Patons Of Greenock

A Memory of Greenock.

My mother Jean was born in Greenock in 1916. She married an Englishman and I was born in England in 1941 but spent my holidays with my grandparents, aunts and cousins in Greenock.
My grandparents lived in an old tenement in Weir St before moving up the hill after the war to Endrick Rd and newly built houses with gardens. I was really young when they were at the tenement but can still remember 'the close', rubble in the back clothes-line area, and a shared toilet on the stairs.
In Endrick Rd I loved to step out through their back fence and be on the hillside, free to explore the vast countryside. The views across the Clyde were/are amazing. My grandfather Paton had a wonderful flower garden there. He was a very fit man, walking the three miles to town and back each day until well into his 80s.
My parents and I came to Australia in 1951 when I was 10. In the summers before that the whole family would, by some means which I don't remember, cross over to Clinda (?) for a picnic on the shore. Any holidaying uncles would make a fire and put a large pot of water on. We would find winkles and cockles amongst the rocks and later have a feast. The women would sit around in dirndel skirts and bras, getting any bit of sun. The kids were in bloomers and tops.
I remember the baker calling from his cart in the street below the Endrick Rd house, and we would run out and buy soft floury rolls or butties and have them with jam while they were warm.
My aunt and cousins lived in a new estate in another part of Greenock, near a small dairy which we visited. The ice cream man would call past their house. The cousins would have a sweet drink pronounced 'sugar alley water' in a bottle, under the bed would you believe?. It was always part of my amazing holidays in Scotland.
Another aunt took me up the Clyde on a steamer when I was about 6. We must have eaten on board as I remember being horribly embarrassed when people laughed as I thought the peach halves surrounded by cream? or condensed milk? were poached eggs. It had been a long time since we had seen golden fruit, I guess.
My grandfather and uncles worked at the shipyards.
My grandmother would take me to pantomimes at a theatre in the centre of Greenock. All the colour, light and sound was amazing.
My mother and aunts had worked at the Coop, I believe.
In 1951 before we emigrated, my mother and I returned to Scotland for a few months as my father had gone ahead to Australia with the Australian army. I was sent to school in Greenock, not my fondest memory. I had to walk down a lane with steps to the school, I think. The school yard was on two levels with girls segregated from boys. The building had two stories. I was an only, and quiet child, unused to the teasing of Scottish schoolboys. I lasted a couple of weeks but was so miserable that I was allowed to stay home, for all the difference it would make - my mother said.
It is amazing to me, and to visitors, that 60 years later I can still pick the Greenock accent.
We have visited a couple of times from Australia and the town of my childhood is no longer 'visible'. Certainly not as clear as it is in my memories.

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