Welcome to the Website of Mrs R Carr

My father laid down a condition about the wedding which reflected a very Donegal distaste for going one better than other folk: he would play his part and give me away so long as we didn't have a hotel reception afterwards. So we got in caterers and Jim's brawny Donegal cousins manhandled the treasured family piano upstairs, and we had six tables with a priest at the head of each; and someone took photographs of Jim in his Anthony Eden hat and me in my smart going-away outfit at the front door of the terrace house called 'Harthill' which my family had moved into by then. More photographs were taken afterwards in the back garden, and they have a special meaning for me now, for almost all the faces are of those I loved and shall not see again in this life.

The professional photographs had been taken after our wedding Mass, in the garden of the convent at Dalbeth, and a fine line-up we make with wedding dresses and cut- away collars in the best of fashion, and Fr John in his long clerical tonsure-coat. This picture always makes me smile when I look at it, because it reminds me of how I went up to the convent to ask permission to use their garden for this purpose, and how Sister Gabriel, usually so sensible, said 'O Cassie, I thought you would have been one of us!' It was at least half in fun, I think, because when I said -'Oh dear, do you think I'll never get to Heaven?' she laughed and answered 'You surely don't intend going to the other place?' I thought Jim would find this funny, but when in all simplicity I repeated Sister's remark to him he went dark red and growled something about 'going up and wrecking that place'.

We came back from a happy honeymoon in London to 38 Cairnhill Road, Airdrie, which was to be our address for almost forty years. Jim was firm that I should go into as good a house as the family home in Tollcross. Like 'Harthill' our new home was part of a terrace, with iron railings closing in a tiny garden patch in front and several steps running up to the front door. I mention the steps - necessary because the terrace, curiously titled 'Carthage Cottages', was built into a slope - because they remind me of the sheer labour housewives took for granted in those days. Scrubbing down the steps and rubbing them over with pumice-stone was a regular chore, as was shining up our large kitchen range with blacking and emery-paper. None of this was new to me of course, and in contrast with my mother, for long years taking her turn in the communal wash-house, I had the luxury of lighting the fire under my own bricked-in boiler in the scullery on Monday mornings, with a deep sink for my washing-board and the very latest wringer, a wedding present from my young brothers Tommy and Eddie.

The house had been lit by gas and we had to come to an agreement about wiring it for electricity with the owners, an Airdrie family called Morton, one of whom became a famous Rangers footballer. In those days a good rented house was the height of our aspirations, and in postwar years this turned to our advantage, when legislation restricted rents and favoured the sitting tenant. Mortgages were more or less unthought of, and my own family later regretted not having explored the possibility of getting one and making an offer for their rented house when the owner died and his heir put it on the market. (Ultimately they moved to Denbrae Street in Shettleston, which was their home for the greater part of my married life.)

With a living-room and sitting-room downstairs and two upstairs bedrooms 38 Cairnhill Road was quite big for a couple of our modest means, but naturally we were looking forward to starting a family as soon as possible. I felt rather low - remember I was thirty-one - when our first Christmas in Airdrie approached without any 'good news'. Jim knew only too well how I felt, and wrote verses of comfort on a Christmas card:
                    May the little infant Jesus share
                    His cradle joys, his cross's care
                    with you and me.
                    And when our way of sorrow's done,
                    We'll hand our crown to Mary's son,
                    there at her knee.
From his brother Fr John with his Christmas card came a little note which has survived down the years, and which I'd like to put in because it says something about the person who was such a support to us through all the later years.

                             St John's
                             23 Shore Street
                             Port-Glasgow
           Dear Jim and Cassie,
           On this your first Xmas in your own home please accept from me
           the wish that all Blessings and Graces of the First Crib may be yours and
           that all the good things, Spiritual and Natural, of 1935 may come your way.
                 I am sorry I cannot be with you, at least for certain on Xmas Day,
           but I shall be there in spirit, giving to both of you my first Mass on Xmas
           morn. Should I find time or opportunity I will certainly call.
                 Yours in C.
                              J.

So we kept praying, and on March 21st 1936 our first son was born in our house in Airdrie. Since both grandfathers had been Thomases there was no problem about choosing a first name, but we added Benedict to it because he was born on that saint's feast-day. Nothing had quite prepared me for the ordeal of a first labour, but then and afterwards we had great faith in our family doctor, Dr Pollok, and my first three children were all born at home with the help of a midwife. I followed the wisdom of the time - which seems to have made a comeback recently, - and breastfed all my babies, Tom, John who arrived in late 1937, Rosaleen who just missed being a war-baby in August 1939, and Jim, who was born in Monklands maternity hospital on All Saints day, November 1st 1941.

Beginning a family brought changes in our way of life. 'Dixie', the fine black Labrador which had been good company for us in the first years had to go, because it showed a real hostility to the small stranger. There were fewer cheerful nights with Jim's teaching acquaintances and the younger circle of friends he had picked up through running a 'Reading and Recreation club' and night-classes. But other people came into our lives. The young local girl who came in to do the domestic work and be a nannie while I was otherwise occupied became a real friend, and we never completely lost touch even after Hannah Cole had become Mrs Sprunt and gone to live in Aberdeen. When my son John was teaching at Blairs College in the 70s and 80s he brought me to visit her, and we reminisced about the time when she filled our home with the pop-songs of those days - does anyone else remember 'Mersey dotes and Dozey dotes' ?

The first midwife I remember specially well, partly because she was capability itself but also because of a story she had of her younger days nursing mental patients. She was not merely not 'one of us' as we Catholics used to say, but was of strong Orange stock,and had been nonplussed for a while when one of the patients took to calling her 'Father Sullivan' and demanding she hear her Confession. 'In the end Ah says Sit doon there and tell me, and she says she had taken money oot her husband's troosers at night, and I says 'Did he drink?' and she says Aye, and I telt her she was daein' mair right than wrang, and she never bothered me efter.' A parish priest couldn't have done better.

Talking about parish priests, our firstborn provoked a special visit from Dean Thornton of St Margaret's Airdrie, who was a bit of an ogre to parishioners and curates alike but had conceived a great respect and liking for my husband. (I remember his wedding present to Jim was a full set of encyclopaedias, with four words of dedication: 'To a Catholic teacher'.) I had young Tom in a tin bath in front of the fire when he came in, and he seemed to get genuinely worried. 'Are you sure he's all right?' he said, ' I've seen a bigger rabbit!' Maybe he hadn't seen too many babies without their christening-robes on.

After I had two children our doctor felt it his duty to tell me to avoid having further pregnancies, but I told him the methods he was suggesting were wrong as far as I was concerned, and he did not speak about it again. Meanwhile Jim, who had moved from St Margaret's School in Airdrie to St Patrick's Coatbridge, made a further move to All Saints, Coatdyke, about a mile's walk from our home, where he was promoted to First Assistant.

To read more, now, about my childrens Grandma, click here To return to the top click here.