Happy St George's Day

I always remember St George's day because it was my grandfather's birthday. He was born in 1891 in the village of Abbot's Langley in Hertfordshire, the same village in which my mother was born some 29 years later. It was also, incidentally, the village in which Nicholas Breakspear, the only Englishman to have become Pope, was born around 1100.

I also discovered last year that my maternal great great grandfather was , in the 1811 census, listed as a shepherd living near the village of Diss in Norfolk (somewhere else I have never been) so clearly on that side my English rural roots go deep.

My grandfather moved to Edinburgh in the early 1930s and my mother was educated there and lived all of her life in Scotland apart from her training in Denmark and England as a PE Teacher and the time she (and my father who she met in Iraq) worked in the Middle East.

I was born some fifty miles or so further south, in what is now the London Borough of Bromley (though I have not been back since I was 9 months old) where my parents were temporarily living before returning to Scotland.

The picture is of the saltires outside St Andrew's House and I mean it as a positive St George's Day salute to our neighbours and friends south of the border and to the whole of the social union.

The Nelson Monument in the background is also testament to the intertwined nature of our national stories ( for there would have been Scots on board his ships at Trafalgar and Aboukir Bay ) but also - in its technology and style - dramatically emphasises that things never stand still . Everything changes and indeed needs to change - including national and political structures.

Independence will, in the old nationalist saying,stop Scotland being a surly lodger and ensure she becomes a good neighbour. So happy national day to our neighbours who are very much part of my social union but who would benefit as much from independence as we would.