A day out with Es

Es and I had a wee day out today to attend the 90th Anniversary Lunch of the Scots Independent Newspaper. Originally the newspaper of the Scottish National Party it later became an independent of The Party and not directly associated with The Party and remains so to this day.

At 90 years old those involved with the inception of the newspaper would not have been the most popular or celebrated of figures. It was not an easy job promoting Scotland's independence and encouraging others to support it. Over the ninety years it has been no easy task to keep the paper going and it is down to the hard work of volunteers and the support of subscribers that it still continues.

For a period in the late seventies early eighties my Dad was employed by the SI as office manager and indeed the first job that Gillian and I both had was folding the newspapers each month at despatch time to go into newspaper wrappers and be posted all across the world. Mum had the job of putting them in the wrappers:-). Gill and I would get a couple of pounds each for doing this and we had to save a portion of that in our Dunfermline Building Society accounts each month :-)

The First Minister was the guest speaker and gave a highly entertaining and poignant address. With any Anniversary there is a degree of looking back over the years and my time and the First Minister's time in the Party coincide. Nicola celebrates 30 years of membership this year...mine will be next having both joined at 16. Many of the things that members now take for granted are a shared folklore of our generation and those before us. It was good to be reminded of these times and appreciate how far we have come and where we are now. And that is all down to the folk who have kept the SI and the Party going in the lean times.

I'm grateful to be able to share this time with Es at an event her Grandpa would have loved and that we both enjoyed very much.