Another wonderful woman - Elif Shafak

We had a great night at our wild camp and enjoyed the pleasure of seeing the Eildons emerge from the mist below while we had a sunny breakfast.

The drive to Traquair wasn’t long, and we arrived in plenty of time to park up in the field - our camp for tonight - before enjoying our first event “Scottish Women can Paint” with Joyce Cairns, first woman President of RSA. We didn’t have time to see the exhibition in the house but hope to see it at lunchtime tomorrow.

The next event was what we consider the best of the day - novelist Elif Shafak and journalist Sarah Helm revealing the truth about the divided societies of Turkey and Gaza. Passionate, clever, knowledgeable.

We ate our picnic in the walled garden, listening to Barbara Dickson - a blast from the past but a good relaxed performance.

Next up was chaired by Allan Little - Stephen Gethins, former UK permanent representative at NATO and Mariot Leslie, former UK ambassador to Denmark among other places. Both were very positive about Scottish independence and our place in EU. They thought that provided independence came from a referendum and was not unilaterally declared, Spain would not veto joining EU.

Mr C opted out of Lady Anne Glenconner’s stories of her life as a lady in waiting to Princess Margaret. She was interviewed by Jim Naughtie who was very annoying - both rudely interrupting and being sycophantic - the woman had plenty to say without him
butting in, man-splaining.

Our last event was Prof Geoff Palmer, William Dalrymple and Alex Renton. The latter’s family owned slaves and plantations in the West Indies and his book lays bare the Scottish involvement in the slave trade. There are more Campbells in the West Indies than Scotland. Apparently the aristocracy made more than the English from slavery which is barely mentioned by Scottish historians of the old school like Tom Devine. William Dalrymple said his usual piece about our horrendous legacy of exploitation and brutality in India. They acknowledged that more is to be taught in Scottish schools.

After this we had a much-needed tasting of
Selkirk gin.

The only cloud on our day is the news from #3 daughter that Luke and the children have tested positive for Covid. She is still negative but beginning to feel unwell. He is in bed. (They both have been double-vaccinated). She thinks Luke may have got it at work and they all got it from him when they slept in the wigwam together. We saw them for 5 minutes on Tuesday which is outside the likely transmission time. The guidelines say that as we are double-vaccinated we don’t have to isolate unless we test positive. We are outside at this festival and wear masks in the well-ventilated marquee. So far we are negative but won’t be going to Carol and Phil’s tomorrow night.