gmb website - photogallery early gmb

Clouston's Pier, Stromness 2001
The room above the shop was also
part of the Brown's house.

I have one image of (my father), on what must have been a night of winter storm, coming into our kitchen-living room at Clouston's Pier, the rain streaming off him. He had possibly come in to trim the lantern that every postman had, pinned to the lapel of the overcoat, to read the names and addresses on winters nights. Then he went once more into the tempest.

from For the Islands I Sing
© Estate of GMB 1997

Boys Lane, Stromness

The Boys' Lane was not an enchanted place for my generation, whatever it is now . . . (it) led to the School and we must have been hundreds of times in the middle of the Boys' Lane when the School bell rang! We were late, we were in trouble. . .

from Rockpools and Daffodils
© GMB 1992

Stromness nousts and piers

There on summer days fifty years ago, boys and sillocks had their rendezvous . . . . sometimes it was a long tedious barren occupation, for either the sillocks were congregating elsewhere or else they declined to bite. On other days, the sillocks couldn't do enough for you, in the way of giving themselves up, latching onto the hooks time after time, allowing themselves to be drawn out of the water curling and flashing - and then deposited, gulping among a pile of their tarnished companions.
The boys sold the sillocks, four for a penny, to the old wives who kept cats.

from Rockpools and Daffodils
© GMB 1992

part of Melvin Place, Stromness

Part of my childhood was spent in a beautiful close called Melvin Place. (Of course in those days we never thought of Stromness, or any part of it, as beautiful. I used to wonder why lady tourists would set up their easels on the street and all a summer morning paint Melvin Place. I don't wonder any more.)
Broad steps go up from the street. The close suddenly narrows, climbing still. I remember a little hidden garden on one side, full of dew and flowers.

from Rockpools and Daffodils
© GMB 1992