slave327-834-200 first assignment
“You first assignment I want you to write about what you wanted to be when you grew up...
Every child has a dream of being something when they grow up...what was yours? What plans did you have for when you grew up...ie..What kind of house...neighborhood...etc. Did you achieve that goal...if not how or why did you not achieve it?”
“There’s nowt so queer as folk”, my Grandma used to say. I pondered over this for years wondering about its true meaning and seeing not just the obvious, there’s strange people about overtones but that it means that everyone is different so not to be surprised by those dissimilar to you and not to judge yourself against anyone else. With that in mind I can honestly tell you that unlike other kids I never had idyllic dreams or plans of my future, most days I was just happy to get to bed at night in one piece.
My childhood was spent within an isolated island community on the west coast of Scotland. The coastal climate was a constant endurance test and the social climate limiting. My family moved there due to unforeseen circumstance when I was three, and the older of my two brothers ten. Although my Grandmothers family were from the isle for generations we would always be classed as outsiders, you have to be born, married and die there to be fully accepted. The local industries there are fishing, farming and whisky production. At that time my parents ran a public house in one of the poorer villages on the island and it was these trawlermen, herdsmen and stillmen who kept the cash drawer full.
Life as a young child there was everything you might imagine with a few bits you wouldn’t. We had no worries about curfews or talking to strangers, we came and went as we pleased with my parents secure in the knowledge that everyone knew everyone, a wonderful status quo between trust and neglect endured. During the holidays we roamed free through the hills and fields finding our own amusement, collecting wild flowers to make perfume or growing frog-spawn and watching the tadpoles turn to frogs over the summer months. Other days might be spent on the beaches searching rock-pools for seahorses, splashing in the sun sparkled sea or fishing from the piers with homemade fishing rods.
During this period my parents had, at the best of times, what could be kindly described as a tempestuous relationship. For about four years, up until I was about ten, they separated and reunited numerous times. The separations were always surrounded by arguing and sometimes violence and the reunions never quite seemed convincing, full of fake gestures and smiles and awful imposed family outings where we would all pile into the Austin Princess for some close quarters battling while on the move. They eventually gave us all a break by officiating proceedings with a divorce but not before the uncertainty of my home life had made a scar in my little soul.
As with most small places the childish glee and excitement for your surroundings only lasts so long and eventually the frogs didn’t do it for me anymore. There was no cinema or swimming pool, zoo or museum. Days spent roaming the countryside soon turned into nights hanging about the streets for most of us. As my mother was now working two jobs to provide for us alone her parental guidance was understandably lacking and we took advantage of this to the hilt. All the local waifs and strays started hanging out at our house to use the badly made skateboard ramps out back, smoke pot and take magic mushrooms. I was lucky to actively escape the island at the age of 14, before any real serious damage was done, as in I didn’t fall pregnant with my best prospect becoming a job at the local supermarket.
Still unclear of what I wanted out of life, other than to survive it, I battled on at my new school and watched my mother exist within a viscous circle of damaging relationships. These peaked triumphantly in a marriage to a gentleman twenty years her senior after only six months of knowing him. Six months after the nuptials she realised he was a violent binge drinker. She chose to stay with him and help him and I chose to help myself by moving into a bed-sit while finishing my last year at school. My father helped by paying the rent after he agreed that moving back to the island was in no way a better option at that stage.
It wasn’t until this point in my life, aged 17, that I had a word with myself about what I wanted from life. I decided to never be truly unhappy and to never be as weak a woman as I perceived my mother to be, at that time. Somehow I finished school with good enough results to go to college so with those and some bad advice from the careers officer I ventured off to the city by myself. It wasn’t long until I had accrued some debts and dropped out of college so I started working hard and playing hard in a whole different league. I did varying jobs and lived in numerous homes around Scotland while thoroughly enjoying myself along the way. I relished the freedom of my life and even managed to afford two years travelling around Asia and Australasia. When I returned to Scotland I fluked a bar job that ended with me managing a private members whisky society and my love affair with the ‘water of life’ started.
Its strange how things you don’t think about at the time later become very important to you. I remember as a kid thinking that the school trips to the distilleries we so dull and boring, this might have been that I craved the childish excitement of a theme park or perhaps that distillery trips were all we ever got and quite frankly they all look alike after you’ve seen half a dozen. But a seed must have been planted way back then because the thought of a day spent at those distilleries now seems nothing like the raw deal it did at that time, quite the opposite.
So I now run an independent whisky shop, a job I love, have enough money in the bank to put down a deposit on a lovely, but definitely small, cottage on a hillside and I would promise you nine out of ten nights that I still don’t dream or plan for the next day.
