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Sally: What I remember is our very nice neighbours and their son was a prisoner of war for the whole of the war. He came back all right, but he had done something to his leg or something. He was a prisoner in Germany. We had other friends that my father had met through the music and her husband, they lived in East Kilbride when it was a village not as it is now, and he was taken at St. Vallery because I always remember that name and he didn’t come back, he was killed. They were a lovely family.

Harry & Sally: Yes, we celebrated Christmas. Both of us are Catholics, cradle Catholics, unfortunately the family dropped out of the cradle! Christmas is always celebrated. My father was unemployed during the depression from late 1934 till he went to a quick fire engineering course and got employment at shipbuilding on the Clyde. He worked at John Brown’s. My father was unemployed, but he did fly nights, he was claiming unemployment money but he was employed at the Temperence Hotel in Glasgow and what he did was when the continental travellers would come with figarines to the Hotel demonstration rooms, local buyers would come through to view and make purchases, this was before the war of course, he got money for that, which the Government didn’t know about. So we always had a Christmas and my mum always used a pillowslip for the clootie dumpling and she put the pillowcase, when you got up on the Christmas morning, the bag was there with something hanging out, either sweeties or an apple or something like that, very, very simple but invariably we never missed a Christmas, not even during the war. I remember when I was working Christmas was coming up and someone said it was rubbish so I told this person that when I was a child, I remember kneeling on my mum’s knee, saying my evening prayers, and I remember saying to myself ‘please God, keep me alive till Christmas’. That’s how I figured it, it was the highlight of my year. I was much more fortunate because I was an only child. They didn’t spoil you, but they were able to give you more than people with a big family. It was only natural, you know. My father’s friends, nearly every one of them was in the army, and they would come home and that’s why I always remember the soldiers because my father was a very gregarious person and everybody was happy and everybody came up to our house, that’s how I first started getting interested in the library, I must admit. I must have been maybe four or five, and it was the blackouts and this lady couldn’t get a bus and my father said ‘come up to our house’ and it turned out that she was the librarian in the local library and when I went in, she would keep books for me from even that age (five) and if you ask at the local library, everybody knows Mrs. Harrick.

Harry: I have a library story. It was during the war and I had gone to the library, it was the junior library in Maryhill and I had gone up to go to the library and there was just the one librarian on duty, and it was getting dark and the air raid siren alert went and I had my book and the librarian lit a candle then put the lights off and I had to go in at the little desk and she stood and chatted to me and talked about books until the all clear went. Then I got a row from my mum and dad for being out during the raid and why hadn’t I run home. The librarian had insisted I stay beside her for safety.

Harry: I remember when war was over. I was at work, I had been pulled out of school at the age of 14, I had been offered a dux, at the age of 13 I was offered to sit for a dux but because of financial constraints I was hauled out of school at 14 and became an apprentice furrier. And I remember 1945, it was a beautiful day, and it came over the radio or something like that, and the owner of the furriers, he was jewish, as most of the furriers in Scotland were, most of them were from Russian extract, in the afternoon he said ‘we will close the shop’ and I can remember dancing down the stairs. There was a fellow, he had obviously been in the pub, he was well dressed, he had one of those kind of forroda hats on, a sort of tweed coat, you know a business man and that, and he was slightly drunk, a business man and some of the young girls, that were maybe 16 or 17, worked with him they were seamstresses and he began sort of jostling them, you know, a saucy kind of approach, and I just went up to him, pulled the forroda over his head and shot away up a lane. I never looked back but I remember that. There was a celebration when I got home but I can’t remember what. It was spread by word of mouth. We went down to George Square and there was big crowds there and lots soldiers, sailors and airmen and lots of Yanks in uniform and they had all the girls because the lasses knew where the money was. It was just dancing — no set band pieces or anything like that, everyone was just in a state of euphoria. I was only 11 and I thought that this was wonderful, being allowed out into the big city. I remember it well. There was no transport so everyone was just walking though the city. I can remember the party to this day, the feeling, the hugging, the party. It was just wonderful. Then afterwards we were able to get sweets — that was our biggest thing when the rationing was taken off of sweets. But, as I say, I was fortunate because we all had ration books and I could get my mum and dad’s ration books so I was alright.

Sally: I think it’s good for children to realise about what happened and about what happened to their parents and the suffering and different things because the modern child has no conception. They have far too much, I have four grandchildren and I spoil them, I think every generation tries to do better than the last. I think it’s very good for the children, especially older children.

Harry: It should be impressed upon the children that the gateway to education is so much a period to when we were children. I had to leave school at 14 and the admission to a senior secondary in Glasgow, apparently they do a graph to see how many vacancies they would have, and they set the exam mark when setting the exam, so as that the intake would agree with the vacancies. So the pass mark one year wouldn’t be the same as the next year.

Sally: What it was called was a senior secondary school and you had to pass what they called the ‘qualifying’, there was two grades of high school which we called senior secondary and junior secondary and the junior secondary, they got the manual skills and in senior secondary you got latin, I can still remember a wee bit latin, it was a long while ago, but it comes back!

Sally: We have four children, they are all doing very well, two of them went to university and they were the first to go from our family, apart from Kathleen’s son, and that was all. He’s registered blind and working as a lawyer for Glasgow Council. They are the first generation from what we called the working class to go to university. That was progress.

Sally: My father wanted me to stay on and have an education but none of my friends were doing that, so I just left. That’s why I think both of us, not just me, were so keen for our children to stay on at school and do well. And they all stayed on and they all have very good jobs. I worked as an assistant for teachers in schools — I did that for 16 years, after we came up here. I would really have liked to have become a librarian.

Harry: I was saying to the Headteacher, she has retired now, she was up visiting us along with the secretary of the school, and it came about about education and I said ‘you know, when a Headteacher or any Teacher dies, they don’t need headstones’ she said ‘what do you mean?’ and I said ‘well, I can go from the day I went to register at school at the age of 5 and the Headmistress was Dame Maudy Gordon, who taught my mother, and I can go through all the classes and apparently there was a thing that if you married, you automatically left the teaching profession if you were female, because I named the very first school teacher and they were all Miss apart from a Mrs. Smith and she was dressed in black and I just reckoned, you know, pure logic, that she was a widow’. I remember all the names, from the age of 5, through primary school and the minute I mention that name, I see them standing in the classroom, absolutely, physically, standing in the classroom. They all had musquarat coats in late autumn, that was the thing for teachers, well not just teachers, but fur coats were status symbols especially for teachers. Anyone that did well had a fur coat. That was a recognised status symbol.

Sally: There was a well known saying ‘fur coats and no knickers!’.

Sally: I remember my mother and Harry’s mother made quite a bit of clothing out of old clothes, you know, cut them down and pressed them, and cut out again. You know, the clothing, I remember that, lumber jackets.

Harry: Yes, I remember my mother unpicking an old coat of my fathers, taking the pattern out and making one up for me with a zip. It was a skill they had learned I suppose, like our children. Because they all came from big families, now remember, you’re talking about nine or ten children at a time and in those days that’s what you’re talking about, and there wasn’t enough to go round.

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