I was slightly taken aback when some months ago a lady, having heard me walk around the museum describing things and telling stories, asked me if I would go and speak at the Ayrshire Hospice’s ladies lunch. I must have said yes 🙂 because I recently got a letter thanking me for agreeing to speak and giving the times of the lunch (which happened to be this February, which is fast approaching!).
If people see me walking about the mill speaking to myself, they mostly put it down to my extreme age (!), but it is usually me drawing from my memory events which might very soon be part of what I finally deliver to the ladies of Ayr!
Such memories have been triggered recently in several unexpected ways. For instance, I was bumbling about in the museum’s coffee room when I was aware that one of the diners was following my comings and goings with what appeared to be unusual interest. Eventually, as I expected, he raised his hand and said ‘excuse me, is there any possibility that fifty-three years ago you taught me the history of architecture in the Mackintosh Lecture Theatre at the Glasgow School of Art?’ I said ‘well yes, it is perfectly possible, since for several years I travelled there three nights a week and taught design on two of the nights, and on the third night I taught a Syrian, Egyptian and Greek architectural history course’. So we had a little conversation, during which I asked him: ‘you were not by any chance there on the night I was lecturing about the movement of sandstone blocks for the pyramids in Egypt?’ Another time, a female student who saw me and Moira in a hotel in Ayr rushed up and said ‘excuse me, did you teach Egyptian architecture history in the Glasgow School of Art?’ I said ‘yes it did’. In her case it related to a humorous story regarding how the sandstone blocks were transferred from the north of the country.
I thought this was strange enough, the call from the past . . . and I had scarcely recovered from thaten counter when, a few weeks later, a group of four ladies were sitting in the coffee room and one of them said to me ‘excuse me, have you always had that voice?’ I said ‘yes I think so’. ‘Then could it be possible,’ she asked, ‘that you once presented an Irvine Royal Academy concert in 1954?’. I said ‘what makes you think that?’. She answered, ‘it’s the voice and how good you were!’. I asked her ‘why do you think it was me?’ She said ‘well for the first half of the concert, you were wearing a white tailcoat, waist coat and bow tie, and you presented all the acts. After the interval you were wearing a horizontal striped blue and white shirt, a black beret and a small moustache and speaking only in French: we were all sure you were destined for the stage’. Following that 1954 concert, the school’s rector said to me: ‘I wonder if you could do a bit of filling in for me with the Rep Theatre Company in the Palace Theatre in Ayr? They are doing “The Importance of Being Ernest”, and unfortunately Algernon has fallen off his bicycle and they are in danger of having abandon their performances’. The rector said ‘I have a boy at school who can do that’. So for a three-week period, I played Algernon and hugely enjoyed it.
Various people said to me ‘have you ever thought of going on the stage?’ As it happened, after this exciting theatrical interlude, I came home and said to my Dad ’the rector thinks I should go and have an audition in London for the theatre school’. To which he replied ’don’t be so bloody stupid – get yourself a real job!!’
