Early Days In Uddingston

A Memory of Uddingston.

I lived with my parents and grandparents in an upstairs flat 8 Clutha Place,101 1/2, (yes one hundred and one and a half!!) Old Mill Road, Uddingston until I was about two and a half. I remember watching the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on a black and white TV in the home of one of the downstairs neighbours who I think was called Mrs Brown. The year was 1953 and she was the only person we knew with a TV set at that time. We, along with several other neighbours, were invited to crowd into Mrs Brown's flat to watch the spectacle I remember having a little gold coloured replica of the Coronation Coach to mark the occasion.
After living in Holytown and then Bothwell, our family returned to Uddingston around 1961 to a house in Holmbrae Avenue. My parents remained there until 2004. I now live in South Australia, but have been back to an ever changing Uddingston on many occasions, most recently in 2011.
Clutha Place has long gone along with the steam trains, milkman's horse and all of my favourite corner shops that I remember from my childhood; Lizzies on Muiredge Street opposite the Primary School. At Lizzies, every Wednesday I took my time choosing sweets from the 'penny tray' and the wee shop at the foot of a very steep and narrow Greenrig Street, was where my Grandma used to send me for cakes like "Fly Cemetries" and "Pineapple Tarts" when we went to visit.
Before supermarkets came to Uddingston, I think Templetons in the Main Street was the first, we shopped in Smith the Grocer's and next door in Tom Kerr's butcher shop. In both shops you waited your turn to be served, and then Mr Smith or Mr Kerr would go round and collect everything on your list. Some things like sugar and rice were weighed out on scales by the grocer, and meat was cut and weighed by Mr Kerr. I don't remember ever not seeing either of these men behind their own counters and I don't remember ever having to wait long to be served. I was always fascinated with the sawdust covering the butcher's floor and traced patterns in it with my feet.
If my mum was buying her weekly shopping then it would be delivered to our house in a big cardboard box. Later when we got a telephone mum could phone in her order but usually she still preferred to go to the shop.
I attended Muiredge Primary School and then Uddingston Grammar School. On the way to the bus stop at Uddingston Cross from Muiredge we used to pass Tunnock's factory where they made the now world famous and internationally available Tunnock's Caramel Wafers and Tea Cakes. If we were lucky the factory workers would hear us coming and drop down a metal bucket with delicious sticky trimmings from the biscuits to an eagerly waiting bunch of hungry schoolkids!
All sorts of regulations will mean that manna from Heaven can't appear like that any more but if we feel like a nostalgia trip it is possible to buy Tunnock's biscuits and various other iconic delicacies like oatcakes and Irn Bru here in South Australia. Come to think of it the wrappers on the caramel wafers seem to be still the same as they always were. I wonder if there's much else that hasn't changed.