Ne’erday

New Year’s Day, Ne’erday, pronounced ‘Newerday’ in our part of East Ayrshire, was a significant day on the farm where I grew up. On a dairy farm caring for the animals has to continue every day of the year and the farm workers, whether on or off duty, would be invited to come into the kitchen at intervals during the day to have a drink and a piece of homemade cake or shortbread, known as their ‘Ne’erday’.

A sort of Lord of Misrule situation applied on these occasions and older members of the farm staff would enjoy recounting stories of Changue as they remembered it from long ago. Although my father was 47 when I was born, Mary McKrindle the dairy maid remembered him, his two brothers and his sister as children. She also remembered my grandmother, suffering from acute appendicitis, being taken away to Glasgow, never to return. That was in 1920 and my father, the eldest of the children, was 14 when she died.

In due course a stepmother arrived who was thereafter referred to as ‘Mrs S’ within the family. When my grandfather, her husband, died in 1932 my father was left to lead the family and the business at the age of only 25. Mrs S, apparently lacking any confidence in Dad’s youthful judgement, left Changue and went off to Glasgow. When I was born 22 years later in 1954 there was no longer any reason for my parents to mention her at all. One day my mother took us aside in the morning room and said, ‘I think you boys should know that Mrs S has died’. Although the name was vaguely familiar to us we had no idea who she was referring to.

In addition to my father and his siblings James, Willie and Nan, there had been a wee brother David who was scalded to death in an accident on the farm aged 2. That story filled us with dread and was perhaps meant to engender caution on our part when playing all day unsupervised among so many agricultural dangers.

On the other side of the family my mother’s parents were not that much older than my father. My grandad was born in 1892 and my father in 1907. It seemed perfectly natural to us to have just the one set of grandparents.

My mother was very close to her parents who having retired from farming nearby, lived in Eskbank. We visited each other many times a year, becoming very familiar with the A70. We knew the coal mining count-down of Howgate, Rosewell, Bonnyrigg and Lasswade before we reached Eskbank and Fala House. The sulphurous smell of smouldering pit bings told us we were getting close to our destination.

Granny and Grandad always came to Changue for Christmas and New Year. We played cards and stayed up for the bells, watching TV. Being awake at midnight was a strange and unfamiliar experience. Granny and Grandad toasted the new year with soft drinks like Schweppes Bitter Lemon. All the adults held strong christian beliefs and my father was an elder of the Kirk. Drinking any alcohol other than perhaps a sweet sherry was frowned upon even at the great midwinter celebration.

Nevertheless it was exciting to be allowed to stay up late and we accepted the naff offerings on TV without question. The White Heather Club dancers, Andy Stewart, Duncan McRae and Ricky Fulton tripped their monochrome way across the Ferranti set with its wooden doors and bakelite knobs.

Below the screen were two large round knobs; one to switch the set off and on and the other for volume. Between these, in a little fold-down compartment, were additional controls: brightness, contrast, vertical hold and horizontal hold. When we finally got STV, a small maroon box with cream switches appeared on top of the cabinet. This meant we could rush our lunch and watch Larry ‘sit back and relax’ Marshall and the One O’Clock Gang before going back to school in the afternoon. It supplied a vocabulary of really bad jokes by which to judge better ones later.

There was a certain thrill to the change in the year, a much more significant event if your age is still in single digits. I can recall the Blue Peter programme pointing out that 1961 read the same upside down as it did the right way up and later years seemed to have an almost science fiction air of modernity as the numbers ticked up. The Sixties were all about relentless modernity.

At primary school early one January I overheard some boys telling each other a hilarious joke which included some words I was not familiar with. I carefully remembered it so I could entertain my father when he collected me at lunchtime.

“Dad, do you know what year it is?”

“Eh, what year is it then?”

“It’s f*****g nineteen b********g sixty one!”

Dad’s thoughts, as usual, were miles from the subject but he suddenly became very focussed.

“You must never, ever, use words like that again! That’s a very bad thing to say!”

I was totally crestfallen. Like many jokes I would attempt later it hadn’t gone down as well as I hoped.

A Guid New Year tae yin and a’.