Winter Lights

Winter Words, in its eighth year, is a festival of the written and spoken word at Pitlochry Festival Theatre. Lasting a week, it has a packed and varied programme each day, and includes speakers such as Sir Chris Bonnington, Mairi Hedderwick and Neil Oliver.

We had booked tickets to hear Liz Lochhead, Scotland's current Makar - ( national poet ) reading and talking about her new collection of selected poems called " A Choosing ". She kept a full house well entertained with her anecdotes and poems. Some years ago we had seen her play " Mary Queen Of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off ".

From that most enjoyable hour we went in to a Literary Lunch with the writer Janice Galloway. We were seated next to another couple who were very good lunch companions. At the coffee stage of the meal, Ms Galloway read from her book "All Made Up". As there was a group of senior school pupils present, she decided to read from the part of her book to do with teachers and her own first days in Senior School. This was hilarious and struck many a chord with the ( again ) full dining room. There seemed to be quite a number of teachers present and amazingly, it included two sisters who had attended the same school as Ms Galloway, now in her mid fifties, and remembered the particular Latin teacher with the same great affection.

That could well have gone on for longer, but we were looking forward to hearing Professor Sue Black OBE a leading forensic anthropologist and recently a well kent face from the TV series "Cold Case Histories". Professor Black gave a fascinating insight into her varied career, from investigating atrocities in Kosovo to advising Val McDermid (creator of TV's Wire in the Blood) on forensic examination techniques. She also paid tribute to her former Biology teacher in the IRA [Inverness Royal Academy] for raising her sights by assuring her she was going to go to university. She is currently raising money for a specialist morgue. Professor Black also explained and praised the selfless gift of donating one's body for medical science without which medical students would be unable to fulfil their training.

It was a great day not least the scenery on the journey north to Pitlochry with snow capped mountains against a cloudless blue sky.