Time Travel

I had a nap, it’s a thing I am enjoying about the ageing process, day off and bad sleep and curling up with the old dog while the world keeps on worlding.

I had a beautiful dream about walking the old Waverley Line at Riccarton with my friend, and the train arriving and before stopping at the bothy.

It was a beautiful train, and I vividly remember jumping up and down in sheer joy at this engine appearing round the corner as track appeared and the bothy turned into a wee shop and office with stickers. There were yellowing boxes compressed with weight of things removed and the train had a tea car.

I remember the driver and stoker and their happy faces and the tea lady making drinks from a wall unit that folded out into Poirot level class, looking perfect in green and gold with matching earrings. I remember the other passengers and their chatter above the sound of steam and crockery and feeling utterly at home on a seat that was too small and too low for me and how it fitted perfectly.

I remember the train turning by reversing into a siding and lying sideways then righting itself and being ready to return in the right order and getting a lift back to the car with my friend. The siding was wet from recent rain, the walls were alive with plants challenging gravity to prove them wrong.

Awake and typing this I can still hear the feeling of the train move and the tea lady telling me the train was obsolete when it was launched because it took so long to build. If that is a metaphor for life I will leave it up to you dear reader to draw your own conclusions, mine is that nothing is ever truly lost and now is the right time, the land does indeed remember.

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Bonskeid House, Faskally, with members of the Barbour family in 1920, just prior to it becoming a youth hostel in 1921, my great gran is in the photo, although i am unable to identify her.

Historic Environment Scotland records the present Bonskeid House as an 1881 Andrew Heiton building incorporating an earlier house dating from around 1805. Local historical accounts identify it as the home of the Barbour family before they let it to the YMCA in 1921.

The fingerprints remain on the photograph because it has been held and kept. Bonskeid later became a place from my own childhood when I attended a music camp there during primary school. The house returned to private ownership in 2001.

Historic Environment Scotland: Bonskeid House Listing.

 

 

 

 

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