| Description | Interview with David Keith recorded on the 10 December 2002 by Jennifer Carter.
Transcript of Interview :
JC Fine, well very nice to have met you David and if we could just start by thinking back to your childhood. You told me came from a seafaring background. The family worked from Newburgh, was it?
DK Yes. Put it this way, most of my male progenitors I suppose were deep-sea, not inshore fishermen. My grandfather and grandmother and three sons, all of whom finished up as master-mariners, but the family tradition goes back much further than that. There are quite a few houses in Newburgh and owned by ex-master-mariners of the Keith family.
JC What exactly is a master-mariner? Is it a captain of a boat or does it mean something slightly different?
DK Well it is a bit higher than a skipper! Put it this way, you have a Board of Trade certificate to command ocean going vessels.
JC Okay. I have got it.
DK Nowadays anyway.
JC So your father was a master-mariner?
DK Yes he was
JC And you were schooled at Newburgh were you?
DK Yes. I went to Newburgh Mathers Public School, up to the age of 12, then I went to Aberdeen, what was then Aberdeen Central Secondary School in Aberdeen. This was the only non-fee paying secondary school available at the time. Entry was by competitive examination of course. There was some fee because I came from the country. It was fairly small, about 5 guineas a year, instead of paying the fees for Gordon's or the Grammar or somewhere like that.
JC In those days the Grammar was considered the more expensive of the two, I believe?
DK Well Gordon's and Grammar were both very much more expensive. I think the original idea in Aberdeen was that they would establish the Central for people who would have difficulty in meeting the fees. They were also fairly advanced in this respect that they took in girls as well. Admittedly there were of 6 classes only 2 were for girls, but this was a major step forward. I think the only alternative for girls, at that time, was the High and there was always St. Megs, and so on.
JC So where was the Central School? Where was it placed?
DK Belmont Street, right opposite Gordon's. It is now an arcade of some sort. It has had a fairly chequered history.
JC A place called the Academy now, which is a shopping arcade.
DK Is that it? Well, when the school was moved up to Hazlehead it became Hazlehead Academy. I never actually attended the Central Secondary School because the war broke out the year I was due to start, 1939, and in fact the next five years until I took my Highers we went backwards and forwards, half-time, with the Grammar School. So probably unique for an aspect of my schooling, although I was a young boy attending Aberdeen Secondary School, in fact my education was carried out in the Grammar School and I actually took my Highers in the hall of Aberdeen High School for Girls!
JC How interesting. Why was that? Was there a shortage of teachers or what?
DK I don't think it was that so much. We did tend to have elderly, or female teachers, far more female secondary teachers than there would have been in the years before, as a lot of them were in the army. But in the 1st World War, my mother told me this, because she was old enough to remember this, the hospitals and everywhere else in south of Britain were so heavily occupied with wounded coming back from the trenches, that eventually they expanded as far up as Aberdeen, and Aberdeen Central School was taken over as a military hospital through World War I. She used to, well I am not quite sure what she did there, but she helped in some way.
JC If it was anything like my mother, her war work during World War was polishing the matron's copper kettle !
DK Well when the 2nd World War started, knowing the military mind, as you can imagine, they promptly did everything they had done for the 1st World War, and I think for most of the war the building stood empty while we did Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, along with the Grammar School in the Grammar building. It didn't worry us particularly.
JC But that meant you only got in effect, half a schooling !
DK Oh no.
JC What happened the other days?
DK The day lasted from 9 - 5 pm, and the reputation of the Central in those days was very much of a cram shop and they made damned sure that we had enough work to keep us going in between .
JC So you went home with a good pile of homework?
DK Oh, yes, yes. And of course, since you were always told that you were on sufferance, you were only there as long as you kept up! You were weeded out at the end of every year, quite vigorously, those who couldn't pass the exam. In fact some were weeded out at end of each term!
JC Gosh, a very ruthless system.
DK Yes, indeed. But then it was being carried out at the public expense! A very notable headmaster, Jock Robertson he was called, author of Robertson's Shilling Arithmetic.
