Gazing out, mesmerised by the landmass looming ever closer, Father and I had been on deck for hours. Now we were able to see the quay, and even make out people swarming about. I strained my eyes for the first glimpse of Alec.

Tomorrow at St Andrew’s Church here in Gib we’d become Mr and Mrs Hinshalwood then set off for a few days in Seville before heading back to the mine, to the home we’d share. I’d imagined this day for three years and yet was suddenly shocked by the reality. Choked by emotion, I had to have a moment to myself. I mumbled some excuse to father who briefly looked concerned but, once I turned down his offer to accompany me, he smiled to himself looking back out to sea.

I hurried away, desperate to find a corner where I could be on my own, collect my thoughts. I was struggling to breathe and sat down on a bench, just out of sight of father.

Inhaling deeply and slowly to calm myself as mother had taught me, I was gripped by a homesickness so profound, so poignant that I feared I would cry out. I longed for her cool hand on my brow, for the constant chatter of my siblings, for the familiar hustle and bustle, the smells of the kitchen as we prepared lunch. At that moment I would willingly have turned tail, given up my dream for the safety of home.

Breath now steady I headed down to the cabin. It looked so bare without the paraphernalia I’d carefully packed away that morning. Here had been a little haven for my journey from Liverpool, a place I could dream of my life with Alec; in the past few days I’d scarcely given a thought to what I was leaving behind.

I plonked down on my bed, beside the dint where my suitcase had been. The weight, the importance of this moment in time hung in the air. I knew I was at a pivotal point in my life. An unfamiliar world lay ahead, everything to be experienced for the first time. How on earth would I cope with the heat of the Andalucian summer? Would I ever be able to talk to the house servants, whose names I knew and whose pictures I’d seen, whose kindness Alec had spoken of? What would the men at the Esperanza Mine make of this gauche Scots woman, stuttering her way through her greetings? My Spanish was still hopelessly amateur, despite so many hours of work. On his last visit home Alec and I had laughed together at my efforts. I blushed, suddenly remembering that afternoon and our time alone together.  The Spanish lesson had been a much needed diversion.

As I thought of him, of what we were to share, my mind began to clear, and the warmth of certainty spread through me.

Just then a sudden deep thump told me we’d arrived alongside the quay and moments later I heard father’s dear voice calling me from outside the cabin.

We walked up on the deck together, into the heat of  late forenoon, into the jumble of noise, unfamiliar smells and sounds and there was Alec.

Granny and Grandpa lived in Andalucía for 20 years. They had three children, one of whom died in infancy. My mother and her brother were taken back to the family home to be educated in Scotland. After Grandpa died in 1958, Granny lived with my (widowed) mother and me until her death in 1965.

For the past couple of months I have been trying out memoir writing. I write prolifically, but always ‘from life’, so that in itself has been challenging. I felt that it would be more in the spirit of Joanna’s project to tackle yet another form, which meant I squirmed a bit for a few days. I used to write stories when I was at primary school, in fact I was good at it. But I’ve never done it since.

I’d been going through some old photographs, intending to use them as inspiration for more more memoir writing and was particularly taken with this one of my maternal grandmother, holding her first child. He was born 9 months to the day after her wedding and looks very young indeed on the picture. On the reverse is a note in which granny mentions that she is wearing her wedding shoes (though, as she points out, they can’t be seen), and I realised that it had been taken within a year of her marriage to my grandpa, a mining engineer who managed a copper mine in Southern Spain.

My maternal grandparents’ story is an interesting one and thus far I haven’t touched on it, mainly because I have very few facts to go on. I wondered if I could fictionalise a tiny part of granny’s story? I began to focus on this moment when everything changed forever for her.

It has been enormously challenging. It has occupied my thoughts day and night. I have redrafted, totally rewritten, read online guidelines, and a couple of Alice Munro’s short stories. Talk about pulling teeth.

Whilst I have concerns about the rather cheesy ‘romantic’ feel,  I am very pleased I’ve been able to do it.

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Every Friday afternoon our task was to find a poem that we liked, copy it into our Poetry Books and then illustrate it. If we felt able, we could write our own poems. I can still see the exercise book in my mind’s eye. The thing itself is long gone, my mother not having a sentimental bone in her body got rid of all my childhood stuff when we moved house in 1970. The very first entry was someone else’s poem, which I had obediently copied out. Not a great one with drawing to this day, I know my attempt at illustration will have disappointed me.

I have no recollection of what process I went through during the following week, but the outcome was that I bravely wrote my own poem. I’m pretty sure it was called ‘The Crinoline’ which figures as, even then, I was in love with the idea of wearing clothes which allowed me to sweep into a room. I must have received some encouragement from the teacher because each week after that I constructed a poem of my very own, until the book was completely full.

I recall a deep sense of injustice when one of the boys said I was lying when I claimed to have made them all up.

We seemed to do lots of creative writing in school in those days. Yet, once I went up the High School I don’t recollect doing much at all. Especially not after the first year. We were encouraged to write for the school magazine and also for the annual Speech Competition, but aside from that, zilch.

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