One Response to “please write?”

1. Marie-Clare Castree responded:
   

   I have been reading your work on St Barts and the Gatehouse, it brought back many memories, thank you for sharing it with me.

   I was in one of the first groups that visited the cottage in Scotland in the 1970s. It must have been the autumn term as one discovery we made was how much more Hallowene was celebrated in Scotland at that time. The newsagents in Buckie, where we had our evening meal each night, was full of costumes for ‘guising’ and I bought a witch’s hat made from orange and black card which I kept for years afterwards.

   Dinner in Buckie was at a small cafe and the boys were very impressed with the locally made soft drink ‘Irn Bru’ as it was said to be made from real iron and we quickly learned that lemonade was a term for any fizzy drink, if you wanted ‘lemon’ lemonade you had to say ‘white lemonade’ to avoid the more popular cherryade or that strange orange iron brew. The cafe also served the most wonderful but very plain icecream. It was a milk ice and was made on the premises, I learned, when I asked what ‘make’ it was as I hadn’t tasted anything like it before. It was probably the first time I had eaten a non-branded icecream and I suspect it would have been Italian in origin as so many cafe owners in Scotland are of Italian origin and made their family icecream as matter of course.

   On one of the last evenings we went to a grander establishment, the Forge?, which had printed napkins, again one came home as a keepsake and was treasured for years!