Dunfermline City Chambers, an iconic Fife view

Me and the Queen

We all knew that the Queen was very old and that she had to die sometime soon. However, she had gone on so long that we tended to think of her as permanent, so that for many people, myself included, her death came as something of a surprise.

Between around 2005 and 2017, I wrote a series of stories featuring a small boy called Bill, growing up in Fife in the 1960’s and 1970’s. They related fictionalised events in my own childhood, and were written for the benefit of my children, Bill and Tom. I suspect Bill and Tom didn’t find them particularly interesting, but they were fun to write, and my great friend Kevin Connelly printed and bound them very attractively so that I could give Bill and Tom respectable hard copies rather than just emailing the stories to them.

I did a lot of chopping and changing, juxtaposing events which happened years and miles apart. For some reason, I put Bill on the protestant side of the Scottish sectarian divide rather than the catholic, to which I belonged as a child. The stories were set in the village of Corburn, a thinly disguised version of Kinglassie, where I lived from age four to seven (1961-63), and the small town of Galton, a fictionalisation of Cowdenbeath, where I lived from 1963 until I went to University in Edinburgh in 1974. There follows below one of the stories, about the time the Queen passed through Kinglassie. As noted above, I have changed things a bit, but everything in the story happened, although not all at that place and time.

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The Queen’s Visit

There was some excitement in Corburn. The Queen was coming. On the fifth of June, 1962, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were to pass through Corburn on their way to a ceremony at the University of St Andrews. The Queen’s car would pass along Main Street from West to East at approximately 11.30 in the morning. Shortly before then, the village primary school children were to be led up to an area at the crossroads of Main Street and Lochend Road, essentially the centre of the village. Here was the co-operative store, the village’s only pub, the Burnside Arms, Smart’s newsagent, and the village hall, Ruskin House. More importantly from the point of view of the school, at this point in the royal progress, the pavement was very wide, and a hundred children could be accommodated easily.

Bill was rather surprised to learn that his next door neighbour, Gerry Philbin, would also be there. The headmaster of the local catholic primary school in nearby Galton had allowed those of his pupils  from Corburn to take the morning of the fifth off to see the queen pass by.

‘But I thought you catholics didnae like the queen, juist the pope,’ was how Bill expressed his puzzlement.

‘Och, she’s no’ juist the queen of the protestants. She’s the queen of a’body. And that queen and pope stuff is a’ hot air for the fitba’ matches. And a’body likes a holiday,’ Gerry displayed some worldly wisdom.

‘Aye weel,’ said Bill, unsure what to say in reply.

Playtime, the fifteen minute break in morning lessons, would take place as usual at 10.45. At eleven, when the bell rang for the end of playtime, the children were to line up as usual at the school’s main door, but instead of filing into their classrooms, they would be led by their teachers out of the school gates and up to Main Street. This almost didn’t happen for Bill and his friend Pud Anderson, due to a contretemps between the latter and John Dark, a fellow primary five (age nine) student. At the end of playtime, the bell rang and the children lined up as usual. Then some shouting and jostling occurred a few feet in front of Bill. Bill did not see the actual fight but when his teacher, Miss Fitzwilliam, parted the crowd, there was Pud standing in pugilistic stance, and John Dark doubled up and fighting back tears.

‘What is going on here?’ she thundered. She stooped to talk to John Dark who was clearly in pain and distress, ‘What happened, John?’

 ‘Please miss, he punched me in the belly,’ John Dark pointed at Pud.

‘George Anderson, did you punch John Dark in the stomach?’ Miss Fitzwilliam rounded on Pud. It was now his turn to look distressed.

‘Please miss, he said I was bonkers.’

Miss Fitzwilliam straightened up, with an unusual look on her face. Bill thought she might be about to burst into laughter, but he was wrong.

‘John Dark, don’t call your friends bonkers. And George Anderson, think yourself lucky I don’t have my belt with me. If there is any hitting to be done, I’ll do it. If I hear of you hitting anyone again, you will be very sorry. Is that clear, both of you?’

‘Yes miss,’ they said in unison, both looking sheepish.

‘Aye,’ Bill whispered to his other good friend, Shug Mackay, ‘If there’s ony punching of bellies tae be done, it’ll be Miss Fitzwilliam that does it.’ Shug giggled, attracting the attention of authority.

‘What did you say, William Fernie?’ Miss Fitzwilliam rounded on him.

‘Nothing, miss.’

‘It didn’t sound like nothing to me. I’ll let you off this time, but if there is any more bad behaviour, you will be staying here and doing arithmetic, and not going to see the queen. Now line back up.’

The children returned to their lines, the other teachers emerged and they marched up to Main Street. It was one of those gloriously sunny days when every view is as sharp as a razor, and to nine-year-old eyes, even sharper. The Corburn School pupils assembled on the north side of the street. Bill noticed his neighbour Gerry among the kids on the south side, and waved. Gerry waved back.

‘Wha’s that?’ asked Pud.

‘He’s cried Gerry. He bides next door to me. He gans tae the catholic school in Galton.’

‘You have tae watch them, ye ken,’ Pud commented, cryptically.

Lengths of bunting were strung across the road. Some of the children were waving little Union Jacks. Aside from the schoolchildren, there was a large contingent of young mothers with prams or toddlers. The women were in best dresses and they continually scrubbed at toddlers’ faces with handkerchiefs. The only men present were old, retired coalminers, all with the same unruffled look that the old men of the village always seemed to have.

‘There’s our mums,’ said Shug, ‘Look, ower by the store.’

‘Dinnae let on,’ said Pud, ‘We dinnae want them showing us up.’

‘See the tyre mark on the road?’ Bill pointed, ‘That’s where the motorbike skidded and the lad fell aff.’

He was referring to an incident the previous week which could have been tragic but turned out to be amusing. A motorcycle with a pillion passenger was roaring through the village. Driver and passenger had turned their jackets back to front in order to keep warm. At a bend in the road, the motorcycle swerved and the pillion passenger fell off. He lay on the road, dazed, as Mrs Bonner, an old widow who lived near the school, stooped over him in some shock at the sight of his face protruding from the back of his jacket.

‘Pair laddie,’ she said, ‘He’s sair twistit.’

The passenger groaned and sat up. Mrs Bonner shrieked in horror.

Bill, Pud and Shug, who had witnessed the scene, giggled a little at the memory.

‘Shhh,’ hissed Miss Fitzwilliam, ‘She’s coming.’

The people went quiet for a few moments, then began to cheer. A large black car sped past them. Bill caught a glimpse of a woman waving. The car was out of sight in a few seconds.

‘All right,’ said Miss Fitzwilliam, ‘Let’s get back to the school.’