JC Splendid
DK It was quite a thing in those days, it was used in the schools all over Scotland. You know the sort of thing, if you are filling a tank at the rate of 100 gallons a minute, and there is a hole in the bottom, how long does it take to fill the tank? Or alternatively plug the hole, of course!
JC And was school discipline fairly tough in those days. I mean were you hit around with the "tawse" or ..
DK Yes. Well it varied. Most of the teachers were fairly reasonable. Pretty much like nowadays. There was and always has been teacher who will abuse the use of the "tawse". There was one maths teacher who looking back on it, I think he was terrified, because he knew he was going to be called up to the army, you know, he was in a state of perpetual fear and he dealt about him with a fairly firm hand. Unfortunately he was a maths teacher, and maths was not my strong point, but there is this to it, as I think he got me through Higher Maths, because he explained everything twice, the third time he belted you! When it came to Geometry, I had learned everything so meticulously, maths in those days was divided into Algebra and Geometry, and this way you had to state the theorem then Nucleus and deduce a result. Well I knew the theorems word perfect and jotting down one or two miscellaneous facts about them, the kind hearted examiner put me through Higher Maths!. So I suppose I should be grateful to this teacher. But I am not!
JC So you finished your schooling with Highers of the age of about 17 would that ?
DK 15, nearly 16.
JC And went straight up to University?
DK I went straight to University from there. The idea was that University was .. well of course there was plenty of spaces, because at the age of 18 when most people would have gone into university, they were being called up, and going straight into the army. The idea was that if I got a year in then I would have a better chance of getting back in again after, as I would be called up at 18.
JC What did you feel about that, I mean, it was an odd way to contemplate your university career in a sense? Did it seem to you to be a sort of fun-time period or a continuation of school indeed?
DK I think so, yes. In fact we covered the work so thoroughly at the Central in the first year it was a dawdle, and I didn't have to do much work at all. There wasn't much of a social life either.
JC No, because things were very quite I imagine. Were boys, men, very much in the minority compares with women students?
DK Yes. I think the English class there was something like 10 of us out of a class of 120, and three of those would have been wounded, a couple of "Conshies", sorry Conscientious Objectors.
JC So that must have been a very strange environment indeed. Do you remember who taught you in English in those days?
DK Well there was the professor, Parker?
JC Did he lecture to the first year class?
DK No.
JC Not in the old tradition that the professor takes the first year class?
DK I am afraid that I really can't remember. I do remember detesting the English language part then.
JC Which was compulsory I presume?
DK Oh yes.
JC Did you do any other subjects in first year?
DK I must have done. I did Latin and French . There had been 4, but I can't remember the fourth. Perhaps History?
JC Maybe. But you were aiming at that time, long term in a degree in English and French?
DK I don't really know what I was aiming at, quite honestly. My mother had been a pupil teacher, she had been very keen on education. In fact the whole family were and whether she ever thought I was going to "wag my heid" in the pulpit or not I don't know. Even at that age it seemed to me to be unlikely, and of course it was perfectly obvious that I was going to go into the Infantry almost certainly. In fact I very much preferred going into the infantry rather than going into a tin box of a tank. Ones survival prospect didn't really loom all that great. The war had been going on practically all my growing up life. I had been learning to kill German's since I was what - 12. At the age of 18, my education was further processed by doing it for real. Then I found myself faced with an indefinite period. We were taken in for ??? in those days, and more or less killing anyone we were pointing at. You know it was Yugoslavs up in the northern borders of Italy, but at one time we found ourselves shooting up some Poles that had become more or less bandits in the South of Italy and we were sent to clear them out. Which we did and it was a case of do what were told and get on with it. It didn't strike us as being anything out of the way. You know, that was the way the world was. And of course as a boy I was had always been keen on guns and so on and shooting was my hobby.
JC I see, you actually had handled guns before you went into the army.
DK Oh yes indeed. Starting with an air-rifle sort of thing and working up to a Four-ten, then a 12 bore.
JC Were you a target shooter, or did you shoot birds and things.
