Story from the Scottish highlands

My Mother told me this story when I was a boy.
She had a cousin who was about ten the same age as her at the time. He was very ill and was in bed in his parents tent. One day he sat up and asked for a drink of water, he drank the water and then sang the hymn Abide with me, then he lay back down and died.
His singing of this hymn must have been a comfort to his parents and must have spoken of his faith to all who heard about him, as he still speaks today.

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim; its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless;
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
Where is death’s sting? Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if Thou abide with me.

Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes;
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.
Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee;
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

Talk talk

When I was growing up
I knew nothing about sectarianism, it was a subject that never came up.
Or anything about ethnic prejudice or colour or creed or football.
Politics wasn't talked about much either apart from which party were in power and who the leaders were.

Both my Father and my Mother were gregarious and accomplished conversationalists.
People would come for miles to visit them and they could talk and hold peoples attention for hours on end.
My Father would not allow swearing or any kind of crude talk in our home. We were not allowed to swear. And I've seen him stopping people half way through a story if he thought it was getting too crude for us to hear.
People would also come to my parents for advice and sometimes for help and they would always do what they could for them.

Some things you don't notice until you begin to grow up and see how other people live.
My parents always taught us to respect people and never make fun of anyone. What they were saying was - Who you are is not in someone else's gift and also who you are should not depend upon having to make someone smaller or less than you.
Even though as Travellers my parents and family were at times denied the respect they showed to others this sense of the will to show people respect was immutably ingrained in our psyche.

Tk Bedford

My Father used to keep lorries like this one.
He worked at collecting scrap metal all his life.
In the spring of 1971 we were staying about three miles outside Fort William, we had two trailers on a piece of ground just off the main road.
One morning My Father went away early before I was up, he was going to Perth.
Later in the day me and my Mother went into Fort William to get shopping and we went to visit my Mother's brother Jimmy Stewart who had a house at the time in Claggan.
By this time it was the afternoon and there was a knock at my uncle's door it was a young policeman telling us that my Father had an accident with his lorry.
He had a head on crash with a Hemphill tanker on a narrow bend between Tyndrum and Crianlarich.
The chassis on his lorry was lower than the chassis on the other lorry so his cab took the full impact the men in the other lorry were okay but my Father was critically injured.
He was kept alive until he reached the hospital by a retired lady Doctor who went with him in the ambulance to Stirling. She was driving behind him when he had the accident and had her bag with her out of habit.
Five months later he came out of the Hospital on crutches.

Not a good year

1981 was not a good year.
My Father who was 67 and my Mother who was 61 were both seriously ill.
They both died in November my Mother on the 6th and my Father on the 24th.
At the time we were living in a trailer (caravan) in Falkirk
and we spent the rest of the winter being moved from place to place
around Falkirk and Stirling. A farmer shifted us on the 2nd of January 1982
telling us how good it was of him letting us stay on new years day.