When Did That Happen?

A couple of weeks ago while we were driving to Livingston, Max asked me what the Five Sisters were. For those of you who don't know the Five Sisters (above) are shale bings on the site of The Westwood Oil Shale Works, near Bathgate. Bings used to be a familiar site all over central Scotland.

I then went on to tell Max that when I was his age, myself and my brother used to play on such a bing over the "bankin" in the village where we grew up and as I recounted some of our exploits I was suddenly aware of what I was saying and the manner in which I was telling him and found myself  stunned that I had morphed into my father and sounded just like he had when he used to tell us stories of his growing up in Airdrie during and just after the Second World War. For the rest of the journey I mulled this over in my head as I drove and felt old, rather sad and had a yearning for a bygone time.

Here is a track from Simon & Garfunkel who my mother used to play all the time when my brother and I were growing up and which reminds me of Honeywell Crescent where our next door neighbour was called Celia but we called her Cecilia.

Simon and Garfunkel - Bookends Theme