DK No. I shot for the pot rather. Rabbits and so on. Didn't shoot anything that I couldn't eat. It was too expensive to do that. A 12 bore cartridge cost 6d.
JC Was that an unusual hobby for a boy in those days?
DK Yes. Then as now, most boys were playing games with each other round about the place. My shooting started with an airgun while I was at Primary school. This was strictly confined to the garden. By the time I was graduated to a shotgun I was 16, which was the minimum legal age. By the time I was "out of synch" with my peers, most of whom would have left school at 14 and become apprentices or delivery boys or some such. Shooting was fairly unusual but not outstandingly so and those who were really keen would have been looking to becoming gamekeepers or (rabbit) trappers.
JC Where you were walking on the fields with your gun, picking up stuff for the pot.
DK Yes, along the beach. I had a dog of course.
JC So tell me about moving into the army. You had a sort of set idea that this was what you were going to do. Your academic year ended in the summer of '44, is that right and you went straight up to the Gordon Highlander's Barracks.
DK Yes, that is right. I was actually called up to Gordon Highlander Barracks. It was still called that, but it was in fact the Headquarters of the No. 9 Infantry training unit, where we did our basic training. We did 6 months basic training. In fact, again, I had done all that already because I had been in the Army Cadets and had spent a year in the Senior Training Corps, which was what they called the UTC at that time. It was a branch of the Home Guard, so in case of invasion we would have been in the front line. I think we all rather hoped that we would be, although looking back I am quite pleased that we didn't have to face German paratroopers at the age of 17!
JC So you got your six months induction with the Gordon Highlanders ..
DK Six weeks, and ten weeks company training, which was at King's Links, where the Golf Driving Range is now. Then went to the Battalion for battalion training. By that time the war had finished, so I was posted to Trieste, where the London Scottish were at the time. The London Scottish were a daughter battalion of the Gordon Highlanders, (i.e. a Territorial Army Reserve Batttalion of men who trained at weekends and at summer camps while holding civilian jobs, and with a small permanent staff supplied by the Gordons. In 1939 such battalions were embodied as full active service units and were in every respect equal to regulars). I was with them till they broke up.
JC So you had a certain amount of active service as it were after the official end of hostilities.
DK Oh yes, there was still a lot of shooting going on all over the world, especially in the more junglier parts of the area. Quite a lot in Europe as well. You never heard about, of course.
JC Well I remember my brother had a long spell in Greece, you know, shooting up Germans. So did you have a choice about when you came out of the army? Or did you just have to wait until your term came as it were?
DK No. You waited until your de-mob number came up. You all had a number and the people who had been in a long time obviously got out first.
JC So you had to wait until. ..when did they release you?
DK Well I was in for three years. Which was fair enough.
JC Quite a slice of one's life though, eh?
DK Well I quite enjoyed it. I would have stayed!
JC Did you think of staying in the army as a career?
DK Yes I did.
JC Applying for a commission and so on?
DK Well yes, but family circumstances… my sister was drowned at Newburgh. My mother was pretty cut-up. My father was in Singapore at that time. He was in war department fleet. So somebody had to go back. So I thought, fair enough, I will go back and do three years at university. I didn't take it terribly seriously! Thought I would look around a bit and see what happened after that.
JC So you had an automatic readmission to university, because you had done first year and passed everything.
DK Not only that, part of it was that we got quite a generous army grant. It paid our fees and we got £184 a year, which was a lot of money.
JC You could live on that?
DK Oh, yes.
JC So did you live at home, or did you live in digs in Aberdeen, or what?
DK In digs in Aberdeen.
JC Which meant you could get home easily to Newburgh?
DK Yes, when the money ran short, I walked out along the beach.
JC Goodness, you walked about 12 miles, or whatever it is?
DK It is about 10 along the beach, and about 12½ by road. It's probably a bit less since they have straightened the road out. But depending on the night, if it was a particularly dark night, you know if you go to a dance or something like that, then you would walk a girl home to Garthdee or somewhere like that, and then find you had to get home to Newburgh. Quite, but if it is a really dark night, you wouldn't want to come along the beach. Or if it was high tide ! So you walked out along the road. We were used to it.
