The black hill
by Angus Shoor Caan
Genre: Memoir
Swearwords: None.
Description: Taboo or not taboo. That was always the question.
_____________________________________________________________________
When we were coming up, my sister and I were forever being reminded not to play anywhere near the black hill, in fact, I suppose every kid on the estate was given the exact same advice. The black hill was, is, a slag heap in the middle of a field right next to our house at the road's end, and to set foot on it would mean dragging the tacky mess all over mum's floors; not recommended.
The house was a late fifties new-build when we moved in, and a far cry from the cramped two rooms we had been renting before, affording us kids a room of our own. Of those rooms, mine was the second biggest, which was fair enough since I was three years older than my sister, and it looked out onto the black hill. More importantly, it gave me a fine view of the Arran Hills across the Clyde Estuary; something I appreciated more with the passing years.
My main interest was photography after the early gift of a camera from an uncle and I still have those initial snaps of the house, inside and out, and evidence of the five feet or so we 'borrowed' off the field to make room for the garage. Dad and I built the garage with scrap materials from the never ending building site that was the expanding scheme. Dad usually sourced it at night when there was no one around to say whether or not it was scrap, and he also added to his handsome collection of tools, burning his initials into the wooden handles. My job was to paint the timbers and stuff beyond all recognition in case anyone came sniffing around.
In a matter of a few short weeks it appeared as the garage had been there for ever, came with the house even; the carefully arranged privet hedge doing more than enough to cover our tracks regarding the extra land. Dad actually had the temerity to complain to some council foreman or other about the incomplete pavement outside our house, and grinned a mile wide when it was fixed without question.
The black hill, surely lacking in nutrients, soon began to show signs of vegetation. I clearly remember the sudden arrival of sunfire yellow gorse one bright summer's day, and my sister's notion that the flowers were in fact buttercups. It gave the hill a little more perspective but it was still more black than anything else.
Cows kept the grass down, then sheep, before a big dispute, covered by the local paper, as to who actually owned the land, put an end to the grazing. The debate ran for years, during which time the animals had to huddle elsewhere and the farmer and the council took turn about at cutting the grass. The council left the new-mown grass lying but not the farmer, who must have found a use for it.
Dad wanted me to follow him into banking but I had a mind of my own and stuck with the photography. I'd been in his office more than a few times and wasn't keen on the closed-in atmosphere, so I did two years at the Poly and got the first ever job I applied for, in London.
If the bank felt soulless, it was nothing compared to the big city. I'd come from a small town environment where everybody knows everyone to a place where no one seemed to want to know anyone. I was the gopher at first, the tea-boy to the stuck-up staff of a popular music magazine; but not for long. A veritable parade of musicians and good looking models traipsed through the building to do interviews and such and I hit on the idea of following them to wherever they went when they were done, camera in hand.
Photographs are infinitely more interesting when they aren't posed for and I quickly built up something of a portfolio of candid shots featuring, among other things, a top model paddling knee deep across a road where firemen had been hosing down a building, her thigh high boots slung casually over her shoulder. She saw my camera and flashed her best smile and six weeks later that snap was the cover shot, although those higher up in the pecking order were none too pleased about it. Around the same time I caught two well established lead singers knocking lumps out of each other behind a pub, and was 'paid off' by both sets of representatives so that the pictures didn't show up anywhere. They called it blackmail but I prefer to call it good business.
As I said, I had a good portfolio, good enough that I had the confidence to go freelance when it became clear there wouldn't be much going for me in the way of promotion.
All cities aren't like London, although most of them are to my mind. I've visited a few. I went home regularly to shake the places out of my system, to assure mum and dad that I was doing just fine and demonstrating such by forking out for new furniture, carpets, white goods and even a new garage when the one we built gave in to the latest storm.
Slowly, over the years the gorse and indeed other plant life crept its way across the black hill, giving it the semblance of a bona fide geographical feature but still kids were warned off it, perhaps through long established habit. The sunsets over Arran fascinated me more each time I went home and I spent hours capturing them on film.
I did my sister's wedding as my gift to her and her man, my girlfriend at the time doing a wonderful job as my assistant. The posed shots were fine, just what everyone wanted but I much preferred those taken unawares, some of which actually made it into the album once my sister saw them.
