Rain on my Window, Tears in my Eyes.

Published in John O'Groat Journal October 5th 2007

RAIN ON MY WINDOW, TEARS IN MY EYES. Morris Pottinger

Long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window is an ongoing tale of my early memories shared by my younger brother David and myself on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay in the Orkney Islands, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.

I have had the privilege of living through a revolution in Farming, a revolution of time and so called progress that took us from long established walking pace horse and cart farming through a time barrier to the present space age of superfast Agriculture in the 21st Century. The tears are not of sorrow for forgotten days, not entirely. They are for the many good memories, for the good people I met along the way, their kindnesses to a small boy who constantly asked why to the point of the distraction of my elders, but who nevertheless did their best to assuage his curiosity. And thankfully that curiosity is still there. Tears perhaps for recollections still in the sunset sky, fading but leaving an afterglow of memories sweet and sad. Alice in Wonderland was written for his grand children by Lewis Carroll ( pseudonim of Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson ). I take it as an excellent precedent. So with some trepidation I will try to put down something of my yesterdays for my own grandchildren, and in the hope that other younger, and, indeed, older, people may get a taste and a flavour of those days gone by. One of my recent rather delightful events was to have two city kids from Yorkshire visit Isauld, to give them a plastic bucket and a garden fork, to let them dig potatoes out of the earth of Sharon's kitchen garden, to take the potatoes home with them to Mill Cottage, Corsback, to wash, boil and eat for their very own dinner. For city kids the memory I am told is still there, the wettest and windiest day of their holiday in the North, but they said their best. Such are the simple pleasures of life. And it was so wonderously beautiful to see the sparkle in their eyes as they did this so mundane task of Days Gone Bye, just over the horizon of time.This is but an introduction to my long look back to childhood days which everyone says were better, sunnier, happier. Perhaps so, perhaps no, I cannot judge. It is said that time lends enchantment to memory. What I do know is that these far off days were hard work with little time off for anything, few holidays, long working days, yet in today’s frantic pace we seem to be no better in sorting the problems of the World. So I hope to write a series of vignettes of a small boy born into farming at Whitehall, Stronsay, and then at 14 years in May 1944 to Greenland Mains in Caithness. To round off my own pathway at 12 I went to Inverness to the Royal Academy there, partly because the War was on and Kirkwall, where I would normally have gone, was at high risk from German bombing. Indeed Hatston Airfield just on the western outskirts was attacked more than once, the occasional bomber shot down, and Scapa Flow Naval Base was a constant target. Inverness was fine, a quiet backwater during the War except constant training and armed forces establishments, including the Cameron Barracks. I got my Highers at 15, did another year to get extra Highers, accepted for Medicine in Edinburgh, went grudgingly there as I wanted to farm, did most of the first year, came back to Greenland Mains at 17 no doubt at all to my mother and fathers’ chagrin, stayed there when they went to Stemster Mains in May 1949, stayed there when they returned in May 1951, bought Lower Dounreay in Nov. 1953, married my sweetheart Nettie Dunnet from Keiss on the heads of the new farm, sold Lower Dounreay to the UKAEA at the point of a gun in 1955, took over neighbouring Isauld Farm in Nov. 1955, moved our home to Isauld House in May 1956, and I am still there.Nettie and I had three children, Tom now in Baillie, Steven in Edinburgh, Janet now in New Zealand, with nine grandchildren between them. Time moved on, I lost Nettie in April 1995. To update the picture in Dec. 2004 I married Sharon Gunason from Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. She now shares my life at Isauld far from her hometown. Life has not been dull. What I hope to write down is memories of my early days, of which I have forgotten a great deal, but of which there is still much left in my treasure chest. If I can share some of them, I shall be content.