Sections “Viewforth Church—Spiritual State” and “Serious Christian Commitment” appeared in the print version of the RP Witness. Below is the unabridged manuscript.
What Did You Do in the War?
When we were small boys, my brother John one day asked our Mother, Norah Scott Keddie (1919-86) what she did in the War. Our Father, David G.A. Keddie (1916-73), had been in the “Desert Rats” (the 4th Armoured Brigade, 1944-45), and saw active service in the Royal Horse Artillery, from the Battle of El Alamein, Egypt, in October 1942, to the end of the North Africa Campaign in Tunisia, and from D+2 in Normandy to the German surrender in May 1945. Indeed, he even figured in an incident recorded in the Brigade History. He was in a “recce party of 4 RHA” fired on by a German column on the bypass east of St. Nicholas in the Netherlands, which was rejoicing in being liberated. They dived into a ditch, he said, and were saved by the appearance of the Sherman tanks of the Royal Scots Greys: “The battle which followed had a sobering effect on the crowds for a time”, writes Brigadier Carver with typical British understatement, but “By the middle of the afternoon the enemy had either been destroyed or withdrawn northwards and calm restored.” (R.P.M. Carver, The History of the 4th Armoured Brigade 1940-45, p, 32.)
But what did our Mother do to beat Adolf Hitler? She could have told about making wings for Spitfire fighter planes; watching for German bombers, while perched under her “tin hat” on the S.M.T. roof in Edinburgh; or, visiting her new hubby on his “leave” from the 15th (Scottish) Division (as they waited for the German invasion that never came), and actually hearing bombs dropped above her, from the shelter of the London Tube. But quick as a flash she answered, “I had your brother in the War!” End of story! My brother, whose war record was not even “a twinkle in “his father’s eye,” – he was destined to become a post-war “boomer” when born on September 11, 1946 – was duly unimpressed and, with all the concentration of an eight-year old, went on to more intriguing interests. He already knew that I had been born on 29th December, 1944, and that our Mother had something to do with it, because we were in the photograph album for April, 1945.
I was baptized in the vestry of Chalmers’ Church of Scotland in January 1945, behind by then unnecessary black-out curtains. That church grew from Thomas Chalmers’ famous evangelistic work of the 1840s in the slums down the street – the church of which my Mother’s family, the Elders, were members. That church no longer exists, but is seen here at the top of the West Port in Edinburgh (a western entrance to the Grassmarket, the place of execution of the 17th century Covenanter martyrs).
But what about me? What did I really “do in the War?” Well, on VE-Day 1945, May 8, 1945, I sported the Union Jack on my pram, thereby “doing my bit” for the British Empire in her epic struggle with what Winston Churchill called the “Nazzee Beast!” I couldn’t fire a rifle, but I sure showed the flag! Here I am, in my pram, winning the War! Meanwhile our Father was helping “Monty” and the British 2nd Army plug a hole on the north side of the “Bulge” created by the Germans in their last offensive in the West.
And what was I up to? When the warm weather came in July, 1945, I was spotted celebrating my (and my Mother’s) victory over Hitler, in the sunshine in Roseburn Park, Edinburgh!
Grandpa Keddie
Grandpa (James Dunn) Keddie was a soldier with the 4th Royal Scots in the Great War. He went “over the top” at the Battle of Arras in 1917, took a bullet in the shoulder and spent the rest of the War as a POW of the Germans. He had nothing but good to say of the medical and other treatment he received from his captors. He was disabled and couldn’t go back to raising pigs, as he had before the Great War, but worked for Bernard’s Brewery till he retired some decades later (1877-1950).
Before his marriage to Helen Anderson in 1908, “J.D.” saw a bit of the world. He crossed Canada in 1900-02 and spent time in the gold-fields (in Dawson, B.C.) – I still have something he brought back from that trip - a piece of quartz with tiny speck of gold in it. After the Boer War (1903-05) he sailed to South Africa – alas, I have no “souvenir” from the diamond-fields, but what I do have is an “Everlasting Silver Leaf” from Table Mountain, brought back as a “remembrance” of Capetown! Grandma (1869-1941) died before I was born, so I never knew her, but I have read her letters to Dad when he was stationed in Essex awaiting the German invasion that never happened, and they surely breathe the spirit of a pious and kind old lady who would have been worth knowing personally.
The only baby photo of me with Grandpa K that exists is in a family shot at 54 Cowan Road, Edinburgh, taken just before my first birthday in December, 1945. The poet Milton said “The child is father of the man,” and you can already see my suspicious nature, as I wonder what that strange man with the camera is about to do to me! Incidentally, I seem to have recovered from German submarines, wartime rationing and “National Dried Milk.” The rationing would still prevail for the “socialist paradise” years of Clement Attlee’s Labour government, but I still look pretty good after my third birthday!
Meantime, only one explicit memory of him has survived to this day. Grandpa Keddie was maybe 73, I was maybe 5, and he took me for a walk along the Union Canal between the Ashley Terrace and Meggetland Bridges. He let me walk on the canal side, but held on to my right hand so I couldn’t trip and fall into the water. Boy, did I feel privileged… and safe! Within a year, my hero was in eternity! You can see here a slightly gentrified version of the very same tow-path, with Colinton Road stretching off to the south-east, to the right of the scullers.
In 1950, we moved to Viewforth – a mile to the east of the above place and nearer the city centre, we lived one block to the south (right) of the Viewforth Bridge you see crossing the canal in the far centre-left of the photo. Behind the bridge to the east is the canal basin, which in the 1950’s was flanked by the Edinburgh Rubber Mill (to the left/north), and various nondescript businesses (to the right/south), but today is all gentrified with luxury condominiums, restaurants and house-boats. The City centre is further east behind the basin.
Grandpa Keddie brought some (purported) gold back from his trip to Canada in 1900-1902 - see Appendix One for the souvenirs extant in the possession of my brother and myself.
Uncle David
“Uncle David” was my Father’s Uncle and therefore my Great-uncle. David Gordon Anderson (1871-1964) was the oldest of the relatives I have known personally, Grandma Keddie’s brother, and an imperialist warrior who, on account of age, missed out on the real war he wanted to be in, except for the slightest of brushes with the Turks. His stories constantly enthralled his grand-nephews.
Too old for front-line duty, he served with the base troops. I was reading about the Turkish attack on the Suez Canal in 1915 and their subsequent defeat in the Battle of Romani in Sinai, (E.W. Swinton, Twenty Years After: the battle-fields of 1914-18 then and now (London, Newnes: nd), Vol. 1, p. 612. First published as a weekly magazine in 1934-38, the issued as bound volumes. Dad subscribed at least to Vol. 1, but I acquired vol. 2 in 2015.) when I spotted a note, under a photo of the British railway in Romani in WWI, written and initialed in pencil: “I was there” DGA!
