The eternal question of kilts in winter

[Lachlan09]

Dear Jock Scott

To take you back to how it used to be, go to my album section, in my album about my family.

In there is a photo, taken by a family friend in the winter of 1941/42, of my dad’s family house in Kirkmichael, Perthshire. They had to get out through the upper floor windows !

Where do you see villages in Scotland getting that nowadays ?

BTW one time my dad was out the back of that house, in the shed, getting logs for the fire, when out of the dark there was a sudden whoosh ! of a shape leaping past his shoulder. When he turned round, a Highland wildcat was bounding off through the snow. “Touch Not The Cat Bot A Glove” indeed !

As a wee boy, I remember a wildcat pelt gracing the back of a big leather chair in my room, but it wasn’t that one.

I loved going to Kirkmichael (locally pronounced Kirkmichel with i as in pin and ch as in loch) with the lingering smell of wood-smoke hanging in the air, but it could be creepy with all those pine trees and shadyness ! There was an old Perthshire writer and published author called (Struan ?) Robertson whose house was called Straloch, who used to regale my brother and I of dark tales of Highland vampires and creatures of the shadows and claimed to have been bitten on the leg by such a creature while climbing through the window of a deserted bothy (even showed us the old bite marks on his leg ! scary stuff ! - ha ha - he had probably bitten himself with his false teeth !).

If there was a Scottish vampire or werewolf tale, where would you set the story ?