The power of associative memory....

This week at Rotary, out of the blue, one of my table companions mentioned that he and his late wife had been married by a woman minister - Revd Dahlia Grigor.

When I was a very young boy in Dumfries and growing up in the Congregational Church in Irving Street, our minister was the very same Dahlia Mary Simpson Grigor.    She was a Margaret Thatcher type.  She ruled the all-male Deacons' Court with a rod of iron.   My father, a gentle man, was the Church Secretary and they had a mercurial relationship.

When I spotted this label this morning, I remembered how one night walking home she bumped into the Rev Harry Simmons, the much-loved minister of Maxwellton-West Church.    There had been a bit in the papers about the possibility of women bishops (a prospect that took another 60 years to fulfill,)     "Well, Miss Grigor" Harry said.  (No one, not even a colleague, was permitted any familiarity with first names.!)     "What price women bishops now?"

Hardly pausing in her stride she retorted - "Well, if there are, they will be good ones!"     And stomped off into the night.