Uncle David, a confirmed bachelor, lived in Whitefoord House, Edinburgh, a home for old soldiers. He was in a group inspection by Princess Mary, sister of King George VI, in the 1950s (age 83, above), and, as reported in The Bulletin on June 25, 1954, at a review at Redford Barracks by her brother, Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester. We were agog when he told us how, in summer manoevres at Stobs Camp, near Hawick, he saw the practice charge of horsed cavalry – first the hoofbeats of unseen horses; then the lance points glinting in the sun as the regiment came in view; and finally the thunder of the charge past the assembled infantry!
Other pictures of a vanished world, were his accounts of being at one of the last whale hunts in the Orkneys in 1903, whence the Andersons came; and, as a boy, the fireworks in the Meadows (a park in Edinburgh) in 1882 celebrating the British victory at Tel-El-Kebir in Egypt. And one day, in the 1880s, he was down at South Queensferry looking at the great railway bridge, then being bult (1882-90). He heard an old lady nearby say aloud, “But I can’t understand why they’re dismantling it!” 130 yrs on, the Forth Bridge is still the world’s second longest cantilever bridge and still carries trains!
I remember how in 1961, when the Iraqis were threatening to invade Kuwait, then a British Protectorate – 30 years before the real Iraq War! The British quickly despatched an Armoured Brigade (and so Iraq backed down). Uncle David asked nephew David (Dad) if he was going to Kuwait with the Army. Dad expostulated, “But I am a Class Z reservist!” (i.e., a veteran of WWII, de-mobbed in 1945!). The old warrior still wanted a war!
When he was about 90, Uncle David tripped, fell, and broke a leg while descending “Jacob’s Ladder” – the steps at the old Scotsman offices that lead down to Market Street. All he said was, that when he opened his eyes “there was a young fellow there waiting to pick me up.” Here was the man who reputedly had a cold bath every morning and put salt on his porridge at breakfast, before his daily “morning constitutional” around the Old Town! A while afterwards, he was admitted to the Longmore Hospital, feeling unwell, when we – Dad, John and I – visited him. The nurse asked us to wait while she asked if he was up for visitors. I saw and heard Uncle David’s answer between the hinges of the door: “Tell them to come back tomorrow,” he said. He died in his sleep that very night!
Here is my first and only photo with Uncle David, taken at Coltbridge (which straddles the Water of Leith at Murrayfield). It is Aug. 17, 1946 – his 75th birthday. I was in my second year, my wee brother John was to be born on Sep. 11 (and, of course, I have no memory of any of these events.).
The Aunts at Shandon
One of our Sunday visits was to “the Aunts” at 9 Shandon Street. The first picture is of the eight Keddie siblings with their mother, Marion Dunn (this photo is the best I can do):
This picture may have been taken just before 1900. #3 is my grandfather, James Dunn Keddie (b. 1877). I met Grand-Auntie Merne once at Kirknewton - I was 4 or 5 – and remember playing in the long grass behind their property (#9 – Marion S.)’ and knew well “the Aunts at Shandon” (# 8 – Margaret/ Daisy [1883-1978]; #1 – Kate [1881-1971]; and #4 – Jeannie [1880-1968]; who all lived to a great age). When I was little, their cousin, Agnes Dunn (Aunt Aggie) lived with the three Aunts. She was greatly afflicted by arthritis. I remember her as the silent old lady sitting to the left of the fireplace like a kind of mirror image of the painting of “Whistler’s Mother,” by the artist.
Auntie Jeannie had been engaged, but lost her fiancé in the Great War. Aunties Kate and Daisy were unmarried. The three, until they retired, ran the Slateford Post Office. Here is their home in 9 Shandon Street (rt. – the ground flat with the purple door). Their father – my Great-grandfather William Keddie – was a baker. From him, I own two things: one is an advert for his pies, which were sold in local shops. This is now framed on our wall in Greenwood, Indiana. The other is the 200 yr old grandfather clock that Aunt Daisy passed on to me, which William accepted in 1874 as part of the payment of a debt owed him. It too is in Indiana.
Here are Kate, Jeannie and Daisy at the rear of their home in Shandon Street. Their’s was a dark, Victorian place, in which they were the only brightness. My other memories are of Auntie Kate always giving us sweets – invariably boilings (a common feature of Victorian days). My brother remembered these sweets were in a jar on a red velour-topped table (of which I recall nothing). I remember Auntie Kate’s enthusiam for this ritual – feeding sweeties to the wee monkeys – overcoming her sisters’ caution at giving them things that could rot our little teeth! The other regular visitor was Timmy, the black tom-cat, who appeared at the back door, mewing for his milk. He was reported as an “outside cat” and a “good mouser” – and imperious about his free meals!
The ladies often had holidays on the Isle of Arran. Here are Kate (I think) and Jeannie, the Edinburgh post-mistresses, checking out the P.O. in Sliddery, Arran, around 1930.
William Keddie’s pie adverts for shops that sold them (right), and (below right) the clock that stood in the entry hall in Shandon Steet for years. It had a big base, so it was about 7-feet tall! It was built by James Smith, an Edinburgh clock-maker, in 1798.
Coltbridge Avenue
I was born into an upstairs flat at 2 Coltbridge Avenue in west Edinburgh - a site made infamous by “the Canter of Coltbridge” when a (Protestant) Government cavalry brigade fled precipitously before the (Catholic) forces of Bonnie Prince Charlie during the Jacobite rebellion of 1745. Here the Water of Leith is spanned by a bridge beside which is my first home, purchased in Jan. 1944, while Dad was with the Army in Belgium. Our flat was on the end of the block above the shops - which in our day (1944-49) housed D. Flett, the Joiner.
The bridge goes off to the right and the entrance to the flat is up some steps on the right, behind the building. The photo of Uncle David holding me [in#3], was taken at the far end of the bridge.
I remember only a few items from these days, one of which was the gas lamps in the street (now all are electric). I had a “special lamp-pos”(sic) outside the room where I slept. I recall a lamp-lighter – called a “Leerie” – rekindling a lamp that had gone out with a flame device on the end of a pole. It reminded me later of the first poem we memorized in Primary School at Bruntsfield in the 1950’s – The Lamplighter by Robert Louis Stevenson, who in his childhood also lived in gas-lit Edinburgh:
“For we are very lucky, with a lamp before the door,
And Leerie stops to light it as he lights so many more;
And O! Before you hurry by with ladder and with light;
O Leerie, see a little child and nod to him to-night!”
