Jems, Jimmy Linton, was my boyhood bosom buddy.  Some might say co-conspirator or partner in crime.  We never did anything bad or well let's say not really bad.  All of the Earlsferry boys were friends but Jems was my special pal.  We were Tom and Huck and then some.  To do our boyhood exploits justice would take a good sized volume.  I'll content myself with a few of our memorable moments.

 

It's like Jems and I got washed up on the beach by a big wave.  We were always beachcombing, fishing, either from the rocks behind the jetty at the Elie Harbour or from the Fish Rock at the lighthouse.  Again, we might be raking in the rocks for partans or lobsters, you name it, we were a regular pair of rag-a-muffin sea gypsies.

 

One time we built a boat from driftwood planks we'd picked up.  More a slab-sided box than a boat. Held together with whatever nails we could find.  At first it leaked like a sieve.  With plenty of tar, (courtesy of the village road repair crew) it held together within reason.  Our bailing can was an empty Heinz 57 baked beans tin which was in constant use..  Our pride and joy was about three feet wide and six or seven feet long. With it we ventured out to sea. For all the world it looked like a coffin and so its name became.  Eventually villagers feared that the village would have a double drowning and made their concerns known to Wilson the bobby. Wilson agreed and knocked on our door to have a talk with my parents. Not exactly a talk.  A command. "That boat is completely unsafe. The boys must never go out in it again.  I want you to break it up."  The Coffin wasn't broken up but my parents laid down the law to me.  Dutifully I listened.  For about three weeks all went well. Then one Saturday Jems showed up at the Howff.  "What say we  get the Coffin out? We can stay inshore, go out around the Chapel and drop our lines in West Bay."  Before Jems arrived I'd been getting ready to go fish for the trout that lived in the Cocklemill  burn that flowed under the bridge near the Kinneuchar railway station. (I once saw a whopper of a sea trout there that must have been all of five pounds). I surprised myself by telling Jems," no." Guess I still had religion.  I left on my own.  But Jems was hot to trot. He rounded up another pal, Alan McRoberts.  The two of them hauled the Coffin down to the waters edge and set off.  They went around the point at the Chapel and on in to West Bay.  Just as they were off the 11^th, the Sea hole of the golf course, and getting their lines over the side, a noise in the sky made them look up. A smoking airplane was coming from over the golf course and heading right for them.  On impact with the water one of the flyers on board was ejected.  As I remember the other went down with the plane.  It transpired that the plane was a Navy Blackburn Roc from Crail Naval Air Station.  Jems and Alan paddled over to the survivor. There was no way a third person could get into the Coffin as it barely held two boys.  To balance the craft Alan went to the front of the Coffin to allow Jems to slip over the back end.  With one hand Jems held the airman and with the other he hung on to the back of the boat.  Alan paddled the Coffin to shore.  By this time half the villagers who had seen the smoking airplane going down, including Wilson the bobby, were on the scene. Wilson with a big smile on his face waded in to help the trio to shore.  Next week the local East Fife Observer weekly newspaper carried the sensational front page headline; 

 

  "Local Boys in Coffin Save Airman."

 

It turned out that the pilot they rescued was the son of Sir George Wilkinson, the 1940 Lord Mayor of London.  In gratitude his lordship gave Jems and Alan 100 pounds each. That was a lot of money in those days.  Also to each he gave a gold pocket watch that was inscribed on the back with his lordship's words of gratitude to mark the occasion.

 

That was the last voyage of the Coffin. 

 

Right then I figured out that some days it just doesn't pay to be good.