Nowadays there are all sorts of ages of consent for different things, but, in 1991, 18 was the big one - it was pretty much the generally accepted age of consent in the UK. So what did our Lucy do to celebrate this milestone? She and Derek got engaged, that's what. Of course, there was nothing we could do about this, even if we wanted to - they could have gone and got married without any reference to us. We weren't over the moon about it. Lucy and Derek had been together for a while but we still thought of them as youngsters.
We had arranged a dinner for four of us - Lucy & Derek, plus Jo and I - at Inverey House to celebrate Lucy's 18th birthday, and I was still getting dressed in our bedroom upstairs when I was told the news of their engagement. To say it put a bit of a damper on the evening would be an understatement, although I tried my hardest to hide my disappointment. I think this may have been that very evening:
They didn't need our approval, of course - those Victorian rules were now long gone - but they obviously wanted us to be happy about it. I still don't know for sure, but I suspect Derek's Mum and Step-Dad already knew about their plans and they were delighted for them. I'm sure Lucy and Derek would have liked Jo and I to be equally thrilled, but we couldn't find it within ourselves - we thought they were too young.
I tried in vain to put some "conditions/qualifications" on our approval of their engagement - I said we would be happy as long as they didn't get married until they were at least 25. Unsurprisingly, this too, went down like a lead balloon - this would have seemed like a lifetime to them.
This was nothing, however, compared to what happened to Jo's Dad the following year - the beloved pipe-smoking "Granda Bill". He had a heart attack and the hospital couldn't stabilise his heart when he was admitted. We had gone on a short break to Dalfaber, Aviemore and got the call to head down to Paisley when we were there. He was only 70 when he passed.
During our brief break in Aviemore, we went skating. You can tell from this photo what a natural I am - not. The Pringle golf sweater is very early 90's:
At work, the early 90's had been a busy one for me. We now had two fish canning businesses to merge together and try to make a success of. One of them had been making small profits (although it had the short-term advantage of a very low cost base, which was about to change) and the other was losing an arm and a leg. The profitable one was about to be evicted as well, as its landlord required the space it occupied for its own expansion, and the larger, older one was located on a very old and run-down site.
We resolved this dilemma by arranging a sale and lease-back of the latter site (still occupied by us to this day) with the the local Council, who agreed to help us modernise the site and make it an acceptable location for a modern food processing plant.
Now there had been canning activities on this site going back to just after the First World War - we understand it wasn't just fish in those days, but chickens as well were being canned. We had to gut the entire place - particularly the drains, which were choked with over 70 years worth of food processing - not a pretty sight.
Michael Clark and I were also learning about the canning business during this period, so we spent a lot of time together trundling up and down the road to Fraserburgh. On a typical day, I would leave Banchory early in the morning and drive along the South Deeside Road to pick up Michael at his farm at Jockston.
All this driving meant the miles were piling up and whilst both Michael and I had safe and solid Volvo estates, our Chairman (Michael's Dad) eventually decided we should both be rewarded with an additional bit of comfort, so our next company vehicles were Mercedes 300 D estates. Beautiful cars, and definitely the most luxurious company car I'd ever had - even better than the Rover 2000 I had with Fischer a decade before - but it was a relatively early model and Mercedes hadn't yet got round to adding the turbo to the UK right hand drive versions, which meant that starting off was a little cumbersome and it was only when you got up to cruising speed that you fully appreciated the power and performance of the 3 litre engine. It was a dark blue car, looking something like this:
Michael also travelled a lot internationally, and Lucy came in to the picture occasionally as a dog-walker and house sitter at Jockston. When Lucy wasn't available, we got involved once or twice. One of Michael's dogs was called "Tiddles", which was a mite embarrassing whenever she wandered off when we were taking her walkies up Burnett Park. On one occasion she got the scent of an animal and shot off - we thought we'd lost her. It took ages before she turned up again. We weren't very keen on any more dog-sitting after that.
Michael met his (American) wife Cathy about this time and we were amongst the few guests at their small, modest wedding.
It wasn't all just work in the new canning business. Golf was - still is - always a big thing with the Clarks, and we had an annual golf outing, principally for our main customer, John West. We had to invite a few staff and suppliers along to make it seem pukka, of course. Usually the outings were held at Cruden Bay, but this one looks like Banchory:
My playing partners on this occasion were the canning company's ("IFC") then accountant Ernie Watt (left) and our Bank Manager, Bill Nicoll, now sadly deceased and much missed. I knew Ernie from years before when we bought MacFisheries in 1985. I didn't force him out on that occasion, but he left soon after we took over - obviously he didn't fancy working under me.
By the time we took over IFC in 1990, Ernie's feet were well under the table with the then Managing Director, Knud Riis, a Dane. What Ernie seemed to miss was that Knud was getting on in years and his health was failing a little, so, before long, he was moved "upstairs" before retiring completely about 18 months after the Clarks' acquisition of the canning businesses.
