"Dear Ian. Your namesake, Ian Fraser, mailed me the other day, asking if I would identify the year of the photo. Ian's family lived in Stewart Crescent two doors away from us in Adam Place (opposite the cooking centre).

I had submitted the photo to Ian. It was a small, scruffy print and had lain in a drawer for years.  I had no problem in identifying the name of every person on the picture, except for some of the babes in arms (they were also Muirs, though, but apparently no relations of yours).

Now, your family I knew so well as they lived only two doors away.  Our address was No. 4 Prospect Place, and the year was 1945.  I was ten and my wee brother Alan, standing in front of me, was two (he is the one holding the greyhound's tail!).  Alan and Ian Fraser are about the same age although Alan was more of a friend to Morag, Ian's wee sister.

I remember your Gran and Grandad (Jock, who worked in Brighills, as did my own Grandad Jim Hunter -- fifty years in the same pit) so well and of course all of their children, your uncle Davie and the girls, Helen (your Mum), Anne and Betty.  Mind you, your Mum was always called "Nellie," and Anne was "Annie." 

Davie and I used to fill a silk stocking with paper and rags and play long-shooting outside the very doors on the hard, dirt roadway.  Davie fancied himself as a goalkeeper. Your Gran was a very kindly woman and often, if my Mum was out, she would give me a piece on jam and a drink of milk to keep me going.  No door was ever locked at night.

Now if you trawl further down that picture page, you will see the photo of the Lochgelly West football team of 1947-8.  I was captain and am holding the cup.  I would be two or three years older than I was on the Prospect Place photo.

It is most interesting to learn what happened to the Muir family after Prospect Place.  Despite the privations, the lack of space, the "lavvies" round the back (at least they were flushing cisterns!), I recall very happy times there. 

Especially during the war years when we all played and gathered under the street lamp.  There was a brick-built air raid shelter opposite your Gran's house and I suspect that many of us gleaned much of our education in or around its precincts!

Your mention of Helen (also "Nellie" I have to say) Kane, brought back a very happy bunch of memories.  I was considered reasonably good at art as a wee boy at the West School and could draw straight lines (I became an architect eventually, in real life).  When I was about eight or nine years old, Nellie Kane, whom I thought was drop-dead gorgeous looking, used to come into our house and stand on a small stool before she had a date with some lucky guy.  I was comissioned to "draw" mock seams on the back of her legs as there were no nylons in these days (unless they got in with American soldiers).  I used to look forward to that, until, for some reason, as I got older, I was taken off the job! I think they call it "shoogly-hand syndrome."  Or maybe Nellie met an American!

There are other stories that I could tell you relating to that photo. One boy on the photo would come to be murdered in the seventies. Another on the photo (not a relative of yours I would stress) stole coal from my Dad's wee coalhouse in the close.  My Mum thought the police should be called but my Dad's pals, who found who the culprit had been, had other ideas, and they did not bother the police.  That guy did not walk about very well for a month or two.  Rough justice had been meted out.  At that time, my Dad had been injured in the pit and was on eighteen bob a week's compensation.  Thus the crime was considered particularly vile.

So there you are.  I hope you find some of this interesting.  You have opened up a can of great memories for me and our family as well.  Maybe we can get together some time for a proper blether.  We live in Dollar, but I pass through Halbeath now and again on my way to the Weight-Watchers' class in Cowdenbeath.

With kind regards to you and all your family.

Ron ("Ronnie") Hunter."