There is a simple answer. He earned well but, rather than save it, he spent it. Alf was always a generous man who thought little of spending money on others; this, combined with the high cost of living that everyone experiences, was a major obstacle to amassing capital.

His own family benefited from his generous nature. My sister and I had the happiest childhoods imaginable. We were well fed, we had several holidays each year and, in our schooldays, rarely missed out on trips. If my father was ever short of money, we were never aware of it.

It was not only his children who benefited from his generosity. He strove continually to make Joan’s life less demanding. Even though Rowardennan was a modern house and easier to keep clean than the big old Kirkgate house, he still paid women to help her. In 1956, he bought her a Morris Minor, the first of a succession of new cars.

After 1961, he had to fund my university education and, four years later, Rosie’s as well, but one of the most revealing examples of his generosity was the financial support he provided for his parents. From the first days of working with Jock McDowall in Sunderland, when he was earning £3 a week, he sent money to them and, even during his time in the RAF, when he was receiving a paltry three shillings a day, money was on its way up to Glasgow.

There are references to this in his letters to them. In one from Sunderland in 1940, he wrote: ‘Here’s 30 bob from my pay; buy yourself 10 Woodbines, Pop old boy!’ And from Thirsk in 1941: ‘Funny how hard it is to save! I don’t spend much and I’ve only given you folks £40 since I came. I do wish it could have been more.’ In later years, as he regularly sent money to them, he referred to it as ‘the pension’. It must have amounted to a fair sum over all that time; he rarely missed a week.

In 1958, he bought his parents’ house in Glasgow. As rent-paying tenants, they were faced with the possibility that the owner was going to sell the house which would have meant their having to find a new home. It cost Alf £1000, a substantial sum at that time. The debt he felt he owed his parents was repaid many times over.

Alf Wight received nothing in the way of financial aid throughout his life and this, combined with his generous and responsible nature, goes a long way to explaining his lack of any capital at that time. His position was hardly surprising, and indeed was no worse than that of many of his professional colleagues of the day, with his lack of readily available money balanced by freedom from any form of debt, save for the mortgage on his house. Admittedly, he was a worried man when he learned that he had no more than £20 to his name in 1966, but he did not allow this to spoil a life that was both rewarding and brimming with a wide variety of interests.

One day, in the early 1960s, while on a visit home during my years at Glasgow Veterinary School, I came across a small manuscript in one of the drawers at Rowardennan. It was a short story called Left Wingerand it was about football. I sat down then and there to read it. Having noticed my father’s familiar scrawl superimposed over parts of the typewritten text, I then approached him with it.

This is very good,’ I said. ‘Did you write it?’

‘Yes,’ he replied, almost apologetically. ‘You really think it’s good, do you?’

‘I really do! Why don’t you send it to a publisher or a magazine?’

‘I have,’ he said. ‘Several’

‘And?’

‘No one seems to want it.’ He thought for a moment before continuing. ‘But you think it’s good?’ He seemed singularly interested in my opinion.

‘Yes, I do!’

He seemed satisfied and dropped the subject.

I knew that my father had been writing for a year or two, and presumed that he was continuing to pursue yet another of his ‘crazes’. This latest hobby seemed to be one at which he appeared to be not only adept but one also that he was clearly taking a little more seriously than the others. I continued to believe, however, that – as with many of his other interests, – he would persevere with this new enthusiasm for a while longer before giving it up for something else. I was wrong.

CHAPTER TWENTY

‘May I borrow one of your magazines, Joan?’ Alf asked of his secretary one day, a slightly sheepish expression upon his face. Joan Drake, who had joined the practice straight from school in 1959, four years previously, considered that she knew her employer quite well. She had regarded him as a man who was at home drinking beer in the company of his friends, or standing on the packed terraces of football grounds, but definitely not the type to read women’s magazines. It was a strange request and she looked at him a little more closely.

I’ll give it back to you as soon as I have read it!’ he promised. Detecting the look of puzzlement on her face, he lowered his voice before continuing. ‘I want to have a look at the short stories.’

Unknown to many, including Joan Drake, Alf’s pastime of writing – for which he was obtaining information and ideas from every possible source – had, in fact, been occupying an increasing amount of his time for several years. Around the late 1950s, he had bought books on the art of writing and, in his spare time, had tentatively begun to tap away on his typewriter.

The idea of writing a book had been one of Alf’s long-held dreams. I remember his talking about it during my schooldays and a letter written by Joan to his parents dated 2 October 1955 is very revealing: ‘I must tell you that there is great excitement in the house as it’s Alf’s birthday tomorrow. Guess what I have bought for him – a typewriter! I’m sure he will be writing to you much more often now; he may even get down to writing that book he has been talking about for thirteen years!’

Although Joan had been listening to Alf’s ideas for writing a book almost from the day they first met, it took him more than twenty years to think seriously of turning his dream into reality.

He had an excellent grounding in that he was extremely well-read, and was a dedicated and accomplished letter-writer. He had observed tremendous change taking place within his profession and he felt a burning desire to put it all down in print. He wanted to talk about the quirky characters he had met, with their fascinating, old-fashioned customs and remedies. He felt compelled to describe the old Yorkshire he had grown to love – a way of life that was fast disappearing – and he wanted to preserve it for others to enjoy. A humorous slant could be provided by his friends, Donald and Brian Sinclair, with whom he had had so many hilarious times.

It was following the recovery from his nervous breakdown that, with such fertile ideas, he began to write in earnest, but he soon discovered that it was not going to be as easy as he thought. After about eighteen months of chopping and changing his story, he came to the conclusion that he was going nowhere. His book, a succession of long sentences full of florid adjectives was, in his own words, like a ‘schoolboy’s essay and a poor one at that’. He had to think again.

The pages of Alf’s very first attempt are covered in corrections and alterations; he must have spent countless hours re-writing the book. The end result was a somewhat jerky collection of stories about farmers and his veterinary friends, Donald and Brian, whom he called Edward and Henry Vernon. Some of the episodes are ones that were eventually to appear in his first published book, but they are a pale shadow of the work that was to appear years later.

It was while he was sadly taking stock of all his efforts that an idea came to him. His book was, in essence, just a collection of short stories, tenuously connected together. He had always been a great admirer of the art of short-story telling, with the stories of Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells and O’Henry remaining some of his all-time favourites. He decided temporarily to shelve the idea of a long book and try his hand at short-story writing. While on his rounds, as he listened attentively to stories on the car radio, he thought to himself, ‘Surely I can do as well as that?’ With renewed feelings of confidence and excitement, he began.