Then there was light,......and Little Richard.

Before the arrival of bottled gas,piped water or electricity(arond !951),the main source of fuel was peat, for heat and cooking and the paraffin lamp for light.The "Tilley"lamp with its brilliantly glowing mantle reached parts of the house never reached before.The switch on of "the electric"in the summer of 1951(in Dalmore) had been anticipated in most households,be it a single light bulb socket or the full panoply of electrical goods available in Stornoway,or from J.and D. Williams' immense catalogue.For us at No.5,the piece de resistance was the massive 13 valve Pye radio,which my uncle,Shonnie Glass(John Murdo Macleod) had bought.Radio Luxembourg's Top Twenty came on air at 11 o'clock on a SUNDAY NIGHT,and for us "cool cats"from Renfrew,this was a must.But this was still "latha na sabaid"(the sabbath),and it took my mother's immense powers to persuade Bodach Glass to allow Little Richard to bring Sunday to a close. After all, my mother Annie had been the baby of his 9 children,and I think,if truth be told,she was his favourite.Glass was a very pious man of 90 years,and an Elder of the Church of Scotland in Carloway,and we rock and rollers attended Sunday church three times every sabbath day."A ghile",lucky for us that Glass was not an elder in the Free Church.After all,the "unco guid" in the Free Church viewed their village friends in the "established church" as doctrinally tainted,and fellow travellers of the unreformed church of Rome.Still,it was back to business on Mondays,and doctrine was left far behind(until the following Sunday,that is).