More family stories from pupils….
9/11
I asked my dad what he was doing when 9/11 happened. He said “I was in an army land rover coming into camp at Edinburgh. By midnight that night we were at Edinburgh Airport Armed on the runway with weapons as the UK threat level went to high alert. In case there was a similar attack in Scotland.” My mum was working at a care home at the time. She was giving medication when she got told.
Drunken shenanigans
My uncle was out with his mates because it was his birthday. They were at the pub and my uncle was “hammered” as my uncle’s friend says, so they all went to one of my uncle’s friend’s house and my uncle fell asleep on the sofa. Now this friend said to the other lads “we should pull a trick on him.” So they thought and they came up with an idea. So they carried my uncle in a blanket out to the boat and left him there so in the morning my uncle was panicking cause he couldn’t really see straight so he was screaming and since his friend was out watching over my uncle. he was “pissing his pants out of laughter.”
9/11
My mum was in the kitchen watching the news whilst doing the ironing when the report of 9/11 came up. She then ran through to another room to get my dad. They both watched a lot of the news about the event before making tea and coffee, then talking about what was to happen next.
The gun mystery
I asked my granddad what was the worst thing he did in his life and he replied with “I can’t really tell you now. Maybe when you are older” and then I asked my nan what the worst thing my granddad did and she said “It was when he was in the army and him and his friends were cleaning their guns. And I can’t tell you the rest.”
Berlin Wall
The destruction of the Berlin Wall was an interesting event for my dad because during his time in the army he was stationed near the Berlin Wall in West Germany with the British army. Germany was divided 2 parts and my dad had spent time there and had seen how the political situation was and how strict the guards were. People were shot and killed trying to cross. Though he didn’t see anyone get shot he saw guards at the wall.
Famous encounters
My mum, her friend and my dad went to see her favourite band in Dundee.
After the gig, my mum, dad and her chum went for pizza. Walking back to the hotel that night, they noticed the band making their way out of the back door of the venue. They rushed over to the crowd of people in the hopes to sneak a few selfies with the band. She was very happy when the band were willing to pose for a few photos and sign some autographs. She always said if she ever met them in person she would get them to sign her arm and she would get it tattooed.
She’s had that tattoo for 6 years now!
naughty secrets
I asked my parents the worst thing they did when they were young. My mum told me she wasn’t sure. I then asked my dad and he said he couldn’t tell me. I think whatever he did must be very bad!
Accidental theft
This is a story about my dad who is a motor vehicle mechanic. One evening he got a phonecall from one of his customers who was having problems with their car and they were scared to drive it. So they parked it at Tesco and walked home. My dad said he could go to their house to pick up the keys when he was ready. So when he was ready he drove down to their house to get the keys for their car and picked up the car from Tesco. He left his van at Tesco to take the customer’s car back. The customer said it was a black Fiesta, so scanned the car park and only saw one Fiesta. He went over to the car with the keys he was given and unlocked the car, got in, started it and drove off to take it to the workshop and parked it up. Once home he got ready for bed and went to sleep. At half past two in the morning he got woken up by a phone call which was his dad asking if he had collected a car that evening and taken it to the workshop to which my dad said “Yes, why?” My granddad said “The police are here about a stolen car!”
To which my dad said “It couldn’t have been stolen because I have the keys.” He had to get up and go see the police and explain.
The next morning he went to go check the Tesco car park and in the far back corner was a black fiesta just sitting there covered by a van!
Granda
When my Granda was around seven his parents were going to send him to Sunday school with his sisters, as he didn’t want to go, he hid himself in a barrel. They couldn’t find him in time, so as a result he never went to it as they didn’t try again.
On another occasion my Granda when he was around ten, he and his friend were out playing. As they were playing, they saw a stranger walking down the road. They thought it would be funny to jump out and scare this stranger, so they hid behind the wall and scared him. Well, they got a fright when they found out that this stranger was their new headmaster when they went back to school.
Footprints
My granny was brought up on a farm, when she was around ten there was a new court to over winter the cattle being built. And as kids they were warned not to touch the cement. But my granny chose to ignore this and made an imprint of her foot into the cement before it was dry. The mason said he was going to have them measure their feet on this imprint to see who did it and my granny was worried. He never did, and it was never fixed.
Motorcyle
When my uncle was 16 years old, he got a motorbike, an old Suzuki 50 cc.He used to drive it up and down to the Quarry near their house and my mum would hop on the back with him and head off. One time down at the Quarry when she was 13 years old, she asked to have a shot of the bike. He showed her how to work it and said,“On you go!”
She instantly took off into a pile of stone and crashed the bike, it fell on her leg, and she lay in a heap with the still running motorcycle laying on top of her! My Uncle was more concerned about the bike and took it from her and drove a circuit of the quarry to ensure it was fine before he went back to check on her…Typical older brother!
Camping
My aunt told me ” We went camping out over some fields, all proper set-up, tent, nice fire with stones surrounding it for a bbq. Later that night after a few drinks, we’d tried to put the fire out with a friggin tyre of all things. The tyre set ablaze, we panicked, launched the tyre in to the dry grass, ended up burning down half of a nature reserve!”
My mum said “We set a farm field ablaze which took ages for the Fire brigade to put out, but i felt more guilt at being caught pinching sweets from a local shop by the owner. Both he and his wife knew my parents but never grassed me up. Whenever i went in after he’d give me a knowing but friendly nod. I never stole again.”
