Glenelg, Scottish Highlands: Allan McAskill

My wife and I visited relatives in the Scottish Highlands and while there, attended a Church of Scotland service at Glenelg Church, overlooking Loch Alsh. The church is set in a striking and dramatic landscape and has a small and warm-hearted congregation. After the service, I was shown a Bible, left on one of the pews' book ledges. That Bible has been there, on the same ledge, in the same place, in the same church, for 106 years. The inscription, carefully written in the inside cover, is from John McAskill, whose son, Allan, died in a French hospital in April 1917, aged 23. The Bible was bought for Allan 'out of the Regimental Pay due to Allan at his death' and is accompanied by a biblical text from John 15.13. A poignant parental request is added: 'Please do not remove bible from his seat.' And so the Bible has remained, an enduring reminder of the raw grief experienced in so many communities in the years following the First World War.

Stonemason

A stonemason came to repair our house wall. I was flattered that he was working on Montacute House, the well known Elizabethan House a couple of miles away, but it was less that our house was important and rather more significant that stonemasons are in short supply nationally. So they are much in demand. Clad in the same style of protective garments worn in medieval times, they are an impressive group of skilled workers, who can handle heights and cut and lay stone in methods which have been in use in England for hundreds of years.