A Mallaig Boyhood

These recollections conjure up a picture of a time gone by. John MacKenzie recalls his railwayman father: a man who hailed from Skye and whose definition of DIY appeared to be "Don't involve yourself"; who would fish enthusiastically for "Jerusalem haddies", which were red in colour, or a blue fish he called sea soo, but despised cod or haddock, and always threw them back. On his father's desk there stood a wooden box full of pen nibs, hundreds of them all shining and golden and all different, and on the side of the box the legend: "They come as a boon and a blessing to men, the Pickwick, the Owl and the Waverley pen." Recollections include schooldays, children's entertainments, Sunday school picnics, Mallaig and the railway, early motoring, the Big Pier, herring fishing and the Wee Pier. It all adds up to a reconstruction of a West Coast fishing village between the wars.