot of people that did very, very well that had left there, did exceptionally well. Got into very good jobs and did very, very well for themselves. It was probably a very good education because you were taught and the discipline was so much that you did what you were told and every night there was an hour of prep which was you doing your homework, every night – it didn’t matter what job you were on or anything. Seven o’ clock till eight o’ clock was prep and you all went in to what was – we called it the day room and you all did your prep for one hour. And it had to be all done because there was a teacher on duty every night and they all took turn of being there to see that you did all your homework. So probably education was – well I found it was very, very good, it was a very broad education.

 

You did woodwork, a type of engineering, making things with metal and all that. But it was also you had physics, maths, Algebra, English, History – all the subjects. But probably how it’s called the technical side because that was one of the things probably at the very early days; that, if they came from fishing and crofting, technical things would be very, very handy for them. But there’s lot of people left there and went to Glasgow to the shipyards and worked there and did exceptionally well for themselves, exceptionally well.’