Summer holidays

[DannyGill]

Hi Gang,
Can you remember where your favourite place for your holidays was, I always remember my Ma and Da taking us to Millport and I loved it there when I was a wean. Remember in the Glasgow Fair fortnight when we used to go , a lot of the shops would have a "can you spy game " I think you payed sixpence [?} for a wee card and it said there was an object in certain shop windows can you find them ?. Being a wean you would ask yer Ma to buy one of the cards and when she said yes you would pretend to be a young Sherlock Holmes and try and spy the things written down in the card, than you held your filled in card back to the shopkeeper to see if you were right and had won something. That was great fun even if you didn't win anything it was just the thrill of on your holidays, I'm sure we all have different places we liked going away on holidays.
Regards.
Danny

[amelia]

Hi Danny
my ma & da would take us to the places where the whelks and "clappy doos" spelling? were good
I remember when I was married we all went down to Whemys Bay Maw ,Paw and all the weans, sisters and their men too. On a Sunday if my hubby didn't get a Sunday shift he would take his works van that had hard seats in it more like the seats in the Paragon the kids were packed in the back and when we were on the road my sister would noise my hubby up by getting them to sing (he would be hungover from the night before) but it was great fun, but the best fun was picking the whelks and mussels and the clappy doos and we would light a fire and boil some of them before we all came home and when we came home you had to watch where you put the whelks as they climbed up the pail or wherever you put them and you heard the noises off them during the night, my mouth is watering thinking about the whelks.
The weans were exhausted but they all loved it happy memories.
Amelia

[frankford]

Danny, When I went to St. John's in Portugal St in the 50s I went to the school camps in the summer for two weeks, we billeted in other school classrooms which were turned into dormitories and were fed in the dinner hall. One of the good things and there was plenty of them was that it was boys from the same school and we could have sports days and football against the locals, some of the places we went to , Broughty Ferry, Aberdour, Peebles and Tullibody, great times and great people looking after us. Frank

[accobra]

Hi Danny ,Amelia, Frank

All my garden machinery is breaking down all at the same time "strimmer ,lawnmower ,hedgetrimmer
so thought I would add something in between waiting for spares.!!
I had moved to the west side from the south side and I would like to play pitch and putt at the local course. So I would search for a few golf balls on the municipal course nearby and the one armed war veteran giving out the two clubs would always accept a couple of golf balls instead of money.
My father had paid fifteen pounds for an old G.P.O. yellow coloured van I think it was a Morris type
with two doors at the back and the plan was to get it working and buy eggs from a local farm and sell
them door to door.. Great plan but it never got repaired and my friends the Kilpatricks from across the road would sit in this unrepaired vehicle in a acul-de sac and pretend we were going to Loch lomond
and other places and at the time we had four flat tyres. Eventually my father paid a fiver to have someone tow it away. LOL.!!

My brother Billy who was a few years older than me was working and earning a wage and took me to
Ayr races for the day and I had a brilliant time listening to and watching the madness when people
were putting a bet on .I was given a few bob by my brother to have a couple of bets and whilst I
never backed a winner my brother ended up breaking even for the day and I did enjoy the day trip
to Ayr and 50 odd years later my wife and I will pay a visit to the Brig o' Doon restaurant in Alloway
to celebrate my 65 birthday in October. <and yes the pension also kicks in the following month>
Those years have just flown by in the blink of an eye and now I feel like I am on permanent
Holiday.

Best regards Reg

[DannyGill]

Hi, Amelia,Frank and Reg,
Yes I think the excitement of just going away wherever was part of the joy of summer holidays be it school swaps like Frank[and playing fitba]. Or Like Amelia going "doon the watter" and collecting whelks or as Reg says going with his brother to the Ayr races etc, there was always something special about the summer and we felt great getting away to wherever. You'll soon be 65 then Reg well join the club mate , I know what you mean about being on permanent retirement cause I retired 4 years ago and my week now consists of 6 Saturdays and 1 Sunday !! and after building bricks for over 46 years I love all the spare time, I suppose you could say every day is now a summer holiday for me ha ha.
Regards.
Danny

[accobra]

Hi All,
Yes like you Danny I packed in working four years ago and I am now have a part time
"summer job " here in France and it involves me cleaning a swimming pool every morning about 8-30
and having a swim afterwards. If you had asked me when i was living in the Gorbals about living abroad I would have laughed at you but fate has our lives mapped out already. I have got to say it is
sometimes a bit unreal the different people that come on the site
We have had a mother from the Isle of Lewis speaking to her children in Gaelic and this week we have
an Orthopedic surgeon from the uk speaking to her son in German .<her mother tongue> in France
Danny I thought that your book was brilliant and I am going to read it again . The only bit that I could not identify with was the Irish connection but when I first came down to England in the sixties I had
a fabulous Landlady called Mrs. Maher and for thirty seven and sixpence I had a clean room and a cup of very hot milky tea every morning before going to work and on Sundays a hot "Toasted sandwich".
These were the best digs/Gaffe that I had. Mrs Maher was the salt of the earth and she was from the
South of Ireland.
Hope everyone has a good Summer Holiday.
Best regards
Reg

[norrie]

I was never on holiday with my parents, we went days here and there
My first holiday away from them was when I was 12/13? BB camp Douglas Isle of Man
Big adventure, boat to IOM
Nowadays I go abroad for holidays, if my parents were alive now they would think, crikey the only way we got abroad, was to go and fight a war
I was in Singapore last March, went to Raffles, while their I thought, pity my dad had passed on, I could have show him photos of Raffles, no doubt he was in there but other ranks bar

[Margaretk]

Danny
I live in Millport now - during the summer weeks they still have the shop spotting quiz costs 50p now though.

[DannyGill]

Hi MargaretK,
Oh I loved going to Millport with My Ma and Da in the late 1950's, I remember you could cycle round the isle [with a cycle you hired from the shop] and I believe if my memory serves me correctly the "halfway" stop was "Frinton " ? where there was a cafe/ice cream place where you had something to eat/drink then back on the bike to the town again hand the bike back to the shop. I also remember watching the "mail boat" sailing in from Glasgow ? and everybody could get the newspaper to read. Isn't it amazing how we all left the soo-side and lived in different places, like yourself now Margaret living in Millport and Reg living in France and other soo-siders living elsewhere in the world but the one thing we all share are our memories of the Gorbals/Oatlands where we were brought up as weans.
Regards.
Danny

[Sandra]

Hi everyone,
My favourite holidays were each year I got to go to Kilmun Home in Dunoon along with my family. My father worked for the Glasgow Coperation as a demolisher so through his work we got two weeks away from the city life.

Sandra