Last week we left author Alan Temperley shortly after his move to Galloway from the far north of Scotland to teach English at Kirkcudbright Academy.
Sunderland-born Alan had previously spent nine years heading the English department at Farr Secondary School, whose Sutherland catchment included Strathnaver – the county’s widest and most fertile glen.
In the early 19th century, readers may know, it notoriously became an economic target for the Duke of Sutherland and his infamous factor Patrick Sellar, who decided to replace people with sheep.
The strath was forcibly emptied of its inhabitants – more than 2,000 souls in all – in one of the most inhuman of all the Clearances.
Folk memories of those families displaced to the coast tumbled down the generations, some captured in Alan’s book Tales of the North Coast, which was published in 1977.
The stories were collected by pupils through an oral history project Alan devised to preserve them before their elderly owners passed away.
His arrival at Kirkcudbright coincided with the book’s publication – and its immediate success got him wondering if he could do something similar here.
“I asked the school if they would be interested in doing the same sort of thing – but nobody wanted to know,” he tells me with a shrug.
“At that time Tales of the North Coast was being reviewed everywhere and doing better than anyone could have guessed.
“Yet no-one here seemed interested – so I decided to do it all myself.
“I was only at Kirkcudbright for a year and gave up the job to work on Tales of Galloway.
“I drove round the country in my little Morris Minor collecting all these stories.
“One person I met was Elspeth Cooper MBE, who lived at the square in Auchencairn.
“She was a remarkable woman and had a lot of tales, one of which she told to the children in Kelton Kirk.
“Elspeth had been told it many years before by close family friend, Marjorie Dunn.
“She was the great grand-daughter of the archivist and collector Joseph Train, a contemporary of and supplier of tales to Sir Walter Scott.
“When Miss Dunn was a girl she had been told this story by an old field worker called Janet Tait, who by then was crippled with age.
“The tale had been passed down through Janet’s family from around 1580 and Joseph Train had recorded it.”
I almost expect Alan to ask if I’m sitting comfortably as he proceeds to give me a shortened version of ancient oral history, now one of his Tales of Galloway.
“There was this herd boy living in a poor little shack, a place, I believe, close to where Castle Douglas Golf Club is today,” he begins.
“He was looking after the flock at Yuletide and the master told him to be sure to have the sheep in as there were wild animals about.
“But after gathering them the boy discovered that he had lost a ewe and despite searching high and low could not find it anywhere.
“Freezing cold he returned to his hut and the fire.
“But he was very worried about this lost ewe and decided to go back out to look again.
“Then he remembered that the well of St Ringan – St Ninian – was nearby.
“He was the saint to whom people sometimes would go if they had lost things.
“The boy was hungry and had nothing as an offering except a bowl of brose.
“He set it on the stone edge of the well and prayed and waited, but nothing happened.
“Then just as he was walking away he heard a little noise.
“He turned round and saw this old ragged man eating his bowl of brose.
“‘You’re looking gey worried’ the man said.
“He then told the boy he would find the ewe in a sheugh where the saugh (willow) trees bloom first in the spring.
“They went together to the place and there the ewe was, just where he said it would be, caught fast in briers down in the muddy and icy ditch.
“The shepherd boy could not get it out so the old man jumped down and gave him a hand.
“Between them they got it to the edge but the boy being young did not have the strength to carry it.
“So the old man threw the exhausted sheep over his shoulders, carried it back to the hut and laid it down beside the fire.
“The boy wanted to repay him in some way.
“‘I have no more food, but you are welcome to bide at the fire,’ he said.
“The old man replied ‘Thank you but I cannot, I must be on my way or I’ll be late.’
“‘Late?’ said the boy. ‘Late? Where on earth are you going at this time of night? It’s nearly midnight.’
“And the old man replied: ‘Where? Why, Bethlehem, of course! Where else would I be on Christmas night?’
“The boy was tending the fire and when he looked round the old man was gone.
“He ran to the door but all he saw was a silver trail in the night sky heading east.”
Listening to this echo from old Scotland, I ask Alan if he knows anything about the location of the well.
“It’s reputed to be somewhere round the entrance to the golf club,” he tells me.
“And the saughs in the story were supposed to be somewhere out on the course.
“I believe there’s a hollow there even yet.
“The boy was the ancestor of that old field worker.
“His story was passed on to Elspeth by Janet Tait and then on to me.”
When the Tales of Galloway book came out, Alan did temporary teaching for a while.
“I was at St Joe’s, Dumfries High School, Castle Douglas, Maxwellton, Dalbeattie – I took anything available because I needed the money,” he says.
In 1985, Alan informs me, much needed stability materialised courtesy of Hamilton College, where he was appointed principal teacher of English – a posting which was to last a decade.
“Money had never really mattered to me but I finally had a steady income,” he says.
“I loved having access to Glasgow – it’s a wonderful city.
“I was in my fifties and I bought my first house – a flat in Lanark.
“It was a lovely modern place but the noise from the neighbours drove me frantic.
“I remember once sitting in the middle of the floor crying my eyes out.
