Arran: Photograph by Islay McLeod
It was the summer of 1969 and I was 15 years old. We were in the place I love best in all the world, the island of Arran. ‘We’ were a family of seven Glaswegians, mum, dad and five siblings spending the month of July in our usual haunt, Bridge Farm, a couple of miles east of Shiskine on the String Road. We’d been coming here for years, renting the farmhouse from Colin and Martha Currie who, along with their three children, would move out to the bothy across the yard for the duration of our stay.
Our days were spent helping out on the farm, milking and herding the cattle, baling hay, digging potatoes, shooting rats in the barn, mucking out the byre, helping the local farmers with dipping and shearing the sheep, collecting eggs etc, etc. And fishing, lots of fishing. For us would-be-farmer townies it was an idyllic break, and one that was fully maximised by Colin who had a willing and happy unpaid workforce for a whole month. My lacerated fingers (from baling string) and bulging biceps were the talk of the neighbourhood, and the subject of much respect and admiration from the local youth.
But something different happened that year, to me at least. I was offered a job. Mary Currie, a relative of Colin’s, and one of the landowning gentry on the island, decided she needed some weekend help in the kitchen at the local hostelry she owned, the Shepherd’s Howff, at Shiskine. (Howff is a phonetic rendering as I can’t remember exactly how the Gaelic word was spelled, but it means ‘crook’). As I was 15, I was legally allowed to be employed, as long as I didn’t hang about in the public bar. The pay offered was minimal, but the proposition took my fancy as I’d never been employed before and the whole idea was novel and fun.
I put it to my parents and, as to be expected, they were doubtful about the whole enterprise. I was only 15 and I didn’t need to earn any money (as they saw it), and why would I want to go and work in a pub? They were both non-drinkers and viewed drinking culture with some disdain. Much discussion and pleading ensued, assurances that I would only be in the back kitchen were given, and eventually they agreed that I could try it for one night, on condition that my father or one of my older brothers would drive me there and pick me up at closing time.
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