Michael Clark was then appointed IFC's new Managing Director and he wanted me to continue to ride shotgun with him, so I was appointed Financial Director - a position Ernie had long coveted. Again, the prospect of reporting to me didn't appeal to him, and soon he was off again. Such is life.
This did, however, leave a large gap in the Finance Dept. I had long since ceased to be a hands-on accountant and we didn't have anybody else that was ready for a bit of promotion, so the only solution was to recruit externally. We eventually found a lovely young graduate, Derek, who took the role on with relish and would have grown in the role over the next few years.
Derek was a squash player too and, by now, I was Captaining Banchory's 3rd team in the Grampian Squash Leagues, and always looking for new recruits, I persuaded Derek to come along to Banchory and play for us. He also joined ASRC at Mannofield and so, any time Derek was down in Aberdeen, we arranged a friendly match there at lunchtime.
Derek was a fairly quiet lad, who had moved down from Inverness and was now renting a flat in Aberdeen, which meant a considerable daily commute for him to Fraserburgh. He liked his cars and whilst he wasn't your typical boy racer, he did like to drive pretty fast. My first real experience of his driving style was one Tuesday evening when he drove me along the north coastal road from Fraserburgh to Macduff, where we had a Grampian Squash League match. It was probably one of the scariest experiences of my life, whizzing round tight bends at incredible speeds on a notoriously dodgy road. I had to tell him to slow down several times, but it seemed to make little difference.
One day, I was sitting in my office at Craigshaw Drive, Altens, Aberdeen - I think this photo may have been taken round about this time:
Derek was due to come down to Aberdeen with some papers that we needed for an important meeting with some Danes who were flying in to Aberdeen that morning. I phoned him just to check and remind, and he said he was running a little late, but would still be there in time for the meeting. The next call I got was from one of our other Managers at Fraserburgh. There had been a dreadful accident and Derek was dead.
We had gone through a long dry period and then we had had a sharp downpour. The Fraserburgh - Aberdeen road was one that was populated by a lot of fish lorries, which inevitably drip some of the slimy contents from the boxes holding the wet fish, and the combination of a bit of rain on top of this made the surface potentially lethal in certain areas. Derek was, no doubt, driving pretty fast and would be trying to make up some time. He was only a few miles out of Fraserburgh when he lost the car on a bend. No more than a few weeks later, the local Council completely re-laid the road surface here and straightened out the bend. To this day, I still shudder every time I drive past this spot.
The following day was Kelly's prize-giving at school and I had planned to take the morning off work to attend with Jo, but I got a phone call from Michael telling me that Derek's parents had driven down from Inverness and were sitting in my office. I was in a quandary - I wanted to go and support Kelly at the prize-giving, but I also knew I had a duty to go and see Derek's distraught parents. In the end, I went to the office and Jo attended the prize-giving.
As you can see, the first half of the 1990's was not always the happiest of times, but it wasn't all gloom and doom. Brother Barry surprised us all by getting married to Helen in 1994 - just before his 40th birthday. Here's the wedding party - and the menu for the meal:
It was also during this period that we set about to make the first of a number of structural changes in the layout of our house. Jo had been scheming for years as to how to make the most of our middle floor in particular. Our living/dining room area was one huge L-shaped room with just one small entrance door and some pretty solid internal and external walls, which didn't allow as much light in to the room as we would have liked.
Jo's idea was to put a wall in between the living and dining areas where the room divider was, then to knock through the wall at the top of the stairs and put a double door entrance in to the living area. At the front of the house, new patio doors to the balcony would be put in as well. Initially I wasn't 100% sure about these changes, but hindsight tells me she was dead right.
The first half of the 90's was also when we discovered that we could potentially extend our squash playing years by taking up doubles. It was Robert Strang Steel who came up with the idea - and donated a trophy that we played for every year - and I have to say what a great idea it was. It meant I was able to carry on playing a game I loved for much more than a decade longer than I would otherwise have been able to, had I just been playing singles. Doubles is great fun too and more sociable than singles. The fact that I was still playing well in to my 65th year - and I'm not the oldest in our group - tells the tale. My new knee has finally kyboshed it now, but it's been a good run.
Here's a memory of the early days of doubles, when I was but a callow youth in my 40's:
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| l-r: Robert Strang Steel (now sadly deceased), Rob Sutherland, my playing partner Ian Dring and me. |
Right in the middle of that decade, there was also Dawn's 40th to celebrate:
Lucy was studying for her degree and planning her wedding through the early 90's, but as the middle of that decade neared, Gary was coming to the end of his 'teens and Kelly had chosen a life of grunge, it seemed. Ross was still relatively innocent, but he didn't remain as cute as this for long:
There were loads of family holidays too - attended by increasingly reduced numbers year on year - but I best save some memories of them for the next blog posting.
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