I also remember seeing a single-deck work tram on the main road, speeding along to work on a problem on the line. Then there was the flood of 1947, when the Water of Leith came up the back yard and almost drowned Mr. Flett’s chickens. In Roseburn Park across the street, the same river burst its banks and flooded the area where I had sunbathed as a baby (see #2)!
But 1947 in Port Seton was gbrother John Watson Keddie’s first summer holiday. He was barely 9 months old but I am told he had first class lungs as his first al fresco picture attests (I can’t remember this performance, but his later career as an athlete confirmed he had good lungs!). Another event I don’t remember involves this photo of all three then living generations of the J.D. Keddie clan! (l. to r.): David holding John; Uncle Bill with cousin Ronnie; Grandpa with Aunt Edith (see ch. 14) and me. At the time of writing, in 2018, only John (72) and I (73) are left.
Some general observations on Summer Holidays:
Almost all our two-week “vacations” (an Americanism) were at the sea-side (“beach” in American). Port Seton(x2), Burntisland, Leven(x2), Elie, Montrose(x2), Aberystwyth and Mallaig. The exceptions were, as I recall, inland in Galashiels, and Callendar.
Jackets and ties were de rigeur in Scottish sea-side hols in those days! We had a so-called “heat wave” at 70+ degrees! And we were thankful we even had a Summer any given year!
Modern running shoes or “sneakers” were yet to be invented for common use, so sandals, tennis shoes or even dress shoes had to suffice. Beach wear in post-war Britain was not terribly snazzy!
Eventually, we boys saved up pocket-money for these holidays – at the level of enough to buy a large cone ice-cream for every day of the two weeks. That was the goal and sometimes we achieved it! This was the highlight of our year.
For these trips my folks had a huge old suitcase packed with clothes etc. I recall that one time en route to Montrose, a blood vessel burst in Dad’s hand - it was so big and heavy - as we rushed on the platform to our train at Waverly station. Fortunately this seems to have happened only the once!
We used to go on so-called “Mystery Tours”- you paid your 2/6d. per person for a bus trip in the local countryside, usually breaking for a visit to some famous site. The only one of these I remember was Edzell Castle (near Brechin), the 17th cent. home of Sir David Lindsay (1551-1610). the famous Scottish judge.
The Elders
Our Mother’s side of the family were the Elders. My memories of Grandpa Elder are more of anecdotes from others than from anything I ever heard from him. To me, even when I was of university age, he was of a kind of silent sphinx, ensconced in his leather easy chair on the left of the fireplace, looking straight ahead and puffing on his pipe! Dad told me he was a died in the wool socialist, whose hero was Keir Hardie, founder of the Labour Party. He always pronounced the name of another hero, Pandit Nehru, as “Nero” – and that whenever he said this, Dad always had to resist falling over with mirth! (Dad was a Tory!). He also warned him that his daughter, Dad’s “intended,” eventually my mother, “liked to spend money.” They lived in Corstorphine, once a village, now a suburb of Edinburgh, and then at 60 Cowan Road (as did we, in another flat up the stair). Here I am with G’pa Elder at the back entrance at 26 Meadowhouse Road, Corstorphine (originally “Cross of Torphin” in Viking days) in Apr. 1946.
Granda Mary (aka “Wee Mary”) was G’pas second wife. (May Scott, mother of all the Elder kids, died of stomach cancer in 1936 in her mid ‘50s.). Grandma Mary was the only real Grandma I ever had. Here we are together in 1946. She was a great cook, whose recipes were only in her head. The quantification of ingredients was by feel rather then by numbers. After 50 years, I can still smell her oatmeal cookies, and have never tasted their equal since!
Aunt Agnes gave me one of my oldest possessions – the book “Jungle Fever” by Ernst Zwilling, autobiography of a big-game hunter who travelled in the then French Equatorial Africa and the Belgian Congo. She played the cinema organ in the Odeon/New Victoria Cinema on Clerk Street before the coming of the “Talkies.”
Uncle Jimmie worked for Thomas Cook, first in Capetown then in Johannesburg. In 2004, I visited Jo’burg and found their home at 63 Honeyball Ave, in Discovery, Transvaal. He got me started in stamp-collecting by sending me the fruit of opening envelopes in his work - also picture-books of African wild-life that were to set me on the road to studying Zoology in university and teaching Biology in Trinity Academy, in Leith. He had attended George Heriot’s School, one of the best in Scotland, and I was to follow him in that inestimable privilege in 1956-62.
Uncle Johnnie taught building in an Edinburgh college, but, before that, in WWII, he was an officer of the Royal Engineers, who were first into Belsen, the infamous Nazi death-camp. I remember answering the door when he came, obviously crest-fallen, to tell us of son Neil’s death from MD (Neil and I were both 15 at the time of his death).
Uncle Bill managed a shoe-shop and first taught me the necessity of profit as the engine of capitalism and therefore of prosperity, against the bogus claims of the socialists. He pointed out that a profit had to be made on even “sales” items, which really enlightened my mind.
That same day in April, 1946, I began to exhibit my future athletic prowess – here I run toward the camera in the first of my three athletic victories in life! This one depended on having no opposition whatsoever – this never recurred and made for a less than brilliant career! But John came along on 11 Sep. 1946 and became an athlete of some accomplishment who was to be Junior Scottish Hop, Step and Jump (Triple Jump) Champion, and to represent Scotland in the quarter-mile.
There was an Elder family gathering in 1948 at Meadowhouse Road, Edinburgh.
After Bill married Helen Hoy in 1956, two new Elder cousins came along – Andrew and Alison. Apart from Alison, all the Elders are gone. Andrew was 40 when he died, leaving son Calum. Neil died of MS age 15 and Mary of cancer at age 32. Aunt Agnes (Mrs Walter Knox) and cousins Jimmie and Fraser lived in Greenlaw. Later, Jimmie destroyed his parents’ business, stealing and gambling away their solvency, and then disappearing in England. Fraser moved to Australia, where he married Margeret. They divorced after having (I think) six children. Uncle Jimmie (and wife Aunt Mollie) were childless, lived in South Africa and later retired home in Scotland. There was a lot of grief in the Elder clan…
“Wee Boy”
My brother was known (to me at least) as “Wee Boy.” I am afraid one looks on a younger brother, for a while at least, as merely “there” or, worse, perhaps as competition. John, as I’ve mentioned, was the fearless, aggressive one – a typical red-head (Mum denied she had “red” hair – she always said “I’m ‘auburn’” – as if that confered some distinction. She said my hair was only “mousey” brown! We a had a good laugh…). But John beat me to all sorts of things in life: sports achievements (and injuries), marriage, children, a settled career (accountant), a home, publishing a book and a few other things. He is uniquely the historian of Scottish Athletics! If I was the swot in the family, he was the activist who actually did things. I am ashamed to say that I bullied him a bit when he was little. Until, that is, Mum took my pants down in Westhall Gdns, along from the school, and “skelped ma’ bum” for punching John. I don’t remember transgressing again. I think the lesson was imprinted on me forever – and I can still go to the exact spot where it all happened (see photo).
