The Travelling Shop

The DVD glides into the player and the word 'loading' appears on the screen. I'm sitting in front of our large, new LCD TV in the patio room of our house in Barcelona. On the floor, is a dusty cardboard box with 'Heinz' printed on its sides. It's full of yellow Kodak envelopes containing all my family's home movies, every one shot in Scotland. Beside the box is a small stack of eight new DVDs containing digitised copies of the hundred or so films. It's years since I've seen them and already I'm missing the ritual of threading the film through the projector's sprockets, the comforting whrrmm-whrrmm of its motor and the dust dancing with our images in its beam of light.

I hear a tinkling sound: a combination of wind chime, water dripping, and bird song. It's joined shortly by the notes of a clarinet. Good God, the studio has added a soundtrack, I think, just as a flickering landscape of bleached-green fields appears on the screen. I can't remember seeing this movie before and lean forward as the camera settles on the back of an ancient, olive green Morris van parked in a country lane with its rear doors wide open. It's my late father's butchers van. Going by the Kodachrome-yellow daffodils on the bank alongside and the registration number, it's Spring 1957.

The camera pans slowly over a selection of marbled ruby meat, each cut topped by a thick slab of creamy fat. There are also mounds of mince, link sausages and soup bones, as well as ashets of 'potted heid'. White metal scales stand sentry-like to one side and, on a wooden shelf above, there are cans of Heinz vegetable soup, Smedley's garden peas and a large jar of boiling sweets.

I recall the few times I went out with him; I must have been six or seven years old. At half past five in the morning I would clamber into the van, its seat cold against my bare legs. Dad started the engine, making its cowling rattle and the great gear lever shake. Slowly, with the miles, wafts of oily heat would rise from the foot well.

We went up to the meat market in Glasgow first. Strong, white-coated men with slicked-down hair lugged sides of beef on their backs and, pivoting, let them drop with a thud into the van. I can still see the steam rising from their shoulders.

Then dad drove to the village of Lochwinnoch in the Renfrewshire countryside to open his shop, 'Alex McFarlane, Family Butcher', at 40 High Street. Cathy and Malcolm, who worked for Dad, fussed over me as he prepared the displays in both the shop and the van. And next came the most exciting and scary bit...setting off for the farms; I was a smooth-handed town boy and out there were rough kids and wild beasts!

On the screen, I see the sign for Auchenhain Farm. Farmer Miller appears from the byre. His bunnet sits on his head like a grey calzone and his white collarless shirt is buttoned around a vigorous, stubbly neck. He's wearing a cardigan beneath a dark waistcoat and his strong arms and hands look like they're holding a wheelbarrow. Two Dalmation dogs career around his feet and then bound across to sniff the sawdust in the turn-ups of Dad's trousers; they look up into the lens and their beautiful black and white faces fill the screen, their tongues almost licking it.

But it's not the farmers who buy; it's their wives, and Mrs. Miller is now on her doorstep stepping over the black cats and their milk bowls. Her scarfed head is down against the wind and her rose-petal pinny is tightly tied around her middle as she strides out in her Wellington boots clasping a dinner plate and purse to her chest. She looks up, and I see at first a puzzled look and then a broad 'Ach-awa'-with-you-Alex!' smile as she realises she's being filmed. It's clear that Dad with his crescent-moon smile and ready laugh is a welcome visitor.

I remember my first visit to Auchenhain. 'And how are you today, Mrs Miller?' Dad asks.
'Oh, canny complain....I've got five wee lambs warming in front of the range.' She tucks a wisp of grey hair under her scarf.
'Five! Mrs Flett at Peockstone has just got the one from last night. She wanted to know if you've lost any this year.'
'None yet, fingers crossed...and who's this bonny boy?'
'This is Alan, my oldest boy,' says Dad, tousling my hair. 'He's come along to help me.'
'Hello, Alan! ...Cat got your tongue?'
'So, will it be a nice sirloin steak for your man today, Mrs. Miller?'

The sign for Overton farm appears next. It's on a slanted post and looks like a grave marker. Mrs. Brown ducks and weaves to avoid the camera, bringing her plate up to cover her face. Dad closes in. I can't make out the name of the plate's manufacturer but I see her thick fingers and broken nails. Behind her, two laughing balaclava-ed kids, still in their winter coats, try to hide behind each other to escape being filmed. I remember them from a summer visit; they were the ones who ran around the stony yard in bare feet and refused sweets. Instead, they wanted slices of raw liver which they held flapping in their hands like witches' tongues before biting into them. I watched them from behind Dad's legs, secure in my broad-fit Clarks sandals.

At lunchtime, we would stop at a huge boulder and clamber up on top to eat our sandwiches and drink our tomato soup together. In those summers, the sun always seemed hot, and the air sweet with the scent of daisies and buttercups.
'Are you sure you want to go on, Alan? It's a long day for you.'
'Yes, yes, I want to go on,' I plead, 'I'm not tired...honest.' I remember my utter determination to continue and, in this sun-filled foreign room, I purse my lips tightly and grip the remote control hard as that intense longing to be with him floods back, even now, thirty-five years after his death.

The soundtrack's texture deepens as an oboe and double bass join in. It wasn't just farms he visited. On the screen, I see a grand mansion house with oriel-windows and crisp lawns. A lady in a three-quarter length fur coat, carrying black gloves and leather handbag waves at Dad, almost flirtatiously, as she steps into the back of a maroon Wolseley motor car. Her driver's head turns as she says something to him. And next, a boys school with a large stone portico, and a pupil in uniform standing soldier straight while another circles round him slowly on his bike, wobbling on the gravel.

Then more farms; some of the houses tall and whitewashed, some low with steep slate roofs and bright slabs of skylight windows. Others have open plough sheds, and yards with rusty-red hens pecking in the straw while Friesian, Belted Galloway and Highland cows fill the surrounding fields.

And not all the wives are middle-aged or wrapped up. A beautiful young woman emerges from the last farm of the day wearing a fine Fair Isle sweater, the low sun casting a rose bloom on her cheeks...or is that a blush? Her two toddlers drop their toys and reach up with blinking eyes and chubby hands, eager for their sweets from the large jar on the top shelf.

I know Dad will soon wind his way back to the village. He'll unload the van in the dark and drive fifteen miles to our house in Paisley where his dinner will be waiting for him in front of the television at ten o'clock at night. But before that, he stops beside a field of playful Clydesdale horses for the final shot of the day. I press the 'pause' button to freeze them on the screen, silhouetted against the setting sun, and imagine Dad standing there transfixed by their size and grace. Then, after a long moment, I press 'play' to let him get home to his dinner. Large white circles flicker on the screen as the last of the film runs out.


First Piece 16th April 2011 - Govan Road

Second Piece 16th April 2012 - Bless 'Em All

Copyright asserted by the physical person who owns the Blipfoto.com journal 'Around the Block' with username 'Barrioboy'.