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A Delicate Entry

Projectile vomit became the norm after feeding in Rossland Manse, Bishopton, Renfrewshire.  The first son of Rev James and Mrs Marjory Caldwell was born on 6th October 1950 but his birth weight was not increasing.

This caused the young family doctor concern especially as his diagnose of cholic proved to be wide of the mark. Meanwhile I managed to discolour the only purchase my parents had brought to the large manse, a royal blue carpet. I would never live that down, for each stain was a constant reminder as the carpet followed them into each succeeding manse.
Fortunately my father’s brother, Stanley, was a doctor. He was the Medical Officer of Health for Berwickshire and at that time, a bachelor. He was a frequent visitor to the manse. When he saw me, he knew immediately that I was dying unless drastic surgery was underway soon. Consequently with his intervention, I was rushed to the Yorkhill Sick Children’s hospital in Glasgow where the surgeons performed a pyloronyotomy to repair infantile hypertropic pyloric stenosis on me, a three week old baby. Pyloric stenosis, as it was known in those days, a blockage of the stomach preventing food entering the digestive system and thus slowly starving the child. My birth defect was skilfully repaired by the surgeon’s knife.  I returned to the manse at Bishopton with a surgical wound the shape of the Croix de Lorraine on my stomach and the wound would grow as I did. This knife saved my life.

I was originally earmarked for a longer name. John Miller Hopkins Caldwell was the name of my grandfather, a doctor at Larkhall, who had died when my father was aged only eleven years.  At the last minute it seemed to my father that there were too many Johns being baptised in 1950. Or was it because in not so far away Barlinnie prison one murderer, John Caldwell, whom I hasten to add was no relation, was hanged in 1946?  With or without these thoughts in mind, the name John was dropped and I became Miller, a surname first name, not an uncommon feature in Scottish boys’ names. Indeed for most of my life, those recently acquainted with me fumble over Martin, Murray, Michael and even Monty but I know of a handful whose first name I share.  There is even one other Miller Caldwell apparently, in Pensacola, Florida.  When his friends Google him, I hope they buy my books!

I was not born the first child. That honour, if being a first child is indeed an honour,  goes to my sister Joan, some two and a bit years older. Six years later I received a brother, Bruce. Strangely Bruce is actually Ian Bruce McLean Caldwell and Joan on her birth certificate is Marjory Helen Joan, so it seems all three of us had issues in our naming procedures.  I am the middle child with all that that entails. But I am satisfied too with a name which, as an author, does not require a non de plume….except some may wonder if it actually is one!

I was not initially aware of being a son of the manse, with that curiously implied mixture of virtuousness and skulduggery, but two years later, the family moved from Renfrewshire to Kirriemuir in Angus and that’s where I do have real memories.  

St. Ninian’s manse was next door to the church. That meant I gained advanced knowledge of Saturday weddings. Knowledge meant privilege and that I learned brought friendship to my world. Accordingly the local Police sergeant’s son Sydney Kippen and I knelt at the foot of the church steps and waited for the wedding recessional music of the bridal party. The music was soon to become our favourite classical pieces, sometimes heard on Uncle Mac’s Saturday radio requests for children. Mendelssohn’s incidental music to Shakespeare’s Midsummer Nights Dream got the bride down the isle and the chorus from Wagner’s Lohengrin brought the wedded couple to the cameras at the top step of the church on their departure.

 Confetti was thrown as the newly weds descended the steps and an avuncular figure stepped forward to throw a bag of three penny pieces and that was our starting gun. We gathered up every coin lingering long after the wedding car had left and counted our gains in towers of three penny pieces.

Ministers did not get paid for conducting weddings and so over the years, presents in lieu of fees meant I could always count on a Parker pen at school but when the local Struthers Lemonade Empire celebrated their daughter’s wedding, we were provided with a year’s monthly supply of crates of Struthers lemonade. I think I can count my sweet tooth from those days.
One day I stood outside the sweetie shop at the corner of the manse lane eying the jars of sweets. An elderly lady of the congregation approached and asked me which sweets I liked.

I would have said all of them of course but thought that ridiculous, so I pointed to a jar of yellow sweets. The lady entered the shop and came out with a small white paper poke, twisted at the end to prevent the sweets escaping. I had been given sherbet lemons. I thanked her and ran home to show my gift. My mother said I had to share them with my sister but I did not mind. We were the best of friends.

One cold weekend shortly after Easter 1954, a minister from Northern Nyasaland, Rev Samuel Nkosa, arrived at my father's manse in Kirriemuir. He would be preaching the following Sunday and during the week he accompanied my father around his scattered parish at Padanarm, Glen Clova and Glen Prosen.
That Saturday evening, after my weekly parade, marching in the hall to fiddle music on radio Scotland’s Home service, with my tiny walking stick that amused Samuel so much, I  was about to be sent for my bath. But as there were no signs that our guest was tiring of my playful activities, I was allowed to stay up a little longer.

The roaring fire, stoked by fresh logs perched on hot coals behind the brass fireguard, mesmerized Samuel. He had never experienced fires inside a house in Africa. He realised the significance of the Fire Station he had seen not 300 yards from the Manse, as each house tried to keep its residents warm!  He took his feet out of his slippers and wiggled his toes to the movement of flickering flames. He felt relaxed in front of the comforting fire. Drawing up beside the reflective Samuel, I removed my slipper boots and placed my foot beside his. I was transfixed at seeing Samuel’s feet. They were not black, like the rest of his skin.
“Our soles are the same.” I said. Samuel smiled. He laid his hand on my head then stroked his fingers through my blond hair like a giant ebony comb. “Yes they are, they are indeed,” he replied.