Mum believed in retributive justice, without appeal. I remember her muttering – when a 5 yr old neighbour talked back to his mother (and she did nothing about it) – “It’s too late if they are not under control before they are five.” Take note, all listening children! But “wee boy” was often my hero, because he was fearless and tarred with the same brush as Mum. On his first day at school, Stanley Caird attacked John (age 5) after school, and he responded with some instant retaliation that had Stanley’s mother complaining to our Mum about it on the spot. Wrong person to complain to! Momma Bear was fully convinced that her cub was in the right. No turning the other cheek for her little boy! It reminds me of an Irish friend who was assaulted by the much bigger bully of his class. He knew the would be beaten but reckoned a spirited fight would act as a deterrant. It did – and he was left alone thereafter. John might be small, and peacable, but nobody tangled with him!
John the sportsman emerged early and became a fixture on the football (soccer) first team. He was a “natural.” I, in contrast, tried for nothing, was no good anyway, but did the nerdy thing and shot for book prizes. Books came later for John and now he is churning out really useful stuff! One of our Aunties – (“No names, no pack-drill”!!) – always called me by my name, but invariably called John, “Sonny.” Mum frequently fumed about this, and was right to think it was an uninterested and demeaning attitude on that Aunt’s part.
He (and I) joined the Boy Scouts. The 38th met in a shop-front opposite the Warrender CofS.
The Scoutmaster was Colin Oswald, son of the Labour MP for Edinburgh Central (1951-1974), Tom Oswald. Once, when the troop went to Bonaly (where the Scouts still have a campground), he emerged from the public toilet in the villege and. Quoting Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1, grandly declared, “For this relief much thanks.” Those were the days when Shakespeare was big in the schools! I eventually was Patrol Second. My “First Class Journey” entailed a two day hike from Peebles to Innerleithen over the hills. I enjoyed many a hike (including a “snow hike” on a moonlit night along the southern crest of the Pentland Hills). But all the rough and tumble palled and I quit for a quieter life.
But the former “wee boy” John persevered in the Scouts, climbed many mountains and camped out in tough circumstances. Most dramatic was a weekend camp in Glencoe – a fearsome pass in the west Highlands – where they were washed out in the middle of the night by the remains of the US hurricane “Agnes.” He knew they were in trouble, he said, when he saw an orange floating past the tent at 2 in the morning! They quit and headed for home. I remember him showing up next morning still soaked to the skin! He may have been a “wee boy” at one time, but he was now a tough and seasoned Scout among as a hardy a group as ever has been!
Viewforth
We moved to Viewforth in early 1950. One night in Dec. 1949, Dad visited the flat and took me along. I remember walking up past the Rubber Mill on lower Viewforth and seeing, still on the wall, the wartime camouflage paint aimed at fooling the German bombers. Further up, Viewforth goes over the Union Canal (basin) and then crosses the east-west Gilmore Place. Below-left is how Gilmore Place looks today, with the Viewforth Church on one corner and, diagonally across from it, the bay windows of 128 Viewforth. The whole tenement – in Dumfries red sandstone – is pictured on the right. A glazier is on the street level, but in the 1950’s it was a bakery of the St Cuthbert’s Co-op, where we often bought our bread and their terrific “Madiera Cake” (an iced sponge cake).
Second from the top is the flat where I grew up between 1950 until the mid 60’s. The narrow window the left of the bay-window is the bathroom and the next window the kitchen/living room. The bay window is the “sitting room” – which served mostly as a second bedroom. The window to the right is the regular bedroom. The entry to the “stair” is out of sight to the right of the glazier behind the little skips (and the lamp-post I walked into when Kathleen Zblewski called my name. This concussed me and I missed the Royal National Life-Saving Society Silver Medal test the next day). Viewforth itself continues south uphill to Bruntsfield (where the novelist Muriel Spark (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie) grew up. Bruntsfield School (See Chapter 11 on “Bruntsfield School.”) is off to the right at the top of the hill. This is my childhood “home territory.”
The three flights of stairs up helped my running legs. I was always up and down, getting messages for Mum from the shops below – no supermarkets in those days! Campbell, the butcher, talked endlessly, and I recall just nodding my head while in his shop - conversation was impossible. Then there was Jimmy Knott, the fish-monger from Port Seton, east of Edinburgh. He filleted the fish himself with speed that boggled the mind – and never so much as nicked himself! The boats came in on Mondays (Sabbath observance?) so he closed on Mondays and stopped at Granton Harbour to buy his fish the next morning – so popping into his shop on Tuesdays was always a highlight of the week – for Jimmies’ filleting and philosophy (he expatiated on all subjects interesting to small boys). At the end was McGlynn’s Dairy where I later delivered milk every morning for his successor, John Adamson, who was a committed Christian and an elder at the evangelical congregation, Holyrood Abbey C. of S., where James Phillip was then the minster. (I was a member and a deacon in that church in 1967-68).
One grey morning, early, I was delivering milk in Lower Gilmore Place, and when I came out of the stair there was a man in a trench coat and a Trilby hat, with an American accent, looking like Sam Spade in the movies! “Gee,” he asked, “You deliver these ‘personally’ every day?” “Yes”, I said, and my Yankee visitor asked if I could stand by my cart of milk bottles and let him take a photo “for the folks back home.” He was the first American I ever met and I have often wondered where the photo ended up in the USA. I must have been something from another world to this New World tourist! Milk in those days was unhomogenized, and so had cream on top. John and I used to see who could get some cream on our breakfast Weetabix – a cereal that left to itself tastes like card-board (but which I have had at every breakfast now for most of 70 years!). Cream does a lot for it, and anyway it had a Royal Coat of Arms on the box, saying, “By appointment to Her Majesty the Queen.” She was worth a few taste buds to us royalists! Amid my two-dozen pint bottles, I had a few “Fentons,” an expensive high-grade milk with an especially thick layer of cream. They came from Fenton Barnes Farm in East Lothian. Some customers really liked their cream! Now we all have boring old homogenized and fat-reduced white water!!
