The Milk of Human Kindness

A few things have happened this week. My dear friends Kevin and Barbara Connelly have had a bereavement: Barbara’s mother died, after a long period of frailty and infirmity. Our thoughts are with them.

On a happier note, I had my 65^th birthday, for which number one son came up from London and Margaret and Andrew came down from Keighley, West Yorkshire, accompanied by their highly strung dog, Cassie. Margaret is Linda’s older sister, and the two are very close. It is always lovely to see them, and it was fun playing host for a couple of days.

If you asked them if they had any children, Margaret and Andrew would say no, but they would be wrong. They took in Linda and her younger brother John when their mother died. And they have been second parents to both of our children, Bill and Tom. There have always been toothbrushes and other maintenance kit items (a fairly long list when the kids were little) for them at Margaret and Andrew’s house. As our boys got older, they remained supportive and nurturing, helping Bill in his artistic work, and always being available for Tom, as he completed his studies at Bradford University.

And they have been supremely supportive of Linda and myself. I don’t know what we would have done without them over the last thirty or so years.

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People are capable of good and bad, I know, but I at any rate have been lucky in that I have met so much kindness in my life.

In the summer holidays of 1973, when I was seventeen years old, Paddy Heneghan, one of my schoolmates, had been in the West Highlands on a climbing weekend when he had broken both legs. This was not a result of a climbing accident, but as I recall, of a road traffic accident in which Paddy was a pillion passenger on a motorcycle journey between climbs. He was confined to hospital in Fort William for the next two or three weeks.

My oldest friend James Barker and I decided to hitch-hike to Fort William and visit him in hospital. We borrowed sleeping bags, a storm tent, and a spirit stove, and headed off on the Road to the Isles. We were lucky in the hitch-hiking and arrived at Fort William on the evening after we left Cowdenbeath. We pitched camp on a site just to the north-east of Fort William, with stony ground and lavatories which were horrific on a Lovecraftian scale. The spirit stove was close to useless. It took half an hour to boil water for tea and more than that to fry sausages to the point that one wouldn’t be frightened to eat them.

The following day we visited Paddy Heneghan in Hospital in both afternoon and evening visiting hours. He seemed to be in very good humour, and spent a lot of time chatting up the highland nurses. For a young man with both legs in plaster, I felt he showed admirable chutzpah.

On the afternoon of the second day in Fort William, we packed up and walked out of Fort William with thumbs out, headed for home. As the evening came on, the heavens opened and we were soaked to the skin. A Penguin Book Merchandiser picked us up and we sat in the back of his van, dripping water onto boxes of paperbacks as he drove us to North Ballachulish.

‘That’s what I do a lot of the time,’ said our benefactor, ‘I drive round the highlands selling and dropping off books to the few bookshops there are. Not a bad life.’

I reflected that I might find it a pleasant and peaceful occupation, especially being in a warm, dry van rather than standing drenched at the roadside.

At North Ballachulish, the book rep went to the nice comfortable hotel, and James and I wondered what to do between now and the morning when the first ferry crossed to South Ballachulish (there was no bridge in those days).

Outside a small cottage, a cluster of four or five caravans were stationed. I knocked at the door. A bearded man who seemed about seven feet tall opened the door.

‘Can we pitch our tent here?’ I asked.

The man replied in a very soft highland voice, which we struggled to hear over the sound of the rain, ‘Yes, but it’s not a proper campsite. It’s just a croft with space for a few tents or caravans and an outside lavatory. Ten pence a night,’  then as I pretended to rummage in my pocket, ‘Don’t worry about the ten pence. Give me it tomorrow if you remember.’

We hurled up the storm tent in record time, and retired to our sleeping bags, managing to get some slumber despite empty stomachs, possibly due to the fatigue of walking in the cold and rain.

Early on the following morning we started to dismantle the tent. As we were pulling out the guy-ropes, a voice called, ‘Would you like some breakfast?’

A blonde woman in her thirties stood in the doorway of one of the caravans. Her accent was English, I couldn’t place it more specifically.

‘Yes please,’ James and I could not have said this in more rapid unison if we had rehearsed it.

‘Come on in.’

In the caravan, we crowded in cheerfully round a small table with the woman and her husband, Emma and George Rae, their two little boys, Sam aged seven and Matthew five, tucking into bacon, sausage, eggs and toast. The children looked on in awe as James and I made short work of two large platefuls.

‘Fox in the henhouse,’ said George.

The family were interested in and impressed with the purpose of our trip, visiting a friend in hospital. Emma was a maths graduate and wished me luck in my  hope to do maths at university. The little boys seemed rather disappointed to learn that neither of us had ever worn the kilt. I have friends and colleagues who really suit the kilt, but I feel that on me it would look like the school uniform of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Once we had eaten prodigious amounts of fried food and consumed several mugs of tea, we made our farewells.

‘Here, take these with you,’ Emma handed us a package of sandwiches wrapped in tin foil.

We were very moved by the generosity of the Raes, and as a consequence were much more vocal in our thanks than is usual in the taciturn souls of Fife. We shouldered our packs and walked down towards the ferry, turning frequently to wave to our benefactors. The two little boys waved frantically back until they were out of sight.

We paid the ludicrously small sum for foot passengers on the car ferry, and met some further luck. One of the drivers on the ferry offered us a lift to Perth. This was much more than half of the journey home, and with the sky looking as if there was going to be more heavy rain, we accepted with gratitude. In the early afternoon, we stood by the River in Perth.

‘Here, will we eat these pieces Emma and George made us?’ I asked.

‘Aye, but if it’s that pink lint ham, I’m no’ sure I can manage it.’ said James.

I unwrapped the sandwiches.

‘No, they’re great. Cheese and tomato, decent bread, here’s some corned beef and cucumber, that’s mair like it, and... God Almighty.’

In between two of the sandwiches were three pound notes.