3 Grans (and a grandchild) in Paisley

A couple of weeks ago LanarkshireGran (LG), LittleSheBear (LSB) (with grand-daughter A (GDA)) and I visited Paisley. My having visited a friend in hospital there earlier this year had aroused my interest in the historic town and my granny friends were interested too, so we arranged to meet up. LSB, GDA and I got the ferry from Kilcreggan to Gourock and then a train to Paisley Gilmour Street station where we met LG. In the square just outside the station there was a show of vintage American cars. I only took a couple of photos. The main impression on me was their hugeness! Nice to see though.

LG's daughter and son-in-law lived for a time in the cobbled street (Church Hill, I think) that has the church spire at the top.

 

Having perused the display of cars, and in 3grans tradition, we headed to a cafe. I was going to refer to it as The Purple Cafe but I looked it up; it is Cafe fairfull. LanarkshireGran and I tested Fairfull's empire biscuit and a salted caramel brownie (half of each each; both scored highly), LSB had a scone, and GDA had a strawberry pavlova for one which was actually enough for two. She did her seven-year-old best to munch through it all but gradually, via a meringue-mashing, cream-dolloping stage, ground to a halt.

We wended our way around Paisley noting nods to famous Paisley people such as the sewing thread Coats family who funded an observatory and Alexander Wilson, "the father of American Ornithology". Knowing of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology through my Ithaca-based brother, I wondered if Alexander Wilson had any connection there. It seems not directly, but I'm sure they know about him.

We came upon the Sma' Shot Cottages. We went in the back door so we didn't see the lion outside the front till later but I'll start with it here:

"Sma' shot" refers to the spool on which yarn was wound and
which was loaded into the spool holder that was
shot between the warp threads on the loom
(I think!)

A loom on the side of the lion

Inside we enjoyed the knowledgeable tour guide's tales. The whole Sma' Shot project is run by volunteers and is impressive. During much of our tour GDA occupied herself quietly on the floor of one of the rooms drawing in her notebook but she joined us to bong the bell that used to call Paisley weavers to work (two of we 3grans in the background).

 

Two pics from inside the workshop

I don't seem to have taken photos of the living rooms of the cottages – small rooms housing a lot of people; too busy looking, I expect. I learned that old wooden potato mashers did indeed look very like carvers' mallets of the past but potato mashers had a more rounded edge at the bashing end.

I did take a photo of this child's toy. It shows three different sizes of what the Scots call a "gird and cleek". The gird is the hoop and the cleek is for pushing it along – requires practice to get skilled at this!

We then wandered over to Paisley Abbey. I particularly liked the new stone roof of the choir and the awesomely good quilted hangings on and behind a lectern. Our guide here told LG and me interesting stuff about stone masons' marks which, I gathered, are recycled. After the mason using one has died that mark is available for use by a new mason.

We enjoyed a few minutes beside the river, White Cart Water, than runs through Paisley before parting for our journeys home. We tried to work out where the White Cart ford could have been, presuming it to have been near the abbey, but it wasn't easy. It's quite a big river.

All in all a very successful 3grans (plus tagalong) outing.

On an old spruce log

On an old spruce log, a thick section of trunk, worn hollow in the middle from being used as a base for splitting other logs on, I have deposited a few white stones. Now things are growing near and through the stones, a moss whose name if I ever found it out I have forgotten and nearby some caldonia lichen.

I will see if I can re-identify this

Growing on the wood both through the stones and not is Heath Star Moss (Campylopus introflexus).

What caught my eye while I was cleaning my Gtech saw were these old bright setae of, I think, Bryum capillare on the same log. It's too midgey to go and check just now. So maybe just read this blog post backwards 😉.

Number 64: the end of an era. Stories and finds

Among the most touching finds in our parents' house after Mum died in April was stuff from the First World War in a tin box from our paternal grandparents' house. One of our antecedents was sent to Northern Ireland after he joined up. Sadly, the amount of anti-Catholic prejudice he experienced from his fellow soldiers was enough to make him desert. Since deserters were shot if discovered, he joined up again under a different name. He was killed in action in France in, we think, November 1914. Such a waste.  In the box were his identity tag (commonly called a "dog tag"), some letters to his mother, and the notification of his death from the war office to his family. That and his tags came in the stiff cardboard roll you can see to the left of the tin in the picture below.

My sister and my eldest daughter are going to scan these and other items of ancestral history and make the information available to us all online.

Other military artefacts, including Dad's post-WW2 army lieutenant's jacket and Sam Browne belt – he had to do two years' national service when he left school even though the war was over – will be made use of by Smudge's partner at exhibitions and talks.










Also found among items that old were these two shaving stick tins that were made into money boxes for old copper coins. They are just the right diameter for the pennies and halfpennies (for anyone in the younger generations reading this that's pronounced 'haypnies') to sit horizontally inside. My younger grandson has started to collect coins so these have gone to him. Jed (eldest brother) has got the large stamp collection – several boxes of a size large enough to store LPs: "What's an LP?" said Toadlet. Yes, well, end of an era, though I hear "vinyl" is making a comeback.



While I was clearing out the boiler room, Rye did the box room. We called it the box room eventually but it was big enough to fit a bed and a desk as well as its built-in wardrobe and I think it had been the bedroom of several of we five over the years. That carpet was there when we moved in in 1967, not the only thing we wore out!

Box room cleared of a large number of boxes,
many of them empty

 ⬅️ My view from the wash-house/boiler room while I cleared it. Some of what was cleared, most of it destined for the skip that Teedee arranged ⬇️

stuff to chuck leant against the back garage doors

 ⬅️ Boiler room after. And, yes, those are chimney sweeping brushes stuffed into holes in the wall through to the garage.           🤔

Number 64: end of an era. Owl pellets

The first part of the small note attached to the cotton wool on which these owl pellets and bird feet rest says: "17/12/1971, StC". I think this means the date of collection, or at least of deciding to store them in the box, was in December 1971 when Jig, the collector, would have been eleven. "StC" probably refers to St Chad's churchyard in Poutlon-le-Fylde.

Our Uncle, who knows an ornithologist or two, and thinks they might be able to do some DNA analysis on the pellets and feet, took them away with him after Mum's funeral and wake only 48 years after they'd been labelled.

We also found Jig's athletics badges. He doesn't know what the Italian one is about. For many years the pole he was using when he came first in the Blackpool schools' pole vault event was stored in the maid's loo at Number 64 (see The Pantry). It was in two pieces because when Jig tried to beat his personal best after the event, it snapped in two. Nothing daunted, Jig bounced off the landing cushion and ran over to ask if he could keep the broken pole. The badges and medals are now, with Jig's permission, in the possession of my elder grandson, who collects such things.

Eldest brother, Jed, was also athletic. His forte was cross country and hill running and he was Victor Ludorum for his year.

I didn't take to netball and hockey but did end up, somehow, in my school lacrosse team. I guess I was better at running with a ball in a net contraption than guiding it with a curve-ended stick or throwing it to someone else. I use my garden rake like a lacrosse stick sometimes to chuck stuff onto compost heaps.

I don't recall Smudge or Teedee being much involved in school sports but no doubt they'll fill me in with details if required. Smudge has been a keen walker all her life.