Chatting to Tony Bonning in his renovated cottage near Dundrennan, it’s hard to imagine a more stunning backdrop.
Through the French windows, frost-rimmed fields roll down to the Solway glistening under the low winter sun, England’s mountains looming dark behind.
It’s a beautiful setting, not greatly dissimilar, given its rurality, to Tony’s native Crosshill in south Ayrshire.
Born at the smiddy “at the Maybole end” of the village, Tony – one of Scotland’s finest storytellers and author of a half-library of children’s books – certainly has his own wonderful tale to tell.
His mother Barbara McQuater, whose name he took as a boy, he tells me, was from a well-known local family while his father Charles Bonning was an engineer from Ayr.
”Barbara was always working in the farms,” Tony begins, his listener half expecting to be asked if he’s sitting comfortably.
“McQuater Bros had a big thrashing mill they used to pull around the country to all the farms behind a steam traction engine.
“It was all corn (oats) and tumshies (turnips) that was grown in those days.
“The worst job as a boy was shawing the tumshies – I’ve been standing in a blizzard doing it – the training was tough!
“Your pay was 10 shillings for two days work over the weekend.
“It would be November time and freezing cold.
“But the first job I remember doing was hooking the big grain sacks on the back of the mill.
“I mind working with a man, Hugh Linden, who was built like a cybie (spring onion) but could put a fork in a bale of hay and throw it up as if it weighed nothing.
“To me he was a hero.
“His son was killed in the war.
“I did a paper round as a boy too – anything to earn a bit of money.
“Crosshill was a tight knit little community.
“Everybody knew everybody else.
“People generally did not travel far to get married, maybe Dailly or Maybole.
“Some of the more exotic ones went to Ayr.”
In “a fantastic childhood”, Tony reveals his go to place always involved water – and fishing.
“I was constantly fishing for salmon and brown trout on the River Girvan, all the time,” he smiles.
“I would cycle round all the burns and go guddling for trout – and that’s what brought poetry into my head.
“There was one very special place, Lady Glen on Kilkerran Estate, halfway between Crosshill and Dailly in the Galloway Hills.
“The workers built a walkway for the lady because the sides were steep.
“I have walked up there from the age of eight or nine.”
It’s interesting to hear south Ayrshire’s Carrick borderland described as Galloway but historically the two have always been close, both in kinship and linguistic
terms.
“My mother was from Girvan and she spoke with a Galloway lilt,” Tony tells me.
“Folk from Straiton, Pinmore, Pinwherry, Colmonell and Ballantrae were the same.
“It was the land of my childhood.
“But as I grew up I could hear the accent changing, through TV, more cars and people moving into the area – all these affected the sound of the language.
“I have always loved the country language and the language of the land that my grandfather Alick McQuater spoke.
“It was just pure music to me.
“From an early age you would learn old country skills – like knowing what kind of bog you could walk through without sinking in.
“What rocks were slippy and what ones were grippy so you could stand on them – granite is good, greywacke is treacherous.
“Knowing what stone to stand on going across a burn is quite important!
“I could climb trees like a monkey and was good shot too – I could take a pheasant off a branch with a catapult.”
Born in 1948, Tony tells me he was “obsessed” by the war so recently ended before his birth and as a boy always wore an army jacket in memory of his uncle, Flight Sergeant Alick McQuater.
“My uncle was still very much a presence in the house when I was wee,” Tony says.
“He was blown out of the sky in his Stirling bomber over Amsterdam in 1943.
“They only found one body – and it was not his.
“The plane went into the water behind a main road built on a dyke.
“I got his childhood book, Beric the Briton.
“My mother said I looked just like him.
“He was musical just like me and played the moothie – and so did I.
“My father Charles was in the war too and came back with PTSD.
“He saw some terrible things and helped liberate a concentration camp.
“During guard duty at the front gate he suddenly heard bagpipes and next thing here’s this piper marching along leading the PoWs.
“They were just skeletons – but those half-dead men marched out of that camp with pride.
“The guy in the box across from him was in tears too.”
Tony talks openly about his high-functioning autism – a gift in terms of boundless energy and keen intelligence but in other ways, not so much.
“I loved primary school and at Crosshill I got the dux medal – I was the best of a bad lot!” he jokes.
“But I hated Carrick Academy and had a really hard time there.
“I got bullied mostly because I was quite left-field.
“Autism heightens the senses and perceptions – but it also made me a target because I was different.
“I was the one guy that everybody picked on.
“I was always in trouble and went head on with the head teacher.
“That was because I refused to wear school uniform – I had a red corduroy shirt and blue jeans – and would not take the belt either.
“However, there was one teacher – Miss ‘Geography’ Scott – who was amazing.
“She taught English too and always called the boys mister and the girls miss – so I was Mr Bonning.
“One day she asked me to stay behind – I can remember it as if it was yesterday,
“‘I have never had anybody through my classes who can recite poetry like you’, she said.
“‘That’s my mum,’ I replied, ‘she’s always reciting poetry.’
“‘Well, your writing is very good but your grammar is all over the place and I’m going to fix it’.
“I stayed behind for the next six periods – and she did.
“Miss Scott gave me the language tools I needed.
“Being honest I regard her as saving my life – although
I did not know that at the time.”
