While on one of his camping weekends at Rosneath, he met a girl called Marion Grant. He went out regularly with her throughout his college years, and kept up a correspondence with her after he left Glasgow; in fact, he was still writing to her during his first few months as a qualified veterinary surgeon in Yorkshire. He did not regard this relationship as a particularly serious one, however, as he was seeing someone else at the same time. She was called Nan Elliot and came from Knightswood, not far from where Alf lived in Scotstounhill. This young lady also continued to correspond with Alf long after he left Glasgow.

He certainly enjoyed female company during his time at the veterinary college but there would be only one deep and lasting relationship in his life, and it was not during his years as a young man in Glasgow.

In July 1939, Alf Wight sat his final qualifying examinations in Veterinary Medicine and Surgery. He was longing to finish being a student and begin his chosen career but it was not to be; he passed Medicine but failed his Surgery exam. He would have to wait a while longer before leaving the veterinary college.

This came as a severe blow but it was not that surprising. His anal fistula had struck again and he was very ill in the months preceding the exams. The condition became so painful that he underwent a second operation in the Western Infirmary in Glasgow and, in his words, ‘Had my backside rearranged again!’ He did well to pass in Medicine while carrying such a debilitating condition.

His friend Jock McDowall, the vet in Sunderland, was full of admiration for him, and wrote to Alf in August 1939: ‘I fully expect you will have had your operation by this time and you’re possibly not feeling too good. I expect the surgeon would make what is commonly called a few heroic gashes in your tender spot. You were unfortunate in getting asked all those questions about the Corpus luteum and Graafian follicles in your oral. I couldn’t have said much myself about the subject. However, it says a whole lot when you sailed through Medicine. By Jove, you must have put in some graft despite not feeling too well; you deserve a medal.’

His father was very upset when Alf failed his final exam in Surgery. Pop, the eternal pessimist, had never encouraged his son to enter the veterinary profession. He had always believed that Alf was taking a big chance entering a profession where one of its main sources of revenue, the heavy draught horse, was rapidly being replaced by mechanisation, but he still shared his son’s deep disappointment when he failed to qualify.

For Pop himself, the outlook was better. Although his fish and chip shop business had failed around 1936, he soon found alternative employment, working as a shipyard clerk for Yarrow’s down by the Clyde. Unlike his son, Pop had a good head for figures, with a neat hand and an organised mind; an ideal man for such a job. With the threat of possible war with Germany, the fortunes of the Glasgow shipyards were beginning to pick up as the demand for ships grew, and Pop was enjoying a more secure financial position than he had for many years.

As Alf began to study for his re-taking of the Surgery exam in December, Pop had even more reason to hope that his son would pass. When Britain and France declared war on Germany in September 1939, Pop knew this could mean his son having to serve his country in the armed forces. The veterinary profession was regarded as a ‘reserved occupation’ – one whose services would be needed at home – and Pop had no desire to see Alf risk his life on foreign fields.

Alf had few qualms about serving his country if needs be. The recent involvement of the International Brigade in the desperately fought Spanish Civil War, where thousands of young men from Britain and other countries had voluntarily given their lives in the fight against Fascism, had stirred the patriotism of many, and Alf was no exception.

However, to achieve his full qualification as a veterinary surgeon was his number one priority. Apart from wanting to start work properly, his perpetual dependence upon his parents also worried him. Although their financial position was by no means parlous, he wished to be a burden upon them no longer.

During that Autumn term of 1939, he felt a little better and worked feverishly to pass this last obstacle. After the exam, he thought he had done well enough, but he still awaited the day of the results with rising tension. That day duly arrived, with Alf one of a large crowd of students jostling for position in front of the notice board, eyes desperately scanning the list for the names of those who had passed. The name of James Alfred Wight was not there. At that moment, he felt only one emotion – despair. Deep, deep despair. He had done his best but he had failed again, and he wondered for how many more years he would have to remain anchored to Buccleuch Street.

He was about to return home to give his parents the shattering news when a door opened and an official of the college walked out to stick another piece of paper onto the notice board. ‘My apologies, gentlemen!’ he said. ‘There has been a clerical error. Another name is to be added to the list.’

That name was J. A. Wight.

As the shaken but immensely relieved young man walked through the streets of Glasgow that day, he felt as if the old college, reluctant to lose another student to the outside world, had made a last despairing snatch at him.

On 14 December 1939, Alfred Wight officially qualified from Glasgow Veterinary College as a fully-fledged Member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. He had taken six and a quarter years to complete a five-year course but, compared to some of the other semi-permanent students, he had attained his goal with admirable speed. He did not leave the college without a twinge of regret. In his introduction to James Herriot’s Dog Stories, he expressed his feelings for his old seat of learning:

When I qualified and walked out of the door of the college for the last time I felt an acute sense of loss, an awareness of something good gone forever. Some of my happiest years were spent in that seedy old building and though my veterinary course was out of date and inefficient in many ways, there was a carefree, easy-going charm about that whole time which has held it in my mind in a golden glow.

The young Alf Wight emerged from Glasgow Veterinary College a much wiser man. He had absorbed a huge amount of information but his learning curve had only just begun. It was one that would never end.

CHAPTER SEVEN

During that final term, Alf had had an incentive to work extra hard. For many of his friends who had qualified with him, their troubles were only just beginning as the daunting prospect of trying to find a job loomed before them. For James Alfred Wight MRCVS, however, things were a little different. He had a job waiting for him. The town of his birth had beckoned him back; he was to be assistant to J. J. McDowall MRCVS of 1 Thornhill Terrace, Sunderland.

It is a widely-held belief that the real James Herriot launched out on his professional career as assistant to ‘Siegfried Farnon’ in the Yorkshire Dales. Indeed, the author himself leads us to believe this; nowhere in his books is there any reference to his being employed anywhere other than in that magical part of Yorkshire that he would make so famous.

His first job, in fact, was in Sunderland and, although he spent barely six months in the employment of McDowall, it was an eventful period in his life, so much so that several chapters in the early Herriot books are based upon people and incidents from that seminal stage of the young man’s career.