Team liked a meaty challenge

Today’s great main picture comes to Craigie courtesy of the column’s resident astronomical expert Ken Kennedy.

Turning his thoughts to Dundee’s meat trade heritage, the retired biomedical scientist writes: “I see Craigie has had an old-time butcher’s theme going for the past few days and I thought you might like to hear about my paternal grandfather, William Kennedy.

“He was a master butcher in Dundee in his younger days and, probably around the mid-1920s, had his own shop in the city’s Ann Street. He had been a keen, and I believe, promising footballer and played matches for the Dundee Butchers’ team, which seems to have been quite active in the early 1900s.”

Referring to the vintage print that can be seen on the right, the Broughty Ferry resident adds: “I have a photograph of the team with my grandfather in the centre with my young father standing between his knees.

“The photograph was taken in 1914 and my father would have been two years old. My grandfather’s apparently promising career in football was suddenly terminated when, as he was boning some meat, his knife slipped and plunged through his thigh, severing his femoral artery.

“As there were no vascular surgeons at the time, he was fortunate enough to survive until a rapid below the knee amputation was performed. He was supplied with a prosthetic leg which he could lock and unlock to allow the knee joint to function, but which was quite primitive compared to modern artificial limbs.

“I’m not sure when the accident happened but he did serve during, and survive, the First World War, so it was some time after that. However, the amputation was the end of his football dreams, but he remained a butcher, with a cheerful disposition, for the remainder of his working life.”

On his grandfather’s sunny disposition, Mr Kennedy concludes: “I have found

that this is a characteristic of butchers in general.

“With his early training in the trade, my father passed on a few tips to me about carving a joint, etc, and I have joked with my own family butcher that I didn’t have any skills in butchery, but I did do some early study of pathology – which is really quite similar!

“The eternally jovial butchers thought that was very funny!”

The Dundee Butchers XI and others at Tannadice Park in 1914. Ken Kennedy’s father and grandfather are both in the photo – see left.

Eric Niven spent an hour in Tuesday’s sunshine at the Grassy Beach by Broughty Ferry.