The One With All The Hugs! in Scottish Meanderings

Maybe don't read if you haven't hugged your grandchildren in a long time :)

Things are slowly getting back to a new normal here as restrictions ease up in Scotland. Every week brings a little more freedom back into our lives although masks are now mandatory in all shops. That's a little 'cart before the horse' in my opinion but I suppose it'll still help. And, for some reason, I stupidly hadn't equated 'shops' with 'the supermarket' and gaily went on my usual shopping trip to TESCO on Monday without my mask on. Boy did I feel an idiot!

To everyone's credit though there wasn't one snide comment or dirty look - I mean there are exemptions so I suppose, being older, folk probably just thought I was one of them but I felt really guilty and promptly bought some disposable masks to keep in my bag so that I'm not caught out like that again.

It's been lovely to see the kids properly again and June 20th was a big day for all of us. In the morning the girls went to their Dad's for the first time since March - Joel had been pushing Nikki a lot to see them before it was really safe and I was proud of her for sticking to her guns with him. We just weren't convinced that everyone around him had been adhering to the rules properly so she wasn't taking any chances.

This was the moment they all saw each other for the first time.


And then later that day I went out to Nikki's and was able to hug Ruari for the first time since March. The weird thing about this and which Nikki didn't realise is that he's never hugged me before - he's been affectionate and done things like stroke my face or blow kisses to me but he's never given me a full on hug. But it was like he knew - he spent ages just running back and fore between Nikki & I giving us big hugs - it was so cute!



And then nine days later I got my first hugs with Lily and Lilah.


Bliss!

And Nikki? Well don't tell anyone but Nikki & I cracked slightly before we were allowed to on the 31st May - we'd had an afternoon of social distancing in her garden which is large enough that we could all do that pretty well but when I was going home around 9 p.m. she asked me to leave by the back. I thought it was because Ruari had not long gone to sleep and she was worried we'd be too noisy chatting at the front door and might wake him up. Turned out it was because she wanted a secret hug!

And I didn't mind that one little bit :)

So Scotland's numbers are now very low, falling each week and lots of stuff has opened back up with all the appropriate safety measures this week. Our First Minister was urging caution and basically saying don't go mad so that we then have to regress in a few weeks but of course there will always be those who see sense and those who don't.

Along with many others, I was shocked to see that photo of the beach at Bournemouth 3 weeks ago and was proud of my city because this was taken on our beach on the same day. (Bournemouth is in England, Aberdeen is in Scotland).


The downside of this is that we may become a bit complacent and think we're 'safe' when we're really not. And it's not so much the immediate impact of the virus that scares the hell out of me although that's bad enough - it's the long term health effects of this thing which we really don't know enough about yet. I just can't imagine what the global effects of that will be as folk struggle with a variety of health complaints and governments struggle to run a slowly depleting country. However as I said to a good friend on here this afternoon, we're living in 2020 and therefore have the benefit of up to date science and scientists who are doing their level best to figure it all out so it could be a lot worse.

Imagine going through this a hundred years ago and without technology😟


Speaking of technology, The Skinner Sibling Zoom has been a great success and I'm sooooo glad I took the time and energy to organise it. It was doubly nice that we had the first one on June the 16th because the day before would have been Mam's birthday and she would have been delighted to see us all making the effort to keep in contact. Family meant absolutely everything to her and Dad.

Here we all are - and there were no technical problems with the first attempt (well there were earlier in the day but we'll just ignore that) apart from Mike sitting waiting in London at 7 p.m. for me to do something magical in Aberdeen so that he could connect with us!

Going clockwise - Ian & Margaret in the top left corner, me, Lorna and Mike. And Jenny (Mike's wife - I wrote about her cancer a while back) made a brief appearance for a few seconds to say hello on her way to bed but she was in her dressing gown and holding onto her walker so I didn't think she would thank me to plaster her photo all over the Internet!


We've had some great conversations and also a couple of quizzes as well - Nikki has found she really enjoys being a quizmaster so has been doing various quizzes with her friends and offered to do one for us too. We did a general one one week and then a Countdown one another week which the girls were allowed to help with just before going to bed :)

Having lots of fun before bedtime!


But it's meant so much more to me than just that.

Since I've had chronic fatigue, whatever happened to my body as a result has caused it to go into sensory overload with certain things - and things like a simple phone call can cause me to be ill. At the start of lockdown, coping with Zoom and online Scrabble caused quite a few problems and made my sleep go absolutely haywire until my system got more used to it and settled down (I had five completely sleepless nights in two weeks!) so I was worried about having long video chats.

We generally chat for a couple of hours at least and they do exhaust me for sure but to have individual phone calls with each of the three of them would flatten me even more, so having one video chat with all 3 at once is a huge bonus for me.

But it's also created another major project which I don't really have energy or time for!

Inevitably we often get to chatting about the past, our childhoods, the houses we lived in, places we went as kids and I will often interject with 'oh there's a photo of that somewhere'. This causes great excitement and I'm then asked to put said photo(s) on Messenger for them to see.

However the 'somewhere' I'm talking about is in all these small plastic folders!


And this is only half of them😳

Mam used to have a battered old music case jammed to the gunnels with tiny old black and white photos which lived in our cupboard under the stairs and because the case was bursting at the seams with holes appearing in the corners, little drifts of tiny photos would occasionally end up strewn all over the floor. I could see photos being lost in this fashion so asked if I could take them home to try and sort them out or at least put them somewhere more secure. She gladly agreed.