When my sister, who fell pregnant some six months into her marriage, upped sticks and moved to Canada to accommodate her husband's promotion, it immediately put years on mum, who was never the same. Without my knowing it, dad took early retirement to look after her, his excuse to the bank being he couldn't keep up with the technology; computers, in other words. Phone calls home made no mention of this, so when I returned after a tenth month work and play jaunt around the globe, I was absolutely staggered at the change in them. Old wasn't in it, a real shock to my system, and my first move was to get the doctor in to both of them; the doctor still did house calls in those days.
Long story short, and after finding drawers full of unpaid bills and a notice of imminent eviction, I found a very helpful young lady in the council offices and between us we managed to change the house over to my name. Mum rallied for a while, relapsed when I had to go back to work and refused point blank to set foot on either a boat or a plane when I arranged to send the folks out to meet their grandson.
I had met my nephew, briefly, and the photographs I sent home held pride of place in the living room, but I noticed it was dad who polished them.
My efforts to bring my sister over for a visit fell on deaf ears, or rather she was pregnant again by then and didn't think she could cope with the hassle. That's what caused the rift between us and she didn't even come over for mum's funeral, nor indeed to dad's some three months later.
The kids from next door attended both funerals. I thought they were twins but in fact there's a year between them; the girl, at thirteen, being the elder of the two. I knew them by sight but what I didn't know was that they ran errands for dad from time to time. I thanked them both for that, and for paying their respects.
The girl from the council called round in person and told me I could now buy the house. The price quoted was a pittance and a real bargain although I had almost decided to give it up and go travelling again, the work was still out there and my agent was constantly on the phone in that regard.
On a whim I set the wheels in motion, thinking the house would be a sound investment if nothing else, and took an assignment in Florida while I considered my options. The girl from the council kept me posted on how things were going, supplying me with her home number rather than have me call her at work. I had to apologise profusely for waking her in the middle of the night a couple of times and she rather sweetly laughed it off.
Pretty soon there was an obvious intimacy to the calls, felt by both of us and on my return we didn't hesitate in taking it to the next level; perhaps even further, truth be told.
Half of the scheme was up in arms about the noise, some of them trying to get me to join the picket line to prevent the dirt bikers from using the black hill as their own sports facility. To be fair they made a hell of a racket but my speakers can compete with a police siren if necessary so I wasn't bothered as long as I could hear my music. I didn't take sides. What I did do was take my camera over to capture the thrills and spills, finding a ready market for my efforts. By that time we had our first child on the way and I was spending more and more time at home.
The cops involved themselves but since no one could actually say they owned the land they were pretty much powerless to do anything about it. A compromise came about when the scramblers were limited to weekends only, and then between the hours of nine and six, a sort of truce.
I saw the business opportunity before anyone else did after witnessing the many spectators the black hill attracted. To experiment, I sent next door's kids into the throng with a fistful of hot-dog each before converting the garage to a kitchen of sorts on seeing the favourable response.
Some locals set a footpath into the easier slope of the black hill, stepping it with old railway sleepers. I climb it on clear evenings to capture the sunset, as do many others.
The kids earn pocket money, a good deal more than pocket money from running the food outlet as my business partners. They work hard, the girl with an eye on her own beauty parlour, something she's studying towards, and her brother saving hard for a good camera after taking a keen interest in my work. We've invested in picnic tables and provided litter bins which are readily made use of. The cops call round each weekend morning on the pretence of checking all is as it should be, safe in the knowledge that they'll be offered a free hot-dog or snack of their choice. Of course ambulance crews are similarly catered to whenever they attend the odd minor accident.
I have a card for the cash and carry. The kids know what sells and what doesn't so they like to accompany me when I go. They take a lot of pleasure from loading the trolley and seeking out bargains.
As if to prove what a good service we were providing, random food outlets turned up from time to time and were largely ignored. They simply couldn't compete.
Changed days from when I was coming up and the black hill was off limits to one and all. Changed days indeed.
The girl stays over when I have to go off on assignment, which goes a long way towards putting my mind at ease. Not to be outdone, her brother is shaping up nicely as a photographer's assistant and I've half let myself be talked into taking him along with me at some point. His sister, practical as ever, has advised it would have to be a midweek assignment during school holidays.
Swearwords: None.
Description: Taboo or not taboo. That was always the question.
