Tain in black and white

With all this local history, I thought it might be fun to articulate the timelessness of much of Tain through a bw photo. The house on the centre right, with the three windows on the first floor, is apparently (according to J) the oldest surviving house in Tain. It has also, likewise according to J, been haunted and subjected to an exorcism, relatively recently.

I snapped this on the way to our only event (and outing) of the day, which was Trial by Jury, presented by Mark Bridgeman. It was an entertaining enough way to spend a Saturday afternoon (in the Sheriff's court which is in the Tollbooth - the building with a pointy tower in the distance in the blip), with Mark presenting about the infamous murder of Mary Mackenzie, in a small community on Lewis, leaving us to figure out what result the jury reached. We were asked to vote on this, and by the looks of the piles of votes, it seems that the majority of people decided that the jury would have opted for that uniquely Scottish verdict, not proven. That is, in fact, the case. They opted unanimously for not proven, after just one and a half hours of deliberation. I suspect that the accused George Macleod literally got away with murder (listening to the evidence against him), mainly because his defending QC, Lionel Daiches, was able to pick holes in the Crown's case, which had not been put together particularly carefully.

The rest of our day was quiet. We sorted out the back vestibule, putting together some storage shelves that have been waiting for our attention for months. This allowed a considerable amount of tidying up, which was also aided by transferring some things from the vestibule into the garage. I did a peloton workout. And this evening we had chilli again, but this time with baked potatoes.