Imagine my surprise the following morning, when in addressing the children from the pulpit in his jet back gown, Samuel repeated this story. He added a bit more of course and mentioned the word ‘souls’ so often that I found his message confusing. Anyway, I felt I had got Samuel’s children’s address off to a good start the previous night!

Little did I realise that eighteen years later, this seminal moment was brought to mind at the interview at 121 George Street Edinburgh, the HQ of the Church of Scotland’s Overseas Council. One month later found me in my first job, in Africa.

But being a son of the manse in Kirrie was beginning to make sense to me. Grace was always said before each meal. I was used to that formality but grace was not a perfunctory rite. I recall one mid-day lunch. A plate of fried liver and onions appeared along with mashed potatoes. I had not seen this combination of food before. It seemed rather special. My father began to say Grace. I stopped him.

“You can’t say that Grace. This meal deserves a special grace.  You know, the Our Father which art in heaven one. This meal is talked about in that prayer.”  My father was dumbstruck.
“What do you mean, Miller?”
“You know, the bit about ‘de liver is from evil”, I said.

Clearly words were beginning to take on meaning. I started primary school aged four years of age. Spelling came in the form of a book in which groups of twelve words appeared on page after page. Page 1 and the first group got me thinking. The word ‘egg’ is such an insignificant word. No one could possibly imagine what an obstacle it was for me. I said the word, and, if you say it too, you might just agree that it is not the ‘g’ which is elongated, but the ‘e’. Consequently I chose to spell egg as eeg. I thought my class teacher, Miss Smith, was wrong.  Labels were not in vogue in those days but there was certainly a leaning towards dyslexia apparent.

At the end of my first term of Primary school at Christmas, each pupil was asked to bring two balls of wool to class the following day, to make a decoration. The balls had to be contrasting in colour. I gave this information to my mother who from her sewing drawer brought me a sky blue ball and a bright yellow ball of wool.  I packed them into my brown leather satchel and in wellington boots the next morning set off to school with Joan, scuffling the powdered snow as we went through the eerily quiet traffic free streets.

I was quite proud of the woollen pompoms I had made. This was probably because it was my first experience of communal production and I had not failed in the task. But what I could not realise at the time, as I returned from class with my pompoms in wellington boot top high snow, was that these yellow and sky blue colours would  return to haunt me and cause mayhem at the Mennock Women’s Rural Institute in forty-five years time!

On my sixth birthday I got a real leather football. I was impatient to learn the skills of the older boys at the Reform Street Primary playground in Kirrie but first, the ball had to be blown up and then coated with dubbin at the saddlers in the Roods, a street in town. But footballs are for playing with others and some boys noticed me kicking the ball in the Church lane against the kirk on my own. “We can play a real game with you.” they said, and as I was outnumbered, we set off to the grassy Den where older boys divided the assembled lads into two teams.  I was placed in goal. It meant I rarely kicked the ball. With no nets I had to run back and retrieve the ball each time it passed me. Those times were frequent. But the boys meant no harm. After an hour’s play the ball was returned to me and I set off home.

The very next day I returned to the lane to kick the ball against the kirk to the silent chant “The Church’s One Foundation” thus convincing myself I was doing no harm to the House of God each time I blasted the ball at the sandstone kirk.  But kicking the ball at an angle resulted in the leather sphere setting off along the kirk towards the main road. A large Angus Milling Company lorry slowed down to take the turn into the Glen road. As it did, its front tyre trapped the leather ball and a loud bang erupted. The lorry driver drove on. When the lorry was out of sight, a tear came to my eye. In the middle of the road was my ball, burst at every seam. It lay perfectly flat like a workman’s flat cap, most certainly dead. It was my one and only real leather football. It was a salutary lesson. But for me, it was a painful one too. It was the first time I recall suffering loss.

Discipline in those early years took an unusual form. If my behaviour was in some way falling short of expectation, my father wondered if he had collected the right baby from Yorkhill hospital! Apparently one Michael O’Flacherty was in the bed next to me. This child was from a travelling Irish family. By implication, he was short of manners and generally a rather undesirable child. So all that was required if I misbehaved was the call of “Michael?”  Now I should point out that the family enjoyed holidays in Ireland and had many Irish Catholic friends, so the motivation was humour and shame perhaps, but Uncle Stanley whose decision had been to send me urgently to hospital not long after my birth, took my father aside and suggested this form of mental disciple may lead me to believe I was not actually their son!  So his view prevailed and thus ended this unusual form of family discipline. I wish it had not.

At the bottom of the manse garden, a stream ran through the Den park. I was transfixed with the idea that water was always on the move. It seemed the key to my mother’s childhood stories about the great river Clyde and its magnificent steamers which plied the oceans of the world and visited far away warm lands. I could never walk through the Den without gazing at the stream and launching pooh sticks from one side of the bridge to, well, not just the other side but to…China, yes and Africa, America and perhaps…..Largs….. Uncle Ian, still a bachelor in those days, came each summer to Kirrie with his camera and created some wonderful pictures of our family. When he drove up from Muswell Hill in London he always brought interesting presents. A pop-up picture book of his London neighbours at Buckingham Palace for Joan and a wild western pistol for me with cap firing tapes.  What a wonderful uncle!

In summer I joined my sister Joan on the back of a farm truck which took us to the rows of raspberries growing regimentally around the Strathmore valley. At this time a full punnet of rasps, for rasps are what we called them much to my English wife’s amusement, brought us silver sixpences but it was a long day in the fields and I lasted only one day. I was considered to be too young to join my sister at the October Tattie picking, a much more arduous and profitable task but I thought the following year I’d be prepared to harvest potatoes despite my young age.

However the following year was 1958. It was to be my last in Kirrie. Life was about to change drastically, we were moving to Glasgow!

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