The best day ever

Pat Doran

I don't remember exactly what age I was but as it was just mum, dad and me so I guess I was around 5 or 6. What I do remember, really quite vividly, was that it was the best day ever!

My mum and dad, like everyone else around us, didn't have a lot of money. After a period of being 'idle', dad got a job in Ferranti's at Crewe Toll. As the trades fortnight approached I do remember a lot of whispering and shushing in our wee tenement flat.

On the day, my dad told me that we couldn't afford a real holiday. Who could in those days? But we were all going to have a special day out. I was dressed in my summer dress, new white summer socks and sandals with cut out toes. My mum even bought me a new ribbon for my hair. Simple pleasures, eh?

It all started with a bus trip, a treat in itself for a wee girl from the centre of Edinburgh. I couldn't believe it when we got off at the Zoo: a vast, hilly, walled park on the Corstorphine road in a posh part of Edinburgh. We got a map and visited all the animals. A lot of them were pretty smelly and sad... the penguins were taken on a walk around the zoo by a grumpy keeper who had a stick; I didn't like that very much. At lunchtime, no chance of a visit to the huge cafeteria, we had packed lunch instead. Luncheon meat and tomato sandwiches, with a flask of milky sweet tea drunk out of plastic cups, very grown up.

We spent the rest of the afternoon visiting the parts we missed in the morning, the gorillas were pretty scary, I clung to my dad...

At teatime, I thought we would be going home, but no, we left and got on another bus for a short journey along the road to a fish and chip shop with tables inside. We had a huge tea with suppers, more tea, bread and butter and a plate of cakes. I was allowed to choose first; bliss! Close by there was a picture house - the last treat. I have no memory of the film but it was the very icing on the cake. We eventually got the bus home to Bread Street and bed.

My dad died over thirty years ago and when I tried to speak to my mum about this brilliant day she couldn't remember it. She was becoming a little forgetful by then... or was it all in my imagination?

It still seems very real to me.