Saving Gary McKinnon Read Free

rain and coming home soaking wet and sitting around the blazing coal fire while your wet clothes were drying was so comforting. Staring into the flames, I could see images of anything I cared to imagine, and I loved that.
    We would put bread on the end of a very long, large metal fork and hold it over the fire until it was toasted. Before going to bed our mum would bathe us in a large tin bath in front of the fire, which was the absolute centre of our home.
    In those days men in Scotland shied away from showing their affection towards their children. It was rare for dads to hug or to cuddle their children, but I used to sit at my dad’s knee and he would dry my hair with a towel and I’d never want it to end. That was his way of showing his affection.
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    The older children used to teach the younger ones all the skills they had learned. Lorna taught me how to make tablet, a Scottish sweet a bit like fudge, only more brittle.
    Fridges were virtually unheard of then, so we’d put the tablet out on the windowsill in the cold night air and leave it to set. It tasted good even if it was sickly sweet and bad for our teeth.
    We also made toffee but managing to do it without getting your fingers burned was an art and gave a sense of self-satisfaction when you got it right.
    My brother Ian was the eldest of the three and the quietest. Ian could draw well and tried to teach me but I was never anygood. Ian once drew an excellent portrait of our dad sitting in his chair reading the newspaper. My dad didn’t really react and didn’t praise Ian, which I thought was a shame as the drawing was so good.
    Whenever the weather was fine we would wander with our friends and have picnics in the fields and make buttercup and daisy chains. When it was cold we would roast potatoes over the glowing embers of a campfire the older children made. That taste is something I remember to this day.
    We’d pick and eat wild blackberries and no matter how many we ate there were always loads left over to take home for our mums to make jam. Our clothes were saturated with bramble juice but we didn’t care; it was fun and the juice washed out.
    Some of the older people in the allotments would ask the children to help them with their gardening and would give the children carrots and turnips to munch on. They called the turnips tumshies, and we would eat them raw. Can you even imagine children wanting to eat raw turnips nowadays?
    One day, when one of our group helped themselves to a turnip without being given permission, the man from the allotment chased us and we all had to run for our lives. It seemed exciting at the time and the relief of getting away safely made us giggle until the tears rolled down our faces.
    My dad had an allotment and everything he touched seemed to grow to a huge size; he was forever winning prizes for his vegetables and flowers and we always had loads of fresh fruit and vegetables to eat. Perhaps it was because he was brought up on a croft in a pretty bleak part of the world, where unless you had such talents, survival would have been difficult.
    Although I didn’t inherit his green fingers, I did inherit my dad’s love of the outdoors.
    When I was little I felt like a free spirit, as much a part ofnature as the deer that ran in the forest or the eagles that flew in the air. I wouldn’t have traded my upbringing for the world.
    Ever since I was a child I’ve cared desperately about neglected animals. When I was three years old I was playing in the back court in Glasgow. An old lady had put a litter of kittens in the dustbin and put a large rock on top of them and I could hear them crying. Neighbours were standing around looking and shouting at the woman, who was at her window, but no one was doing anything and I couldn’t understand why the adults were all just standing there and wouldn’t save the kittens.
    The older children were at school so couldn’t help me. I used every bit of strength I had to try to remove