Writer's Gramps

On the website I have mentioned the ex-slave village, Pniel, near Cpae Town but I came across an interesting story closer to home in Neil Oliver's A History of Scotland. It starts in the Caribbean with a Scottish sugar plater called Wedderburn, an unusual name in Scotland. In 1762, Wedderburn attended a slave sale and bought a young lad called Joseph Knight. Something about Knight made Wedderburn educate the lad, make him a house servant and treated him much like a son. In 1769, when Knight was a young man, Wedderburn decided to take a trip back to his Scottish roots in Perthshire in order to reclaim the baronetcy lost by his father in fighting for Bonny Prince Charlie. Knight and a local girl Annie Thompson formed a liaison and Wedderburn allowed them to marry. Knight then decided to ask his master to be paid for his years of service and Wedderburn refused. Wedderburn decided to return to his sugar estate and ordered Knight to go with him. Knight refused and appealed to the courts...

This is one of the Dalton Gang, all masked up. Seriously, I made this mask to stop the pollen from the trees, chestnuts and other free flowering exhibits, that totally enclose the lane I walk along to the shop aggravating my hay fever.   It’s an old handkerchief folded in half with the ribbon from a name tag stapled to it.   To get the chin bit right I had to put it on, make the shape, and put a piece of sticking plaster on it, take it off and staple the sticking plaster. It   made me feel foolish but I assumed it would also works for the Virus and thought anyone seeing it would just think it was for that and think – well done! I got a surprise when I went to the shop the other day because people who would normally have moved to the edge of the pavement and nodded in passing, rushed off to the other side of the road. It seemed that with no mask, they thought I was normal, now they thought – He’s got a mask on, he must be dangerous. Probably covered in germs. www.sul...