Telling Tales: Growing Up on a Highland Farm

by Jane Yeadon

Growing up on a farm in the north of Scotland could be both rewarding and challenging. Now, bestselling author Jane Yeadon recounts her childhood before her nursing adventures started, in her own unique and entertaining style. Jane and her little sister Elizabeth never had it easy, especially on Mondays. As their mother shut herself away to write her popular newspaper articles on the everyday life of a tenant crofter, the girls were given tasks around the farm by Dod, the farm grieve. On a farm where money was tight, the extra income meant a lot, especially with their father dead after a tragic motorbike accident. As they grow up, the girls start to see life on the farm in very different ways, but both know that running a farm demands hard, physical toil. And it's often from them. In a world where you should either be useful or keep out of the way, Jane finds herself divided between hearing the freedom call of the winds that blow over the moorland farm and those of its ceaseless demands for attention. Telling Tales recounts how Jane learns about her place in the scheme of things, the hard way. Poignant and touching, this nostalgic account of life on the farm recalls a way of life which was so recent but is now all but forgotten.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir

224 pages, Paperback

First published April 9, 2015

Reviews

[Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, devouring it over the weekend. Yeadon remembers how it felt to be a small child surrounded by arbitrary adults. Her mother and others never actually say "because I said so" but she knew that's what they meant. Her life in the Highlands is beautifully evoked--hard to realise today that many crofters didn't have electricity until the 1960s! At one point she mentions never having seen herself in a full-length mirror until she was six.

If the book has a weakness, it is that the author sometimes mentions events and people as if the reader already knows all about them, and only explains several pages or chapters later. This too is characteristic of children of the age of 4 or 5, but doesn't add to the reading experience. There was a bit too much unexplained Scots vocabulary, as well. A footnote or two, or even just a parenthesis, would have helped.

[Sadie · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF @ 25%. I'm just not a fan of the childish narration, with its rambling/stream-of-consciousness style. I did, however, find some of the Scottish slang interesting -- e.g. a "dry greet" instead of "crocodile tears".