History
Hello Class. In my final year at school I wanted to join the Fleet Air Arm and train as a helicopter pilot but was dissuaded from this by a friend's fiance who was in the Fleet Air Arm. I think now it was bad advice but at the time I thought he should know, and took his advice. My next choice was the Customs & Excise but as I had failed Higher English (it was the one that was compulsory) I couldn't get direct entry to the interview stage of selection. I took a temporary job with the County Council in Dingwall and did some study (current affairs, American Politics etc) for an open competition entry to Customs. I passed the written exam but wasn't successful at the interview stage!
About this time my temporary job (about 15 months) came to an end and I was on the dole. I bummed around for the summer until my mother couldn't stand it any longer and had an application form for the Inland Revenue stuck under my nose and ordered to complete it. I seem to remember it was even my mother who posted it! This resulted in a job in the Tax Office in Inverness.
The job was OK but my workmates were great and the socialising was good. I made some friends whom I still meet from time to time. In 1965 I was transferred to a Tax Office in Glasgow. It wasn't a great time - somehow the swinging sixties bypassed Glasgow (or maybe it was just me!). By 1969 the inland revenue were starting out with a computerisation program and I applied for training as a programmer. This resulted in a move to East Kilbride.
This was where I met Margo and we got married there in 1973. We bought a house in Strathaven and within a few a few months of moving in I got a promotion to Systems Analyst and a transfer to Liverpool!
Our two daughters, Lynne and Jennifer were born in Ormskirk General Hospital in 1974 and 1976 respectively. In 1977 I was transferred again back to East Kilbride and Centre 1. Margo started and completed training for nursing and we had a very enjoyable 8 years there before further promotion resulted in a transfer to Telford in Shropshire.
This quickly became a very stressful and traumatic period as the girls hadn't wanted to move, were getting a hard time at school because they were Scottish, and Lynne was just reaching puberty and being very rebellious. However we got through it and both girls are now normal loving daughters who can't believe how bad they were. Lynne lives in Somerset with her partner and Jenny lives in Telford with her man. Neither of them have bothered getting married although they both talk about it, but neither of them have children yet.
I had moved into Project Management at Telford and wasn't enjoying it so much as the more technically demanding jobs I had been doing for 20 years. In 1991 I moved into computer security and became the Inland Revenue's IT Security Officer. This involved a lot of travelling as I had staff at various sites around the country from Cumbernauld in the north to Worthing in the south. I enjoyed the job but eventually got fed up with Britain's motorways (especially the M6 around the Birmingham area and the M25 carpark) and when an opportunity for early retirement arose in 1995 I jumped at the chance and haven't regretted it since.
And Now
Last year a sequence of events led to a decision to move back to Tain so we put our house on the market, put our belongings into storage, got into our campervan and moved to Dornoch beach. By September we still hadn't found a suitable house in Tain and the campsite proprietor warned us we would soon be getting the kind of weather where we would get blown into the sea so we managed to rent a little furnished cottage beside the beach at Shandwick Bay. We also bought a building plot in Knockbreck Road in Tain and started planning a new house.
The planning and building approvals took an age - the planning officer seemed to want to design our house herself. Margo was going to ask her if she wanted to choose our curtains as well! However I had read that it's a good idea to keep a rapport with the planning officer so kept the two women apart and eventually got planning approvals in January.
At present I'm project manager, painter and general labourer on the build so it's keeping me busy, although I still manage to get a game of golf fitted in. We are hoping to be able to move in before the end of July. The cottage in Shandwick is OK but the furnishings etc are straight out of the 1970's and we are missing our own things which are still in storage. Our dog, Skye( a border collie), loves it here where she gets 3 walks a day along the beach . I don't think she'll take kindly to becoming a townie again.
I'm looking forward to the reunion and since coming back to Tain I'm constantly reminded of school days and keep meeting people I haven't seen for 30 or 40 years.
I regret now that I didn't make more of an effort to keep in touch with you all. I did usually come up to Tain for a few days at the Tain Golf Week in August but really the only people from our class that I saw on these visits was David Robertson and David MacKay.
I play golf every Sunday with Kathella's husband Archie and Dusty Vass. Dusty thinks Big Bill is back to the UK - Edinburgh he thinks - from South Africa and there is a Bill Mackenzie registered on Friends Reunited site living in Helensburgh. I think this is probably Little Bill and I did send an Email a few weeks ago but haven't received a reply. I also got in touch with Stewart Strachan who is in the USA and told him about the reunion but I believe he is coming to the UK later in the year for a wedding so won't be making two trips.
Sorry this is so long, at least you've been
spared the photos because they are all still in storage! If anyone
feels like dropping a note my email address is -malcolmanderson@tiscali.co.uk
and my snail mail address at present is :-
5 Shore Street
Shandwick
TAIN
Ross-shire
IV20 1UU
Tel 01862 832064