I remember the day the phone arrived at our flat. It was mounted on a table in a corner of of our little hall-way. We stood around just looking at it. I thought of it as gloriously enhancing our status and giving us contact with important people as never before.
For me, the most dramatic memory of all is the day in 1950, when Dr Hamilton injected penicillin in my bare bottom. I cried out and tensed up so that syringe – in those days a big ominous instrument of torture – came free and sprayed penicillin all over the wall-paper in the “bed-recess” in our kitchen/living-room! I have not liked getting “jags” since (as they are called in the UK).
Excitement was often provided by lorries laden with crates of “lemonade” – the catch-all UK term for all fizzy drinks. When a flat-bed suddenly had to brake at our intersections lights, some crates would fall off. The mixture of broken and unbroken bottles seemed to attract instant swarms of small boys, and whole bottles found their way behind the neighbourhood’s short, unrailed walls (the railings were all sawn of for scrap to make tanks in the War!), only to reappear when the street was cleared up! I don’t recall stealing anything, but I could see how popular drinks like “Vimto” (pseudo-black-currant fizz) were popular with the local thieves. We lived on the edge of a tougher area – in which, btw, Sean Connery grew up – three blocks away in Fountainbridge. He was unknown then, but became the most famous Scottish actor in history and the maker of the James Bond character in movies.
Viewforth Church—What and Where
Our church was “Viewforth” just across the street – part of the Established Church of Scotland. It was built in 1872 as St.Peter’s Free Church, but by our time is was a CofS which was more or less a social club, with neither the word of God nor a gospel salvation in Christ. In the 1950’s, there were about 1,000 communicants and a Sabbath School of c. 350 young people.
Some time in the 1950’s, bits fell off from the pinnacles of the tower, and the safety modifications basically turned it into a stump, as in this photo I took from our home across the street. Comparison with the church as it is today shows how the top half of the tower has since been demolished. You will note that at one time it was to have a clock – see the round hole in the bottom part – but it was never inserted.
The church was very active – I joined the 19th Craiglockhart Cub Pack. The leader was Lily Neil (the “Akela,” after Kipling’s Jungle Book). She was living in Granton, next to the Gas Works, when one Saturday she heard the roar of low-flying aircraft, looked out the window, saw big black crosses on the wings and realized they were German bombers and that if they hit the Gas Works, she’d be a cinder in no time! The Jerries missed and Lily and the Gas Works survived the War! In my time, TV was coming in, but churches were still neighbourhood social centres virtually every day. There were organizations galore – but no Prayer or Bible Study! We had Junior Choir on Thursdays, working on the annual concert to raise money for the Fabric Fund. The CofS closed a church of fewer than 350 members - a number which usually could not support the local ministry. They needed income from Concerts, Jumble Sales and Whist Drives to pay the bills!
I think I was only in one of the Junior Choir concerts – “Jan of Windmill Land” in 1958. I was too shy to sing in front of people – one year I “froze” while attempting to sing “Santa hnnhLucia” at a dress rehearsal – and that was the end of my brilliant career as a soloist! Meanwhile, my talented and fearless brother was the eponymous “star” of the show – the “Jan.” In the photo, I am the background “Burgomaster!” The one thing I did was to make the mitre Jim Kelly is wearing here. In other years, I designed various crowns, spears and shields as needed. Maisie Sowicki and Mum ran the Choir, and the only other thing I recall is how we ran to Jim and Billy Kelly’s house afterwords to catch George Reeves in “The Adventure of Superman” series from America! The Kellys had a TV!
The Kirk Session was numbered about 50 men. Dad, seen here at the end of the third row, was Assistant Session Clerk. He wrote the Minutes in long-hand. The Session books are still kept at the church (see the example on the next page), where they can be examined. The Rev. John H. Sammon (the minister on the right) – the Moderator – was a univeralist and a moralist who believed that the “good news” was that if anyone lived a decent life, he’d be OK with God. In other words, you are practically justified by death and heaven is your reward – unless you are egregiously wicked, like a Hitler or a Stalin.
Dad was also Receiver of Banns, so we often had couples visit, to pay their 7/6 for the Certificate of their intention of marriage to be read in the Church stating that if any had objections, they “should speak now or forever hold their peace.” On this legal document, the men were all called “Bachelor” and the women “Spinster,” – the latter archaism providing endless amusement to us lads, since, it seemed to us, that a “spinster” denoted an old unmarried lady (which was not true). Dad also wrote out long-hand the names of members on the annual packet of Free-will Offering Envelopes, which were a numbered concertina of one for every week of the year. This meant hand-writing over 500 household addresses! I remember Dad coming to two identical packets – addressed to “Mrs. A. Smith” – and pausing to remark that this bothered him, in that the second “Mrs.A. Smith” had the replaced the first “Mrs. A. Smith” (with the same “Mr. A. Smith”) – and the Church had never raised any questions of right and wrong. It was a little indicator of what was a widespread spiritual neglect in the CofS.
Viewforth Church—Spiritual State
The church I grew up in was large and moralistic, rather than Christ-centred and Gospel preaching. TV eventually replaced the Church as the social centre of the parish and exposed the lack of a clear Christian witness and mission. It took a generation, but eventually the Churches of Scotland within a half-mile walk in all directions were closed down, so that by 2018 our old home area has one “evangelical” CofS congregation (Barclay-Viewforth) instead of the nine decidedly “liberal” congregations of our childhood (Barclay; Viewforth; St Oswald’s, St. David’s, Bruntsfield, North Morningside, John Ker Memorial, and slightly further away, Warrender and Lauriston.). So… the one remaining CofS has become “evangelical” and the old “Viewforth” is the Bible-believing, Gospel preaching independent “King’s Church.” Furthermore, the Free Presbyterian Church – two blocks away – is now the only sound presbyterian church for miles on a western artery that spans the city centre at the “Barclay” Church to the countryside beyond Colinton. The death of “liberal theology” has been a predictable outcome – and arguably God’s verdict on the whole movement.
The most important influence at Viewforth Church was my childhood Sunday-school teacher Michael McLuckie, who was a committed Christian who believed and taught his class the Bible as the actual Word of God. Mike pointed me to Jesus Christ as a real Saviour, and although I was not truly converted to Christ for several years until further evangelical teaching, I was made aware that the Bible was serious about our actual relationship to the Lord. I was not able to find any trace of Mike in later years, but I am indebted to his faithful witness in first awakening me to my need of a Saviour. The state of the church was well represented by the reaction to my question in a youth group, “Why does the Church of Scotland baptise children?” (I had Plymouth Brethren and Baptist friends by that time, and I was impressed by their seriousness about what we believed and did in and with our lives.) There was universal laughter, followed by the minister’s answer – forever engraved upon my memory; “Well, we’ve done it for about 400 years, so you can bet your boots there is a good reason for it somewhere!” We then immediately passed to the next topic! It was at that point I realized the church was not serious about what it believed and practiced, although it was a few years before I found a confessional fellowship with which to worship.
