In the Glen of the Levern

Jim has taken us along, to witness in our minds the destructive changes that the Industrial Revolution wrought on the two streams that flowed into, and through, his home town, and he has also given an evocative reminiscence of growing up in Barrhead, Scotland, just before and after the Second World war. He took us from an early career of animal husbandry (rabbits) to the war ---introducing along the way a number of friends, family and street characters. The war brought out personal recollections of the building of the family air raid shelter, and the Clydebank Blitz. Central to all this was the garden that Jimmy's father established, and a greenhouse built from bits and pieces, more often found and scrounged than not. Among other things, Jim's descriptions pointed up the strong rural elements that accompanied life in those days, and of the complete absence of electronic gadgetry that too often dominates life in the twenty-first century. It is a glimpse into a world that really doesn't exist any more, but is nonetheless very familiar to those who grew up in the nineteen- thirties, forties and fifties.