Mrs Sloan (our new woman what does, and so much more than the traitor Mrs Travers did), has come like manna from heaven. She is so well organised I am barely having to function on the domestic front which leave me free to spread the Gospel of Marvellousness and the Lessons of Gracious Living. These are so needed in the changing world of 1962. They are anchors in the storms of life. The question is “will your anchor hold?” Mine certainly will. It is therefore incumbent on me to rush to the assistance of those who have come adrift and require guiding into harbour past the rocks and sandbanks, not to mention the sirens that seek to have us run aground in the storms of life.
Those of you who, like myself, are aficionados of The Glasgow Herald will be well aware that there is much in current affairs that seeks to wreck good ships, like our own dear nation, and extinguish the burning lighthouse that is the creative West Ender. If this morning you happened to glance at The Herald, or even Jasper’s paper The Manchester Guardian (he firmly believes he is a revolutionary, albeit one in tweed with a Scottish Automobile Club membership, who went to a CND rally in a taxi), you would have read much, which if you allowed it, would loosen your anchor.
Why as we speak 3,000,000 engineers and shipyard workers are on strike for a shorter day. If you ask me any shorter and they will meet themselves coming backwards. 31,0000 Scottish railwaymen have passed what are positively called “resolutions”, but are little short of unreasonable demands for more money. I am not sure that an occupation that is based on simply extending one’s boyhood interest in train sets to a full-time job warrants more money. On many occasions I have amused myself and young Gayle in the toy department of Lewis’s in Glasgow bringing the ‘Royal Scot’ over the Clyde and into Central Station without crashing it into Gordon Street.
It’s a case of looking ahead and a steady hand, much in the fashion of Mr Macmillan, our Prime Minister, who is currently under attack from his own side. He should they believe make way for a younger man at the helm. This has been a gift for Jasper’s leader Mr Gaitskell and his side kick Harold Wilson, whom I do not trust. Jasper says Mr Gaitskell is very impressive, but somehow, I do not think he will ever become prime minister.
It is not only on the domestic front that one can feel the country is shortly to be cast upon a reef. There are “chilly winds blowing from Russia” too. For those of you who were at Junior Secondary Schools this is a very large country, with little choice in lipstick and the strongest perfume you have ever worn. Put it this way if you dab it behind your ears in St Petersburg you will be able to smell it in Vladivostok. Determined to extend the cold war blast Mr Mikhail Sustov, “a leading communist party theoretician” who loathes the western world has said that peaceful coexistence with the West is “impossible and unthinkable.”
I don’t know about you, but can you imagine a woman coming away with that sort of thing, when on receiving a telephone call from her husband announcing that he is unexpectedly bringing home the new managing Director of Detroit Trucks Limited, (about to open in Glenrothes), for suppa. Would she reply, “Sorry darling, I have always loathed trucks and the idea of stretching the toad in the hole three ways is impossible and unthinkable”? No of course she wouldn’t. The housewife would put her best foot forward and, in her swing back coat, set out for to the butcher’s and another half dozen pork links, stopping off at the green grocer’s and spending her own money on some out of season strawberries. For while one might not like trucks (and I too have had to look interested in such things) many trucks will bring happiness in the form of jobs for husbands and teak room dividers for wives. We are all children under the sun.
With this in my mind I thought a great deal about my new neighbours across the road in the almost matching late Victorian, honey coloured sandstone, with the polished ashlar stone. Now the thought of having Football Pools’ winners move into a house previously inhabited by a prominent sanitary-ware family, one of whom became Lord Provost, might bring out the snob in many a lesser mortal. However, not moi – for as you know I am above that and many a silk purse is made out of a sow’s ear. I decided to offer the hand of friendship – unlike Mr Sustov or the three million engineers.