My Dad was an elder and often a Sabbath School teacher. I was taken to SS, and garnered a few “perfect attendance” prizes, but I never heard a Bible read, or a prayer uttered at home – not even a formal “grace” before a meal. The sermons were mostly about “doing good” at home and abroad; like the alleviation of poverty and aid for poorer peoples overseas and other commendable projects. But as to doctrine and life and a personal relationship with Christ as Saviour, there was only the assurance that all would be well for generally decent folk. They were universalists, and the old Biblical confessional truth was not true any more for them! My brother’s burst appendix and life-threatening peritonitis at age 10 was a marker for me, in that it was the very first time (I was 12) I heard anyone prayed for by name in that church. And it was not the Minister, but the SS Superintendant, Keith Black! This was a most welcome event, but I do not recall it ever becoming the practice in that church.
In later years, I had occasion to speak with an older member of “Viewforth” – a friend of my mother’s – who emphasised that the only reason she was involved in the church was to be sure there was somebody to bury her. Mum was eventually buried from that church, and some years later, those who remained saw the church “buried” in a union with “the Barclay.” It is the grace of God, that the last of the eight churches that had previously extinguished the Gospel of Christ, should eventually be merged into the one – the ninth and only congregation in our area – that actually proclaims Christ as a personal Saviour of sinners! Luke 18:8 asks, “… when the Son of man comes, shall he find faith on the earth?” Yes, He will, in spite of all efforts to suppress and eliminate the truth of the Gospel of saving grace in Christ!
Bruntsfield School
I was in the March intake of 1950 (there were two classes per year immediately after the War – because of the “boomers.”) The school is on Montpelier (a street in Bruntsfield), was built in 1912, and, back then, with a swimming pool!
This fact meant we had a swimming teacher on site! Her name was “Miss King” (1909-94) – perhaps the most famous school teacher in the country! In 1924, age 15, she competed for Britain in the Paris Olympics, and, though ill, was seventh fastest overall. In 1928, age 19, Ellen King won two silver medals for Britain in the Amsterdam Olympics, and later held world records for the 150 yd. and 220 yd. breaststroke. Our teacher!!! She was a fine teacher and a great lady, of whom we were all in awestruck wonder. Always dressed impeccably in a white uniform with a pleated skirt, and always ready to demonstrate the various strokes, we just marvelled at how she could do it all with scarcely a ripple in the water. She inculcated confidence in little kids entering the water and actually swimming!
A class photo was taken in 1951. I notice I had on the dark-and light-green jerkin I am still sporting in the 1953 photo, which is then filled out to capacity (see next page)! My particular friends were Norrie McLeod (4th rt., back row)and Ricky Reid (2nd rt., first row), I was always 2nd in the class to Norrie, who left for Heriot’s after two years. He later was an actuary. I inherited 1st place until I joined Norrie in Heriot’s secondary school in 1956. I still have the prizes collected over the years. But I was always afraid of failure. One day, when Miss Spellman noticed my apprehensions (somehow I was behind her backboard), she said (gruffly), “Don’t worry, Keddie, you did just fine.” (I did!).
When I was 9, or going on 10, I burst into tears whenever I heard the word “dictation.” It took an explanation by a child psychologist at the “Sick Kids” (properly, “The Royal Sick Children’s Hospital”), a Miss Reid. A decade later she was my teacher in 1967-68 in “Child Psychology” in the Dip. Ed. course at the University of Edinburgh. I had a psycho-somatic ailment called alopecia in which some of my hair fell out leaving a bald patch. When I went home, kids followed chanting “Baldy! Baldy! Baldy!” and me in tears all the way – children can be as cruel as they are uncomprehending. The reason given was that I was frustrated with something as simple as dictation. Apparently, dictation was too easy for me, and caused a stress I never understood at the time. The solution was to miss my last year in Primary,and go to Secondary School, where I would be challenged. I could only do this by going to a private school – because a public school could not allow a “bright” pupil to miss a year in the one-size-fits-all scheme that fitted their socialist theory. Hence my transfer to (private) George Heriot’s School in late 1956, by examination. My final teacher, Robert Essex, tutored me for the tests needed to skip a year. He emigrated to Canada soon after. One of my first teachers, a young woman named Joyce Carney, went to Hong Kong to teach in an Armed Forces school. In those days, lots of talented people left for the “Empire,” which was still a real thing in the Britsh scheme of things!
One of the prizes I collected at Bruntsfield – the one for 1954-55 – is pictured below. It was the classic, Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson, who, like myself, was a native of Edinburgh. My final year was in Class 7b, so by going to Heriot’s in 1956-57, I forfeited any prize I might have won in the year I missed at Primary School.
Politics at Bruntsfield
My first awareness of “politics” was the General Election in 1951, in which Winston Churchill and the Tories replaced Clement Attlee and the Labour government. This grabbed my attention because there were fights on the boys school playground between “Tories”: and “Labours” – yes, and all Primary boys! The girls were more civilized and were glad they had their own playground in those days. I was “Labour,” because, as far as I knew, my parents had voted for Attlee in 1945. In fact they were swing voters who voted Tory/Conservative for the rest of their lives. I remember asking my Dad after Churchill won the election what this change of government meant. I was afraid it meant some huge change probably injurious to my health. He said, “No need to worry. Nothing will change, because the Civil Service really runs the country and they don’t change.” So I thought no more about it, even though the word “cynicism” wasn’t yet in my vocabulary! (I was only 7, after all!). Much later, I realized that Attlee was by far the most influential and significant post-war politician – even to this day, far more then the peace-time Churchill or Mrs. Thatcher – because his socialist “reforms” were to be the domininant reality to this day! Then there was the Cold War. I used to dream repeatedly that the Russians invaded Britain, that WWIII was under way, and we were losing. Mum often said that the fact she had two boys (and no girls) showed that a war was coming, so I saw myself, at 8 yr old and older as doing my duty for Queen and Country. I was just up the street where we lived, waiting with my 0.303 Vickers machine-gun (like the toy WWII soldiers we played with at home) for the Russkies to come round the corner. I would know they were Ruskies because they had “snow on their boots!” I was Britain’s last hope, but in the dream, my gun would jam – but, phew! – I wake up in time to survive the encounter (till the next time!). In a variant dream, I left the jammed machine-gun and ran across the street, only for a Russian to land a hand-grenade under my feet! Fortunately, I always woke up in time to miss any explosion, and so have lived to tell the tale! Of course, I still watched out for the Russkies coming round the corner, hoping the Vickers didn’t jam the next time around!
