Free Even on Days when it Rains by Julia O'Donnell

was so proud of me.
    â€˜Y’know, Julia, I don’t know what I’d have done without you,’ he remarked as he made his way back inside the cottage.
    The following year I was back on the chain-gang when I joined a big crew of Owey people, including my brothers James and Edward, for the first of many trips tattie howkin’ on the big farms of Scotland. It was June when we set out for our destination, leaving my beloved island and my parents behind. And even though I was travelling with my brothers and many of my neighbours, the homesickness was as bad as ever.
    Our destination was Ayrshire in Scotland, and on my arrival at the farm in Kilwinning, where acres of potatoes awaited us, I was shown my sleeping quarters. I now had something in common with the farm animals: we were sharing the cowshed. The pungent smell of hot cow dung and the peculiar odour of the animals which had just been milked was still heavy in the air, even though the area had been washed out with water and swept with yard brushes. As I stared at my spartan new sleeping quarters, I could hardly believe it. I hadn’t known what to expect as I’d set out for this land so far removed from Owey, but the cowshed had never been mentioned. It’s not that I was accustomed to the finer things in life, but this was as basic as you could get.
    â€˜It’s certainly no home away from home,’ I remarked to Mary, one of the other girls.
    â€˜Julia, you’ll be so tired you’ll be happy to bed down anywhere,’ Mary pointed out.
    â€˜I suppose you’re right,’ I replied, as I got set to make up my mattress. Our employer had thrown us some straw, and each of us had to make up our own mattress using bags that had been stitched together. There was a black blanket for every worker and two of us sleeping on one mattress. All the girls slept in one shed, and the men were in a separate one. On the positive side, it was June as I started into this, which took the sting out of having to rough it in these primitive surroundings.
    The next morning a lorry arrived for us at 5 a.m., and we all piled onto the back of it. We were like the inmates of a prison camp being driven off to do hard labour. The vehicle was packed with young men and women. We were transported across rough terrain, and the bouncing up and down made me feel sick that first morning. Finally, we reached the fields where we had to reap the tatties. As I jumped down to the ground and walked around to the front of the truck , I glanced across the huge expanse of land that swept before me. There seemed to be no end to the field. It spanned out as far as the eye could see, and I wondered how many weeks I would spend in this field crawling on my hands and knees as I gathered the potatoes.
    Tattie howkin’ was laborious, painstaking work. It was done by hand at a snail’s pace, with the spuds being dug out with three-pronged forks and then collected in baskets. It was back-breaking work, and every day was the same that summer. I’d get to the fields shortly after 5 a.m. and go straight to work. We were under pressure to make as much progress as was humanly possible before the heat of the sun became unbearable. I’d spend hours on my knees, gathering the potatoes into a basket that I pulled along after me. The ground was rock-hard, and as I crawled along through the drills the friction blistered my knees, making the tedious task even harder. My hands were soon decorated with welts and cuts, and clay was caked under my fingernails. Sometimes small, sharp stones would pierce underneath my nails, sending a stinging pain up my fingers and leaving them sore for days. The cuts, punctures and blisters hurt like hell as you worked, and there was never any time for them to heal.
    Sometimes the heat in the field was unbearable, but you couldn’t go off to the shade of the trees because there was a job to be done. At 2.00 p.m. the lorry would return to take us