_____________________________________________________________________
When we were coming up, my sister and I were forever being reminded not to play anywhere near the black hill, in fact, I suppose every kid on the estate was given the exact same advice. The black hill was, is, a slag heap in the middle of a field right next to our house at the road's end, and to set foot on it would mean dragging the tacky mess all over mum's floors; not recommended.
The house was a late fifties new-build when we moved in, and a far cry from the cramped two rooms we had been renting before, affording us kids a room of our own. Of those rooms, mine was the second biggest, which was fair enough since I was three years older than my sister, and it looked out onto the black hill. More importantly, it gave me a fine view of the Arran Hills across the Clyde Estuary; something I appreciated more with the passing years.
My main interest was photography after the early gift of a camera from an uncle and I still have those initial snaps of the house, inside and out, and evidence of the five feet or so we 'borrowed' off the field to make room for the garage. Dad and I built the garage with scrap materials from the never ending building site that was the expanding scheme. Dad usually sourced it at night when there was no one around to say whether or not it was scrap, and he also added to his handsome collection of tools, burning his initials into the wooden handles. My job was to paint the timbers and stuff beyond all recognition in case anyone came sniffing around.
In a matter of a few short weeks it appeared as the garage had been there for ever, came with the house even; the carefully arranged privet hedge doing more than enough to cover our tracks regarding the extra land. Dad actually had the temerity to complain to some council foreman or other about the incomplete pavement outside our house, and grinned a mile wide when it was fixed without question.
The black hill, surely lacking in nutrients, soon began to show signs of vegetation. I clearly remember the sudden arrival of sunfire yellow gorse one bright summer's day, and my sister's notion that the flowers were in fact buttercups. It gave the hill a little more perspective but it was still more black than anything else.
Cows kept the grass down, then sheep, before a big dispute, covered by the local paper, as to who actually owned the land, put an end to the grazing. The debate ran for years, during which time the animals had to huddle elsewhere and the farmer and the council took turn about at cutting the grass. The council left the new-mown grass lying but not the farmer, who must have found a use for it.
Dad wanted me to follow him into banking but I had a mind of my own and stuck with the photography. I'd been in his office more than a few times and wasn't keen on the closed-in atmosphere, so I did two years at the Poly and got the first ever job I applied for, in London.
If the bank felt soulless, it was nothing compared to the big city. I'd come from a small town environment where everybody knows everyone to a place where no one seemed to want to know anyone. I was the gopher at first, the tea-boy to the stuck-up staff of a popular music magazine; but not for long. A veritable parade of musicians and good looking models traipsed through the building to do interviews and such and I hit on the idea of following them to wherever they went when they were done, camera in hand.
Photographs are infinitely more interesting when they aren't posed for and I quickly built up something of a portfolio of candid shots featuring, among other things, a top model paddling knee deep across a road where firemen had been hosing down a building, her thigh high boots slung casually over her shoulder. She saw my camera and flashed her best smile and six weeks later that snap was the cover shot, although those higher up in the pecking order were none too pleased about it. Around the same time I caught two well established lead singers knocking lumps out of each other behind a pub, and was 'paid off' by both sets of representatives so that the pictures didn't show up anywhere. They called it blackmail but I prefer to call it good business.
As I said, I had a good portfolio, good enough that I had the confidence to go freelance when it became clear there wouldn't be much going for me in the way of promotion.
All cities aren't like London, although most of them are to my mind. I've visited a few. I went home regularly to shake the places out of my system, to assure mum and dad that I was doing just fine and demonstrating such by forking out for new furniture, carpets, white goods and even a new garage when the one we built gave in to the latest storm.
Slowly, over the years the gorse and indeed other plant life crept its way across the black hill, giving it the semblance of a bona fide geographical feature but still kids were warned off it, perhaps through long established habit. The sunsets over Arran fascinated me more each time I went home and I spent hours capturing them on film.
I did my sister's wedding as my gift to her and her man, my girlfriend at the time doing a wonderful job as my assistant. The posed shots were fine, just what everyone wanted but I much preferred those taken unawares, some of which actually made it into the album once my sister saw them.
When my sister, who fell pregnant some six months into her marriage, upped sticks and moved to Canada to accommodate her husband's promotion, it immediately put years on mum, who was never the same. Without my knowing it, dad took early retirement to look after her, his excuse to the bank being he couldn't keep up with the technology; computers, in other words. Phone calls home made no mention of this, so when I returned after a tenth month work and play jaunt around the globe, I was absolutely staggered at the change in them. Old wasn't in it, a real shock to my system, and my first move was to get the doctor in to both of them; the doctor still did house calls in those days.
