It Started in a Cupboard by Kenneth Calman sampler

a cupboard in knightswood
Mum was devoted to my father. She wasn’t as much of an extrovert
as him, and if you didn’t know her you might even mark her down as
being quite shy, but they seemed to complement each other. She had
been secretary to Sir Hugh (later Lord) Fraser and was an excellent
typist and typed my phd thesis. Her mother lived in Knightswood
along with her sister, my auntie Cathy, so there was plenty of family
support on hand to help in bringing up me and my brother Norman.
Beyond the family, there was the church and the Women’s Guild, and,
after the war, the community centre at the end of our street, where she
won prizes for her baking, sewing, and special tablet – a wonderful
fudge. She loved the cinema too, and would regularly head off with
my father to catch the latest shows at the Ascot, the Rosevale and the
Vogue. My bedroom was just across the hall from the sitting room,
and I can still remember crawling there like Wee Willie Winkie, unable
to sleep and wanting a story, as my babysitters Moira and Norma
sat on the sofa in front of a coal fire banked with dross, ready to last
through till morning.
I’ve always been a hoarder, so I’ve held onto quite a number of
things from my childhood that I hardly remember or don’t remember
at all. My mother’s baby book, for example, informs me that I first
slept through the night aged ten months, and that I started walking
about the same time. By 18 months, I could say ‘Please, mummy’,
‘Thanks’ and (very polite) ‘Pardon me’. On Monday 10 February
1947, I first went to school, and apparently liked it. My dad made
me a wooden rocking chair, in which I was photographed when I was
one. I’ve still got it, and my children and grandchildren have sat in it,
just like I still have the three cut-down hickory golf clubs he used to
teach me on the nine-hole Knightswood municipal course (threepence
for children on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons). I still remember
the sign on the clubhouse, ‘Each player must have at least 3 clubs,
one of which must be a putter’. When I was eight, and we were on
a family holiday in St Andrews, the two of us played all three major
courses, including the Old Course, which probably isn’t possible to
do now. I’ve also still got my father’s helmet and booklet from his
Home Guard days, bits of blackout material, the airplane hangar he
made me for Christmas in the war when toys were luxuries beyond
compare. I can tell you that when I saw the Scottish Cup Final on 20
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