It Started in a Cupboard by Kenneth Calman sampler

a cupboard in knightswood
also when I wrote, in neat italic handwriting, and then bound my first
book, ‘The History of Flight’. I still have it at home.
Although I had won a bursary to Allan Glen’s, money was still
tight – in fact, there wasn’t any coming into the house apart from
a small widow’s pension. So my mother began to take in boarders,
two at a time, who were training to be physical education teachers at
the nearby Jordanhill College. She replaced her double bed with two
singles and the two students took over that bedroom. Norman and I
shared the other one. Mum slept on a pull-down bed in the lounge.
When I look back and think of what she did for us all, as a single
mother bringing up two young boys, I am overcome with gratitude.
The only problem was that our two-bedroom flat was completely
full. There wasn’t anywhere for me to do my homework. After making
us all a meal, in the evening mum would put her feet up in front
of the television. The students would either work in their own room
or join her in the lounge. Either way, there wasn’t anywhere else I
could get out my books and study. But I wasn’t going to be put off
easily. To the right at the top of our stairs, between the bedroom and
the lounge, there was a small cupboard space. Technically, it was a
walk-in cupboard, because it had a door and you could walk in, although
it was only four-foot deep and little more than the width of
the door. There was a waist-high shelf at which I could sit and, using
it as a desk, spread out my books while everyone’s coats and jackets
hung on hooks behind me. There was just one drawback; the walk-in
cupboard didn’t have an electric light, so I used candles placed in a tin
box. And that is where it all began, my learning and writing, both of
which have brought me great happiness.
I have kept all my school exercise books, along with timetables,
reading lists and even exam papers for my 1959 Scottish Higher Leaving
Certificate (I’d find them impossible to do now). And as I take
them out of their box, glance at the school’s coat of arms (two compasses
above a set square) on the cover, I find it easy to imagine the
years dissolving and being back at 62 Thornley Avenue, my younger
self beginning to learn the basics of chemistry, calculus, trigonometry
or dynamics in the soft, flickering candlelight. 6
Allan Glen’s widened my horizons in other ways too – sometimes
painfully. Rugby was the sport of choice at school, and my height (or
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