Birth: 'the coming into existence of something'.
In the bleak
mid-winter, Dickens' Christmas stories give the reader images of hope and
light; warmth and joy; as well as transformation and resurrection. However, the
light is tempered by the darkness and cold too which makes it even more life
enhancing.
The hope comes
from spring, surely following winter and the renewal of life as Scrooge is
restored to the good values of his boyhood and youth.
Six decades ago in
the deep mid-winter of 1958, the Hanlon family moved into the newly built
Edinburgh Corporation flats at 6 Oxgangs Avenue to take up residence at ‘The
Stair’; Charlie and Hilda were full of hope at the beginning of the exciting
adventure ahead and novelty of bringing up their family in a new home.
Like the other
young families at ‘The Stair’ they had their dreams and aspirations of the good
life and raising their children as well as they could, with all the fun, joys
and worries inherent.
At this time, only
Michael, the eldest brother had been born; he would only have been around one
year old; Brian, Colin and Alan would come along in the following years.
When the family
took up their tenancy at 6/7, like the other seven families in residence at
‘The Stair’, they were issued with a rent book. It records their rent as being
eighteen shillings a week.
Most
remarkably, Hilda, the last remaining original member at ‘The Stair’, still has
the family's first rent book. It records their date of entry as 15th
December, 1958.
In a way the document records the birth of ‘The Stair’, when one of the
original inhabitants first took up residence there and is perhaps a unique
document of its type.
Brian speaks humorously about the family's first experience. Hilda recalled the
Hoffmann family had already moved in downstairs to 6/2 slightly earlier. The
coal-man was delivering coal to our family - Ken and Anne Hoffmann, the author
(Peter aged two) and my brother, Iain (aged only a month).
Hilda wanted to buy some coal in too,
to heat their new home. However, the coal merchant turned down her request as
she lived on the top floor and he mustn't have fancied walking up another three
flights of stairs. Given it was mid-winter and Michael, the eldest brother was
still only a baby, the stone-hearted coal-man clearly wasn't full of the
Christmas spirit.
He reminds me of Ebenezer Scrooge to
Bob Cratchit, that '...there will be no coal burned in this office today...'
Hilda must
have found a way forward, not only to heat their new top flat home with its
fantastic views to the hills and the sea, as well as the prominent Edinburgh
Castle, as she and Charlie went on to successfully raise their four boys in a happy
household, throughout the decades of the 1960s and 1970s.
 |
| 'Edinburgh in Snow' William Crozier |
Spring and
indeed summer followed winter.
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