Michael Alexander speaks to a Kirkcaldy couple whose nostalgic memories feature on a BBC Radio Scotland documentary.
Kirkcaldy couple Tom and Moira Olding have seen many changes in the town during their lifetimes.
From the decline of the coal mines and the linoleum industry to the development of modern housing estates and fluctuating fortunes of the harbour, they’ve seen it all.
But it was the viewing of bygone footage as part of a BBC radio documentary, being broadcast on Tuesday June 28, that rekindled special memories for the two born and bred local pensioners.
Radio Scotland programme Radio Recall creates a specially chosen selection of music, photos, and clips from BBC programmes to evoke someone’s life story.
And the broadcast sees Mark Stephen visit Moira and Tom at home in Link Street, Kirkcaldy, recalling everything from their childhood memories of wartime, to the Links Market and their lifelong love of the outdoors.
“I could sit for hours and hours and hours looking at old film of how things used to be, “Moira, 77, who grew up in the Linktown area of Kirkcaldy told The Courier.
“I’m definitely proud to be a Linktonian.”
Born in Kirkcaldy, Moira grew up in the Linktown – a distinct former industrial area to the west of the town centre – while Tom grew up in Hayfield at the other end of town.
“We were like bookends from both ends of Kirkcaldy!” laughed Moira who devoted much of her life to bringing up the couple’s three children. Tom, 83, worked as an upholsterer and carpet fitter.
Documentary
The radio documentary, which gives a heart-warming and at times heart-breaking insight into their memories, opens with the couple watching old footage of the Links Market – the longest street fair in Europe, which they still visit each April.
“It’s always cold at the market, “ recalled Moira. “We always go and see it! We dinnae miss it even though I’m older and the grand children are up a bit. We still walk through it.”
Moira recalled that her late- mother used to do washing for the market folk to make money in days gone by.
“My mum was always hard up, “ she recalled. “We had an outside wash house with the boiler and a big tub. She would sit there for hours scrubbing.”
Tom recalled going on the steam boats. “At the back end were ropes and that’s what you held onto, “he laughed. “
Moira added: “Of course in those days we didn’t wear trousers, we just wore a skirt. So the laddies sat at one end of the steamboat. To get a good view! That aye sticks in my mind! But I hated it because you got lifted up off the seat.”
Tom also recalled the market’s boxing booths. Moira also remembered visiting the ‘bearded lady’, the wall of death and the visiting circuses.
Moira was born in March 1939 – just six months before the outbreak of the Second World War.
Gas mask
She remembers having to go to school with her gas mask in a small box. The air raid shelter was over a field and she remembers getting taken there when she was two or three.
Tom also has fond memories of playing in what was known locally as the ‘Sand Pit’.
“It was actually the beach originally, “he said. “The beach came further up compared with where it is today.”
Moira remembers playing cowboys and Indians and played in giant tin cans that had been dumped by the former Brig Mill rope factory.
But she has few memories of her father who went away to war with the navy.
“I remember him coming home once on leave, “she said.
“I remember them coming to the school and saying ‘you have to go home, your dad’s home.’ I just remember him picking us up to give him a cuddle. When he came, I couldn’t even tell you what his face looked like. I was only six.”
Moira remembers the day he went back to South Africa where he was living at the time. But he never came home again. He left her mum for another woman – the nurse who had cared for him when he had malaria in the navy.
Moira’s mum was left to bring up three children on her own whilst working in the local rope factory.
Living in a cramped but n’ben with her grand parents and siblings, they used to go down and collect sea coal from the beach to keep warm.
The couple also recall their childhood trips berry picking at Blairgowrie. It was the only way their families could afford school clothing during times of great hardship.
- Radio Recall is broadcast on BBC Radio Scotland at 1.30pm on Tuesday June 28.
