The Lady's Brig

On a bend in the Ettrick Water, below the ruin of Newark Tower, the Lady's Brig used to be my favourite way to get to the tower from the Ettrick road. It lay, a haunted, tranquil spot, at the bottom of a slope covered in mixed woodland - ash, oak, birch and rowan - and spanned a deep pool fringed with hazel bushes. As a teenager I used to love the dark peaty water, where I'd see the kythe of a salmon's back from time to time, and, fresh from Robert Graves' "White Goddess", I'd dream about the salmon of knowledge, which gained its wisdom from the hazel nuts that fell into the pool. I'd read there, or just sit and dream an afternoon away, lulled by the rush of water, the birdsong, and the breeze in the bushes.

The last time I was there - two-three years ago - it was dilapidated and closed.

And the houses I remember from my childhood? 26 Point Rd., Apapa, Lagos is still there - or at least the address is: I had a Nigerian scam e-mail once from that address. That fairly put the heart across me.... In Edinburgh, what was my grandparents' house in Abbeyhill, is still there, as I think is the Edwardian villa we lived in on Carronshore Road, near Falkirk, though the Carron ironworks, where my dad worked, is long ago demolished. My mother's family house - Croft Cottage in Selkirk - is there yet, though much altered and occupied by strangers.

I know people whose family have lived in the same house for generations, who still have all their old toys and schoolbooks - I have none of that. Much of my past is known only to me and my brother now, as most of my family is long dead.

Which brings me to something I've long wondered about: how much can we trust our memories? Trying to write about my childhood in Nigeria once, I asked my brother about the chimps. You see, when we were in Lagos, Dad had a doctor friend who raised chimpanzees, and we would play with them on the white sands of Victoria beach. He asked if I remembered the albino one, and I didn't, so I asked Mum, and she told me that it wasn't the chimp that was albino, but the houseboy who looked after them. My brother had conflated the two.....(I still remember the smell of chimps.)

I think we seem to have discrete childhood memories like little snapshots, and as we turn them over in our minds, we link them together to create the illusion of movement, like movie film does.

Zhuangzi talks about someone who wakes from a dream of glorious feast, and weeps for what he's missing. And, he says, one day, there will be a great awakening. Maybe so with our memories?

Where would the Lady's Brig lead me now, if I could cross it again?