Journal Entries
A Dressed Red Herring
Posted May 22, 2007
I was always an exciting time for me, the lustre of Christmas had started to tarnish a little when suddenly along comes The New Year. Suddenly the house when into overdrive, everything had be cleaned. All the wrappings and trappings of Christmas was removed and toys tidied away to ones bedroom from the place they had been lying since Christmas.
Christmas was never a big celebration in my house mainly because if it fell on a week day then it was work as usual for the men of the house, or at least until lunchtime.
Presents were opened before breakfast but not properly looked at by the adults at least until afternoon when everyone gathered prior to the Christmas meal around five pm.
But New Year, well that was different, everyone was on holiday that day.
The day before New Year, Hogmanay as it is called here in Scotland is when it all starts. I would dance around all day on tenterhooks waiting for tea to be passed and the preparation to begin.
The front room fire had been lit earlier in the day and now the musty smell was gone as the room was only used for special occasions such as a visit by the Minister or Kirk Elder or a funerals and such like. Plates of shortbread and cake were carried through from the kitchen and arranged on the sideboard. A bottle of whiskey, a bottle of gin and a bottle of sherry were also displayed along with the home made ginger wine which I could not wait to sample, the warmth as it hit the back of your throat can never be forgotten.
A bowl of fruit and a dish of nuts was placed on an occasional table to the side of the fire. At this point the green baize lined top drawer of the sideboard was frantically racked through to find the nut crackers which were to be given their annual outing. I always thought that walnuts were a bit of a waste as they shattered under the pressure of the crackers and you had to pick out small crumbs of nut and sometimes got shell in stead.
Around eight o’ clock my mother would tell me to get my coat on as it was time to go. It was the tradition you see, my mother, her brother and I would venture forth down to the town centre where we would meet up with my Uncles pal and his fiancée and we would all do the Overgate.
The Overgate on that one night of the year was a magical wonderful place full of mystery and excitement for a boy of ten. However by day it was a sombre dismal place coming rapidly to the end of it’s life and due for redevelopment. But on that night, that one magical night it became a wonderland. Stalls or barrows as they were called as that was what they were, wheel barrows with decorated canopies were lined up alone one side of the narrow street. Each barrow lit by a tilley lamp hung from it’s roof and reflecting shafts of coloured light as they swung in the wind and illuminated the coloured canvas awnings that formed there roofs.
There were barrows selling fruit, some selling white and pink sugar mice, coloured candy walking sticks, large rainbow coloured lollypops, sticky toffee and every other kind of sweet that could be imagined. Some barrows sold paper hats and cardboard trumpets and all manner of fancy dress. Straw hats with “Kiss me Quick” and “I’ll be yours” printed round the brim and balloons of all colours.
But the stall that held the most fascination was the one that sold the Dressed Red Herring or Reed Herins as they were know. A dressed red herring is a herring that has been smoked over a oak fire a talent of the good folk of Arbroath. Then it is wrapped in brightly coloured crepe paper teased out at the top to make a frill round the fish’s neck. The head is left to protrude. Then a second crepe is applied in the manner of a dress with a larger frill going up round the back of the fish’s head. A ribbon is then applied around the middle of the fish and formed into a bow at the rear. This bow is used to hang the fish up by as the fish is left hanging in the recipient’s house, sometimes for the best part of a year, as a good luck charm.
Several red herrings would be purchased and wrapped in old newspaper and carried home along with the other items such as calendars and sweets which were also bought from the barrows. The object of the exercise was to arrive home before midnight as one did not want to be one’s own “first foot” a Scottish term for the first person to cross the threshold after the striking of midnight. The purchased items had to be left outside the house as to bring them in before midnight would be bad luck, so they would be set down under a nearby bush in the garden next to the front door.
Around half past eleven my Uncle would leave the house to go and meet up with some friends. At five to the hour my mother and grandmother would go into overdrive. All ashtrays were emptied, the kitchen bin cleaned out, all dishes that were lying around were washed and put away. Even the ashes from the fire place was shovelled up and taken out. All this had to be accomplished before “the bells”
Back in nineteen fifty three we had no television to tell us when the old year ended and the new one began. My mother would take the front and rear doors of the latch the reason being to let the old year out the rear and the new one in the front door.
Then we would sit and wait for the sound of the rocket being fired from the City Square, it’s scream and bang could be heard all over Dundee.
