Coming home to Castle Street

By Reader Sandra Rutherford

Published:

ANIMAL MAGIC: Sandra sits on the Hazlehead Park tiger with brother Michael in attendance in 1955.

HOMEWARD BOUND: Sandra, front, with mum, left, and friends heading home to Castle Street in 1952.

MEMORIES: Sandra Rutherford.

HOLY ORDERS: Youngsters at their first communion at St Peter's Church, Peacock's Lane, Aberdeen, in 1954 were instructed to “look at the Lord in Heaven” but it appears that only Sandra, second right front, did.

1971: Sandra Smith as she was at the start of the oil boom in Aberdeen.

SANDRA Rutherford, nee Smith, formerly of Aberdeen, has many happy memories of her childhood in the Granite City.

Now living in Perth, Sandra and her family lived on the top floor at 34 Castle Street.

Sandra, 61, submitted pictures which jogged her memory and included the tiger at Hazlehead Park, shopping in King Street with mum and granny, her first communion at St Peter's Church, her time at St Peter's RC Secondary School and as a young lady when oil changed the face of the city and the North-east in the early 1970s.

IT WAS a bitterly cold day in January 1947, when I first arrived at Castle Street.

I was only a few days old and had my first bath in front of a coal fire, bathed in water from the local public toilets.

It was a tough introduction for my mother and her newborn baby, as the severity of the weather had frozen all the pipes in the house.

The winter of 1947 was one of the longest and coldest in living memory but I did survive!

We lived in one room, on the top floor, overlooking the Castlegate, but this was no penthouse flat.

The nearest source of running water was a communal sink on the landing and the toilet was on the ground floor, three flights of stairs down.

Visiting this, was a dire experience, where either my backside was frozen to the seat or I was totally immobilised with fear at the thought of the bogeyman coming in to join me!

More conspicuous, by his absence, was my father, who spent most of his time and the whole of his pay packet, in the pub or at the bookmakers.

He rarely put in an appearance. Generous, only with his temper, we were grateful, when eventually, he didn’t bother at all!

Harsh though these conditions were, I was a healthy child and very fit from running up and down stairs. Too much in a hurry, once, I plunged headlong down them and lost two teeth.

Even at that early stage, I seemed to have acquired a certain creativity with my dark imaginings, as several years later, these were rooted in reality, when I was told that my uncle’s father had been murdered just below.

In the days where refrigeration consisted of keeping the milk on the window ledge, shopping was a daily event.

Ration books were still in force and used at the local Co-op, points were gathered as you shopped to earn a dividend (the annual divvie).

Remembering your number was essential and chanting it all along the way, I can recall this still, as being 46117.

Collecting the cash reward was a big event, followed by the ritual of choosing new shoes and the usual argument with my mother.

Castle Street had a row of shops, visited in turn, to buy the simple consumer needs of the 1950s. In Wilburns, men, in long white aprons, risked losing the tips of their fingers, catching ham, sliced wafer thin, as it fell from the rotating blades.

With the same deftness, they wrapped it in brown paper bags along with our other basic requirements. Often, at the end of a transaction, there would be a wink and something extra slipped in.

Our final stop was the greengrocer next to the marketplace, where, in September, the magical Timbermarket took place. Having saved for this event, it was anticipated with great pleasure. Afterwards, we went home, clutching jumping beans, tins of soapy bubbles and other small treasures, our faces sticky with candyfloss, eaten off a stick.

Of all the senses to evoke childhood memories, surely this must be smell, the delectable one, of mint humbugs, aniseed balls and liquorice.

The Candy Shop, run by Doris, next door to our house, captured the small amount of pocket money I had. With dark hair, porcelain skin and a lovely smile, she was delightful and just like a piece of confectionery.

Just round the corner, in Castle Terrace stood the amazing second hand shop fondly known as “Cocky Hunters”, where, unbeknown to me then, my future husband bought the best putter he ever had for five shillings.

The Aladdin’s cave for me however, was Daniel’s newsagent where I bought my comics and from the early beginnings of “The School Friend”, “The Dandy and “The Beano”, developed into the book junkie, I am today.

