Mr Gibson describes the progress of the new sanatorium. He has also been making toast, and assessing Ruskin’s social theories. There has been a letter from Canada, whilst Barrie the cat seems a little better. The next in our series of letters from the W.J. Gibson collection held by Museum nan Eilean. Please get in touch if you have any comments: archives@cne-siar.gov.uk
Jean dear,
Sunday evening again. It is nine o’clock, but we have only finished tea. I was insisting on making toast, and Mamma says my coat-of-arms should be a frying-pan sable supported on each side by a toasting fork. Not bad! Barrie is rather better; he is able to walk but needs a little special attention. He had a little bit of boiled cod.
Let me see where I left off. I brought you up to Thursday evening. On Friday Mr. Peddie turned up. We think he is greatly improved. In the meantime he has left Mrs. Peddie in Bedford, as houses cannot be got here. None of our other teachers clear yet; but the old boys are getting off gradually.
On Friday afternoon we went for a walk as far as the Market Hill to see the new sanatorium. It is being put up in the new method – the roof first on a wooden frame, then the wall built up double of thin concrete slabs set on edge.
The patrol fleet is gradually being cleared off. It is expected that by the end of March, if the weather keeps favourable for minesweeping in the meantime, the last of the boats and the admiral will go. There is a very large fishing fleet here, though sometimes the boats prefer Mallaig to Story as offering higher prices. The catch during the week has been light. There was a pretty big turnout of the fisher lads in the Hut last night, with a good sprinkling of the older men. There were not quite as many as on the previous Saturday, so that it was slightly less of a rush for Mamma and her three assistants. My half-hour talks on Navigation still go on, but I never seem to have the same hearers two weeks running with the way the fleet moves about. I am dealing with lights and buoys mainly. A good many of the lads have had a fair amount of instruction in the subject at school, but not on these bits.
So you are already having a glimpse of your Chemi. degree exam! How fast the term runs on! We hope you’ll get on well with your Chemi. grind, and get it forward in time, so as not to have a rush at the end. You didn’t remember to send us the Handbook so that we could see the dates of things and the syllabuses of the Societies. You forgot to tell me of your visit to the den of “Alma Mater” and of what you found there. We had another letter from George – from Alberta this time, where he had arrived safely and found his father and mother on the farm. He said in it that he was going to write you. Mamma wants to know what steps you are taking to get clothes. Remember your unsupplied plight at your last holiday and be provident in time.
We have been re-reading some of Ruskin whose centenary was last week. His views of social economy are very modern. They must have seemed very mad to the people of the Sixties for whom he wrote.
Our best love.
Papa
[Italics written in left margin]
Ref: 1992.50.64iii/L30
Transcribed by Dawn MacDonald, Archives Collection Assistant
