Visiting Aunties

I write about villages because I was brought up in one where most of the people were related – even if it was only through drink, as one of the local worthies commented. He also insisted that, unlike the one next door, our village didn’t share out the bairns at New Year – them no’ being certain who the fathers were.

Before I reached the age of discretion, those intermingled relations got me into trouble several times making what I thought were hilarious comments about citizens, who turned out to be cousins of the hearer.

Don’t imagine we lived in isolation, however, I visited the Shanklys at Glenbuck and, as some historians are wont to say, there is no reason to suppose I didn’t meet Bill Shankly of Liverpool there – except that he would have been either in the RAF, or in England, playing for Preston North End.

The experience did have its benefits. I had visited my schoolfriend’s maiden aunts several times. Had to take my boots off and not spill tea on a doily, or leave crumbs on the couch, and was well prepared for meeting my fiancée’s maiden aunts fifteen years later. When we visited them, Annie and Meg, one skinny, one chubby, both as prim and tight mouthed as Presbyterian minister’s wives, I was welcomed with – ‘So, this is your young man!’

I wasn’t put out, however, and before anyone could answer, I had taken the limp hand of the skinny one and replied, ‘And you’ll be Aunt Annie.’ I was just as wrong as I had been about village cousins. The hand was withdraw and I was glared into a pillar of salt. It didn’t help that my intended brother-in-law thought it was hilarious and, honest, I didn’t spill tea on the doily intentionally.