We still had air-raid drills in the early 50’s. Along from the school, there was a Police Box (later the TV’s “Tardis” of “Dr Who” fame) with a loud siren on the roof, and it regularly went off (we got plenty warning [unlike in a real war], so we could line up in the playground [in the open!] to endure the Russian A-bombs! We actually had very little warning, so we had to move fast!!! Who was kidding who?
The most lethal threat we actually faced, was the ancient Laburnum (Golden Chain Tree), with its poisonous seeds, now long gone from the girl’s playground. And there was “Ma Stewart,” who had the “sweetie shop” across from the school, and a (lethal?) tray of sweeties which were “all a penny, as long as there’s any.” She is also a memory. And the street is safe – today largely a pedestrian area cut off from cars by bollards across the street!
After the Churchill election, the political agitation settled into an era that a later Prime Minister, Harold McMillan, would characterize as “You Never Had it so Good” (under the Conservatives. This was of course just “Thirteen Years of Tory Mis-rule” to the Labourites!). But the playgound was all football and Ma Stewart’s sweeties. No election fights any more. I suspect now that this just mirrored a declining interest among adults in the post-WWII jitters about Soviet Communism. Apart from India, independent since 1947, the British Empire shuffled along as before. I later remember an older member of our Scripture Union Interschool Fellowship, who had graduated and who interviewed for teaching positions, telling that at one school (Edinburgh Academy) she was told rather snootily (perhaps to deliberately trigger her response on the issue?) that, “Many go from this school to attain high positions in the British Empire.” Ho, ho, ho! People were generally fed up with the Empire and were ready to let it go – and so at least bring the soldiers home who, especially in Malaya, Cyprus and Kenya, were fighting to maintain a British control few wanted, at home or abroad. Must of us small boys in the early 50s’ did not relish “National Service” – finally abolished in 1959 – to maintain our hegemony in these parts! Cousin Jimmy Knox was wounded in an ambush in Malaya during the so-called “Emergency” and his brother Fraser was with the RAF at Christmas Island, in the Pacific Ocean, for the British nuclear bomb tests. I missed “National Service” by just two years! Even so, when I turned 12, I joined the Army section of Heriot’s Combined Cadet Force and learned basic drills and the handling of Lee-Enfield No. 4, so that if WWIII did come along, I’d have something of a start. I even passed the Army’s marksmanship “Empire Test” on the rifle range at Dreghorn Barracks! All that was enough “politics” for me – for a while.
George Heriot’s School (1)
I started secondary school at George Heriot’s in the Autumn of 1956, skipping my final Primary year for the reasons already mentioned. Heriot’s was founded in 1628, although the War of the Three Kingdoms and the later Cromwellian invasion put off classes starting until 1659. The building(s) stand to the south of the Castle across the valley of the Grassmarket.
Every 1pm., you could see the flash and smoke from the 25pd. howitzer at the Castle that served as the One O’clock Gun. I could see it from Ernie Palmer’s First Year Biology class if I just stretched out to the left. One day, I was rebuked with a loud, “It’ll still be there tomorrow, Keddie!!!” And that was that! Sounds only hereafter had to suffice! GAS (G.A.Scott), who was using (the rather glamourous) Miss Kilpatrick’s room next door, sent a boy asking Ernie where she kept her “belt” (for corporal punishment). GAS had always used a cane, and being semi-retired, had left it at home. “Look in Miss Kilpatrick’s drawers,” said Ernie, adding after the boy left, “I perhaps should have said, ‘The drawers of Miss Kilpatrick’s room.’” Even 12 yr olds got the joke!
Life at Heriot’s was devoted to the idea of mens sana in corpore sano (“A sound mind in a sound body.”). So, one day a week, we traipsed down to Goldenacre (We thought: to see if we could really get injured playing rugby). (The Goldenacre grass track was used in the 1981 movie Chariots of Fire in the scene where Eric Liddell falls, gets up, and wins an International quarter-mile race [which actually happened – in pouring rain at Stoke-on-Trent.].) I remember putting in a text-book tackle, only to hit the ground hard. I saw stars, and through the grass, witnessed both teams chase the ball to the other side of the pitch. I heard the ref. say, “That’s how to tackle… like Keddie!” – and wondered how many more such tackles would finally kill me! I once scored a try (3 pts) by unknowingly sitting on ball between the posts! It was basically my best performance until – in my last such match (for Moray House College) most of a decade later – I broke a collar-bone heroically saving a try from being scored by the other side! Otherwise, I preferred just watching rugby – or my brother, who later played for Boroughmuir RFC in first-class rugby…
I was youngest (and second-smallest) in my year, so every time the Head, Willie Dewar, sailed in at each year’s end to review our work one by one, he reminded me I was “the infantry” and commended me for doing so well relative to my older classmates. The shortest boy was my best friend “Curly” (Lamond), who felt this justified his instant retaliation with his ball-point pen for any erstwhile bully! I never saw him attacked even once! Curly later went Canada and made his fortune. Like many short fellows, there seemed to be a big guy inside waiting to show the world what he could accomplish! And he did accomplish – big time!
Founder’s Day, the first Monday in June, was an annual event, in my day packed into the central Quadrangle. We had to sing the silly school song “The Merry Month of June” – “of sunny days and flowers” modified in our practices, to the instant rage of Music teacher Eric Smith, into “of sunny days and showers.” I was in the Corps one year, when it was hot, and a poor Corps-member, even “at ease,” suddenly fainted and smashed his front teeth on the flagstones! As good little toy soldiers, we uniformed types “stood at ease” motionless, while the casualty was whisked out by rescuers! June Day, as it is also known, is now observed on the grass at the War Memorial. There the air is cool, there is more room – and sudden collapses less destructive!
