About me
The short version:
Born 1970, 8 minutes after my brother (who was breech)
Studied: Edinburgh College of Art, 1988 – 1992
Son, Ronan, born Christmas Day, 1993
PGDE from Strathclyde University, 2008 – 2010
Currently living in the South West of Scotland with a new (to me) cornea!
The longer read:
*Help ma boab – this needs some serious attention! Read on at your peril!
A chronological autobiographical info bit, in brief, all about me! [Edit – it isn’t brief; to be revised, again!]
Having started off writing about my art college years, it all began to get a bit lengthy, and I’d only reached 1996! So will start again with, what I intend to be, a swift sweep of some of the most important moments in my life so far. Brushing a few others under the carpet as I go!
I should probably start at the very beginning…
1970 – Born!
I came along 8 minutes after my brother, who was breech. So my mum saw me first. On asking her reaction, she said ‘oh’…
A moment of disappointment as she’d expected two boys!
I like to tell myself that she was quickly overtaken by joy at having both a girl and a boy. We were inseparable – at least, to me we were!
1974 – Nursery
Our defining moment at the Jack and Jill nursery in Davidson’s Mains, Edinburgh, was our starring roles in The Nativity!
As Mary and Joseph, there is a picture of us somewhere wearing our dressing gowns and tea towels!
1975 – School
Actually, I think we might have started school in 1974, but surely I’m too old now for marks off?
We had the loveliest teacher, Miss Abbot, who became Mrs Millar, in p1, 2 and 3! She was everything an infant teacher should be. A magical creature, the font of all knowledge, and everything my little 41/2 year-old self wanted to be.
Which made it all the worse when she talked to us about her wedding after the summer holidays. I remember the moment of realisation now, as if it were yesterday. We had gone to her wedding, as a few others in the class had, sitting on the hard pews and watched her walk down the aisle.
Back in class, she announced that one of her best memories was of walking down the aisle, and seeing this beautiful wee face beaming up at her… Fiona House. My best friend!
I should have been delighted for her, but I wasn’t, I was devastated.
Funny the things you remember – I also remember my brother having to chum me to the toilet!
1977 – Ballet
The Queen’s jubilee year – I only remember it because we went to Chester Zoo and the baby elephant was called ‘Jubilee’.
It was also around this time that I had a disastrous crisis in confidence (I’m not sure I started out with much in the first place to be honest!). My ballet class was putting on a show, The Wizard of Oz. I was chosen as the Lion. One of my ‘lines’ was to shout out the word ‘Courage!’. And I just didn’t have the courage to do it! Everytime I tried, I opened my mouth and nothing came out, no matter how much I wanted it to.
It was possibly one of my first experiences of public humiliation. That I still remember it 40 years on is telling of the enormity!
It was decided that everyone would have to shout ‘Courage!’ with me, which was both much better, and so much worse!
1978 – New house
We moved into our ‘new’ house, my parents are still there today, 40 years later. We’re not sure how long for, as my dad has Parkinsons and for many reasons, sheltered accommodation would be more appropriate for everyone…
1979 – Violin
It must have been around this time that I was chosen to learn to play the violin. I do remember that I was the only one in our whole class to get 10/10 in the music class used to select children for musical instruction., I’m probably the only person on the planet who remembers that fact! It was momentous!
1981 – P7
I loved P7. I was the fastest girl in the school, though Lorraine Robertson and Lynn Murphy were hot on my heels (and probably think they were the fastest). These things really matter!
Sports day – the last one ever… The girl’s flat race. My moment to shine… 3, 2, 1 – I tripped and fell flat on my face! My pride was broken. I couldn’t understand how the school didn’t declare a restart – it was my forte; my element; my race.
1982 – Secondary School
It all started to go downhill from here-on-in.
My mum hadn’t split us up in primary, but decided it was best now. Keith decided hanging out with his ‘wee’ sister wasn’t cool anymore (maybe because I wasn’t the fastest runner). And I found myself in a class of new people. Only one boy I knew from primary. ‘Peewee’, who we’d always mucked about with, playing houses and skipping and elastic and all the great games of primary.
But he was Iain now, grown up over the summer holidays and having to try to fit in with the boys too…
I felt the loss of twinship deeply.
1985 – Doomed
That says it all for 1985. Though I started to like Depeche Mode, and had been to a Nik Kershaw concert with my best friend, Helen over the road, so it wasn’t all the worst time of my entire life. There were also the ‘Munich’ trips – exchange visits to Europe with the school choir and orchestra. Many good memories of times there. (I sang in the choir having soon learned that the connections between my fingers and brain do not move fast enough for violin playing!)
1986 – Cramond Island
I did make friends at school, some really good ones at that! And we spent the night on Cramond Island. Once just my best friend Anna and I – it was so bloody cold, we must have been close to hypothermia, with just her dad’s car seat cover for warmth. It was April, and we could see the stars. We counted the seconds between the flashes of the distant lighthouse until the tide went out. I’ll never forget the relief of getting in to her bed, cuddling in with her electric blanket on!!
1987 – Art
A couple of my good friends, Anna and David and I spent all our spare time in the Art Department making our portfolios for art college. I did like 6th year.
1988 – Edinburgh College of Art
I got a wooden box of Derwent Artist’s pencils for my 18th birthday. Best present ever!
I was also accepted into the Edinburgh College of Art from school. I didn’t want to stay in Edinburgh – my twin brother was moving away to uni, and I was desperate to go too! However, in those days, you had to choose either Edinburgh or Glasgow as your first choice of the four Scottish Art Colleges. They wouldn’t entertain you if you put them second! I was scared of Glasgow. So it was with utter amazement and unbridled delight, but conversely, tamed with disappointment, that I got into the mighty Edinburgh College of Art!