JC I suppose so. It seems almost bizarre now. I can't imagine any students doing that now, but then you took it just for granted.
DK Yes, I didn't do it for fun. Well in fact, sometimes I did do it for fun. I walked out along the beach on a Sunday. Walked out for a meal with my grandmother, and walked back.
JC Yes I have done that sometimes. Walked up to eat a Newburgh and come back. I only walked one way! Okay, well sort of digs did you stay in town then? Did you have family connections, or did you just hire digs?
DK No,no. I had family connections. In fact my mother owned a two-roomed flat in Jasmine Terrace, and I lived there. Above a shop.
JC Still quite a student area that.
DK Yes, and it was very convenient.
JC So you were there the whole of your second period at university.
DK Yes.
JC On your own, or with others.
DK No on my own. It was just two rooms.
JC Okay and what was it like this time socially. You said that during your first year at university, you know, there was this curious imbalance between men and female students and there wasn't much social life. You know it was war time and so on. Was it very different when you came back?
DK Oh completely different. For a start I think the University life had got off with a bang the minute we came back, and the ex-service students, of course, had a bit more money and were able to go out a bit, and the girls were more interested in them. I mean, I was small and rather ingenuous at the age of 16, and not the least interesting to the august young ladies, many of whom were wearing these red togas. But, yes, things had changed drastically when we came back.
JC You came back with a bigger ex-service cohort?
DK Oh yes. Most of the men there and the numbers, but the women still seemed to outnumber the men, but I think it was about 60/40 speaking from memory. Certainly there were a lot of men there, and of course there people more or less of your own type. You know, had been about a bit.
JC And were people sort of, in a sense, seeking to have a good time at university, after having been in the war. There was an element of sort of not as violent as the 1920's, but the seem sort of feel.
DK Yes. Thank God that is over, let's enjoy ourselves, that sort of thing. May I point out that my age group were not heroes returning after four years of hell in the trenches as in 1918. Most of the men who had done the real fighting had come out, done their three years at university and gone on by the time we arrived. Not all, of course. I remember one, Sandy Dale, who had taken part in the Swordfish attack on the Bismarck. We were young men who had had several fairly exciting, not too arduous and not too dangerous years and were kicking up our heels after being released from military discipline. There were also some, like one chap I knew who spent three years as an Army Pay Corps Clerk in Aldershot and felt it had been a complete waste of time.
JC So you went back to studying English as your main interest. But this time not with a language, but with Psychology? Was that right?
DK That is right. Psych. looked like the coming thing in those days. Brave new world and all the rest of it.
JC Was this under Professor Rex Knight? Was he around then?
DK I still have a copy of Knight & Knight's Modern Introduction to Psychology lying around somewhere! It was very good.
JC I gather he was very charismatic teacher I am told.
DK He was a splendid teacher. Don't know how good a psychologist he was, but he was a good teacher! A damned good teacher. They reckoned his wife was the brains of the combination!
JC Yes. Although not such a good teacher. I have been told that she simply read out her lectures!
DK That's right. She was rather austere.
JC He was dead by the time I came, but I knew her. So you did English and Psych. for joint honours, is that right?
DK Yes, that's right.
JC And enjoyed it academically. Or was it very much secondary to your social life?
DK About 50/50 I think ! I did enough to pass the exams and that was about it!
JC So you weren't what I call a committed scholar!
DK Oh, no, no. Certainly not. That came later!
JC What class of degree did your get, can I ask?
DK Third, I am afraid!
JC You got a third. That's interesting. Were you disappointed about that, or was it what you expected?
DK Yes, I thought I had done enough to get a second! Obviously I had mis-calculated!
JC So you emerged as a graduate with your degree in.. I have lost track of the years now. In 1951 is that right?
DK Yes, that's right.
JC And started looking for a job. Or had you one already?
