A stone of potatoes

by Louisa Adjoa Parker (Weymouth)

Maureen’s been here 50 years this September. When she first arrived, she got the bus to Portland Bill. I was used to the lochs and mountains of Greenock, she says, but here I looked out, and saw nothing but the vast emptiness of the English Channel.

It was strange at first, we couldn’t understand a word people were saying, they didn’t understand us. Back in Scotland, you’d buy potatoes by the stone. I went into a shop and asked for a stone of potatoes. The woman just looked at me.

Another time I asked for cream of tartar, the woman handed something to me saying ‘We call it tartar sauce here.’ We’d meet in the tea room – Burt’s – on Saturday mornings, all us Greenock ones. We’d eat beautiful cakes off Poole pottery in pastel shades.

If you live and die in the same area, you have life-long friends. Coming down here, you have to start again. Sometimes I dream, she says finally, that I’m with my family, but instead of being here, we all live in a house in Greenock. It never leaves you.

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What Louisa Adjoa Parker says about A stone of potatoes:

Inspired by talking to Maureen, who moved down to Weymouth from Scotland at the age of 17, along with hundreds of others from the Torpedo Experimental Establishment at Greenock.