It was a time of high excitement – for me anyway. For my parents there was a lot to be done – and in a very short time. Travel to book, passports and vaccinations to organise – possessions to sell and to pack.
Right in the middle of it all I came down with a bad bout of flu. My clearest memory is of lying in my parents’ bed in the big front bedroom of the Desswood Place flat while they packed up stuff around me, ready to leave.
My schoolmates were sceptical, having heard me talk about Canada, but they soon came to realise that this was for real. As for me, I was too excited to think about missing Aberdeen – though I look back on it fondly now. The prospect of journeying to an exotic continent like Africa was exhilarating.
A few days before we left, my parents’ application for permission to build the house they had planned earlier came up for hearing before the Council. Aberdeen is very fussy about granting planning permissions – the Granite City has strict rules about building materials to start with. After the hearing was over, the tribunal did in fact grant planning permission and then my father had to tell them we were leaving the country. One of the planners commented what a pity that was because we had such a very nice set of plans. Typically, my father dropped the plans on his desk and shook him by the hand. I imagine that house got built – I just wish I could remember where the piece of land was!
The blur of activity finally focussed itself. On a late October evening we boarded the famous Flying Scotsman at Aberdeen station, surrounded by friends and my father’s colleagues – and there was a surprise – a lone piper in full kit who as the train prepared to pull away, played “Ye’re No Awa’ Tae Bide Awa’” – you may be going but you’re not going to stay away. What a moment of mixed emotions!
As it happened, we did stay away. But that doesn’t stop me having a high priority to return for a visit.
The first time I found the Aberdeen City Council’s Webcams – it was around Christmas a few years ago – I spent some days with them permanently open on my desktop, just alternating between the Castlegate and Union Street views. Thank you, Aberdeen City. Your town gave me my best childhood memories, an education second to none at Harlaw Academy, and a wonderful appreciation of all things Scottish.
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For an Army family, our lifestyle had now become pretty settled. London had tried to get my father back, but thanks to some very powerful Scottish connections, we stayed put. We enjoyed living in the more rural environment at Culter, with its distant fells and sparkling burn.
My parents were even planning to buy or build our own home, preferably somewhere along the Old Deeside Road that we’d come to love, and I can still remember a variety of locations we looked at with the land agents: a lovely old high-walled garden, a disused stable complex, a new subdivision. I think that was at Murtle, but there was trouble with the laird over putting in a water supply.
My schooling was well settled and for the first time in my life I had one or two really close school friends. My best friend, a doctor’s daughter, lived on the corner of Baillieswells Road, Bieldside not far back along the Old Deeside Road. In winter we used to sledge down a narrow path to the bottom of their steep garden. I can tell from Google maps that it’s all still there…..
I was still pursuing art, if only on the sidelines, and it was about this time that I entered a small marquetry plaque in the Aberdeen Marquetry Club’s first annual exhibition held in the foyer of the Odeon cinema in Justice Mill Lane. It was exciting because I gained a mention, along with a couple of other top exhibits, in “The Press and Journal” newspaper. The plaque depicted a Common Snipe (Gallinago gallinago) coming in to land, inspired by a painting on the cover of a Scottish Field Magazine. It was a detailed work, every piece of veneer carefully chosen for its color and markings, and I still have it. I had done one marquetry piece previous to this – a store-bought kitset scene. Though the work was all mine, I know the success of this do-it-fom-scratch job owed a lot to my dad’s insistence that I select my veneers carefully.
But there were winds of change blowing in the British Army, and they began to rattle the tent flaps of our comfort zone. Word had it that men with long service would be the first to feel the axe. My father had served the Army for 24 years. So there we were – looking to settle but living in uncertainty.
In the midst of all this, for some reason that I can no longer remember, the Army moved us again – back into Aberdeen. We moved into an upstairs apartment of a terrace house in Desswood Place not far from my school, but we expected that this would be only temporary accommodation.
My parents were also looking into the possibility of emigrating to Canada. My dad knew that scope for employment for ex-servicemen in the UK was limited. The idea of getting away to a country with more freedom to prove oneself on merit appealed to him. Then one of the officers from the University Training Corps resigned and went to take up a post in Zimbabwe – Southern Rhodesia as it was then. Before long, he wrote to my father saying he had a job for him if he wanted to come.
We were emigrating to Africa!
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Here in Far North New Zealand, we have just seen a similar appropriation of public property, on a much larger scale, to that described in my previous post – with a far less happy outcome.
My nearest small town, Kerikeri, had a Memorial Hall – a refurbished packing shed complex with stage and auditorium, gifted to the Far North District Council many years ago to be the Kerikeri Memorial Hall for soldiers lost in the two World Wars.
It was a good venue, and I have fond memories of designing and painting sets for stage productions there during my holidays from University. It was the town’s theatre for many years, and hosted a heap of events including substantial Art and Craft Exhibitions over the Christmas holidays, and the world-famous Kerikeri Piano Competition, annually.
It was a simple but serviceable building that the Far North District Council left to rot. That should never have happened. The same thing occurred here in Kaeo until a small group of public-minded citizens got togther, sought and got financial assistance (not from the FNDC note) and put in the hard yards to recover the Kaeo Memorial Hall from a far worse state of disrepair and all-out abuse.
Whether the Kerikeri Memorial Hall could have been done up and developed for the community uses suggested by members of the public over recent months, is not strictly the issue. There’s a crying need for it – this little town, busily chasing the reputation of being New Zealand’s “top small town” is no different from any other – it is fighting drug abuse in young people, daily.
HOWEVER… Several years ago, the Far North District Council set up an independent trading arm called Far North Holdings. Notwithstanding that the Hall was originally gifted to the Council as a public memorial, Council saw fit to pass it over lock, stock and barrel into the hands of the Far North Holdings company.
To cut a long story short, Far North Holdings announced it was going to divest itself of the property. It was put on the market, to the horror of many local residents. The pretext was that the building was no longer viable and was surplus to requirements because Kerikeri now has a new (not yet fully completed) plushy venue – The Arts Centre. Hmmm. Where do local kids in dire need of something to do fit into that?
There were protests, of course – and petitions. The last petition, sactioned by Council, was ignored because Council elected not to play by its own rules. The stance of Far North Holdings was that if the public wanted the Hall, they would have to buy it at the market price – about $1.05million. Council and the Mayor reiterated that money was required to finish off The Arts Centre as priority number one. Miscalculation of priorities, I’d say.
Just as the tangata whenua threw their weight in behind the movement to retain the Hall and it began to look as if there could be some daylight at the end of the tunnel, a motion was passed in Council condemning the building as unsound and demolition began literally overnight. I have quite honestly never been so appalled, and I don’t doubt many people were equally shocked. No doubt the ratepayers – again – footed the bill to have their own property destroyed.
A builder who went on site and inspected the Kerikeri Memorial Hall building while it was being demolished commented that the building was sound.
This Council wantonly destroyed a public asset given to it by the ratepayers in good faith. Ironically, as a Council, it was elected quite recently to make a change for the better in local government, by ratepayers hoping to be listened to at last: hoping at least for fair play. Well, well…
No doubt the rationale behind all this was that there were Councilors who wanted the glory of finally getting the Arts Centre finished. That actually won’t count for much in the long run. There are far bigger issues at stake here.
“Lest We Forget?” Oh yes……
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