DK Oh well I had done all sorts of jobs during the 3 years. I acted as a postman, a postal sorter at Xmas. At Easter you were putting in trees for the Forestry department, and all summer I worked as a ghillie at Newburgh. The River Ythan was, still is, an outstanding fishing river, for Sea Trout. A few Grouse and so on. Actually I could row a boat before I could ride a bike. I said my old man was a merchant navy master, he was beached during the slump, in the late '20's sort of thing. Came back to Newburgh and opened a shop, and to eek things out, he acted as a pilot to Newburgh. There were trawler-sized boats going up and down, a couple hundred ton cargo boats going up to the quay there. I remember one year, this had been before I went to Aberdeen University, he had injured his arm, he was also signalman on the life boat. Injured his arm quite badly, rowing him up the river setting up these beacons for the ships coming in. It is a sand bank entrance, and it changes, every tide more or else. So at the age of 10 I was able to row him about the river.
JC So did you take these holiday jobs from necessity or for interest. You needed it to make ends meet, or ..both?
DK No, I really enjoyed it. After spending some years basically in the open air, I was an infantryman all the time. I finished up as standard sergeant, acting company sergeant-major, in fact, when I left, and I didn't take all that kindly to being … . ? Arts wasn't so bad, you were only about three hours a day shut in ?servi?. You would spend a certain amount of time studying and I didn't take all that kindly to it. I used to spend all my time mooching around Aberdeen, just exercising myself. I joined the Fencing Club. I joined the Boxing Club originally, but there again part of the social life was the hop at the Union on a Saturday night. Not much fun seeing a girl home if you had loops sticking out alongside your ears somewhere! So I switched to fencing!
JC Interesting. Yes, I can very much imagine what your, you know, … I can understand what you are saying, that after you know a very active life for several years, getting back to your books and being almost a schoolboy again wasn't attractive to you. So you fenced and you boxed for a time, you did these active field sports. Did you take much part in other student activity. Political or whatever societies?
DK Not political. Yes, I was in the ?PSYCH? society. I had been in about three or four at one time. The Literary Society. I was Captain of the Fencing Club, finally. Secretary of one, Treasurer of another, you know, that sort of thing. A fair bit.
JC So you were a pretty active student in that sense?
DK Oh, yes, socially anyway!
JC Yes, committed to students things, but not politically interested at all?
DK Not really. I was vaguely anti-socialist, because the socialists struck me as being a bunch of .. They weren't the sort of people I got on with.
JC They were contrary to your background.
DK That was part of it, but there is also this element of .. ?Morphism? was not encouraged ? in the battalions? put it that way, you know. I finished up with a rather dog-matic if not pig-headed..
JC RSM?
DK No, I was only acting as a CSM, which is a very much lower grade! The RSM is the Centurian equivalent!
JC So your background, in a political sense, would have been conservative with a small C?
DK Yes
JC Or would you have been of a Liberal inclination? I mean capital L.
DK Certainly my family's tradition would have been Liberal.
JC That is what I was wondering.
DK The Liberals had ceased to exist, and although at one time the saying goes in the north-east of Scotland, "If you put a blue (Liberal) ribbon round a stook of corn and people would vote for it." It was very much a Liberal stronghold. The Liberal had died away and the Conservatives were a not very attractive alternative, and the… I don't know how to put this without sounding quite snobbish, the Socialists seemed to be the representatives of the mob, rather than of the people. Do you following the distinction I make there? We weren't, certainly not officer class, non-commissioned class if you would like to put it, but I think the idea of a fair days work for a fair days pay was heavily engrained, and you spent more time doing a job properly, than you did trying to avoid it and getting more money for it. That was the idea.
JC That was a brief interruption whilst the interviewer had a coughing fit! Now we are resuming. Yes I understood very well what you were telling me about your personal political outlook and where you stood then in the early '50's. Do you have any sort of recollection about what other people thought then. I mean were you conscious that you were in a minority, or that your views were an average one. How interested were students in public issues at all?
DK I find it difficult to recall. There were people who were interested in that sort of thing. You notice nowadays many of our leading politicians start off at school, the sort of… as far as I can see, it is a sort of career decision on their part. I didn't know that many people who had that particular career ambition.
JC What about the nuclear threat and so forth. Was that something that was prominent in University.