Long story short, and after finding drawers full of unpaid bills and a notice of imminent eviction, I found a very helpful young lady in the council offices and between us we managed to change the house over to my name. Mum rallied for a while, relapsed when I had to go back to work and refused point blank to set foot on either a boat or a plane when I arranged to send the folks out to meet their grandson.
I had met my nephew, briefly, and the photographs I sent home held pride of place in the living room, but I noticed it was dad who polished them.
My efforts to bring my sister over for a visit fell on deaf ears, or rather she was pregnant again by then and didn't think she could cope with the hassle. That's what caused the rift between us and she didn't even come over for mum's funeral, nor indeed to dad's some three months later.
The kids from next door attended both funerals. I thought they were twins but in fact there's a year between them; the girl, at thirteen, being the elder of the two. I knew them by sight but what I didn't know was that they ran errands for dad from time to time. I thanked them both for that, and for paying their respects.
The girl from the council called round in person and told me I could now buy the house. The price quoted was a pittance and a real bargain although I had almost decided to give it up and go travelling again, the work was still out there and my agent was constantly on the phone in that regard.
On a whim I set the wheels in motion, thinking the house would be a sound investment if nothing else, and took an assignment in Florida while I considered my options. The girl from the council kept me posted on how things were going, supplying me with her home number rather than have me call her at work. I had to apologise profusely for waking her in the middle of the night a couple of times and she rather sweetly laughed it off.
Pretty soon there was an obvious intimacy to the calls, felt by both of us and on my return we didn't hesitate in taking it to the next level; perhaps even further, truth be told.
Half of the scheme was up in arms about the noise, some of them trying to get me to join the picket line to prevent the dirt bikers from using the black hill as their own sports facility. To be fair they made a hell of a racket but my speakers can compete with a police siren if necessary so I wasn't bothered as long as I could hear my music. I didn't take sides. What I did do was take my camera over to capture the thrills and spills, finding a ready market for my efforts. By that time we had our first child on the way and I was spending more and more time at home.
The cops involved themselves but since no one could actually say they owned the land they were pretty much powerless to do anything about it. A compromise came about when the scramblers were limited to weekends only, and then between the hours of nine and six, a sort of truce.
I saw the business opportunity before anyone else did after witnessing the many spectators the black hill attracted. To experiment, I sent next door's kids into the throng with a fistful of hot-dog each before converting the garage to a kitchen of sorts on seeing the favourable response.
Some locals set a footpath into the easier slope of the black hill, stepping it with old railway sleepers. I climb it on clear evenings to capture the sunset, as do many others.
The kids earn pocket money, a good deal more than pocket money from running the food outlet as my business partners. They work hard, the girl with an eye on her own beauty parlour, something she's studying towards, and her brother saving hard for a good camera after taking a keen interest in my work. We've invested in picnic tables and provided litter bins which are readily made use of. The cops call round each weekend morning on the pretence of checking all is as it should be, safe in the knowledge that they'll be offered a free hot-dog or snack of their choice. Of course ambulance crews are similarly catered to whenever they attend the odd minor accident.
I have a card for the cash and carry. The kids know what sells and what doesn't so they like to accompany me when I go. They take a lot of pleasure from loading the trolley and seeking out bargains.
As if to prove what a good service we were providing, random food outlets turned up from time to time and were largely ignored. They simply couldn't compete.
Changed days from when I was coming up and the black hill was off limits to one and all. Changed days indeed.
The girl stays over when I have to go off on assignment, which goes a long way towards putting my mind at ease. Not to be outdone, her brother is shaping up nicely as a photographer's assistant and I've half let myself be talked into taking him along with me at some point. His sister, practical as ever, has advised it would have to be a midweek assignment during school holidays.
About the Author
Angus Shoor Caan is in an ex-seaman and rail worker. Born and bred in Saltcoats, he returned to Scotland after many years in England and found the time to begin writing.
Angus is the author of twelve novels, two short story collections and six collections of McLimericks. All but four of his books are McStorytellers publications.
You can read his full profile on McVoices.
Angus is the author of twelve novels, two short story collections and six collections of McLimericks. All but four of his books are McStorytellers publications.
You can read his full profile on McVoices.