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eBook Category: People/Humor
eBook Description: A brimming and lively broth of rural characters, drunken ghosts, bullocks in the bedrooms and country superstitions. East Lothian is 'The Garden of Scotland' and the setting of this delightfully idiosyncratic story of country life. Often hilarious, always heartfelt and at times sad, here is unfolded the ups and downs of four generations of one farming family from the northerly Orkney Isles, who move to the little farm of Cuddy Neuk in the south of Scotland just before the outbreak of the Second World War. A young Peter, the peedie boy who sets his heart on filling his somewhat eccentric grandfather's straw-lined wellies, grows up to run the family farm and become a farmer father to his own sons, putting his ability to see the funny side of things to good use, as adversities crop up with an intriguing reality ... By the same author: Snowball Oranges and Manana Manana.

eBook Publisher: Summersdale Publishers Ltd/Summersdale Travel, Published: 2004
Fictionwise Release Date: April 2005

Available eBook Formats:
All formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
Adobe Acrobat Reader ISBN: 1840242655

"A lively autobiographical account of one family's laughter and tears ... prose breezes along at the rate of knots, pulling up to introduce a note of pathos ... not just a scribe with a sense of humour. His autobiography reveals him as a farmer, piper, clarinetist and record producer. He is also disarmingly honest, not only about himself but in the character studies of his extended family, and never more so than in describing the antics of his welly-booted grandfather whose influence was felt long after his death.... For the Kerrs, as for all families, it's a roller-coaster ride and we leave them, having shared in their tears and laughter over the years, about to start yet another venture."--The Scots Magazine

"Combining travel, family life, DIY and humour all with a distinctly Scottish slant."--Home Plus Scotland Magazine

"...amusing, interesting, moving and true to life."--The Scotsman

?Aye, nothin? like kindlin? up a fag tae put a heat in ye when the water's runnin? oot the erse o? yer breeks,? Jimmy opined stoically. ?Ken what Ah mean, Tam?? Rheumy-eyed, he did his best to stifle a splutter as the stinging tobacco reek assaulted his lungs. ?Rare wee fags, the Woodbines, eh?? Marvelling at the mysterious pleasure that both men were deriving from drawing deeply on their cigarettes, then cleverly exhaling the thick white smoke through flaring nostrils, I silently wished that I could join in the ritual. But, being not quite four years old, I'd have to wait a while yet. About a couple of months, as I remember. My grandfather patted Jimmy's back. ?We'll leave thee tae get on with the work then, Cheemy. I?m away tae check the kye up the hill field.? Then he turned to me. ?Come now, peedie boy ? we'll get Fanny tae give us a lift tae see the cattle beasts.? ?Peedie? is the Orkney word for ?small?, so it followed that my grandfather should call me ?peedie boy?. He'd always done so, and I was used to it. The youngest of a line of three living Peters, I was also used to being called ? originally to avoid confusion when we were all together ? Wee Pete, Pedro, Young Pate (Pate is Scots for Pete), Paitrick, Pat and even Paderooski (pronounced as spelt). In fact, it was reaching the stage when I would automatically answer to just about any name beginning with the letter ?P?. Fanny was a young Clydesdale mare, a gentle giant of an animal with the richest of bay coats, a narrow white blaze bisecting her face, and a kindly expression of eye that gave the clue to her disposition. She was my grandfather's pride and joy. He had brought her down from Orkney along with the nucleus of his herd of Ayrshire milking cows just a few years earlier. My father remembers seeing him standing on the pier at Edinburgh's port, long overcoat blowing in the wind, battered trilby pulled firmly down to his ears, while he supervised the unloading of a small tramp steamer that had been chartered to transport all his worldly possessions south from his native islands across well over two hundred miles of sea. Implements and crates were all marked in stencilled letters: CARGO OF THOMAS MUIR ? STROMNESS TO LEITH. He would only have been in his mid-fifties, I suppose, but seeming ancient in my three-year-old's eyes. Though not a particularly big man, he was as strong as an ox, like most who had spent all of their lives since boyhood working with heavy horses. His favourite footwear, no matter what the weather, was a pair of old wellington boots, the tops turned down, and bought deliberately two sizes too big to accommodate a generous lining of straw.