It Started in a Cupboard by Kenneth Calman sampler

it started in a cupboard
me on her shoulders to watch Rangers at Ibrox, taught me to play
golf on Knightswood’s municipal nine-hole course, or made wooden
toys for me at Christmas. Dad was fun to be with, and he had a great
sense of humour. He used to play a game called Mr Bumble, where he
dressed up and sang, ‘My name is Bobbie Bumble, he doesn’t mind a
tumble, but up he jumps, and rubs his bumps and doesn’t even grumble’
and fell on the floor. It always made me laugh anyway. After the
war, when work started to dry up in the shipyards, he got a job as
a mechanic at MacKinnon’s, a local textile manufacturer. I always
looked forward to seeing him. To this day, I can remember listening
out for him as he walked home along the street, whistling the first few
bars of the Woody Woodpecker theme tune.
He was the youngest of eight children (and two who didn’t survive
childhood) and as all of them had children of their own, I had plenty
of Calman cousins. The one I never knew was Charles, who was
killed by the Japanese on the day I was born. He was the son of my
uncle Alex, who had moved out to Hong Kong, where he managed a
shipyard. I never knew my paternal grandfather either, but he was the
one who brought the family from Dundee, where they lived at Lochee,
to Glasgow early in the previous century. The word Calman is Gaelic
and means a dove or pigeon, and the family, and the name, have an
interesting history. 2 They lived in Partick, a district in Glasgow near
the Clyde. My father attended Hamilton Crescent School, which he
left when he was 14 to work in the shipyards. I have a Certificate of
Merit for him from his final year, where his subjects included Laws of
Health, Civics and the Empire.
My mother’s family were also very close to me. She had been
born Grace Douglas Don and her sister Cathy lived close by in
Knightswood with her family and my Gran Daisy. Her brother and
his family lived for a long time in the South Ayrshire village of Dailly,
near Girvan. At one time he had a chip shop in which I occasionally
helped out: not bad training for a future Chief Medical Officer! My
father’s brother, Charles, and his family also lived in Ayrshire: he was
a Hoover salesman with great patter and his key phrase when going
anywhere was ‘The sky’s the limit!’ His daughter Doreen had a special
dance which she demonstrated at weddings to the tune of ‘Salome’
with great effect.
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