Coming as I did from an English family, I was always struck by how many of my classmates knew their Burns from home, not just what we learned in school; not something you'd find with Shakespeare in England. Ardrossan and Saltcoats both have their Burns-related street names ; looking at the map I hav...

Further to what Meg said about the Olsens; Carl's younger sister Dawne was in my class and I think their name was spelled Olson rather than Olsen. At any rate it came from their American father, who was divorced from their mother ( quite an American-seeming thing in itself in those days when divorce...

Loved it Ellen, thanks a lot for finding it. I keep replaying it and pausing to see what's changed-and how much looks really just the same ! Susan

The way I would put it is that she had great moral authority; even the usual suspects who played up in some other classes rarely tried it on with her. I can still see her , in one move whipping round from the board and whipping off her reading glasses the better to glare at some miscreant who'd star...

There was a family of Olufsens of Danish ancestry living locally; the name Oluf Olufsen was passed down the generations, and I was at school with one of them. I've seen a reference to the various Oluf Olufsens on the Sea Queen page in the general part of the 3T site, describing this as a " well-know...

Miss E.Nisbet was of course the famous ( to Academy pupils ) Dr.Nisbet aka "Nibby" who was head of Classics at Ardrossan Academy for many years , and lived in Sorbie Road. A redoubtable lady whom I remember well! She battled to keep Latin and Greek going into the modern age , and made sure The Acade...

When I first started timidly using the computer to surf the net, I was keen to find any sites related to Saltcoats or Ayrshire; but I had to guess at the addresses. I was struggling in vain to find the Ardrossan & Saltcoats Herald,little knowing that Saltcoats had been disgracefully downgraded out o...

My first day at school:Ardrossan Academy primary in 1961. But I thought I was supposed to be going to Saltcoats Public, so I was a bit mystified when my mother took me up through the plantation to places I'd never been before.Round the corner of a big grey building we came on a crowd of people all m...

I recently found the receipt my mother got when she joined the Ardrossan Co-op back in the 1950s, for the grand sum of 1s 6d entry fee. Also a dull and worthy booklet entitled Rules of the Ardrossan Co-operative Society Limited, with such items as How the Committee May Act to those not Purchasing at...

Does anyone else remember the most stylish feature Harris's big shop in Dockhead Street had when it first opened in the sixties-quite a good-sized pool in the middle of the ground floor, complete with goldfish ? It seemed a very upmarket thing to find in a Saltcoats shop !
Susan

I was having quite a bit of trouble accessing the forum for several weeks , as well as some other parts of the site like the originals of the Herald files;my experience was much like wmh described above . But this week since I joined 3T I've had no bother at all. Susan

Thank you all for your kind welcomes. Dr.McCann was our GP too; he was often round on house calls when I was little and ill in bed ( which seemed to be rather a lot, especially when I was six and had measles and other possibly related nasties )-my clearest memory of him is of how cold his stethoscop...