With Jasper busy doing the windows at ‘Chez Nous’ and Mrs Sloan bottoming out Jasper’s wardrobe, I decided I had time to spend helping my new neighbour to put a foot on the first rung of Gracious Living. I used as my calling card special intelligence, not from Moscow, but from my friend Mrs Lottie Macaulay. Lottie said that she had it on good authority, that is to say from Rita Fleming, President of the Women’s Guild, that Sadie or “Big Nana” (as it seems she was known in Govan) was seen coming out of the baker’s in Byres Road “with shop bought Empire biscuits.” Apparently not a few of the ladies were so taken aback by this revelation, heralding the possible end of civilisation (no doubt with the help of Mr Sustov) that both Mrs Shirley Aitken and Mrs Daphne Drummond are still under the doctor. This has come as little surprise to those who know Shirley well, one of whom said “let’s face it, Shirley would put herself under an advancing steam roller if it had warm hands, come-to-bed eyes and smelt of carbolic”.
As you know my motto is give, give, give and give some more. So I put on my coat and a jaunty scarf and took my grandmother’s Empire Biscuit recipe across the road into the jaws of the working classes made good. Well, more accurately the recipe was her cook’s, as dear Grandmamma had little idea of what an Empire Biscuit or indeed any biscuit looked like naked as it were, the ingredients being as much of a mystery as what lay below the frills around the legs of her boudoir grand. I must say “Big Nana”, who was on her own as “Pops” was out “sourcing a juke box” was most welcoming. She took the gift of the recipe in good part, but said really, she could not be something or othered (I couldn’t quite hear) being up to her oxters in flour, sugar and jam for hours on end. After a mug of tea “and a wee bit Lyons Jam Roll”, we had a tour of the house on which no expense is being spared, if you like that sort of thing.
Big Nana, seemingly, knowing that I am an interior decorator of some repute was not in the least hesitant about asking my opinions or advice as to an incomplete room. In all honesty I felt a bit like a missionary. I was as kind as I could be although I had to be honest about the vast leatherette corner settee and matching footstalls. “Where did you get it I asked, with my voice rising and falling?” “I bought it in a shop called ‘Chez Nous’ from an American woman, a Miss Dubois I think her name wiz. She said it was all the rage in Key West – so that was good enuf fur me now that I’m the West End.”
“That will be my American cousin” I replied “And ‘Chez Nous’ by the way is my shop”. I added. Big Nana replied “That proves it. I must’ve good taste if you sell it.” “That is very kind of you Sadie” I replied “but just because I stock it does not mean I would have it my house, it’s from our ‘Overspill Range’ but it’s not really Kelvinside. You might get away with it on the South Side, if you got rid of the matching table lamps with the Niagara Falls picture and internal fan, which when the lightbulb gets warm spins and creates the feeling of tumbling water.” Sadie looked rather crestfallen, but cheered up when I said as it still had the plastic on I could change it and if she liked give her a little design help. This seemed to be very popular.
She then took me into the dining room to see what seemed like a life-sized painting of the Rocky Mountains behind curtains which open when the light switch is activated, revealing its function as a backdrop for a fully operating train set on a journey through snowy peaks and tree fringed lakes. It reminded me of Lewis’s Toy Department, which apparently is where it came from, (the Manager, according to B.N., saying he would be glad to get rid of it and the woman and her her wee girl who were constantly in trying to make it crash into Gordon Street. I wonder who that was?). He was sure it would be adaptable to western Canada with the right scenery. So, there was a special commission to a “ a man down Pops’ boozer”, who is a wonderful artist and had learnt all he knows from Painting by Numbers. I must admit the whole thing, complete with sound effects had a curious fascination. I wonder if anyone will ask why the Royal Scot is chugging through Edmonton or wherever. Just as well it is not being operated by one of the Scottish railwaymen currently balloting.
I said I would return to see the tropical fish tanks and the tanks of reptiles, “fur the weans”, on another occasion as I didn’t want to have all the surprises on my first visit. It seems that Big Nana so enjoyed my call that somehow I have managed to agree to take her to Wylie & Lochhead’s where I am chairing a New Trends in Wallpaper and Paint Symposium. According to Big Nana, “if that outing’s as good as today, then yoose and me will hae a rare time.”
I wonder if I should go in disguise.
à bientôt
Muriel Wylie
February 1962
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