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O.K.This is page 5!
Growing up in Glenurquhart!
This is the fifth of several pages about the 10 years I lived in the "Glen",at Shenval and at school in Corrimony,in the 1960`s.

I often saw my Dad,in the passing,at eight in the morning at the garage, speaking to the squad or Eddie Broadley, the lorry driver. I`d be heading along the low road to school or if it was wet or snowing I`d head to the main road for the bus,often driven by "Shinner".
This was a noisy lorry.It was the "bin" lorry once a week for quite a while,the dump was up behind Shenval.I remember being in the covered "tent" with the squad and my dad one time and going up the wood to where they were planting trees.The men in old jackets and trousers and boots.They all had dirty mustard coloured canvas "piece " bags with gold metal buckles.Tea flasks, Embassy cigarettes, It was wet and there was that smell of damp canvas and pine needles.Each tree was planted by hand,pretty back breaking hard work.Dad always made an effort to make sure that when the planting was going on,that the Larch trees were set out in irregular shapes in amongst the Douglas Fir and other trees.He hated seeing Forests with "square blocks" of orange Larch standing out.

When they did cut some trees down,they were stacked in huge piles at the side of the forest roads until the lorries and grabs came in to take them out.Me and all the other boys at Corrimony School laboured long and hard over many lunch breaks to create a splendid series of "forts" for our games of "Cowboys & Indians".We stacked them criss-crossed over each other up to 6 feet high.Some had several "rooms" and we had plans for the girls to join us and for real fires for cooking.The "Forts" had names and each gang of boys had one.They were built on the forest roads as it was the only clear flat ground. It all came to an end the day Dad was showing some of the Forestry Commission top brass around the forest and they arrived at one side of our "blockade".I was not a popular boy at home that night.

Go back. Corrimony School,Sunday School and Gladys Aylward