The Rural

I found this picture when looking through another box of photos of my mum. There are Loads !

She had put the names of all the ladies on the back of the photograph and it was like having a trip down memory lane seeing some of the faces as in the interactions I had with a lot of them , mostly in the 60s when I was a youngster. Two of them had shops where I would go and spend my pocket money on gifts for the family birthdays or Christmas.

Although one birthday present I bought for my mum, a ceramic heart with a little red heart painted on it with a saying ‘You only have one Mother, patient, kind and true, no one else in all the world will mean as much to you’. Hmm my mum would be the first to hold up her hand and say she wasn’t blessed with patience, not back then. The patience was all from my Dad. The patience of a saint he had. The story behind that ceramic heart was that my mum collected silver sixpences in a bank that was kept in the sideboard. I found the piggy bank when I was doing some ‘raking’ one day and thought I would be smart and take a sixpence now and again and get myself sweets at Dobbies the sweetie shop up the road. Yum. What a great feeling that was, illicit pickings. Tasted sweeter I swear. Ill gotten gains….

Then I had a great idea I would take a whole bundle of sixpences to buy my mum the ceramic heart I had seen in Mrs Logan’s gift shop for her upcoming birthday. Mum loved it. But then a few weeks later she was counting the sixpences and found there was less than when she last counted and I was blamed immediately! Not my little brother, me! To be fair he was only 4 and I was 9……. I probably got a right row for that but I dont remember …

This photo is fab. It’s in the village hall where there seemed to be a variety of shows and events often. Beetle drives, Sales of Work, Bring and Buy, shows, whist drives, domino nights, dances….. etc etc the days when there was only 3 tv channels and entertainment outside the house was plenty.

I put this on the Facebook group of Auchterarder Past and Present and it got a lot of comments. Lots of people there knew the people in Blackford as there is only 5 miles between each place.

It’s good to reminisce.