Dear Friends,
Thank you for your support and donations and thank you for taking the time to open my email to read my ramblings 🤣. This last week’s weather in Fort William has been pretty awful with the rain and wind dominating the entire week, preventing me from getting out and about with the camera so unfortunately, I’ve had to sit down and go through my financial books for the last few days. Oh the fun 🤣🤣
I was absolutely overjoyed that I was able to sell my 300 calendars at the end of last November. This is the first time I have sold them all before December. I only order 300 each year. I know it’s not a massive amount, but, as I personally send them all around the world, it creates a little bit of interest for me throughout the year.
I was also contacted to create frames for a retiree at the local Health Centre which I agreed to do. I got the prints framed and delivered them last week.
I will have to start creating the 2025 calendar soon and decide on the 13 images. This will be the fifth edition of calendars since my retirement from Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. I can’t believe it’s been 4 years since I started my Landscape Photography business and socials.
This week we attended the Lochaber Rugby Club Dinner Dance at the Alexandra Hotel in Fort William. Due to Covid, we have not been able to hold a dinner dance since 2019, so it was nice to get everyone together from the Rugby club community to have a dance, a lovely meal and mix together. There was much dancing to be had, with live accordion and drum music being played by nephew in law Andrew Macdonald and his friend.
I’m always impressed when watching people of various ages dance the Gay Gordon’s, Strip the Willow or the Boston Two Step without looking at their feet. As a city kid I was never exposed to organised Ceilidh Scottish Dancing, and feel I look like a fish out of water when I try, but I still get up and give it a go. I’ve never had any criticism from anyone for my dancing skills 🤣🕺 It’s a beautiful community activity and brings everyone together like no other musical event can. Moving in symmetry with others, is often underrated. If you get the chance, give it a go as well.
I feel I should give you all a wee bit of my history, so you know a little about who I am and where I came from and how I ended up in The Scottish Highlands as a Photographer.
Chapter 1
Firstly, I’m not Scottish. I’m a Scouser and was born in Liverpool 55 years ago. The term Scouser derives from the dish "Scouse", strongly associated with our city and its people. Scouse (or to give it its full name "lobscouse") is a type of stew made with potatoes, carrots, swede/turnip (optional), onions and meat (frequently lamb, although I use corned beef). There is also "blind scouse", which is made without meat at all. Curiously, in the region of Hamburg (a port with a long tradition of trading with Liverpool), there is a very similar dish called "Lobskaus". Scotland has a very similar dish, but it is called Stovies.
I was born in Liverpool in 1968 in an area called Bootle. In fact, I was the only sibling to be born at home. I did ask my mum once why I was the only one born a home, and it was because my mum couldn’t afford a new nightie, she wasn’t prepared to go into the maternity hospital to have me.
So, as you can see, I came from a very humble and working-class background. Six of us, (two sisters, a brother and our parents) all living in a very small three-bedroom house with no central heating or indoor bathroom. I clearly remember the outside toilet we had at the bottom of the yard at the rear of 11 Bibby’s Lane. Now, when I tell my 3 children this story, they laugh and say “Oh dad, that was back in 1868!” like my upbringing was from some Dickensian novel, but to be fair, social housing in the 60’s was basic, very basic. I do remember getting a wash in the kitchen sink as a wee lad, and I also remember having my mouth washed out with soap as a child for swearing in front of my mum. I didn’t do it again. 🤣.
We might not have had much, but we had love in abundance, and I have many fond memories of growing up in our wee little house in Bootle. We all played together. We all read books together. It’s funny, I feel sorry for some modern families who sit on computers and phones without talking to each other. It certainly wasn’t the environment I was raised in. I was taught from an early age; education is the only way to improve your outcomes. “If you read, question and understand the world, your knowledge and life opportunities will increase Pat”, my dad would say.
My dad (Michael) was a scaffolder and worked long hours and also worked away to provide for us. Dad was one of the scaffolders who helped build the Metropolitan Catholic Cathedral in Liverpool which was completed in 1967. One of the stories he told us as small children, was that when they were lowering the altar, right in the centre of the cathedral into position, my dad and others placed pennies under the alter for good luck, which will still be there today, 57 years later.
There are many similarities between Liverpool and Glasgow, with large Irish communities establishing themselves in both cities over 150 years. My family name ‘McElhinney’ originates from Donegal in Ireland and my great great granddad first moving Liverpool to find work and opportunity. My dad was brought up in a slum area on the Docks of Liverpool, Saltney Steet where 9 of his siblings plus their Mum and Dad huddled, cooked, ate and slept together in a very small, rat-infested building just like the Glaswegian tenement blocks Billy Connolly often talked about in his comedy routines. In fact, John Lennon’s family were also housed in the same block in Saltney Street 
“The ‘court’ in Saltney Street where John Lennon’s great grandfather lived in 1851 was made up of ten three storey dwellings. The 1851 census records that 89 people lived there. There was only one room on each storey, so James Lennon, his wife and daughter would live, cook, eat, sleep in this one room. When more children came along, they would just be squeezed in - like the Lennon’s neighbours, the Magees, who had six children. The court was one of fourteen on Saltney Street, close to Clarence Docks - over a thousand people crammed in to one residential block”.
https://liverpoolmiscellany.blogspot.com/2023/05/saltney-street-good-old-days.html?m=1
Having seen how far many Irish families have travelled around the world to settle, it’s ironic that we got on one boat and then just stopped, settling and making Liverpool our home like 35,000 other Irish families. The biggest irony was that we became a sea faring family, sailing the world but always returning to Liverpool as that was our new home. My great grandad even survived the sinking of the Lusitania on the 7th of May 1915 by a German U Boat, which is a story I’ll tell on another day.
So, back to the story 🤣. The penny 🪙 my dad placed under the Cathedral Altar finally paid off. We got a new house and moved to Runcorn in Cheshire as part of a Liverpool rehousing program. To be fair, we thought we’d won the lottery as we now had a fully fitted bathroom upstairs and an extra toilet downstairs. We had a fitted kitchen, front garden and back garden. We didn’t know ourselves. Happy days indeed.
To be continued….
If you enjoy my posts please let me know ❤️
Pat