Written by Mary Mather (mum)

When it was time for me to leave Maryhill, Chris was  still away on duty in London and  Dot Mounce came to take me and Michael home to Rose Cottage.  Netty Shea had got everything ready and helped put Michael in his carry cot in my bedroom.   No sooner had she gone than he got hiccups.  I suddenly remembered that my grandfather once had hiccups for several days and it was considered  ‘SERIOUS’.  So I phoned Netty and asked her what to do. ‘Give him some boiled water’ she said.  So away I went and boiled some water.  Now what? – I had to phone her back… ‘How do I cool it down?’  ‘Put it in a sterilised bottle and hold it under the cold tap’  – ‘how do you sterilise a bottle?’…by this time the poor mite was asleep again. 

Within a day another problem arose and I began to realise that although it was  easy to wash terry towelling nappies by hand,  there was no way I could  get them dry with out a spin dryer and that hanging them around the open fire in the kitchen would take ages.The arrival of a little spin dryer – lent by the lady next door was a real God-send.  

When the day came for Michael’s fingers to be cauterised, I drove into Elgin to the out patients clinic where the doctor insisted that I should hold Michael while the Nursing sister helped him . 

To remove the extra fingers he used a sort of soldering iron.  The screams of the baby and the smell of burning flesh were dreadful – and in the end he decided not to continue – so Michael has one smooth scar and one lump – where the doctor gave up. 

After the ‘operation’ I felt a bit weak at the knees so I  pushed Michael in his pram around to ‘Shillong’, the home of Arthur and Thelma Lockwood, in South Street and rang her door bell and asked if I could come in for a cup of tea before driving back to Lossie. 

Because Chris was doing alot of night flying, it was very important that he got undisturbed sleep – which meant I had to take Michael out of earshot to feed and change him when he woke in the night – (which he continued to do until he was two ) I began to hate the hum of the fridge and felt very envious of ‘everyone else in the world’ who was able to stay  asleep all night!  I got so very tired that it was a real treat when Tony Nicholls – who had been at sea with Chris, on one of his make and mend afternoons, offered to take Michael for a long walk in the pram so that I could have an afternoon nap. 

I’ll never forget thinking I heard Michael crying – only to find it was a seagull on the roof!!  

I remember  taking Michael for a long walk into Lossie in his pram only to find that I had run out of energy to get back and had to sit on a wall for a rest. One day I took Michael to see Mr & Mrs O’Gorman and put his carry cot on a coffee table – I had forgotton that it had soft collapsible  sides  which started to droop down over the edge of the table and to my horror the baby rose up  – just rescued in time by dear Mrs O’G.