What is one of your fondest childhood memories?

It's really hard to pick a 'best'memory... I honestly had such a very happy, loved and secure childhood. Probably a memory that pulls a lot of those feelings together is of being on holidays in Alyth and being allowed to go berry picking with Mum & Sheila. We went out to the berry fields away out the Muirton Road.

We were taken out to the fields in the back of a van, with our berry pails which we wore strapped around our waists and a packed lunch so's we could stay all day. It was July, so warm and sunny in the Vale of Strathmore. We were assigned dreels (rows) and told to 'pick clean'. The berries were picked into small our pails then tipped into a bigger pail.

When that was full it was taken to the weigh scale and we were paid a penny a pound for the fruit we had picked. It was all going to the jam factory in Dundee. I still remember eating those sweet, ripe berries until we were fit to burst, not to mention the inevitable consequences later!!! The berry fields were always busy and people joined in and sang as they picked.

There were always big family groups of 'tinks' ( tinkers), the itinerant workers who traveled from farm to farm throughout the seasons picking whatever the harvest was. This is what remains of the platform where the weigh scale was, the lorries used to back up to the platform to get loaded with the full pails of berries...it was funny to recognize that so many years later on a visit to Alyth. They still grow soft fruits there, not so many raspberries now, but other soft fruits, gooseberries, redcurrants and blackcurrants.