It was as a teenager, Tony explains, that he began to discover other aspects of his autism.
“I could not look at crossword puzzles because the squares start moving about,” he says.
“Even now it’s the same with a black and white chequered floor – it’s a nightmare for me.
“On the positive side I have amazing perceptiveness.
“I will see a deer in the hills before anyone else.
“But it’s frustrating – there are some things which seem simple to people that I can’t do. For example my tent got trashed and the firm told me to send it back.
“But months later it’s still sitting on the kitchen table!
“Also, because you are high in sensory things your senses are heightened – for example, big sounds are painful.
“I can’t really do parties – I hear absolutely everybody and can’t distinguish sounds.
“Two guys can be right in front of me talking to each other yet I can’t hear them.
“It’s not deafness – I have to cup me hands over my ears to enter the conversation otherwise the whole thing just becomes a cacophony of noise.
“I hear every conversation in the room – I’m trying to process it all and after a while it gets too painful and I have to leave.
“And I don’t like new things when I have only just got used to the old ones.
“If they mess about with the shelving displays in Tesco at Kirkcudbright I can’t go in!”
Physically still very robust at 74, Tony has always loved big open spaces and cherishes memories of cycling through the hills to Wigtownshire as a boy.
His long distance pedal took him past Clachaneasy, a tiny hamlet not far from the Ayrshire border.
The sing-song name caught his imagination – and in its own way had as big an impact on his life as Miss “Geography” Scott.
“Clachaneasy took me into the study of language and the origins of words,” he smiles.
“It’s Gaelic, Clachan Iosu, which means Jesus’ hamlet.
“Since then I have never lost my obsession with language.”
There’s a slight catch in Tony’s voice as out of the blue he recites a poem.
It’s a homage to his place of sanctuary and inspiration throughout his life.
“Take me just one time through my known woods to the Lady Glen,” he says in a whisper.
“To slip and fall in mossy streams that glint in green leafed sunshine.
“Will all my old friends sill be there – or have they all gone home from play?”
It’s a far cry from Carrick Academy, which Tony was glad to leave at 15 for Ayr Technical College then on to the GPO for training as an engineer.
By 21 he was “a long-haired hippy” in London – where he started singing at gigs and putting his technical skills to good use.
“I worked for Tony Rockcliffe, who was was the producer for Eddie Grant and the Equals,” he chuckles.
“My flat was in Notting Hill, just off Portobello Road where the carnival is held.”
Tony reels off a whirlwind and varied career which took him back to Scotland as a freelance journalist, writing for The Sunday Post, the Scotsman and a particularly famous article for the Sunday Mail.
“They were going to run these pylons over the Pentland Hills to Edinburgh,” he recalls.
“Roy Petrie the artist painted in this huge pylon beside the Scott Monument to illustrate the story.
“On Monday there were phone calls to the Daily Record offices complaining about them building pylons on Princes Street!
“They were good campaigning papers then.”
Tony comes across as somebody with a healthy disrespect for overweening authority.
So it’s little surprise to learn that by the early 1980s he was deeply involved in the freedom of information campaign, which aimed to expose government actions to full scrutiny by the people.
But Galloway was calling – and while still living near Edinburgh he bought a piece of land below Screel Hill near Gelston.
“I named it Taliesin after the Celtic poet,” he tells me.
“It means radiant brow in old Welsh.
“Taliesin was just a piece of rough ground and grazing on the side of Screel.
“The owner needed a bit of money fast and I gave it to him.
“Having come out of a farming family I wanted to own a wee farm and build a log cabin.
“There are many old Celtic names locally - Tarff is tarbh, Gaelic for bull, Cluden is Cludda – Clodagh in Irish – the Celtic goddess, and the River Dee – Uisge Dhè – is named after a water deity.
“The rivers Urr and Ayr are pre-Celtic – both names relate to the sacredness of water.”
Tony recounts how he made a living through his own tech company CTT, his journalism and, latterly, selling advertising for Oracle, ITV’s teletext service.
And in 1992, eight years after buying Taliesin, he and his family moved to Galloway permanently, to Glenroan, Knockvennie, on the narrow moorland road between Parton and Corsock.
“It means red glen in Gaelic,” he explains.
“We had a wee cottage up there half a mile up a track.
“I used to love being out on the hill with my kids.
“They could tell a raven from a crow, and a crow from a rook.
“The ravens are the largest and set apart by the finger feathers on their wing tips.”
At Taliesin, Tony tells me, he co-founded South West Community Woodlands “with a group of like-minded souls”.
“We started working with the Forestry Commission to encourage them to plant native species,” he says.
“We taught woodland skills, built turf ovens and coracles, and flooded a lot of land to encourage wildlife.
“I also did storytelling for the kids which spread through word of mouth.
“But the real genesis of my storytelling was at Glenlochar playgroup.
“One time the manager Karen Millar said ‘let’s have a singsong’.
“I joined in with The Wheels on the Bus – but didn’t know the Dingly Dangly Scarecrow.
“Karen just said, okay here’s 60 songs, learn them for next week!
“I did – and brought my guitar along.
“That was the starting point.
■ Don’t miss part two of Tony’s story in next week’s Galloway News.
