SHY BAIRNS

In Aussie parlance, ‘good on you, girl’. Lots of people all over the world say the same as Alexandra Sokoloff [Viewpoint, March 2016], though rarely so elegantly.

When I graduated in 1969 with a degree in dentistry from Edinburgh University, I found my first job in a very scruffy corner of South East London with an Australian dentist, a graduate from Sydney who loved his ancient Scottish hereditary and taught me to appreciate my Scottishness in a way I would not have understood had I never left Scotland. Since then, and increasingly so, I have been a little more exuberant about my Scottishness.

I think I know the main reasons for the reticence of Scottish people to ‘show the world what an incredible country in so many respects Scotland is’. I’m an insignificant wee chap: still practising dentistry, but it is still amazingly apparent even in that personal-gained confidence, the reluctance to ‘Shout to the World’ – never boasting, rather, even, apologising that we are just a very small insignificant mention beside other much larger populations – is haltingly embarrassing.

A few days ago, in my Rotary Club, our speaker for the evening was an ex-Army man who told us about the tragedy of Gallipolli 1915 in the First World War, where infantry from England and Scotland and other countries fought impossible odds side by side. As is expected, at the end of his talk, he asked for any questions.

That Scottish reticence I’ve seen so often before kept everyone quiet – except me. I told him a very little about my grandfather. He wasn’t at Gallipolli, but I recognised the speaker’s words in an old black ‘n’ white photograph which I am so proud and lucky to have: it’s of my grandfather standing in the sunshine, in his kilt, covered with the skin of a sheep, with a supremely proud confidence. I look at that photograph with tears in my eyes because we were being hammered, left, right and centre.

The speaker asked if my grandfather survived and was astonished with my answer. Yes, I replied: after the war, he went back to the Highlands, becoming the Headmaster of Spean School. He was the gentlest man I have ever known. He died at age 79 when I was about ten. Reading this letter, maybe Alexandra will start to see why Scottish people have that reticence of speaking about our country, its people character. Peter Macdougall, Perth