Moments later a knock would come to the door. I would hold by breath with anticipation. My Grandmother as matriarch would answer the door to be met with hopefully a tall, dark, handsome man, as these were the requirements for a “First foot”
And sure enough standing on the threshold would be the said first foot Red Herring in one hand, a lump of coal in the other and a half bottle in his coat pocket as you never entered a house empty handed so to speak.
After the traditional greeting of “A happy New Year” the first foot would proceed to the lounge where he would ceremonially pace the lump of coal on the fire and utter the words “lang may you’re lum reek”
Usually after that the doorbell never stopped ringing and the house filled with people. For my part after a glass of ginger wine and a piece of shortbread I was glad to be put to bed as by now tiredness had caught up with me and I would be sitting behind the sofa half asleep.
As for the red herring, well it would spend the next two months at least hanging from the pulley rope hook in the kitchen until spring and the flies forced my mother to part company with the beast.
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Industrial Scools and Training Ships
Posted Apr 15, 2007
For a few years now I have been fascinated by The Training Ship Mars which was anchored in the River Tay from 1869 until 1929 when it was taken to the breakers yard.
This one time Naval Man-O-War was purchased from the navy and based out in the middle of the river where it was used as an Industrial School constituted under the 1866 Industrial Schools Act.
It became home to many a street boy, misfit or orphan from Dundee and the surrounding countryside.
So deeply routed was this ship in the Dundee psyche that I can remember in even in the fifties some twenty or so years after the decommissioning of the Mars, my Grandmother threatening me with being sent to the Mars if I did not behave.
My interest in this ship has prompted me to write a historical/fiction based around the Mars.
While trawling for info I noted that no entry exists for Industrial Schools or Training Ships, of which there were two in Scotland. I may pull my info together and try to write an entry.
In the meantime I attach the prologue to my story comments please. 
The prologue
The midday train drew into Dundee West station and came to a halt with an exhausted discharge of steam.
“Dundee West” called out the porter as carriage doors were thrown open and the passengers began to alight. The pungent station air heavy with the smell of soot, stale steam and fish from the boxes stacked on the platform greeted the tall distinguished looking gentleman who stepped onto the platform from the first class carriage. There he lingered taking in every aspect of the station as if refreshing some long lost memory of the place.
Finally satisfied he headed for the metal railings and lattice gate at the end of the platform where stood a uniformed porter collecting tickets. As he approached the ticket collector docked his cap, accepted the ticket stub and as if acknowledging the uniform worn by the passenger muttered “Sir” as he passed through the barrier on his way to the station exit.
Emerging from the great red sand stone edifice of the station that boldly professed Dundee licking for the classical revival style of architecture he stepped into the semi-circular cut of road where a rank of taxi cabs sat waiting for fairs, but he ignored the cabs and crossed straight to the ferry terminal that was situated on the opposite side of Dock Street.
Dock Street, a wide cobbled way that separated the city and river. A tangled ribbon of tram and train rails cris crossed this busy thoroughfare. Open on one side to the graving docks where a dredger was off loading sand into railway wagons and enclosed on the other by the shambles of buildings that was the city with discharging mouths of the feeder streets which lead down from the High Street towards the docks.
Having successfully negotiated a horse drawn wagon loaded with jute bales and a three wheeled station Scammel truck bumping it’s way over the cobbles and embedded railway lines he reached his goal, the ferry terminal . There he checked the time table outside the ticket office. It was difficult to decipher, faded by the sunlight and stained brown at the corners, for it was displayed in a leaky glass case with condensation clinging to the inside of the glass.
Once satisfied, he walked past the office and strode a short way along the Esplanade. Only when he had cleared the last of the buildings did he stop to lean on the smooth cope of the long sea wall that ran out like a great finger pointing towards the Tay Bridge, and gazed out across the grey river.
It was the 15th of March 1929 and that day an era was coming to an end for the City of Dundee. The former Man 0’ War, the frigate Mars was being towed from her moorings off Woodhaven on the Fife side of the Tay to a breakers yard on the Fife coast. The once proud ship which had been part of Britain’s fighting fleet was now just a blackened hull. She sat high in the water stripped of her masts, gun ports nailed shut with great sections of her gunnels cut away to allow the tow cables to be attached. Reminiscent of a harpooned whale being hauled in to the mother ship for dissection she moved slowly against the incoming tide behind her captors, three steam tugs.
It was true that the Mars had not see active service for over one hundred years if in fact she ever did for her history was scant. The best part of her life she had been anchored in the Tay, stripped of her ordinance and condemned to serve as home, school and detention centre for boys of a wayward persuasion.
