Bill’s pens farming book

FROM shepherding to three-piece suites, Bill Dalgleish reveals all in his memoir ‘A Son of the hills’.
At 90 years young, Bill has journeyed from being the son of a shepherd in the hills and glens of Upper Nithsdale to establishing a successful business in his home town of Sanquhar.
Illustrated with photographs of now almost vanished ways of life from the late 1930s through to the 60s, Bill takes readers on a tour of his childhood and early teenage years as he follows his father through his nomadic existence as a ‘herd’.
Moving from one remote farm to another, from the dramatic and challenging slopes of the Southern Uplands to the Pentland Hills close to Edinburgh, Bill details the many challenges of dog and stick livestock rearing and long forgotten farming practices.
There were the pastures that were used for wartime gunnery practice; and the nights when he would watch German Luftwaffe bombers flying overhead to target Clydebank.
Bill became an adept do-it-yourself vet, mending the broken leg of a much-needed sheepdog, and learning how to care for sheep to survive months of sub-zero isolation during the infamous 1947 blizzards. Tuning in to a battery-powered radio, there could be light relief with regular evening broadcasts such as ‘Dick Barton, Special Agent’, or ‘The McFlannels’.
With the tragic death of his father, just as the nation was celebrating the coronation of a new Queen, Bill’s focus switched from the land to the High Street where, over the next thirty years, he served the mining communities of Sanquhar with a very successful furniture business.
In writing this book, Bill acknowledges that one personal regret is that he knew next to nothing about his grandparents and their parents before them.
He said: “These memories of my own life are passed to my family and those who follow in the hope that maybe in the distant future, some of their families might have the opportunity to find out a little about their ancestors.”
Bill will celebrate the launch of his book with a special book signing, to be held at Chapters Bookshop in Thornhill from 11 am on Saturday July 25.