Reel emotional.

Continuing on my theme of digitising analogue material from the past, I decided to get closer to home. Specifically, from my past. We were clearing out the spare room the other weekend, and in among a dusty box of precious things, failed projects, and certificates I forgot I had even earned I found a compact audio cassette. I had kept that - along with a photo-album, a slate yacht ornament and a brass fire andiron - from when we were clearing my wee Gran's house after her passing. I had always meant to digitise it, but couldn't face doing it at the time. So I put it in a box of things I wanted to keep. Came across it every couple of years and thought 'I must do something with that'. Well today I did. I bought a used tape walkman from Ebay and hooked it up to my Tascam recorder. It's from a time when tape recorders were the must have thing. A friend, Neil McDermott, had a similar tape of his grandparents, which suggests it must have been all the rage at some point. As the leader tape fizzled out and the audio came up I heard my Wee Gran sing. I haven't heard her voice in 15 years, and there it was, crystal clear, or at least as clear as the mono-tape recorder could manage back in the day. In came my Step-Grandad Tommy, or just 'Tommy' as we called him, but a Grandad in all but title. He spoke more politely than I recall, but it might just have been his Sunday voice for the tape machine. He died in 1991, which means I haven't heard him in 27 years. I adored my Wee Gran, and I was very fond of Tommy, so it was lovely to hear them both again.

Also on the tape were Margaret and Jim McCulloch, my Wee Grans sister and her Husband. Margaret died young, I can only vaguely remember her. She must have passed in the mid-80s, maybe earlier, and Jim must be gone nearly 20 years now. I will look up their children, Jim, Margaret and John and make them a copy of the recording. I hope they are as thrilled to hear it as I was.