1971 by Susan Stewart

"Is it where the sweet shop is?"

"No. It's just after Easter Rd, mind?"

"Is it after the big trees?"

"No, before the trees. Susan, ye ken where it is, you do."

It was 1971. It was winter, and this was my Mum trying to get me to make a doctors appointment on my own.  I was 8. 

I wasn't bothered about going to the doctors.  I'd been there loads.  You had to tell the big lady with the horn rimmed glasses you'd arrived, and then sit in the massive waiting room where the gnarly old wooden table dominated the entire space.  You got to sit in one of the huge leather couches that smelt of...well, leather actually, but I didn't know that then.  You didn't speak to anyone and if you said anything at all, you had to whisper.  Fine by me.

Nowadays, you wouldn't dream of sending your average 8yr old out to the shops without a serious amount of counselling for the bairn afterwards.  But, as a single parent of 8yrs, my Mum had to force me into such angst-ridden tasks to save time and yes, probably her job.  Did her boss even know she had children?  Possibly not.  Of course, the downside of these sparkling solutions was having to convince me that I had the ability to survive such a trial.  Obviously she had a faith in me that I couldn't quite grasp yet.

As the youngest, I often had my older brother as my guide.  He was 12, and he did all my thinking for me.  But he was somewhere else on that day, and this meant me having to do it myself.

"How can you no' take me?"

"Because I've had too much time off my work. It was the only appointment they had, so, I need to meet you there.  You'll only be about 10 minutes before me."

She'd taken many jobs over the years.  Manual labour, factory work, office work, bookie's assistant, anything 9 - 5 ish would do.  Oh, and an early morning cleaning job if she was saving up for something.  Anyway, things were looking up because we were emigrating to New Zealand and once we'd jumped through all the hoops they'd amassed for us, we'd be flying off to better things.  Goodbye to wintery, cold, flee-bitten Scotland and all who lived in her.

We had to do interviews, get references and endure several medicals and do things like pee in a measuring jug for urine samples.  Always a novelty.  And I so wanted to go to New Zealand.  I was absolutely clueless as to what to expect from such a place.  I had to rely on school maps, and Mum's snippets of life in a city called Dunedin, furnished by her own sister who had settled there five years earlier.  But we'd once watched an Elvis movie together, and she'd said we were going to a place like that.  I'd gazed with an envious eye at the people in that film.  They looked happy, and they sang and danced, and they wore grass skirts and the sun shined.  Great!

As it turned out, she managed to get away from work early.  My instructions were to meet her at the bus stop on Craigentinny Rd.  She'd already be on the bus, and I was to be there 4.30pm.

That was the wee hand between the 4 and the 5, and the big hand on the 6.  And the bus fare was under the clock.  Oh, and I had to mind to lock the door...and put the key in my zippy pocket, because if I lost it...

She was on the top deck, front seat - my favourite.  She stood up to her full 4ft 11 inches so I could see her, and I stumbled onto the bus and up the stairs at full pelt.  As we journeyed past the council houses and further on to Jock's Lodge, the heavens opened and the rain battered down onto the top of the bus.  How grateful I was, at that moment, that I wasn't on my own.  That I had my lovely Mum sitting beside me, watching the rain make the locals scurry and sprint for cover in the gloom of the early evening.  That we were dry and warm in that damp smelling, smokey top deck, heading into Edinburgh.

Lost in a monologue about something important to me, I noticed we were approaching our stop.  I slipped off the seat and only then realised Mum resting a steady gaze on me.

"What are you getting up for?" she asked quietly.

My head swivelled in my attempts to orientate myself.

"So, ye kent which stop to get off after all, eh? she said.  "You're no' as daft as yer cabbage lookin, Susan."

I took that as a compliment.