Irongray kirk

D was back at college today and he dropped Jess and me at Irongray on his way in. After all that history I was reading yesterday, I thought I’d have a look at some gravestones of people who died in our house. Against the church wall (to the left of the war memorial) is one for Thomas Maxwell and his wife Helen Rogerson which says that they “lived happily together for 63 years”. Their oldest son, also called Thomas Maxwell, took a wife called Mary, who was 34 years his junior. Mary’s sister Sarah was my ggg grandmother and she lived at the neighbouring farm. I never knew that until we moved here.

The night after we moved to Irongray, in 1997, there was the most amazing aurora and D and I watched for ages from the garden. It made us feel happy that we had come to live in this place. There has been a really strong aurora over Scotland for the past two nights, but sadly it’s too cloudy here to see it.

Samba Sisters AGM tonight. Well done Hazel for chairing, like herding a group of cats! What a great bunch of women we are :-)