Stranraer

How proud were you? 10 caps for Scotland.

A boy from Stranraer, and why not? What was it like when you went back home?

Oh, it was amazing.

Yeah.

I mean, we joked as well about the curse of the manager of the month being real after two consecutive defeats.

If we were joking about it, we're not joking about it now because I don't know if you watched this post-match interview following Elgin's 5-1 home defeat to Stranraer.

He was absolutely livid.

It was funny because like, so you, a wee kind of peek behind the curtains here.

Yeah aye in future sorry we will pick games where there are highlights In

fairness we thought there were going to be highlights for this one it's very unusual for Dumbarton not

to have highlights Yes but then when we saw there were no highlights we could have pivoted to somewhere else but we chose not to I suppose though we've talked about Clyde a lot we've talked about Stranraer a lot we need to give someone else a chance And just no games next week similar to League 1 because of the international break.

But before we finish up the podcast, Sean, you touched on it very briefly.

Even though Reston is a ScotRail station, it's not served by any ScotRail trains.

It gets a train every two hours run by TransPenn and Express, alongside a token daily LNER train in either direction, giving it annual passenger usage of around 30,000, about the same as Stranraer station, but still well down the list of stations along this leg of the East Coast mainline.

So its train service might be a bit weird and not great, but the station does have a bus interchange of sorts, connecting with the local service to Eymyth, which is good.

I'm not going to go into detail about bus integration at our Scottish stations because Scottish bus regulation is another whole episode and I think I'd end up repeating myself from earlier.

It must be 30 years since I last arrived here by boat.

I think it was the fast craft that ran across from Stranraer many years ago.

Very quick.

not very popular for some passengers because of the sea worthiness perhaps or not but just explain them what is the dock system like in Belfast if you're not familiar with it how many docks are there what kind of vessels come into a port like this?

Your picks for League 2 are faltering already.

Humped 5-1 at home by Stranraer.

All good.

Cummings an unused sub again.

Should I attain this result, I shall rest amply satisfied with the outcome of my first and probably my last venture in literature.

it was my intention to write out the sequence of events in due order depending on trustworthy hearsay when i was describing that which was beyond my own personal knowledge i have now however through the kind co-operation of friends hit upon a plan which promises to be less onerous to me and more satisfactory to the reader this is nothing less than to make use of the various manuscripts which i have by me bearing upon the subject and to add to them the first-hand evidence contributed by those who had the best opportunities of knowing major-general j b heatherstone in pursuance of this design i shall lay before the public the testimony of israel stix formerly coachman at columbra hall and of john easterling f r c p edinburgh now practising at stranraer in wigtonshire to these i shall add a verbatim account extracted from the journal of the late john berthier heatherstone of the events which occurred in the thul valley in the autumn of forty one towards the end of the first afghan war with a description of the skirmish in the tirana defile and of the death of the man to myself i reserve the duty of filling up all the gaps and chinks which may be left in the narrative by this arrangement i have sunk from the position of an author to that of a compiler but on the other hand my work has ceased to be a story and has expanded into a series of affidavits my father john hunter west was a well-known oriental and sanscrit scholar and his name is still of weight with those who are interested in such matters he it was who first after sir william jones called attention to the great value of early persian literature and his translations from the hafiz and from freddy de natar have earned the warmest commendations from the baron von hammerpergstall of vienna and other distinguished continental critics in the issue of the orientalicious seanceblatt for january eighteen sixty one he is described as der berhunte und sehr gelhandene unterwest von edinburgh a passage which i will remember that he cut out and stowed away with a pardonable vanity among the most revered family archives he had been brought up to be a solicitor or writer to the signet as it is termed in scotland but his learned hobby absorbed so much of his time that he had little to devote to the pursuit of his profession when his clients were seeking him at his chambers in george street he was buried in the recesses of the advocate's library or poring over some mouldy manuscript at the philosophical institution and his brain more exercised over the code which menou propounded six hundred years before the birth of christ than over the knotty problems of scottish law in the nineteenth century hence it can hardly be wondered at that as his learning accumulated his practice dissolved until at the very moment when he had attained the zenith of his celebrity he had also reached the nadir of his fortunes there being no chair of sanskrit in any of his native universities and no demand anywhere for the only mental wares which he had to dispose of we should have been forced to retire into genteel poverty consoling ourselves with the aphorisms and precepts of fair ducie omar khayyam and others of his eastern favourites had it not been for the kindness and liberality of his half-brother william farintosh the laird of branksome in wigtownshire this william farintosh was the proprietor of a landed estate the acreage which bore unfortunately a most disproportional relation to its value for it formed the bleakest and most barren tract of land in the whole of a bleak and barren shire as a bachelor however his expenses had been small and he had contrived from the rents of his scattered cottages and the sale of the galloway nags which he bred upon the moors not only to live as a laird should but to put by a considerable sum in the bank We had heard little from our kinsmen during the days of our comparative prosperity, but just as we were at our wit's end, there came a letter, like a ministering angel, giving us assurance of sympathy and succour.

In it, a laird of Branksome told us that one of his lungs had been growing weaker for some time, and that Dr. Easterling of Stranraer had strongly advised him to spend the few years which were left to him in some more genial climate.

he had determined therefore to set out for the south of italy and he begged that we should take up our residence at branksome in his absence and that my father should act as his land steward and agent at a salary which placed us above all fear of want our mother had been dead for some years so that there were only myself my father and my sister esther to consult and it may be readily imagined that it did not take us long to decide upon the acceptance of the laird's generous offer my father started for wigtown that very night while esther and i followed a few days afterwards bearing with us two potato-sacks full of learned books and such other of our household effects that were worth the trouble and expense of transport

chapter one CHAPTER II OF THE STRANGE

your hands off me.

Is it not enough that my life has been ruined? Where is it all to end? How long am I to endure it?' "'Hush, dear, hush,' said his wife in a soothing voice, passing her cool hand over his heated forehead.

"'This is Dr. Easterling from Stranraer.