Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

I’ll mak bloody Scott’s men o’ ye yet!

My father eventually left the Atomic Energy job and started working for James Scott in London (after we left Culcheth around 1962-1963). Naturally, I know very little about my father regarding his work. But like many men of that period, I think he lived a Jekyll and Hyde existence (that is, a ‘double’ life). Although, my father could have easily have been a parade ground Sergeant-Major, due to his brusque manner and loud raucous voice, it was my mother who kept him under a tight rein. Thus, in the house, he was relatively subdued; I can imagine how different it probably was at work between my father and his draughtsmen.

When my father worked for James Scott (also when he worked at the Atomic Energy Authority), he was in charge of a team of draughtsmen, amongst other things. My mother may have kept my father under a tight rein in the house, but he kept his draughtsmen under a tight rein at the office, as is illustrated in the following humoristic sketch drawn by one of his workmates. The joke being that the draughtsmen in London were ‘weak-kneed’ Englishmen who needed a fiery Scot like my father to turn them into hard-working (James) Scott’s men (‘Scotsmen’). The expletive ‘bloody’ in the sketch is shortened to ‘B’. I’m sure this is no mere accident that ‘bloody’ is included in the sketch.

My father never used the worst of swear words in the house – restricting himself to milder expletives. This was part of being under the tight rein of my mother. However, in his ‘other’ life at work, he swore worse than a Scottish seaman (which is hardly surprising considering he was a naval officer during the war).

I know this for a fact, because when I was a teenager I happened to visit him at his office in London one day. Before entering his office, I stood outside for a while, because, as the door was ajar, I could hear him talking to a colleague. I was quite ‘shocked’ on hearing his language!

I had never ever heard a man that could squeeze so many swear words into a single sentence, mostly ‘bloodies’ and ‘fucks’. This was the same man who never swore at home! And who would beat you to a pulp if you dared utter such a word in the house! But once again, I’m jumping the gun, as this little anecdote belongs to “Recollections 2”, but I include it here in an attempt to say something about my father’s ‘other life’ at work.  

However, after some years, around 1970, he was retrenched and started working for an associated company, Hayman; I think they had a contract with the Atomic Energy Authority at Dounreay, Caithness, in the north of Scotland. As mentioned, this was ironic in the sense that my father and his family had gradually moved southwards over a period of 30 years, only to return to the roots of his family, the area where his great, and great-great grandparents had lived.

Maps can also show a visual presentation of other things apart from where you lived and where you worked. They can also show where you spent your leisure time. Nowadays everyone has a car, at least in Britain. In Britain in 1950, there were only 4 million cars as compared to 34 million in 2010⁴³.

In other words, roughly one-third of families owned a car in 1950; these were mainly the middle class families. In other words, we were fairly fortunate in having a car as this enabled us to go on picnics, day trips, weekend trips, holidays and so on.

⁴³ https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/tsgb-2011-vehicles Date of reading: 31 Dec. 2021.