Teasing mum
I was play fighting with my brother and mum started telling us to behave, it was raining outside and we were bored so we decided to play a prank on mum, Hanging trousers out my bedroom window while my mum was washing dishes and scared her, she run upstairs and seen I was joking, she was really angry, I said that it was my brother’s idea and don’t think she believed me much, she grounded the two of us for a week, It only lasted until next day as we were to noisy.
Thinking back it must have been scary but not sure why mum didn’t see there was no shoes at the bottom of the trousers. So yeah this always sticks in my mind and we still speak about it, probably done more but this is one I can look back and have a laugh about.
9/11
Parents interview: On the 9th Tuesday 11 September 2001, I was in class at Aberdeen college in create and design class when I found out. The instructor stopped the class and told us that one plane had hit one of the twin towers and you don’t have to do any work. We could listen to the news and read about it, text our family. From then on in the classes after that we didn’t have to do any work because all the instructors were reading about it and trying to find out about it. All I was thinking about is, “I can’t believe this has happened who would do that.” I never knew it was an attack at first until the second tower got hit, I thought it was an accident. It made me feel a bit scared to be honest. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to make sure all my family were safe. I called my mum and dad to make sure they knew about it. For the next couple of days, I thought about it a lot, I didn’t really know what happened. Why had it happened? There was a lot of unknown at that time so it was quite scary it could happen to any plane going about and all sorts of things like that.
9/11
“I can remember back in September 2001 I worked at a satellite telecommunications company and I worked in the office. Down in our workshop we had lots of televisions and satellites that were hooked up to offshore platforms because that’s the role of the company. So off I went to work on Tuesday the 11th of September thinking it would be an ordinary day, a busy one as usual, however things changed dramatically that day. I have memories that will stay in my head and forever of our guys who were the technicians down in the workshop running upstairs telling us what had happened, so straight away we were made aware that two planes had just struck the twin towers in America. Of course we were all devastated to hear what was happening and I can remember a group of us going down to the workshop and basically that was probably what the rest of that day involved, watching what was happening on the news worldwide. I didn’t see the two planes going into the twin towers that had already happened; however I watched the towers collapsing. You could see that people were trying to rescue people who were stranded in the towers not knowing what on earth had obviously gone on. Shortly after the Twin Towers were struck there was a third plane that struck the Pentagon in Virginia so then they were aware that this was a terrorist attack that was going on. It was not just a coincidence that two planes had struck the towers.
Childhood days
When my mum was a child, they used to have 4 channels. Maybe if they were lucky, they would get 5 channels on the TV. At school they used to have a board and chalk. They used to play with rubber bands and pencils. When they were young, they didn’t have Whatsapp or good phones. My dad said he played football and was really good at it and he’s still good at it. They used to play board games.
Granny
My Granny said the naughtiest thing she has ever done has done is she sprayed anti-dazzle spray on her dad’s glasses, don’t think he was very happy about that. Although even after that he still let her play golf and tennis. Granny loved playing tennis she still sometimes talks about how good she was. I haven’t seen her play before, so I take her word for it. As for golf she took me and my little cousin out to the range not that long ago, I gave her a turn and she was pretty good I must admit.
Granny went to Macduff high school; there she sang in the choir. When I found that out, I was so shocked she never told me about that. Don’t get me wrong she looks like a person that can sing really well, thinking about it now I remember when she used to sing to me and my brother when we were little. I asked granny what her best memory was, she said the day her brother launched his boat out in Macduff, to be honest with you I didn’t even know her brother had a boat.
Princess Di
I interviewed a teacher – “I remember when Princess Diana was killed. That was 31st July 1997. It happened at night so when me and my boyfriend woke up, we checked the news like every day except this time it was different, it was all over the news. To me it was the worst news to ever hear. The world came to a standstill. I remember when Prince Charles came over to Paris to identify the body. A lot of people had conspiracy theories about the loss of princess Diana. The day of her funeral me and my boyfriend sat down and watched Princess Diana’s funeral, Prince William, Prince Harry, Prince Charles, the Duke of Edinburgh and her brother Charles Spencer. She was so beautiful, and the news shocked us all. A week after the funeral there were sixty million flowers all at Kensington palace.”
Mischievous dad
My dad was a very mischievous boy. He didn’t particularly like school as a young boy. He has done some naughty stuff in his time in school but the naughtiest thing he had done was. He hated school, so on his second day of p1, my dad and his two sisters and mum walked down their long road to the bus. My dad, as you know, hated school so when his mum let go of his hand to go to the bus, he turned around and ran back up to the farm. He loved working on the farm, he would rather work on the farm than go to school. When he made it to the house he went inside and got into farm clothes and went to find his dad. His dad was a cool dad, well I think so. He found his dad and he said “Fit you deeing here min” “I ran back up the hill to help you on the farm.” “Right ok well hand me the bucket”
Green
My sister stole some of my mums make up box and put green eyeshadow all over her face. It was very funny because when my parents woke up and made breakfast, they shouted on her and realized she had shiny dark green stuff on her face! My mum recorded it and said “Thea what is that on your face?” she replied saying “I don’t know,” Then it eventually got to “Thea is that mummy’s green eye shadow?” Thea then says “no” then my mum says “Tell mum the truth mummy doesn’t like liars” she answered saying “yes”.
