Graeme Mackay

I was born at Elsie Inglis Maternity Hospital , in the shadow of Aurthur's Seat, a well known landmark, actually an extinct volcano, situated within the limits of Edinburgh. Once known as Dunn Eiden when Gaelic was the language of the whole of Scotland, the town grew up around the castle ramparts and gradually transformed itself from a fortress  to a thriving city of half a million , speaking a form of English known as the Scot's dialect. Only in the remoter corners of the Western Highlands and Islands was Gaelic still spoken. It was a cold damp  morning typical of a Scottish winter  that I popped into the world as world war two was drawing to a close when rationing was in effect, air raid shelters were a common sight in the backyards of suburban houses and unexploded bombs were being discovered here and there around the environs of Rosyth, a naval shipyard on the Firth of Forth; so began my journey called life along with a thousand other Scottish brats who  became known as the baby boomer generation. We've just been born: war is over, but not completely- so says Pete Townsend in his autobiography as he records the occasion of his birth five months after mine. We are war babies that have never known war. Edinburgh was less affected by war than London where Townsend came to be or even Glasgow with it's shipyard targets of the Lufwaffe but everyone in Britain suffered deprivations of one sort or another due to shortages of even the staple of everyday life- bread.