DK No. Not one every heard it discussed. In fact my daughter, who you have also interviewed, used to take part in going down to Glasgow and on the stroke of 12 everyone lies down and dies in Buchanan Street! But there would have been no anti-nuclear in the sergeant's mess at the Gordon Highlander's. The Americans wanted to keep the British Navy out of Far-Eastern waters because they didn't want Britain to resume political hegemony there but it was perfectly obvious that they would be delighted to accept the help of the ground troops, and estimates of casualties which we knew about, were something like 10 million troops to take Japan and hold it down. We reckoned that we were going to be. I think each one of us said, I am going to be one of these troops. So the Atom bomb seemed like a damned good idea. They were asking for it and they got it. So this was the attitude in those days. Looking back on it I can't imagine why the Americans couldn't just have dropped the damned thing on an island somewhere in Tokyo bay and vaporised that as a demonstration.
JC I have always thought probably because they were unsure of it working, but I many be wrong! They tried it out in the desert of course.
DK They weren't sure, when they set the first one off, that they weren't going to start off a chain reaction.
JC I think they probably didn't do it as a demonstration in case the demonstration went wrong!
DK Well possibly. You have heard the word of the chap who dropped it - no regrets at all. We felt like that, most of us.
JC So coming back to other aspects of student life in those days. The University was still relatively small, I suppose we are talking about a community of about 15 hundred?
DK Yes, something like that and most of them in the Arts.
JC And did you feel that you, as it were, that you knew nearly everybody, or were you only interested in your own group of friends and associates in the various clubs and societies?
DK Well, I would say that we knew just about everyone, certainly in our own year, and perhaps the year following. It is a three or four year cycle, and you intended not to know the young people coming in. And of course we had less in common with the 18 year olds at that time, as I was what - 23.
JC What about in other Faculties. Did you have friends, let us say Medics, because some of them would have been older too.
DK That was mainly through sport, but we had friends of course from school days. One of my close friends was a medical student. Our hours were different, our location was different. We met in the Union. The Arts students had a fairly easy time as regards attending classes. Something like three hours a day…..
JC Yes, you were saying that you did have friends in Faculties other than Arts, but mainly perhaps based on sports and based on school links. Yes?
DK Yes, playing a game of Bridge in the Pavilion and that sort of thing, and the Union.
JC What were your main as it were student haunts? Did you spend a lot of time in the Library socially as well as academically?
DK No. The Library hours I thought were pretty pathetic. Extremely poor. You couldn't get any of the books you wanted ever. You couldn't really afford to buy expensive books. There was a lot of buying of second-hand books, and there still is no doubt, but you could not get anything from the Library. That was it basically. The Library staff were not really all that helpful I found.
JC So what did you do for getting your reading matter? Buy second-hand books and read mainly at home?
DK Always, always.
JC How interesting.
DK But the haunts otherwise, there was Jack's or the Pavilion at King's or the Union. You could always guarantee that you could get a Bridge game at the Union. You couldn't always guarantee that you could get one at the Pavilion.
JC The Pavilion had a social area then as well as a sporting section?
DK Yes, upstairs above the swimming pool. Can't remember if you could get a cup of coffee. Not sure if you did not .
JC But you could go there in between classes and relax with friends, have a game of Bridge?
DK Well it finished up with, I think, only the Bridge players going there!
JC So the game was very popular amongst the young then?
DK Oh yes. Again, I think partly a career move, like playing golf . The Medics tend to all go in for golf.
JC That must have been about the time when Ian Macleod wrote his book about Bridge, I think. Did you play Golf as well?
DK No.
JC No you didn't take that particular career move? No.
DK I thought it was a good walk spoiled! I would much sooner have my dog. Sometimes regret it.
JC If you wanted to take a meal in University premises at King's, it was Jack's Café or was there food in the Elphinstone then or not?
DK No, just Jack's. A pie or something. There were quite a lot of little restaurants where you could get a pie, or a pie and beans.
JC Actually around the King's area?
DK No. You had to back into Aberdeen itself.
JC I had the impression that Jack's was the only food outlet. Had the monopoly!