“There were children coming and going the whole time and I was very badly affected.
“When the back door banged it bounced the picture on my wall.
“I absolutely hated it – and seriously considered sleeping in a tent in a field on the way back from Hamilton.”
Hamilton College, I learn, was a very religious Brethren school with a very strict Christian ethos.
“The education was simple, discipline was simple and values were traditional,” Alan explains.
“It was founded in 1983 by a man called Charles Oxley.
“He had very strong religious beliefs.
“When Hamilton College came up for sale in 1982 nobody wanted it – and Charles Oxley snapped it up for £250,000.
“The college was a huge place right next to Hamilton racecourse with tennis courts, games hall, gym, lawns and woods.
“People objected to him buying it and he only had a little money at the start.
“Big lads of 15 or 16 were squashed behind these little desks with ink wells and tip up seats.
“It was a fee paying school and he brought in teachers and it succeeded. I was not expected to be religious – all they asked was that I would not seek to undermine their philosophy, which was fine by me.
“The teachers were enthusiastic and it was a happy place to be. You did not get any of the confrontations you got elsewhere.
“Every morning at assembly there would be a religious service, a prayer, a hymn, a bible reading, a brief talk on a religious topic, then notices of what was happening that day.”
Alan’s arrival at Hamilton, he recounts, coincided with completion of another book which, just as with Tales of the North Coast, began life at Bettyhill in Sutherland.
“Years previously I had got 11 boys in my English class at Farr Secondary School each to write a chapter for the book,” he smiles.
“At Hamilton College I read the class the story then told them I needed a title.
“They came up with suggestions, which were whittled down to two.
“Then they voted on which one it should be.
“I can’t remember what the other one was but they voted strongly for Murdo’s War – so that’s what it was called.”
I am familiar with the book, whose main character is 14-year-old Sutherland laddie Murdo Mackay.
Set in wartime, in echoes of Buchan’s The 39 Steps, Murdo uncovers a plot by Nazi Germany to smuggle in crates of machine guns and explosives by boat then has to flee for his life through the wilds of Scotland to alert the authorities.
“The book was a great success and went transatlantic,” Alan smiles. “New York Libraries voted it the number one book of the year.”
Alan was invited to an awards ceremony in the city but declined.
“They did offer to pay my fare, but not my accommodation, so I did not go,” he said.
Alan is rueful about his restless earlier years, during which he rented rooms, stayed with friends and sometimes found himself with nowhere to go.
“I had a hand-to-mouth existence which went on for a long time,” he tells me frankly.
“For 10 years after leaving the sea, from 1975 until 1985, my life was in disarray and I had no home of my own.
“A lot of my stuff went into storage at Wick.
“But the rain got into it and much of it, including my photographic collection, was destroyed.
“For most of that time Jean Slaven, the kindest of friends whom I had known for several years, gave me a home in the spacious schoolhouse where I live now.
“She was head teacher of Rhonehouse School.”
Alan takes especial pride in one book, Harry and the Wrinklies, which was serialised on STV and then CITV from 2000-2002.
In an age of talentless celebrities bragging about their invariably talentless lives, it is refreshing to listen to someone genuinely modest about their achievements.
“I am not big-headed, but perhaps I do have a little bit of talent for writing,” Alan says.
“Harry and the Wrinklies is by a mile my best-known book.
“I took a year out of work at Hamilton College to write it and sold my flat to get money to live on.
“The Scottish Arts Council gave me a second writing grant and my employer helped also.
“I stayed in the house of a seagoing friend in Carnoustie – he died in the Philippines – then with lifelong friends in Bristol.
“I had an eminent editor and did rewriting after rewriting.
“It became a best-seller, was widely translated and was runner-up for the Whitbread Prize.
“It was published a few months before the first Harry Potter, so there was no stealing of a name!”
Telling me about the book, it’s clear Alan takes great joy in the dottery criminals – the Wrinklies – its pages contain.
“It’s about a boy, Harry, whose parents are dead and he goes to stay with great-aunts at their home, Lag Hall,” he chuckles.
“They are part of a criminal gang made up of old people – four men, four women – who all love Harry to bits and he loves being there.
“My book was televised and they used my story for the first four episodes, then used my same characters for another 15.
“Now they are planning a movie based on the book – the actor and comedian Stephen Mangan is writing the screenplay.
“I will get some money for it – which will be a joy.”
Another of Alan’s children’s books, the Magician of Samarkand, was made into a three-part series for the BBC’s Jackanory in 2006.
“Ben Kingsley, the Oscar winner for Gandhi, played the lead in it,” Alan says.
“It won first prize in the World Television Awards for a children’s programme.
“It was my story, characters, settings and imagination – but it was the BBC boffins who had the jollies in Banff in the Rockies!”
Through all his writing and teaching, Alan had Jean to count on for support.
“Jean continued to be my closest friend. We were inseparable,” he says.
“In 2002 she wished to sell the schoolhouse. I was able to buy it from her, moved back to Rhonehouse and live here still.
“Sadly she became ill and died on 23 September, 2013.
“She is buried in Castle Douglas Cemetery.
