Ne Obliviscaris?*

I've had a totally uncharacteristic day today, one so far from my normal existence and yet conducted on an ordinary Friday, less than an hour's drive from home, among people I knew as well as total strangers. We'd been invited by our closest friends Di and Rob to go with them to Inveraray Castle for a tour conducted by their son, who's recently taken a job there as a guide, so as soon as we'd scraped ourselves together (and had our coffee) we were off, to drive the sometimes hair-raising road up one loch side and then round the head of another to Inveraray for lunch. After several trying miles behind a swaying and enormous timber lorry - one of these two-part jobs with lorry and trailer, both loaded with logs - we managed to overtake on a hill and were only 25 minutes late (I know). If you're ever in this extraordinary town (relocated at the Duke's behest when the current castle was built after the '45 because he wanted an unbroken view of the hills) I can recommend Brambles for a terrific sandwich - they take the concept to a new dimension. Di and Rob, who'd been there on time, had bagged a table ...

Lunch over, we walked up to the castle through the grounds where we met up with the rest of our group, some of whom I'd met before and one who remembered us from his schooldays - there's always one - and Michael, who emerged in a Campbell kilt, looking as if he'd always belonged there.

We saw some parts of the castle I'd not seen on a previous visit, including a haunted bedroom and a small, private library that would have made  a perfect set for a movie murder (extra). But what struck me forcibly were the arrangements of weapons on the walls - so many different ways to disembowel an opponent, with ingenious tassels on pikes so that the user's hands didn't get slippery with blood and a variety of swords, from basket-hilted monsters to delicate slender blades. We even passed round a bayonet - so long, so heavy, so horribly sharp! 

We finished in the kitchen, with its four ranges, bread ovens, ranks of copper pans, and exited through the gift shop (coveted a tiny silver hip flask, but the crest would never do for someone whose mother was a Stewart!) As always, there was that feeling of otherness for the gentry whose home this had been over the centuries - but tempered by the obvious fact that the family has given and still gives work to the community. And our friend Michael is a fantastic guide - I don't know how he's memorised so much in such a short time, though I never doubted that he'd be the man to tell a great story.

And a last word about our own family: while we were standing outside the castle waiting to go in, my phone rang (it plays Beethoven's Ode to Joy very loudly) and I stepped aside over the gravel to answer it. It was my oldest grandchild, Catriona the trombonist, who yesterday felt she'd not done at all well in her Grade 8 exam. (She'd had a dire cold for a week, to say nothing of her just having finished her Advanced Higher exams at school). She was almost incoherent with relief as she told me she'd passed with Merit, only four marks below a Distinction. 

I must've been grinning like a lunatic when the Duke drove past ...


*"Don't forget" - the story of the castle explains : We have taken great pride in our achievements, yet are conscious of our mistakes, something reflected in our family motto, ‘Ne Obliviscaris' - 'do not forget.'