Article from 'The Sunday Times' newspaper from January 2004.
TIME AND PLACE : A TOAST TO TEMPERANCE
The impression made by a seaside hotel has stayed with Barbara Dickson for life
"I've never talked about the importance of this place in my life before, partly because it was such a fleeting visit. It has, however, created an almost lifelong hankering in me. I often talk about Castle Campbell, in Dollar, which I know well and have stayed in often. And I have often spoken about family holidays to Liverpool my mother is a Scouser and when I was little we used to go there every summer. But I've never talked before about the Temperance hotel in Invergordon.
Talk about amazing, ambient memories. Invergordon sparked amazing feelings that have stayed with me all my life.
The hotel was owned by the brother of my uncle Willie's wife. I can't imagine it was that temperate because Roddy, the owner, certainly enjoyed a party. It was a place of great jollity. The hotel's name certainly belied what went on behind the front door.
Anyway, I remember going up to this tiny room which I was to share with my brother Alastair, and feeling immediately in the clouds. Almost every time I see a dormer window I am taken back to that room. I was used to living in a single-storey prefab in Rosyth and here I was looking through this dormer window to the sea. I remember feeling terribly sophisticated.
Another thing about the hotel was that it was old. It was Victorian, but to me it was as ancient as anything. The hotel had such character.
There I was, a little child, up in the roof space. I wasn't scared, but I was fascinated.
I remember it vividly: the room had two small beds in it. I have a memory of it having a window seat. It was cosy, but the corridors were quite dark. I don't think of it as being gloomy, even though it probably was.
It proved to be a once-only visit to the Temperance hotel. As a family, we didn't really go on holidays. We weren't that well off and we didn't have a car. If there was a holiday to go on, there was always Liverpool. Compared with Rosyth, where I was brought up, Liverpool was a fantastic place to go for a holiday. Because it was so urban, there wasn't a blade of grass; it was very Coronation Street.
The Temperance hotel felt like something out of Hamish McBeth, very exotic indeed, and I thought Fife seemed so kind of switched-on compared with the Highlands. I had a strange take on the world at the time. I thought everywhere was so very far away, even Aberdour, which is about five miles away, but at the time everything felt like an expedition.
I think it was because a trip to Edinburgh was something you did "once in a blue moon". There was no Forth road bridge then, although my dad didn't drive a car anyway. Back then, the Firth of Forth was a real geographical barrier. Of course, I now think all of Scotland is entirely beautiful.
My memory of growing up in Fife is absolutely prodigious and deep.
I suppose my memories are bound to be sharp, as I haven't lived in Scotland for 30 years and absence makes the heart grow fonder.
I now have this terrible longing to live in Edinburgh, and last year I was sneaking behind my husband's back and checking out flats in the city. When he found out what I was doing, there was almost a divorce in the family. He wasn't having it.
Maybe it's a hankering for all things Scottish because thanks to that room in Invergordon I also have a desire for a place in some remote part of Scotland, such as Argyllshire. I was recently speaking to David Sole, the former Scotland rugby union captain, a good friend of mine. As well as his home in Edinburgh, he has a house in Aberdeenshire, where he is originally from. He has been encouraging me to move to Aberdeenshire, as it's so lovely up there. I had to tell him,'No way', as it has to be somewhere on the west coast, where the big mist and small rain is.
You see, I have this picture in my head of one of those white two-storey Scottish houses, with, of course, dormer windows. It would have to overlook some lapping water, probably a loch, despite the fact that it would be so bloody freezing that you'd never dip your foot in it.
I always visualise this image when I go up to Loch Fyne and sit in the Oyster Bar there. Even a little place in Glenluce, in the southwest of Scotland, would satisfy me, given that it is easy to commute from rural Lincolnshire, where I now live.
That room in Invergordon has a lot to answer for.