DK Not quite and it wasn't all that much. It was only a re-heated pie basically.
JC And what about the pubs. Were the ones around the University much frequented? The Machar, the Beastie?
DK Some people went to Ma Cameron's, but most people went just round the corner. I forget - McBryan's? It was the main centre there, but it was small.
JC Was there a lot of drinking among students, because you said the ex-service men, particularly, of course had more money.
DK Beer yes, but I wouldn't have though there was much in the way of spirits. A fair amount of beer. You could buy a beer in the Union.
JC And any drunks, or not?
DK No.
JC Not a feature of your time at all.
DK I didn't know anything at all about drunks. If it occurred at all …..
JC Did you have any student contemporaries who have become interesting since. I mean people who you have thought, oh I was at university with him!
DK Well, when I was being interviewed for Logie Coldstone, I was surprised to find that a pal of mine was the Director Designate, Jimmy Michie. So, I hadn't realised this at the time. So I don't suppose it did me any harm, getting the job!
JC That was good deal later in your career, wasn't it, because after you graduated you went into a commercial firm and worked in Borneo for a time.
DK That's right.
JC And it was only much later, 10 years later, that you came back to Aberdeen to train as a teacher.
DK Yes, that's right.
JC And then had your long career in primary school teaching.
DK Yes, I didn't intend to spend much time in teaching, but in fact my wife and I intended going out to Australia, but we decided it was a good thing to have some sort of career behind you, rather than having spent a few years on what the Australians call the "Islands". So I said, okay, I will do a bit of teaching, and if I am doing it, I will do it properly and I will get a teaching course. So I found to my astonishment that they were dead short of teachers at the time, as they always appear to be, and the wages weren't all that bad. They had upped them quite a bit and they gave quite a generous grant the first year and they told us, although it wasn't mandatory, that you were expected to do two years to repay your training. So I said alright we will do that. But then we got married, I was left the house in Newburgh, where I had been brought up, and I decided I liked teaching and Australia began to recede.
JC And you must have been good at it, as you ended up as Head Teacher for most of your career?
DK Well, yes. I think I was a good enough Head Teacher. I was more interested in being my own boss really, and it was only towards the very end that I ceased being a teaching Head. I would have hated being a full time administrator.
JC The Teacher Training College, in Aberdeen, to which you came back to get your educational qualification, you told me it was the "old" TC, down in the centre of town. What was it like as a course, because by then your were quite a mature man!
DK I thought it was dreadful!
JC You thought it was dreadful, like the rest of the world! Something you had to go through.
DK Yes, quite. In fact we objected going through! We were one of the first years where an Honours graduate had to go through a course. You were able to go and teach your own subject when you left university. We didn't like it one bit! In fact, the only chap there I had much time for was Scotland. I was lucky enough to be in his tutorial group.
JC Yes, because subsequently he was Principal of the college.
DK He was, he had just become Principal at that time. He was dragging the whole thing into the 20th Century! A bit late! As it was half-way through the 20th Century!
JC So as even compared with University it seemed fairly" babyish", did it to you?
DK Oh yes, yes.
JC And did you get a grant for going there?
DK Yes I did. I was surprised and delighted to find out that I did. I could have managed it without.
JC Well, okay. That's all been extremely interesting to me and told us a lot about your student days. Is there anything we haven't covered that you think we should have done. Aspects of your university life or your teaching training life?
DK Could I say that the TC, the year I spent there I thought was pathetic. The thought of one chap that inspired me was a Dr. Pratt. I don't know if you have heard of him. He was technical, of some sort, and, remember the days of the old Bell & Howell projectors, well he was showing us how to use one for some reason or other, and he said " that very often when you start up you will find you are getting nothing at all, that is because you haven't opened the shutter at the front". He said "now when you leave here, you are male, and you will be expected to know everything about all the equipment that goes on, and you may find yourself the only man in a whole lot of women, and they will say "that's your job". If you are called to someone who cannot get the thing to work, he said "Don't just do what I have done and flick the shutter open, because you have destroyed the teachers control of that class, possibly forever". He said look at it and say "ah now this a bit tricky, and yes that should do it now!" That sort of thing, and the rest of it.