Well God knows how long ago that was but they've sat in these folders ever since waiting to see the light of day!

I have a vague idea of what's in them but never know which folder it's in so in order to find a particular photo I have to rake through all of them until I find it which, as you can imagine, can take ages. Virtually none of them have anything written on the backs. It would have been one of the things I would have spent a weekend doing in the days before chronic fatigue made an appearance - now it would take me weeks.

But at least the others asking me for certain ones prompted me to set up the big table and get them all out one afternoon and I made a start putting them into various categories (so hard to know what categories though - people? places? dates? - still figuring that out).


So far I've done 1 and a half folders :(

But I came across one which gave me a whole newfound respect for my Dad. I've often talked about what a profound impact he had on me in only the 16 years I knew him - the way he juggled everything in his life successfully - work, hobbies, friendships, professional activities, leisure activities but above all family.

As well as owning and managing a bakery business comprising of two shops and a large bakehouse, he was a member of the Rotary Club, organised and took the Boys Brigade at his church, was a member of the church choir, ran the badminton club, was a lay preacher and often preached at outlying churches on a Sunday - if not he would attend both services of his own church. He organised and took the Boys Brigade and also the Lifeboys (the junior version of the BB). He was an active member of Christian Aid and organised a yearly walk to raise money for them. He was a very active member of his local bowling club and won trophies and cups galore and he played golf and badminton too.

He had no days off from work - years later we managed to persuade him to take a half day on a Wednesday and also shut the shop on Saturday afternoon - so you'd think Sundays would be a relaxing day wouldn't you? Not a bit of it! He was acutely aware Sunday was his only proper day with us so he would be up early (he got up at 4/5 a.m. on a normal weekday to get started in the bakehouse) to cook a proper breakfast for us all, take us down to the baths for a swim, then it was back home to get changed for church. And then in the afternoon we would meet friends and go for a walk, hike, hillwalk or a picnic down at the beach depending on the weather and be back in time for church in the evening.

He bought us a caravan and organised a pitch with a friend near his farm half way to the next town in a beautiful spot amongst broom and whin bushes close to the beach. That way we could all go there on a Friday night - he could go to work on Saturday without bothering us and come back at teatime for fun on Sundays. He also organised renting a house from a friend in a place called Farr where we would all go for a weekend or a week in summer.

I used to think this house was miles and miles away and we were properly 'on holiday' somewhere. It was only when I happened to be visiting the Inverness office of my job once years and years later that I noticed a road sign saying 'Farr 11 miles'!! I was gobsmacked! But again he did that so that he could still drive to work when necessary and not spoil our enjoyment. And all credit to him, I was never once aware of him not being there half the time - he was fully present joining in all the games and everything when he was there - and we always had such a houseful anyway so that probably helped.

The boys and Lorna would have friends/girlfriends with them - I would have a friend when I was old enough - Mam & Dad's friends would come as well - the place was packed to the gunnels! In fact we had an interesting conversation the other week about where everyone slept because the house has recently come on the market and we were astonished to see it just had two very small attic bedrooms! I have a very vivid memory of coming down the windy staircase in the morning and stepping over numerous sleeping bags in the tiny living room :)

Another of my good friends on here has written in her entry this week about her cousin who recently died that although she didn’t see him much - "he was very nice to me once when we were at a low ebb .... you don’t forget those things."

That totally reminded me of Dad. He would lift people up just by his presence and was the most kind hearted, gentle soul you can imagine. But at the same time didn’t suffer fools gladly. After he died Mam had hundreds of letters from people everywhere remembering him with stories of kindnesses galore - some we knew nothing of.

I myself can clearly remember when my piano teacher decided to teach from her own house several miles out of Inverness, he drove me out there every week and while I was there, he would go and visit a dear old lady and her son in a neighbouring village.

She used to stay in an original thatched cottage miles from anywhere which had one room and a flagstone floor with a large fire in the hearth - no electricity - very very basic. Then when it got too much for her they got a council house in the nearby village and Dad went out and checked up on her every week (she would have been well into her eighties by then). He would take out a box of groceries and cakes with him and refuse all payment.

And if I had a pound for every time I read ‘went the extra mile’ in these letters Mam received after his death I’d be rich.

But of course I’m already rich just knowing him :)

So anyway this photo below was taken just after we moved into their first proper house. They'd been in flats before that and we were in a tiny house when I was born but we shared it with an old woman who apparently lived in one of the room downstairs so I'm told. (I was only 9 months old when we moved out of it). At this point we're a family of six so it must have been very exciting to move into a 3 bedroom house in a fairly desirable area, very close to both primary and secondary schools and not far away from Dad's first shop and bakehouse.

This was the state of the garden after moving in. Ramshackle doesn’t really cover it!


And here’s Mum and I playing Hopscotch in the same garden about 9 years later - and that would have been primarily all Dad's work - in fact you can see him at the bottom of the second photo working away in the garden - and I know for certain that would have been on a weekday lunchtime in between working a long day at the shops/bakehouse.


Mind you I do love the fact that in that first photo the 9 month old baby (i.e. me) is sitting in the manky old grass with a great stonking pile of toppling bricks and rubbish beside her and surrounded by rickety wooden washing poles which were constantly slipping off the washing lines!

None of your crappy old health and safety going on in those days :)