Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

In Rhoda’s 1962 Diary, my mother worries that Stuart doesn’t have a girlfriend, while also worrying that my eldest brother, Sandy, has a blonde girlfriend.

The unskilled and uninformed reader would not notice anything peculiar here. But for me it rings a bell! I suppose my mother is not the only mother in the world who says things to her teenage children like, “You’re never at home – what do you think this is a hotel?!”

My mother might say this sometimes; or she would change her tune and say, “You’re always at home, don’t you have any friends?!” I remember my mother said this to me on one occasion when we were living in Billericay, Essex. I injudiciously replied, “You’re always at home too. You don’t seem to have many friends either!”

Of course, this was an unkind thing to say to my mother. I had quite a few friends, whereas, she didn’t seem to have that many, unlike when she lived in Culcheth, Lancashire. So, I was somewhat cynical and unkind in my reply. But then I had a good teacher – my mother! My mother didn’t like being alone, but she didn’t like too much company either. 

The other irony about her comment above is that she seems ‘worried’ that Stuart doesn’t have a girlfriend. Elsewhere, she is worried that my eldest brother, Sandy, has a blonde girlfriend. Her comment above implies that Stuart is too much at home. Also elsewhere in the Diary, she worries that her husband and eldest son do not come home at night! It’s not easy being a mother!    

Georgina Suzanne – Stuart’s blonde upper class girlfriend

My mother is somewhat incorrect because I remember that Stuart had a fabulous, well-off blonde girlfriend that drove around in the village’s most sporty sports car. Unfortunately, I can’t remember her name. But for the sake of argument let’s call her Georgina Suzanne.

I remember the whole family being ‘flabbergasted’ when his ‘upper class’ elegant young blonde girl turned up in a red sports car! This situation was a one-up for Stuart against his older brother Sandy. Although the ‘non-favoured’ son (of the two eldest sons), Stuart was taller, stronger, and more handsome than Sandy. He wasn’t such a ‘Don Juan,’ but he could have probably had any girl he set his sights on due to his good looks and charm. But of course, Sandy was also handsome with his shock of ox-blood hair.    

Joy – Sandy’s blonde working class girlfriend

We never saw Sandy’s blonde Culcheth girlfriend, although she was spoken about in whispers, mainly by my mother. But let’s call her ‘Joy’. So it seems that Sandy was perhaps too ‘ashamed’ of his blonde, working class girlfriend from ‘the wrong side of town’; she never made an appearance at our house. 

In retrospect, this is comical. It is also a ‘cultural’ marker of the period. In the late 1950s, and early 1960s, working class fiction and films became the fashion. There were the authors, such as Alan Sillitoe (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning) and John Braine (Room at the Top). In fact, both these books were favourites of Sandy. I can remember him having a copy of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning on his bedside table when we lived in Billericay. 

In other words, both my brothers replicated the social realist culture of the period. It could have indeed formed the basis of one such story – a story, I could have written, but never did. However, my Master’s thesis focuses on these topics: Look Back on Anger: A Study of the Drama and Fiction of the ”Angry Young Men”, and the ”New Wave” Film Adaptations of these Texts (1995). 

To sum up, my two eldest brothers, Sandy and Stuart, eventually took home ‘blondes’ ‘later’ when we lived in Billericay. Sandy married the ‘working class’ blonde Carol, and Stuart married the ‘upper class’, blonde Cath, the daughter of an industrialist whose wife was descended from Baltic aristocracy (according to Cath). But this story will not be told here, but in  the forthcoming “Volume V (from 1962 to 1968-1969) of No Woman, No Cry” (2024).

Pictures of Sandy and Stuart (Uncle Gavin’s home movie)

I have made some still pictures of Sandy and Stuart from an old home movie made by Uncle Gavin around this time.