JC What a nice piece of psychology.
DK Yes, I thought well that is quite sound. The speech training in particular was dreadful. .One of the teachers, lecturers, was a speech defective herself! She certainly had no control over the mechanism she was trying to use! I felt like taking it from her. For God sake woman! I know it is pathetic, but to be apologetic for it! And again if you were ex-service you were very thoroughly accustomed to people having the wool pulled over your eyes. When you go straight up from school you do tend to think that people know what they are doing, but, if you pardon the expression, we had met "bull-shit" merchants before, and really trying to pull the wool over, a bunch of fairly mature, fairly experienced people, it was silly. It just didn't work with us. It may have affected our view on the whole process. I don't think it was a year well spent, however, the point I started off to make was that I started off as a Secondary teacher in a Junior Secondary school, and I decided that I was dissatisfied with the education being purveyed to my own brats. So I would look for a school on my own, and I went looking carefully for selected courses, I had about two foolscap pages, in my CV, of the courses, what my courses were that I had attended, and I had to say that these courses which were funded by the Education system or the Dick Bequest, and they were given by the College, and they were excellent. But you tended to pick your course and to pick your lecturer. So those I thought were very good, and by the that time Mr. Scotland had been in the saddle a while, and I think he had booted out a lot of the refuse! Encouraged them to aspire elsewhere!
JC I was very interested to hear that you were supported by the Dick Bequest, because that still goes on. You had several grants from them did you?
DK Yes, I did. I never had the audacity to apply for a 3 months during the summer holidays in France, which I know some people did.
JC And got it?
DK Yes, some did. In the early days. It was just a holiday! But the Dick Bequest paid for my travelling backwards and forwards to Elgin in a fairly late stage in my career, to take an "O" level for example in computing!
JC Excellent.
DK And I did an "O" level course in Arts Sciences and they paid for that.
JC Well it is a splendid institution for Aberdeenshire and wherever else it covers, but not the city.
DK I got one or two things for the school. I couldn't really remember, but I thought it was very good.
JC Great. Anything else we have missed then?
DK Not that I can think of.
JC I hadn't dared ask you about religious life in the University and when it existed in your experience. Whether people went to the chapel? Bet you didn't know!.
DK I am afraid I wouldn't know!
JC I didn't think you would, that's why I didn't ask!
DK I remember when I was stationed in Trieste they held a Drum-head service. Well now we were two battalion's at that time stationed at the barracks at Trieste, and we were just going down, it was a 1st of May march, we were going down to overawe the population of the Yugoslavs, and there were something like 12 hundred infantry men there. All lined up. We were in the Protestants in the front, the London Irish were the other battalion, sharing a barrack with us. We all lined up in front of our respective padry, and we were all invited out to partake of the body and blood of the Lord of Peace, you know. I joined the army to please Churchill I suppose, I joined the church to please my mother, I joined the Masons to please my uncle, although I have not back near any of them since! But I thought I am standing here I have 50 rounds of small arms ammunition, I have short-magazine Lee-Enfield rifle; I have an 18 inch bayonet; I have two hand grenades and couple of Bren-gun magazines; I have been taught how use my tin hat and my gully-knife and my boot heels, for that matter, as offensive weapons, so what the hell am I doing here listening to the lecture on the Prince of Peace! So when we were told, would the communicants of the Church of Scotland come to attention, turn smartly to your right, march out and partake of the body and blood of Christ, on this occasion I decided I would please myself! To hell with this!
JC Do you incidently know who was Principal of the University when you were a student? Did he impinge at all on you?
DK I can't remember. I would have known at the time.
JC You would have known who he was at the time?
DK Oh yes. Another chap I remember, Col. Butchart.
JC Yes the Secretary.
DK I remember him alright. Nice old boy. But that was through the senior Training Corps.
JC Well thank you very much indeed. It has been a very interesting chat. I have enjoyed it- apart from having a coughing fit in the middle! Thank you so much.
End of Interview.
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