大象传媒

A "lad"? Aye, a long time back! Born Bobby Rogerson in a place called New Cumnock, in the year of Our Lord 1930. A more precise description of the place of my birth must give mention of a section of the New Cumnock parish called "Connel Park." This, for some reason, is still noted on detailed World maps, even though the Connel Park miner's rows were demolished many years ago. "Oor toon" nestles at the south end of a broad valley, its buildings, commercial and private, straddling the River made famous by the poesy of Robert Burns, the Afton. The glen of Afton makes several miles of incursion into the Galloway hills, and is flanked by the "lofty hills" which, again, are part of the Burns muse. In recent years, the horizon of the high hills to the south has seen the advent of ranked windmills which are producing environmentally friendly power for the grid. I digress, however. The advent of windmills did not occur for many years after the Second World War.
It will suffice to say that I grew up in New Cumnock coincidentally with the growth of the Nazis in Germany, and as War approached, I was of an age at which awareness of the world and of the important events therein was causing, even in a lad of nine years, the dawning of concern.