None of my direct ancestors could ever really have been described as sporty, including my parents. However, like many young people growing up in the forties and fifties, they had walked and cycled everywhere and played various sports through their schools or local youth groups. Later, in mid-life, my father developed a love of hill walking and round about the same time bought a new-fangled racing bike in a bid to maintain his level of fitness. But there was no membership of teams or sporting equipment in our house when I was growing up – unless you could include my father’s ugly stationary bicycle which was relegated to the garage after my mother refused to have it taking up precious space in the bedroom. There was no encouragement to follow in a parent’s footsteps by playing hockey (something I hated after an initial burst of enthusiasm) or taking up gymnastics or ballet. We had Brownies and Guides and Sunday School and the Church Music Club and that was enough. 

My mother (Catherine McKay) after a game of tennis c1956

As a teenager I discovered the joys of horse riding and hiking all on my own, and was also grateful my father had put in the hours to teach me to ride a bicycle. More importantly, these activities did not demand playing ball sports in a team, something I struggled with on account of having difficulties with hand-eye co-ordination. Because of this, there were many hours in the garden with my father training me to catch a ball as well as a few days every summer at the seaside while my father tried and failed to teach me how to do simple breast strokes in calm and shallow water. But in this case, the large plastic ring and armbands I was encouraged to wear probably did not help me to get any feeling for my own buoyancy, something I only realised almost twenty years later when I doggedly (literally) taught myself to swim a few metres in an outdoor pool in a much warmer country. As my mother could not swim (and neither her mother nor her grandmother) this was not generally considered an essential skill in the family; even the men were not great swimmers, having learnt only the basics in the fickle seas of the British Isles.

My grandfather, Alec McKay (far left), and friends, West Coast Scotland early 1920s

Looking back I now see that this was just the continuation of a historical pattern and if I’d been born a generation later I may have had a completely different experience. There were some relatives who bucked this trend: an English second cousin who was in the synchronised swimming team competing in the 2012 London Olympics; a Scottish second cousin who’d been a 1980s commonwealth athlete. But when I look closer, it appears that they mostly all were taking their cue from the other half of the family – the ones which my relatives married into – and so can effectively be discounted when it comes to passing on the sporting gene.

To be fair, it would appear that my own ancestors – who’d typically mostly belonged to large working families living in cities – often had little time or means to indulge in sports beyond those encouraged at school or through organisations such as the church or the boys’ brigade. Women in particular were bound to the home and the grind of constant childbearing and rearing. Even those like my maternal grandmother who only had one child after seven years of marriage often created extra work for themselves by obsessing about their home duties and the standard they had to keep up for fear they would be judged slovenly by others.

In addition, the sole family day off was usually a Sunday – a day that may have involved attending church and the cooking and eating of a huge dinner as well as dressing up to visit relatives or stroll in nearby parks. I can remember those interminable days and having to keep on my Sunday best to walk to Belleisle Park – one of the local estates which had morphed into a public park at some time in the 1920s, replete with a small zoo, greenhouses and a golf course. In the winter we fed the animals and in the summer we’d admire the Victorian bedding displays, then sit on the grass to listen to brass bands playing among trees whose provenance hinted at the colonial wealth that had funded the estate and it’s ‘big house’ all those centuries ago.

Me at Belleisle Park, Ayr, c1967

For my ancestors, the fortnight trades’ summer holiday allowed opportunities to indulge in extended leisure activities – or a holiday away, if you could afford it. While a week’s paid holiday for workers was not enshrined in law until 1938, many families still saved up through the year for this event. In my grandparents’ case, this often meant heading off to a boarding house somewhere by the sea with a round of golf on the local putting course to start the day. Living only a stroll from a local municipal course in West Edinburgh, my grandfather went on to take up golf more seriously in his retirement, an egalitarian activity (as it still is in many parts of Scotland) a world away from the elite Pringle-sweater-wearing, deal-making activity of how the sport is currently perceived.

My grandmother, on the putting course, early 1930s

In the above image, my grandmother does look rather glamorous for the occasion but the two-week holiday would have been an opportunity to wear smart clothes to parade along the local promenade and sit by the sea. Even an outing onto the sands often did not demand different attire, reminding me of the days at the seaside in Ayr with both sets of grandparents dressed as if for a city trip. Rolled up trouser legs and shirt-sleeves and sometimes a knotted hanky on their head (the men) and a short-sleeved summer dress were often the only concessions they made to the informality of the day.

A Day at the Beach, 1920s

In the above photograph my young grandmother (far right) is sitting with her parents and other relatives on what was possibly a rather cool and windy beach. The unknown child looks to be in fancy dress but it is my great-grandfather’s formal hat that seems the most unusual about this image. Unsurprisingly, no-one is looking as if they are sitting very comfortably, least of all my great-grandmother, although the children behind them seem to be having fun. 

My Grandfather and one of his sisters on a hike, early 1920s

The 1920s and 30s was a time when the benefit of a healthy body (tied in with notions of patriotism after the First World War) was extolled, culminating in a craze for rambling – often in large groups – as well as cycling and camping. It is no coincidence that both the Ramblers Association and the Youth Hostel Association were formed in these interwar years, and unsurprisingly my grandparents had both both keen walkers. As a child I once discovered their tiny fold up portable metal drinking cups abandoned at the back of a drawer and they told me about when they they were young and newly married and had packed these funny little cups into their knapsack as part of their paraphernalia for a day’s hillwalking in the nearby Pentland Hills.

My grandparents (far right) on the West Coast, 1920s

The photograph above seems to symbolise the freedom won by the post-war generation, which was often put to use in exploring the great outdoors. Here my grandfather is on a trip on the water with my grandmother and her elder sister, Chrissie, and a friend of his. Both girls are wearing the peasant blouses that were popular at the time, in part due to their popularity in silent Hollywood films depicting the characters of ‘free and exotic’ women. It’s a timeless look, which combined with their windswept hair, gives them a healthy, modern vibe. They look happy and carefree and ready to embrace the spirit of the age – until another world war would come along to change the course of their lives, yet again.

The Incidental Genealogist, September 2023