1989 – Moving out
By the start of 1989, I had moved into an enormous room in an old tenement on Lauriston Place, conveniently just down the road from the Art College. Before too long, the landlady and the two other flatmates moved out, and things got interesting! Mad times with amazing flatmates and friends – seriously the best times in the world, looking back.
Lots to blog about, if I dare!
Chaos and carnage and music and dance, wild hairstyles, big boots, magic times and romance.
1992 – Graduation
Keeping it brief, I graduated with a BA(hons) in Art and Design (but I was always rubbish at design – I did (‘specialised in’) drawing and painting, specifically portraiture).
My degree show featured several large-scale self-portrait oil paintings. I tended to be distant in them though, my hennaed orange hair blurred in the background. I actually sold one of them – it was a very odd experience as it was unusually and unnervingly direct. Just me and the viewer. And I couldn’t look me in the eye! I have a photo of it somewhere (*reminder – find photo and upload here). It went to a couple in North Berwick. I wonder if it’s still there!
Several of my other paintings (2 portraits and a painting of my favourite longi lilies, done on an ironing-board shaped plank of wood, salvaged from a skip and fragranced with White Musk perfumed oil from The Body Shop) were taken to the Compass Gallery in Glasgow.
One, a portrait of my flatmate David drawing me as I drew him, was my favourite, and I was advised to put a big price on it if I didn’t want to sell it! £500 did the job!! I’m glad it didn’t go – I still have it hanging in my hall.
1992 1/2 – Motorbiking
I got around on a motorbike in those days, a CM125 and then a Yamaha XS 250 (though the engine was re-bored to 400cc – the guy I bought it from had made it up from bits in cardboard boxes). I had to be sensible when I found out I was pregnant – and stopped riding.
Though the idea of zooming around with a baby in a sidecar was, in some respects, appealing!
25 December 1993 – Away in a Manger
Ronan was born on Christmas Day 1993! He had a full, spikey head of hair to do me proud and my life changed forever. We moved to Comely Bank and frequented the charity shops in Stockbridge – though they were nothing like they are now! I remember a couple of purchases – a stripy baggy jumper in shades of the sea, and a string lampshade which cost £7. I had to weigh up if I could afford it and was terrified I’d go in and find it gone. But it must have been ‘meant to be’, it still hangs in my bedroom today!
1995 – New Life
We moved away from Edinburgh to start a new life in the Lifespan Community (a commune in deepest nowhere in Yorkshire). I remember the old miners’ cottages linked by a greenhouse, the pig and chickens and vegetables. And the people!
Not one ‘normal’ person amongst us! A right motley crew – David by day, Linda by night, the family at the end who summoned evil spirits, Val and Peter from Essex, John, who Val fell in love with, and a guy, also from Scotland who ended up in prison for an armed bank robbery. To name a few. There were staunchest of the staunch vegans who got irate at the carnivores. They killed and plucked and cooked a chicken on the Aga whilst the vegans’ sheets hung up to dry on the pully above…
1995/6 – A Stint in the City
We moved to Birmingham with an unsuitable suitor, one memory of melting his sister’s bedroom carpet (trying to get a wee blob of candle wax out with an iron and newspaper… The wee waxy blob would have gone unnoticed; the big melty patch was unmissable! Owning up was a blood-draining experience.
Handsworth Park was a great place to live near to. Our street – Chantry Road got new lampposts in, and Ronan and I went down the street to the park making flowery patterns in the wet cement with our fingers!
After our nextdoor neighbour moved out, we were the only white family on the street. The area was a right good mix of black and Asian, and the Scottish flag in my olde VW campervan wasn’t too out of place.
We were in the minority in Hansworth! Ronan was the only white boy in his playgroup. The local children would push him up and down the pavement on his wee trike!
I loved the local shops on Soho Road, their wares spilling out onto the street, bunches of coriander demarcating the stalls. The charity shops were full of saris and reems of fabric. I bought some to cover the hideous wallpaper in our wee terraced 2 up 2 down.
The spiders were maaasive in Brmingham. Bigger than the rim of a pint glass. Hideous memories!
Time to move on!
1996 – Rural Idyll
We had been taking the A456 west, out of Birmingham and discovered the beautiful market town of Ludlow. Our ‘trusty’ 1973 VW camper regularly giving up on us en-route!
We found a wonderful campsite up on the hill above Ludlow – Whitcliffe Stables – where we spent many happy days flying kites, walking down the steep paths into town, patching up the van and listening to the church bells’ tunes.
We had no luck finding a place to rent in Ludlow, nor nearby, but the landlady of an incredible 16th Century black and white house in Kington, a small town on the Welsh border, about 45 minutes from Ludlow, in rural Herefordshire gave me a ring. It seems she liked us, and would be happy to offer 18 High Street to us for rent.
Theee most incredible house, wonderful in summer, perishing in winter – you could see through gaps in the beams to the outside. There were actual toadstools growing out of the basement carpet… My bedroom had a galley which opened up into the eaves of the enormous sitting room, the crickedy stairs and floors were completely uneven. You couldn’t hang picture’s straight as all the wood-worm infested beams were at different angles to eachother!
Ronan went to playgroup there, and then on to nursery and school.
Things took a turn for the worse in the summer between Ronan ending nursery and starting school… I was having the most hideous headaches and couldn’t bear the sunshine. Things deteriorated and I was bed bound, only able to stagger to the school gates, hanging on to the shop fronts on the way back.
I’ll cut this long story short, and leave a specific blog of this ‘episode’, once it’s written.
…
Well, I’ve only gone and done it again, too much info and run out of steam…
To be continued!