All posts by Craig Hamnett

Your Memoirs – “The Gentle Doctor”

I often wonder what happened to Mansour Ben Amer. His dark curly hair and deep brown eyes remain in my memory fifty-odd years later. But, in the days when we students were a rather wild and unpredictable lot, it is his gentle manner and perfect etiquette I marvel at. This in spite of his once … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “The Gentle Doctor”

Your Memoirs – “A Memoir of the 1960’s”

I often wonder what happened to Miss McClure. When I was a teenager, she was a young teacher, with a love of tweed skirts and bad haircuts.  Miss McClure taught Religious Education and she cemented my already developing doubts about Christianity. Clearly, that was not her intention when she confidently informed me that my disability, … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “A Memoir of the 1960’s”

Your Memoirs – “Signed Off”

I often wondered what happened to John Lennon’s cousin. The Beatles toured extensively in the 1960s and played several Scottish venues. I was 11 in 1964, and already a huge Beatles fan, when my dad brought home a new work colleague for dinner. John Lennon’s cousin, he said. Excited beyond measure, I questioned him mercilessly … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “Signed Off”

Your Memoirs – “Realisation”

With modern technology (and a degree in history research!) it is relatively easy these days to discover whatever happened to anybody. When I sat down to write this memoir it came as no surprise to me there was no-one, hand on heart, that fell into this category. The sixties were a very special era about … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “Realisation”

Your Memoirs – “A Passage To India”

A few months after the evacuation at Dunkirk in 1940, two boys, me aged five and my brother (eight) perched on a pile of trunks at Southampton Docks, while our mother queued to hand in our gas-masks and ration books,  The trunks  had ‘cabin luggage’ stencilled on them, or ‘not wanted on voyage,’ which meant … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “A Passage To India”

Your Memoirs – “The Day God and I Parted Ways”

We’ve got a late lecture so you can wait here or the Glanrafon. I’ll hitch out to Caernarfon and come back with the boys –in Tom’s mini-van. We never saw Lindsay again. On the journey back from Caernarfon to Bangor there was an horrendous car crash. No seat belts in the sixties. The steering wheel … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “The Day God and I Parted Ways”

Your Memoirs – “Piggy in the Muddle”

Long before lockdown I was used to aloneness. I was divorced 29 years ago so have had lots of practice. But even during the years of my marriage there were countless lonely, lockdown days… quelling frustration and boredom, trying to fill endless time in foreign places where friends were few and opportunities limited. Two of … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “Piggy in the Muddle”

Your Memoirs – “Afternoon Snowfall”

Back in the 1950s there was little forewarning of sudden changes in the weather. I was at secondary school then, travelling daily along with many others to Monmouth, some eleven miles distant from my home in Ross-on-Wye. At that time the A40 didn’t have the smooth gradients that it has today – there were two … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “Afternoon Snowfall”

Your Memoirs – “Last Tram”

You sent me a video, last tram, our tram, the family strung along its track from the greener suburbs of northern Sheffield to the back- to- backs nearer the steel works. Aunts, uncles, cousins, grandmothers, two spinster great aunts still in the tiny terrace where they grew up with 9 others, all lived along the … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “Last Tram”

Your Memoirs – “The First Time That I Was Published”

The first time that I had something published was in article in the Scots Magazine in March 1979. It was entitled ‘Ben Ime by Moonlight’ and was about a night ascent, in winter, of Ben Ime near the Rest and Be Thankful pass, north west of Arrochar. It was one of the coldest spells of … Continue reading Your Memoirs – “The First Time That I Was Published”