In the news again.

Listening to Punchey Wunchey Wickey Wackey Woo by Hasil Adkins and Been Here and Gone by Elmo Williams and Hezekiah Early.

I was going to write about the wedding of niece of Willox Dixon, which took place prior to the Covid lockdown, and I will later, but seeing a selection of relatives there caused me to start thinking about families in general. Now, unfortunately, other than the fact that my family are perhaps a little eccentric at times, I don’t hate them or anything. It is a bit disappointing as it limits my colourful back story a bit – although, Batman didn’t hate his parents, but I suppose, they got shot before he got a chance to grow up and hate them.

I have mentioned the viking ancestors in a past blog, but there are more recent family members who are also worthy of a mention. Auntie Jeannie for example, she swears like … a parrot I know called Lorenza, which is probably the most ill tempered creature I have ever come across, but back to Jeannie. She uses swears I have never even heard before and summer or winter she always wears the same overcoat, tied round the middle with orange baler twine. Even on the hottest days she wears the overcoat, because, “whit keeps the cauld oot, keeps the hot oot”. It is claimed that when Jeannie bought her flat, she wheeled the cash up to the solicitors in a pram. That may be apocryphal, but no-one is likely to question her about it.

On the subject of swearing, I just learned that swearing generally draws from a pool of 10 expressions and occurs at a rate of about 0.5 percent of one’s daily word output…While swearing crosses socioeconomic statuses and age ranges and persists across the lifespan, it is more common among adolescents and more frequent among men. Inappropriate swearing can be observed in frontal lobe damage, Tourette’s disorder, and aphasia. As I often say, the quest for knowledge is eternal.

I have digressed a little. At the wedding I got speaking to a great uncle who has also been tracing the family tree. As we stood at the bar, he went into his wallet, and I asked for a whisky. He pulled a newspaper cutting from the wallet as the barman looked at me for cash. The cutting proved to be gold though. So good I didn’t even mind paying for my own dram.

He had spotted in the local paper a reprinted article from February 1928, referring to my great aunt. The article was entitled, ‘Highland spirit enough to give robber a run for his money’. So picture the scene, it is late evening, the night is wet and windy, the slates rattle on the cottage roof as she returns home. Completely unaware of dark figure hiding in the hallway, the moon glinting evilly off the dirty great iron shovel in his hand, she fumbles with key, then pushes back the door and throws herself into the warmth and security of the cottage, and WHACK! A robber proceeds to batter her about the head with the shovel. So vicious was this attack, that blood was sprayed around all the walls of the hallway.

But…Janet was a Highlander by God, and no iron shovel was going to stop her relaxing at home. She picked up a lamp and threw it at the man and they fought through the cottage. She rugby tackled the burly former soldier, bringing him crashing to the ground, along with the Welsh dresser of china, and wrestled with him. It was only when her head was badly cut by the broken lamp, that the fight stopped.

The robber, an army deserter, whilst quite happy to batter her over the head with a shovel, took fright on seeing how much blood there was from the cut – and after all, we know that head wounds do bleed a lot – and worried that she was going to die. He cleaned her and bandaged her head, and sat with her till he was sure she was ok. He then stole a suit and legged it. Janet raised the hue and cry, and the robber was quickly discovered and arrested. It appears there is a reason that making your getaway doesn’t normally involve going to the pub.

Now that is some woman! It was in the paper…must be true.