An Act of Kindness

A popular picnic was to the Braid Hills-I might struggle to find it today, but there was a very shallow open cave where we would eat our picnic-if the weather turned sour it gave us some shelter too. It served as a good base from which to play. Sometimes we would venture further to the Elfin Pond on the private Mortonhall Golf Course to collect frogs.

On one occasion a group of us were setting out for a picnic-all that Iain and I had was a bottle of water each which I'd stored in my small brown haversack. All the others had sandwiches and perhaps a few sweets. I don't know how, but Hilda Hanlon somehow must have noticed this-she leaned out her window and threw down a tanner-three-pence each-and told us to get something at Jimmy's Green Van which was parked outside the stair.

 I bought us two packets of Golden Wonder crisps.

'An Act of Kindness' (Peter Hoffmann, 2008)

Or, was it Smiths?

Great blog Peter evokes many memories I especially remember the mini Olympics you used to organise and we would run between the lamposts and you would time us happy days
Ruth Blades

Great to hear from you Ruth-thanks for the prompt-definitely a future blog item! For years I had a wee notebook with all the times as well as triple jump on the small grass area across the road.Later on we held a couple of mini-Olympics at the army track at Redford Baracks-second one not completed because we got chased off by the soldiers! Peter Hoffmann

Great to hear from you Ruth-thanks for the prompt-definitely a future blog item! For years I had a wee notebook with all the times as well as triple jump on the small grass area across the road.Later on we held a couple of mini-Olympics at the army track at Redford Baracks-second one not completed because we got chased off by the soldiers! Peter Hoffmann