I had joined the Combined Cadet Force. We were little toy soldiers. We did basic rifle training on the school’s indoor 0.22 rifle range, before moving on to 0.303 Lee Enfields which seemed almost as big as we 12 yr olds were! We had field days at various places, but I vividly remember one warm sunny day at the War Dept. range at Castlelaw in the Pentland Hills (that was before we got all nice and changed to a Ministry of Defence!). We had 5 0.303 blanks each and wore full kit including a steel helmet. We marched over the hills to attack an entrenched position prepared the night before. We not only didn’t use the tactics of WWII, but rather employed those of WWI!!! Even then we thought this rather bizarre, given all the chatter about casualties in that generation. The chatter of “enemy” machine guns was not very reassuring either. But I remember crouching in a depression when a butterfly came fluttering by into the sights of my Lee Enfield No 4. I pulled the trigger and it vanished in a puff of scales! Our CSM (Ian Dickson) had earlier shown us how a blank could blast a hole in a soup-can at several inches, warning us that we were softer than a tin can and should be careful even with blanks! I guess I tested the theory on the butterfly!! That was before I became a zoologist and was kind to butterflies (and others of God’s creatures!).
I was fed up with the pains of rugby, so I switched to cross-country the following year. Only when I was 19 did I get really committed to long-distance running over hill and dale. I didn’t mind the pains of corpore sano as such, but hard hits by hulking forwards was something else! In one race, I beat Karl, the son of the German consul, who was 6ft already and expostulated loudly at the Notice Board that I was much too small to have beaten him - which elicited, in guffaws and laughter, a universal round of British post-war anti-German feeling from the rest of the crowd! We also had the son of Arab sheik from the Gulf, who made the mistake of trying to pull rank by demanding the brand-new bench stool from his neighbour in Sammy Millar’s chemistry class. More derisive laughter from the Scots and “Ali Baba” vanished within a week, no doubt insulted by us plebs! Sammy, btw, seemed to have no shoulders, so he was nick-named, “The human milk-bottle,” by his pupils. Nicknames for teachers were in vogue in those days: our English teacher, David Stott, was “Bouncer” because “stot” is an old Scots word for “bounce”! Ian Stone (Geography) was “Rocky” and the Physics teacher, Mr Thompson, was “Spud” on account of his bald head resembling a potato! My History teacher, Willie Gould, nick-named “the Mogul,” was an avid Scottish Nationalist who made us memorize the Arbroath Declaration of 1320. “The Mid” (D. Ritchie K. Middlemas) was an older Chemistry teacher. He remembered being a spotter on the night in the First War that German Zeppelins tried to bomb the Castle. He was a teacher from 1921 for over 40 years thereafter. “Hail, Hail, the Mid’s in Jail” was one of our impromptu choruses when the whole school gathered in the Examination Hall at the start of each day. But when the Headmaster showed up, we shut up!
The big event of 1959 was the visit of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, to mark the Tercentenary of actually starting classes in a building thefinish of which was hindered by a generation of war with King Charles I and others (Oliver Cromwell used it as a barracks in his siege of Edinburgh, c. 1650). When I was 14, it fell to me to dissect a rat for the Prince. He examined mine and genially asked me if anything was wrong with it. It was dead, of course, and the only thing I could think of was that it was “constipated,” in that its intestines were, well, filled with pellets! So overawed was I at meeting real royalty, that I could not bring myself to say so to a Prince of the Blood! I rather suspect he would have hooted over the very idea, had I said so! But that would have made the papers, as the next man to speak to me was the Scotsman correspondent (to whom I was also totally, and unquotably, vague!).
The air of the school seemed to me Victorian. We were all about esprit d’corp rules: for example, black shoes, never brown; and caps only with short trousers. The “Head” always wore a mortar-board and academic gown – other teachers, only the latter, or (sciences) a white coat. The poem, based on “Wee, Willie Winkie…”, went around:
“Wee Willie Dewar rins through the toon,
Upstairs an’ doonstairs, in his black goon,
Tellin’ a’ the pupils, ‘Black shoes, not broon!’”
It did make for happy rebels! We had many crazy moments, large and small! A friend of mine, Graham Blamire, was looking over his Date Cards in Peter O’Malley’s (aka “POM”) History class, and after 55 BC (other side: “Caesar invaded Britain”), pondered a second 55 BC card, the other side of which said “POM born.” The teacher, quietly observing over his shoulder, whispered, “Actually 1917, old boy” – and moved on!
George Heriot’s School (2)
The Heriot’s experience was not only fun, but hard work all the way. Classes IV-VI were the crunch years of the Senior School. Here is Class VI for 1961-2. It was comprised of all the members of that Form, whatever their various classes might be. I had to sit for a Scottish Leaving Certificate (SLC) examination in German, but otherwise broadly prepared for pre-University studies. All my other SLC “passes” were in the can. I did have to mark time to pass age 17 (i.e., on Dec. 29, 1961) to meet the age qualification for application and entrance to a University course. There was so little pressure, principally because getting into University was a “scoosh, ” given my qualifications thus far. So exams actually became a “lark” in which, rather perversely, I began to think of how badly others might be doing especially if I finished “early.” I had a bad attitude.
Over the years. I have only run into a handful of the fellows I knew so well for so long. For instance, I never saw Jack Goldberg (fourth on my left in the back row of the Class VI photograph), even though we had lunch together for years in the recess of the window on the left of George Heriot’s statue in the Quad (I had the left side and Jack the right side of the recess - the old “Tuck Shop” was the room behind to the right). Jack was one of the only two Jews in my year, and the grandson of a couple who spent the War in a Belgian policemen’s home, hiding from the Gestapo. His father was sent from Hitler’s Third Reich to the UK before the War and built a successful business. Jack set up a visit to the local Synagogue for me, and introduced me to Judaism and the Holocaust in a unique way, for which I am forever grateful. What is striking is how soon we all went our separate ways and lost contact. You so easily take for granted the people of your earliest acquaintence, and only in old age make some some belated contacts – or, more likely, stumble across an obituary. In my case, being in the USA from 1970 has something to do with it, but non-involvement with FP organizations didn’t help. Excuses! Excuses!
But then the year was crowned with my last day, and I proceeded out through the side-gate at the Vennel, whence I had come in and gone out for 6 years (1956-62). This is the gate in the last surviving portion of the 17th century City Wall - the Telfer Wall. I was very conscious of this as the end of my time at Heriot’s, and I was officially a Heriot F.P. (Former Pupil) forevermore! Below is a picture I took of my brother (a “Boroughmuir F.P.”) in 2008 at the gate in the Telfer Wall which was my usual ingress and egress to the school. I always felt very “historical” going in and out, since not every school has a bit of a 17th century city wall for its boundary!
Meanwhile, the old school goes on – it has been co-educational since 1979 and is regularly reckoned one of the top schools in the country. It was and is a privilege to be a Herioter!
Part two of this article is available here.
Gordon Keddie pastored RP chuches in Scotland, Pennsylvania, and Indiana prior to his retirement. He is the author of Prayers of the Bible (2017) and many other books.