Venturing further, to “The Trainie Park “in Union Terrace, we watched men, skin parched by the sun, play giant draughts. Hooking and lifting pieces, with long sticks, a cigarette dangling constantly from their lips, they were a vision of concentration, as they planned, their next clever move. Consuming egg sandwiches, we threw the crusts to pigeons with one hand and waved to trains passing by, with the other. No week was ever complete either, without a visit to the Kingsway Cinema, where I fell in love with Cary Grant and at least three different boys from my class.

Despite the innocence of my early years, I was aware of the less idyllic side of life. Peacock’s Close nearby, was a dark forbidding lane and the short cut to where my Brownies met. It was here, that vagrants and down and outs from the Lodging House in East North Street met and shared a bottle of cheap liquor.

Although basically harmless, the only chance I would take, was to run like hell, past them, into the warmth and safety of our hall.

Just through from here was the beautiful church of St Peters, where I went every Sunday.

Fasting to receive communion, I was always hungry and often confused the smell of extinguished candles with that of well-fired toast!

Rather irreverently, I also suspected that the priest, in all his piety, had eaten a hearty breakfast.

I’m also convinced that my scepticism of all things religious, began right there, with such early instinctiveness.

No less a place of sanctuary then, I will still travel miles back to it now, if ever troubled.

Unusually for a child, I loved my schooldays. Crossing the threshold of learning for the first time at St Peters school, into the open and welcoming arms of Hilda Bruce, the moment was unforgettable.

Nor have I lost my passion for an Aberdeen Rowie, with syrup in the middle, which was found in my schoolbag every day. I relished the camaraderie of my school pals.

We made slides the length of the playground in winter and converted it with chalk, for a game of rounders in the summer. Nothing could beat that feeling, when the opposition were caught and held, well and truly “Out!” Exchanging confidences and penny caramels in the shelters on rainy days, friendships were cemented for ever.

The staff were wonderful and my education first class.

Teachers reigned out front, facing classes in parallel rows. As the rhythmic tap flowed one way, the chorus repeat went the other.

Exercised with such regularity, knowledge, once built could never be taken away. Margaret Shaw, the music teacher, using her TA-TA-TA-TE-TA semantics, was known, affectionately, as “Tattie Shaw” because of this! Introducing me to the joy of music, she was one of the greatest influences in my life.

Years later, when I took my small daughter to visit my old school, I found it, flattened to the ground. I was as sad then, as on the day I had left! It was a relief therefore to find that the basic structure of my senior school, Aberdeen Academy had been left intact.

Now an upmarket shopping centre, the original staircase remains. From here, we had looked down on the grand entrance hall, and projected dubious missiles at the rector’s bald head. Our firing range was impressive.

The central playground can still be found and in 1964, when the typhoid outbreak was at its height, Grampian Television interviewed us there and we all appeared, full of self-importance, on the telly.

In 1957, I moved from Castle Street and exchanged as neighbours, the local constabulary at Lodge Walk for the Fire Service in King Street. It was from here I paraded, in 1958, with the last tramcar, back to the depot and said goodbye forever to halfpenny rides home and started to grow up, with all the opportunities of a 60’s girl.

When I left Aberdeen in 1971, the first supplies of North Sea Oil were flowing into the city, bringing with them a tide of affluence and change. For me the most noticeable feature of this, is the cosmopolitan mix of the population. In fact, it is now extremely difficult to hear an Aberdeen accent and I’ve been known to stalk people, down Union Street and across Duthie Park, merely to catch, a few words of the Mother tongue.

As I increase in years, so too, does my need for nostalgia. To be part of a history, is validation. Watching the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre, crumble and fall, I knew I had made history, for I had stood there, just the year before. On either side of my humble home in Castle Street, stand the great towers of the Town House and the Salvation Army Citadel. Instantly recognisable and symbolic of strength, stability and security, these were the roots I grew and blossomed from, giving me the freedom to live and explore but above all, a place to come home to.