The visitor watched with interest from his vantage point on the Esplanade, by the time he had arrived in Dundee lines were already attached to the vessel and the three tugs, two forward and one aft, were manoeuvring her out into the channel.
The March wind was biting at his face and hands and he pulled his long heavy dark blue coat across his chest and fastened the decorated brass buttons.
He had only recently resigned his commission in the Royal Navy but had being asked to stay on, with the prospect of a promotion. On one hand he was only sixty three and felt that he still had a few years left in him, but on the other it would mean a desk job and the thought of leaving his beloved sea did not appeal to him. So he had decided to take this trip to Dundee to give himself time to reflect on his situation. He had never married, except to his ship some would say. He had no family, well that he knew of for his mother had died shortly after giving birth to him and his father could have been any of a dozen men.
The tall naval gentleman turned his face from the East wind and allowed his eyes to wander towards the high girders of the slender bridge that spanned the Tay some way above the Mars moorings. For a brief moment he was transported back fifty years to that fateful night when the old bridge bent and buckled in the great storm of ’79 and plunged a train with it’s hundred passengers and crew into the icy waters below. He was only a lad of thirteen then but the memory was so vivid that it could have been yesterday.
With a shudder he brought himself back to present, checked the time on his gold pocket watch and satisfied made for the ferry ticket office where he purchased a return ticket for the next ferry then proceeding to the Waiting Room.
He and the other passengers did not have long to wait and once boarded were soon edging their way out into the river, the great paddle wheels thrashing the water and the throbbing engines sending shudders through the whole vessel. Now the wind began to bite harder as he stood at the rail, eyes fixed on the manoeuvres that were taking place on the far side of the river.
As the tugs entered the channel the pull of the river and thrust of the incoming tide took hold of the huge hull and she began to swing round.
“Dam it man bring her round to port or you’ll loose her on the Garr Bank you fool!” he said out loud to nobody in particular and without realising that a small group of passengers like himself were interested in the goings on across the water.
His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the voice of a young boy standing close by with mother “Are you a sailor, Mannie?”
“Dinna be sa’ rude, leave the man alane will yae” snapped his mother.
“It’s all right, leave the lad be, yes son I was a sailor, how did you guess” he answered.
“Easy peasy, it’s yer buttons, dead give awa, anchors and aw” said the wee lad. “and the way ye speak, ye ken something aboot boats, that’s fur sure.” The lad had a big grin on his face. “Were ye on a whaler mister?”
“No son I was Captain of one of Her Majesties frigate” he replied with a smile.
“Oh crivens Royal Navy that must ha’ been exciting, were you in the war?” the lad asked. But before the Captain could reply the lad’s mother butted in.
“Dinna bother the gentleman, I’ve telt ye before if ye carry on like that it’ll be the Mars for ye.”
“I hardly think so Madam, is that not the Mars that they are towing down the river” and he laughed as he spoke.
“Weel if it’s no there it’ll be somewhere else along with the rest of the bad boys and murderers and the like” the mother retorted.
By now the ferry was closing on the convoy and the great dark hull could be seen in all it’s detail. The tin deck roofing had been stripped off, along with the masts. The life boats had been removed and great holes had been cut in here gunnels to allow the tow ropes to be attached. Her white waist line paint was yellow, stained and flaking off in places.
“Madam I think that you don’t know much about the Mars if that’s what you think, unfortunate boys maybe, but murderers I don’t think so” the Captain turned his attention again to the Mars.
“Weel nae guid ever came o’ those toe rags I bet you” she retorted.
“Maybe one or two of them fell by the wayside, but most of the boys were taught an honest trade and I am sure that they managed to make a life for themselves when they left the ship” there was a slight falter in his voice as he spoke.
“Ye seem ta know a lot aboot that boat Captain, where did ye say ye were fra?” she enquired.
“Dundee, but I always had very close links with the river when I was young” he said with a smile.
“Weel come on Johnnie, it’s getting cauld oot here” and with these parting words pulled the lad into the saloon.
The Captain looked back towards the great hulk, she was now well into the middle of the river and the Fifie as the ferry was affectionately known was about to pass her stern, He lifted his hand from the rail and brushed a tear from his cheek. Yes he had made his mind up, he would return south and take that shore job, at least he had friends there. Dundee held nothing for him now.
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Latest reply: Apr 15, 2007
henryk206
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