Leprechauns and fairies

Living with Granny Clarke at the seaside, with two cousins only eight years older was a new world for me. I had written bits of things for school and a few tries at poetry, why, I can not explain, other than my mother's enjoyment of it and my father's love of quoting Robert Burns. Uncle John wrote poetry, drew cartoons and built model aeroplanes, which fascinated me. Unknowingly, Granny Clarke with her stories of leprechauns and fairy rings which were to be avoided at midnight or one was whisked off to Fairyland was preparing me for another school year. Whatever, my mother and I survived the trip and came back to preparations for the annual flower show and a scatty teacher called Miss Mowat, I think. It was her first posting and since she had come from among the fairies at the bottom of the garden somewhere, unused to laddies who knew what bulls were for, she never had a chance.

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